In 1905, Norway gained its independence peacefully. At the time, Peder Furubotn was apprenticed in Bergen. Because they could not afford an education for him, his parents apprenticed him to a joiner in 1904. Moving from the tiny community at Vaksdal to the big city of Bergen, with 90,000 inhabitants in 1904, was a difficult transition(2) for a fourteen-year-old. The cultural differences in Vaksdal between the peasants' and the labourers' children were nothing compared to the contempt felt by the city people for country folk, whose clothes and accents they made fun of. With the rolling r's of northern Hordaland, Peder Furubotn's accent gave him away in Bergen. Rural immigrants often felt an inferiority complex in their encounter with the city dwellers of Bergen and Furubotn was no exception and he quickly attempted to adopt a Bergen accent. At meetings, he observed the unwritten law among labour movement representatives: one must acquire and use ``civil service Danish''. Their speech became a hotch-potch of a genuine rural dialect, the urban Bergen dialect, and stilted Dano-Norwegian. The result was not infrequently a powerful and emotive language, like that of many of Furubotn's later speeches and articles. This was the typical language situation for tens of thousands of young working men who moved from the country to the towns during the big industrial build-up in Norway between 1905 and 1914. Today the language seems strange to read, but it found an echo among the working class after 1905. They shared Furubotn's educational background: the public elementary school.

Apprenticeship in Bergen gave Furubotn a trade which he was always to remain proud of. He became a joiner, or rather a maker of period furniture, with rococo as his speciality. Firmly rooted in traditions, this was a craft in which quality was insisted upon. Joiners themselves reckoned that only about 5% of them were real craftsmen. Furubotn was among them, and was for a time a member of the municipal committee in Bergen which judged would-be journeymen's test pieces. He was reputed to be an exceptionally skilful craftsman. Bergen's old urban traditions also influenced the craft attitudes and organisation. For centuries Bergen had been the only truly European Norwegian city, and the civic pride taken in this extended to the professional pride of its craftsmen. The joiners had one of the strongest trade unions in the city, boasting almost total membership. This trade background had a strong formative influence on Furubotn's personality, deepening and extending the independence he had acquired during childhood. Recent research into work processes and labour organizations in Norway has confirmed the importance to a person's development of his vocational background.(3) Training in a specialised craft has tended to promote the independence and initiative of those receiving it - and this is not least true of the cabinet maker's craft.

In due course, Furubotn found new friends in the old Hanseatic city.(4) He was tall, well-built and strong, with a natural interest in sports. He and a friend had been keen marksmen before joining the labour movement and they bought themselves revolvers, and practiced up in Bergen's ``seven hills''.(5) For a time in his youth, Furubotn was a member of the Bergen Sparta wrestling club and learned classical, disciplined wrestling. He was to need it, as his hot temper got him into a number of fights. At the age of 22, he married Gina Sandal, the daughter of the head stable-man at the Hansa breweries. He was already active in the union, but had yet to commit himself to Socialist party work.