Verse 1
He was twenty-three that winter,
Working cargo on the quay,
Three days tied up in Bergen,
Three nights beside the sea.
In a little shop near Bryggen,
Behind a rain-streaked doorway,
He saw a red dress in the window
On a cold Norwegian day.
Verse 2
He thought about the girl back home,
Who’d waited nearly two years,
He pictured her there wearing it
And grinning ear to ear.
He spent most of that week’s wages,
Folded it carefully away,
And carried that red dress home with him
All the way from Norway.
Chorus
The red dress from Norway,
Wrapped in paper, tied with string,
Bought by a boy who had no money
For the girl who was everything.
Across the dark North Sea,
Through the wind and freezing spray,
He carried home his promise
In a red dress from Norway.
Verse 3
But letters travel slowly,
And hearts can change their road,
By the time his ship reached England
Someone else had shared her load.
She’d left one note with his mother,
Six small words were all she’d say,
And he never gave that red dress
He had brought from Norway.
Chorus
The red dress from Norway,
Wrapped in paper, tied with string,
Bought by a boy who had no money
For the girl who was everything.
Across the dark North Sea,
Through the wind and freezing spray,
He carried home his promise
In a red dress from Norway.
Verse 4
Years later he met my mother,
And built a different life,
Never told the story fully,
Just said, “I nearly had a wife.”
When we emptied out his wardrobe,
After he had passed away,
There beneath his old blue jacket
Was the red dress from Norway.
Bridge
Still folded in the paper,
Still tied with faded thread,
A life that never happened,
A thousand words unsaid.
Final Chorus
The red dress from Norway,
Never danced beneath the lights,
Never heard a band on Saturday,
Never came alive at night.
But seventy years of silence
Couldn’t throw that love away.
Some dreams stay folded forever
Like the red dress from Norway.
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty & Friends