Søndre Valler and Eidanger

Eidanger was a large rural municipality in lower Telemark, wrapped like a horseshoe around the market town of Porsgrunn, from the Eidanger fjord and Brevik in the south to the forest villages of Oklungen and Bjørkedal in the north. The soil was flat and good, clay and moraine – the opposite of the hillsides back in Sogn.

But what really set Eidanger apart from Brekke was industry: in 1928, the year Lasse and Åshild moved in, Norsk Hydro's plant at Herøya was completed a few kilometres away. Grenland was becoming Norway's industrial heartland, and Eidanger a farming parish next door to heavy industry. Farmers sold milk and vegetables to a growing town, and the tension between land and industry shaped everything Lasse later stood for in politics.

Søndre Valler, farm no. 44 holding no. 1, was bought by Lasse Tynning from the gardener Mikael Aamot. The concession was granted on 7 February 1928, and the deed was dated 17 December 1928 and registered on 2 January 1929, reported in Breviksposten: 68,000 kroner – a substantial property. After the wedding in Brekke on 26 May 1928 the newlyweds moved in, and by September 1928 "gardener Lasse Tynning" was listed as an approved assessor for the Eidanger agricultural board. Aamot and Åshild would later sit together on the municipal home-economics committee.

Vallermyrene was flat, peaty farmland just outside Porsgrunn – perfect for vegetables, with the town as a market a quarter of an hour away by horse and cart. From 1930 Valler Gartneri (Eidanger, telephone 207) advertised vegetables from its own cart at the market square in Porsgrunn every Wednesday and Saturday. In 1931 and 1933 the nursery advertised for apprentices, "boy and girl", in the national farming paper Nationen.

The farm was versatile: at the 1942 cattle show the cow Tomasine from Valler won a prize, and in the post-war years the family sold everything from calves and dried firewood to German shepherd puppies.

As early as 1933 and 1934 Lasse parcelled out building plots from Valler with names like Alfheim, Kolborg and Apalstad, and in 1935 Trollheim. The parcelling of farmland around Porsgrunn was the beginning of the suburban growth that would later swallow much of Eidanger. The housing estate at Vallermyrene literally stands on plots Lasse sold. Widerøe's aerial photograph from 1961, "Valler, Eidanger station", shows Vallermyrene with the station and the new houses.

Right next to the farm stood Tveten school. Åshild taught there from January 1937 until she retired in 1967 – thirty years, and in 1962 she was honoured for 25 years of service to Eidanger municipality. The school was also the parish hall: the 30th anniversary of the Eidanger Farmers' Union in 1947 was celebrated at Tveten, with chairman Lasse Tynning as speaker. Later both her daughter-in-law Bjørg (1966–2015) and her granddaughter Tone would work at the same school.

From 1 January 1964 Porsgrunn, Brevik and Eidanger were merged into one municipality, following the Schei committee's proposal. Lasse, aged 65, headed the Centre Party's list at the first election, became group leader in the new town council and chairman of the merged municipality's first conciliation board. He died on 10 October 1964, and the death notice was dated "Valler".

On 14 September 1955 Lasse signed a contract with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence leasing about 96 decares of the farm for 99 years, at 6,000 kroner a year. That is the formal origin of Vallermyrene camp. The lease turned the camp site into a distinct asset in the family's affairs, and eleven years later it could be separated out as its own share of the inheritance.

Søndre Valler stayed in the family. Lasse died on 10 October 1964, and Åshild was granted the right to keep the undivided estate on 7 December the same year. According to the Eidanger farm and family history, Åsmund Lasse Tynning ran the farm from 1965 while his brother Torstein sat in Parliament.

The settlement itself came a year and a half later. All the deeds are dated 4 January 1966 and were entered in the land register on the same day, 14 April 1966. Åshild divided the estate three ways: Torstein received the farm for 90,000 kroner, Åsmund and Brita received the land the military camp stood on for 150,000 kroner, and Åshild secured herself a life annuity worth 3,150 kroner a year. The register states plainly that the transfer to Torstein "does not include Valler military camp".

In 1991 the farm passed to the next generation. Torstein's three daughters, Gro, Signe and Tone, took it over together, a third each. Five years later, in February 1996, Tone bought out her sisters and became sole owner, and she lives on the farm today. The fields are leased to the neighbouring farm Bjerketvedt, which grows turf on them, so Vallermyrene is still green, if in a different way than in the market-garden years. Vallermyrene has more asphalt and commercial buildings than fields now, but Søndre Valler is still there, in the family, three generations after a gardener from Sogn bought it.