It was a simple question that didn’t make sense.
Natalie Wimberley wanted to know how the daily drop-off worked at her sons’ new school in Bodø, Norway when they moved there for her husband’s work about 10 years ago.
Where and when parents drive up is important in the United States. Not so in Bodø.
No one drives to school, locals explained when they finally figured out what she was asking. You walk or ski, they told her.
The family “came to love the culture and the people” during the 2½ years they lived there, she said. When it was time to return to the United States, the similarities between Bodø and Gig Harbor drew them to the area.
Now Wimberley is vice president of the Peninsula School Board, and she’s traveling back to Norway with other local leaders as part of an effort to start sister city relationships between Gig Harbor and Bodø, and with Bra?, Croatia.
One person trying to start those relationships is former Rotary Club of Gig Harbor North president Bob Anderson. He and others have been trying for a couple years, and their goal is to have the relationships formalized this year.
That takes agreements between the mayors, and sometimes approval by city councils, Anderson said.
They chose Bodø as a potential sister city in part because of Wimberley’s ties there. Lise Kristiansen, he said, has been critical in the effort. She lives in Gig Harbor, serves as Norway’s honorary consul in Alaska and has family ties in Bodø.
They chose the island of Bra? in Croatia, Anderson said, because the head of the Harbor History Museum connected them with a man who has local ties and plans to travel from Croatia to Gig Harbor this summer to work on a boat-building project.
“There’s a high Norwegian population in Washington state and a lot of people with Norwegian affiliations in the Gig Harbor area,” Anderson said, as well as “a very large Croatian contingent in Gig Harbor.”
The local sister cities team had about 200 people attend a Norwegian heritage day event in December, and they’re planning one celebrating Croatia.
Anderson said the goal is for everyone in Gig Harbor to consider their heritage, not just those with ties to Norway and Croatia.
Gig Harbor had a sister city in Japan in 2002, but the relationship didn’t last after those who started it moved away. Anderson believes having local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs behind the effort this time will make it stronger.
He’s done it before. A sister city relationship he helped start between Newton, Iowa and Smila, Ukraine remains strong 30 years later.
“Our differences bring us together,” Anderson said.
Leaders of the potential sister cities have had video calls, but the Norway trip would be the first in-person contact.
Wimberley, Peninsula School District Superintendent Krestin Bahr, Kristiansen, and Jennifer Stiefel (co-founder of Heritage Distilling) are some of those traveling to Norway this week for 10 days as part of the Gig Harbor delegation. They’ll be going to a conference of business leaders called the High North Dialogue, meet with local government officials and tour Norwegian schools. Wimberley said the school district is paying the way for Bahr and her, and that some in the delegation are individually funding their participation.
Wimberley wants to study the Norwegian school system and look into bringing some of those ideas to Gig Harbor.
Her sons were in elementary school and preschool when they lived in Bodø from 2011-13. Her husband is a retired U.S. Air Force officer who was stationed to fly with the Royal Norwegian Air Force.
There’s a strong focus on the outdoors in the early years of the Norwegian education system, she said, and everyone is in preschool from the ages of 1 to 6.
The kids learn confidence and teamwork. They forage for mushrooms outside, make mint tea and learn about hunting and how to prepare the food they gather. They learn how to dress for the outdoors and how to solve problems as a group.
“So much focus on the world around them,” she said. “… They’re resourceful and confident.”
She ran into her son’s class one day while she was out skiing.
Norwegian students have the same teacher and classmates for grades one, two and three. While the teacher changes for the next two years, their classmates stay the same.
They don’t start standardized testing until third grade.
Norwegian educators, she said, have expressed interest in learning how Gig Harbor students make the transition from free-play learning to a more traditional education setting where they’re sitting in a classroom.
Voyager Elementary School has connected with an elementary school overseas about getting students in touch, maybe through letter writing, Wimberley said.
She also thinks it could be fun to do a soccer game between the cities and maybe a youth camp. Bodø has a club.
Anderson said the important thing is to create person-to-person relationships. That’s good for peace and for economic development, he said.
He’s the former lieutenant governor of Iowa and was a state representative there, though he’s not quick to mention that.
Talking about why sister cities mater, he’s more likely to talk about the time he helped bring people from Russia and Ukraine to Iowa in the ‘80s, and formed a relationship with a collective farm in Ukraine.
“Lots of international work in Iowa sort of led me to understand the benefits of sister cities or various kinds of international partnerships,” he said. “… To have those personal contacts globally and to have continued them over all this time has been very important to me personally.”
Jane Ann Cotton, chair of Newton’s sister cities board, said Anderson is the reason Newton has a sister city in Ukraine.
“I think it expands other folks’ awareness of the way other people live and maybe some of the challenges that they’ve had to go through,” she said.
It was special, she said, that they had guests from Ukraine when the country declared its independence in 1991. One of the sister city projects at the time was to send medical equipment and personnel to Smila.
Today, Newton is organizing nonperishable food, medication and clothing, among other supplies, to send to support their sister city during the war.
“It’s really quite heartbreaking for all of us that have had close relationships with them over the years,” she said. “… Our local newspaper has really done a great job in covering this and personalizing it and putting really important information that we received from the students since it all started, the change in their lives.”
A recent front page featured Ukrainian colors of blue and gold to raise awareness, she said.
“I work with a particular teacher in Ukraine at a particular school, and over the years we have gotten very close,” she said. “It’s just been so difficult.”
Many locals who have hosted Ukrainian students have been in touch with them, she said.
“You always feel like it’s your own son or daughter by the time they leave, when they’ve been with you an entire school year,” she said.
Her own “Ukrainian daughter” now lives in Florida and is hosting four or five Ukrainians who were able to get visas.
She noted that Anderson took farm kids to Ukraine as part of his work with the Iowa Peace Institute.
One of the Iowa kids on the youth agriculture trip grew up to become U.S. Senator Joni Ernst.
“In fact, she just returned, she led a delegation to go to Poland, and took other senators, so they could see for themselves about the refugees and what has happened there.”
Wimberley said Bodø’s mayor has been asked to welcome 350 Ukrainian refugees and agreed. Maybe there are ways for Gig Harbor to help the city do that, she said.
When the delegation returns, the Gig Harbor City Council plans to discuss the potential sister city relationships at a study session April 28.
“It does have to be approved by council,” Mayor Tracie Markley said.
She’s supportive, she said, and has spoken with the other mayors.
Bodø, she pointed out, has a youth council. She’d like to see some sort of youth government like that in Gig Harbor.
Markley, like Anderson, hopes to have the relationships finalized by the end of the year.
The idea, she said, is “getting to know each other and making the world a little smaller.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2022, 5:00 AM.