Ivar Furulund Product controller Gudbrandsdalens Uldvarefabrik September 2013

I have worked in the factory since 1962. When I was sixty-three I went into retirement and didn't work for a few years, but then I started again when I was sixty-seven and worked until I was sixty-eight. Then I ended up at Feiring and underwent cardiac surgery. I had to replace two veins. Just now after a sick-leave that lasted ten months, I started again. I turned sixty-nine the other day. I didn't like being retired. The camaraderie here in the mill is very good, I was very happy with my job. You might tell since I have worked here for almost fifty years.

I'm from Lillehammer, from Saksumdal just over the hill there, and when I started in the mill I was seventeen or eighteen years old. I came straight from secondary school. It was like that when I grew up, it was about getting out there and finding a job. Today I would probably have taken more school. I started here in the weaving mill and worked for two years before I was in the military for a year. When I came back to the mill I did different tasks. I did shearing for a year before I started as a product controller. I perform the last check before the fabrics leave the factory. I've been doing this for about forty years, and I have done it well, I guess, since I have had the job for so long.

When I started there were 325 people who worked in the mill, and then it was really fun to get down here because there were people everywhere. It was often both a wife and a husband who worked here; that was very common. Today there are maybe seventy employees and yet we produce so much! I think almost more than ever. When I started there were sixty-five old looms beating and slamming. Today there are a lot fewer, but each loom produces, isn't it, eight hundred metres a day? You can see the fabric growing on the cloth beam. There has been rapid development. I still think it is an all right place to be. You have to work really hard. But that is what you are supposed to do when you are at work.

Besides my job at the factory I have been a musician for fifty years. I've had my own dance band. It's called Furulunds, and we were touring all over Norway. It was hard to make it happen. When I finished the job here Friday night, I had to run home to get changed and then be on the road to play somewhere. I came home early in the morning, and then off again at night. There were no quiet weekends, but it was really fun. I stopped after fifty years, when it was enough.

In the final control you pass all the fabrics through a machine to look for errors. I notice the mistakes that are possible to notice. My job is demanding. It is tough both on the head and the vision. You stand in one position the whole time and leave only when you eat. I check up to three thousand metres a day. If you add the numbers for the daily production during a year, it becomes a lot. You must have a keen eye, and you kind of see not only where you focus but also much wider. The fabrics are often 140 centimetres wide, and I don't look to both sides. I look mostly straight forward, and then I see the whole width. I guess it is a question of practice. I wear glasses, but actually I think that I still have pretty good vision.

I work full time now. Unless you are ill I think it is much better to work. Of course, there are many who cannot handle working any longer; the body says stop. I am the only one my age in the factory, but I know people at other places who are still working in their seventies. And now they would like people to work until they turn seventy-five. Then you better have good health! There is no one who has been here as long as me. Think about it, when I started I was the youngest! You get a large amount of knowledge after so many years, of course you do. I feel a little pride in it; I know what I am capable of. But it's not something I brag about.