In an empty nook of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in San Pedro, long-ago reminiscences bubble up like seafoam.
Right here, sailors used to huddle 1000’s of miles from house and regale one another with yarns about their lives. In a nook lengthy since repurposed, the seafarers gathered to smoke, learn newspapers from tiny cities in Norway and drink espresso. There have been bunks to sleep, a pool desk for leisure and telephone cubicles to name house, alongside Lutheran sermons. It was equal elements nourishment for physique and soul.
The church, perched close to the Port of Los Angeles, dates to the early Forties, a haven for ship-weary crews who is perhaps anchored for every week or two between sailings that usually stored them away from the Nordic nation for months at a time.
The chapel nonetheless boasts a nautical theme: A small picket ship hangs from the sanctuary ceiling; a portray depicts crashing waves.
The adornments bear witness to the church’s fading previous, even because it transitions to a brand new section — one through which homesick faculty college students and Norwegian expatriates residing in L.A. take consolation within the trappings of house.
“As we speak, it’s extra type of a gathering place for what we normally name ‘fashionable seamen,’” the Rev. Morgan Berg stated of the folks the church now serves.
Pastor Morgan Berg, 37, on the Norwegian Seaman’s Church.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Occasions)
On Sunday, the church will rejoice St. Lucia’s Day, one of many largest holidays in Scandinavia. The saint, a 4th century Sicilian woman martyred for her Christian religion, is represented as a girl carrying a white gown, pink sash and a crown of glowing candles.
“She introduced gentle into darkness,” actually and metaphysically, stated Berg — an uplifting observance becoming for a 12 months that has seen the worst pandemic in a century.
Conventional St. Lucia’s Day celebrations function a girl or woman dressed as Lucia, carrying the signature candle-adorned headpiece, main a procession of singing youngsters dressed as “star boys,” Santa’s helpers and gingerbread males. However like so many different occasions in 2020, this 12 months’s parade and stay live performance have been upended by the coronavirus, which is raging unchecked in L.A. County and past.
The church, as an alternative, could have an outside service and display screen a recorded musical program.
When the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission arrived in San Pedro in 1941, Norway reportedly boasted the most important delivery fleet on this planet, with lots of of vessels visiting the Los Angeles harbor yearly. The Seamen’s Church — and dozens of others prefer it — have been inbuilt ports world wide, together with one constructed within the early Fifties overlooking the bay in San Francisco.
“The sailors obtained to be right here and have some reference to the house nation” greater than 5,000 miles away, stated Jay Prepare dinner, an organist whose great-grandfather helped discovered the native church.
And the home of worship that provided far more grew to become a beloved sanctuary, in line with “50 Years on Beacon Avenue,” a Norwegian-language historic e-book put collectively by the church. Apart from being a hub for mariners, the church grew to become an anchor for the roughly 10,000 Norwegians residing in L.A. on the time. To accommodate the rising numbers, the church moved to its present location, atop the Beacon Avenue bluff overlooking the San Pedro Harbor, in 1951.
Till the mid-Nineteen Seventies, 400 Norwegian ships got here by means of the harbor annually. By 1985, that quantity had been diminished by half, the Rev. Arne Oystese advised The Occasions that 12 months.
Catherine Chiaro, an Oslo native who moved to Southern California in 1987 and now works as an administrator on the church, remembers looking down hometown newspapers for visiting sailors, who got here by the lots of yearly.
She and Tone Grunwald, who bakes for the church and works in its reward store, now see a distinct type of bustle within the constructing. The ladies, each carrying matching pink face masks and T-shirts bearing the Norwegian flag, just lately helped prospects buy conventional Scandinavian Christmas decorations, corresponding to julenisse, a Santa-like gnome, and julebukk, the Xmas goat.
The church noticed file gross sales throughout its annual Christmas market. They offered out of the bright-yellow S-shaped saffron buns referred to as lussekatter that mark the vacation season.
“Persons are on the lookout for that nostalgic sense,” Prepare dinner stated. “Particularly when, you realize, isolation is the norm.”
The pandemic has introduced loads of adjustments to the Seamen’s Church. Two Norwegian {couples} heading the San Pedro web site returned house earlier this 12 months, and Berg, who had arrived from Norway in the summertime of 2019 to pastor a sister church in San Francisco, now splits his time between the 2 locales.
Norwegians Syhnove Helset, left, and husband Andreas Helset, stay in Pasadena, the place Andreas attends Caltech. The couple chat with Liv Johansen, middle, Catherine Chiaro and Tone Grunwald on the Norwegian Seaman’s Church’s reward store in San Pedro.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Occasions)
The tall, ruddy-cheeked minister was tasked by the church’s headquarters in Bergen, Norway, with surveying the place his compatriots stay on the West Coast. UC Berkeley probably has the most important group of scholars, with round 150, Berg stated, however he’s in touch with others throughout the state. About 50 to 60 college students stay in Southern California, he estimated.
Norwegian highschool college students are sometimes allowed to spend their penultimate 12 months within the nation of their alternative, however that didn’t occur in 2020 due to the coronavirus, Chiaro stated.
Some faculty college students returned house when the virus shuttered in-person courses. Others have been left stranded in California due to visa and journey restrictions.
“They’ve family that die, and so they can’t go house for his or her funerals,” stated Hans Bratt Hernberg, priest of the Church of Sweden, which has shared a constructing with the Seamen’s Church for the reason that late Fifties. “It’s actually a large number.”
Due to the pandemic, the Church of Sweden is holding its St. Lucia celebration on-line this 12 months. It’s a disappointing cap to a somber 12 months for a lot of, Hernberg stated.
However there’s a vivid — and candy — spot. Berolina Bakery in Glendale is holding a Swedish procuring occasion on Sunday morning that may profit the church.
With visitors within the port dwindling to only a handful of Norwegian ships, the church as an alternative acts as a central hub for the roughly 15,000 expatriates residing within the better Los Angeles space, Berg stated.
Amid the hopeful abatement of the pandemic in 2021 and the deliberate widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, a number of passenger vessels have tentative arrival dates in Might. Ought to these ships sail into the harbor, they’ll be met with an previous custom, the pastor says: blasting the Norwegian nationwide anthem from the church’s loudspeakers.
