Aashild Haugland

Aashild Haugland was born on 10 February 1897 on the neighbouring farm Haugland in Brekke, daughter of Torstein H. Haugland.

Aashild was the eldest of thirteen siblings at Øvre Haugland. After qualifying as a teacher at Stord in 1919 she took her first post in Solund, then Austgulen, Takle in Brekke and Voss, before marrying her second cousin Lasse Tynning in 1928. She began at Tveten school in January 1937 and stayed until 1967. That same spring she spoke at a national farmers' union meeting, reported in Dagbladet: "The farmer's wife has always been a working woman. If we only keep house and children, we are not doing our duty." In Eidanger she sat on the domestic science board and the school kitchen board.

On 26 May 1928 she married Lasse Tynning in Brekke church, and followed him to the new home at Søndre Valler in Eidanger. Here she became a teacher, from 1937 permanently at Tveten school, and the same year chair of Eidanger Husmorforening.

When war threatened in the winter of 1940, Aashild became chair of the agriculture committee of Kvinnenes Arbeidshjelp in Eidanger. Together with the district agronomist she trained young women to take over farm work if the men had to go to war, with Valler as one of the practice farms. She kept the minutes — and almost forty years later could still tell Porsgrunns Dagblad about the effort.

In February 1946 she was elected first chair of the re-established Telemark Bondekvinnelag, a post she held until 1952. She spoke for farm women on NRK radio, raised women's property rights at national meetings and in 1956 won national press attention for the demand for barn assistants for farm wives. She retired in 1967 after thirty years of teaching at Tveten school, and died on 9 September 1974.