Arvid was born in 1940 in Mandal, a little town in southern Norway. The second world war had just started and the country was invaded by German troops. The family lived on the second floor in Store Elvegate 19.
The family had a German Shepherd. Arvid says he remembers the dog, especially from a trolley walk down the nearby river. His father took a handkerchief from his mother, put a little stone in and threw it into the water. The dog jumped in, collected the handkerchief and brought it back, not to the father who throw it, but to his mother, whose handkerchief it was. This must have made an enormous impression on a child of not more than two years of age, so strong that he still remembers 80 years later. Other early memories from the war years were German soldiers marching in the street, boys running on ice flakes in the heavily polluted ”Pölsesundet” and when the British bombed the airfield. The Germans had built the strip early 1940. In 1946 there was an international ”speider” camp and during the 1950:s did ”Vestnes” become a popular building site.
After the war, the family lived for a few years in one of the buildings the German troops left behind. It had been used as a hospital for soldiers and contrary to most other houses in Mandal at that time it had a WC and a shower. There was also space enough for a family of two grown-ups and three from two to six years of age boys.
Thirty meters from the front yard was a long sandy beach where the boys learned to swim almost before they could walk. The woods surrounding the place was a perfect playground where they could spend their after-school time.