While Mom and Dad did a lot of research back when we were in Minnesota, there’s nothing like getting information from the horse’s mouth. Or a Norwegian’s mouth, for that matter. It was time to talk to Bertha and dip our toes into some family history of Norway from just a couple hundred years ago. I’m sure you’ve all done it before, but it’s a first for me. Today, we got to see what kind of info Mom and I could dig up.<\/p>\n
It was bright and early, but at least it was bright. Today wasn\u2019t as gloomy and gray as before, which may have been Nature\u2019s way to compensate us for the time we were going to spend hanging out with the dead. Or maybe God likes good weather on His day off. Whatever the reason, it made the drive to Sannidal more pleasant.<\/p>\n
By leaving as early as we did, we got to the church before 10:00 and decided to wander around the graveyard to search for names that might have been related to me (this is Dad\u2019s side of the family that we\u2019re searching for). We couldn\u2019t find anything there, but we eventually found Bertha outside the church to talk to her for a while.<\/p>\n
She was a little bit confused because I told her my name was \u201cShawn Bakken\u201d, but when we started talking, she checked to see if it was us by holding up her phone. The caller ID said \u201cJuane Bakken.\u201d Hey, she\u2019s the one who bought it at the store\u2026 But once we got the names clarified, it was down to business.<\/p>\n
This netbook has just about everything on it\u2014reservations, journal entries, maps to find the bodies\u2026 and it also had a picture of Pauline\u2019s birth record (my great-great-grandmother) from the church. We thought maybe Bertha could use her name, the names of her parents or anything else to find more information. She didn\u2019t know anything on the spot, of course, but she offered to do some research and suggested we call her on Tuesday. (Given our previous trouble on the phone, I later asked for her e-mail address so I could send her a message and she could write back to us with any results.)<\/p>\n
In the meantime, she said we could look around the church if we wanted. The outside looked a little aged, but was probably renovated at some point, given that it\u2019s been around since 1771. There was a wall that had pictures of all the pastors who\u2019d worked at the church in the past\u2014there were a lot of pictures. Then when I was walking up and down the aisle to see more of the church, I thought about how my great-great-grandmother had walked this same path every time she came to church.<\/p>\n
But as I walked up and down the aisle, I was looking around and the inside\u2026 in all honesty, it looked a little like a playhouse. Churches in the U.S. are usually designed with a lot of dark, rich brown wood inside that creates a sense of seriousness\u2014getting in touch with God is a big deal. Inside of Sannidal\u2019s church, the pews were painted with a combination of white, light blue and green.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say that it wasn\u2019t a church: it had a full-scale organ on the second level and there was a giant painting of Jesus on the cross on the back wall that said in Norwegian (we think), \u201cHe died to save us.\u201d But aside from that painting, it seemed like a non-denominational church. When I thought back on it, I couldn\u2019t remember seeing any other religious icons or symbols. I don\u2019t know if any \u201cnon-denominational\u201d churches existed 240 years ago, but it\u2019s an interesting thought.<\/p>\n
We took another look through the gravestones, but didn\u2019t find any with the name \u201cHelle\u201d (Pauline\u2019s father) or Olson (her husband). We took a few pictures of \u201cMoe\u201d gravestones, since that surname is a branch of our family tree. Whether the Sannidal Moes are related to me, we don\u2019t know, but we took the pictures anyway.<\/p>\n
From there, we moved on to the Strand Farm. If I\u2019ve got the details straight, Pauline\u2019s father was named Paul Pederson Helle because he worked in the \u201cHelle\u201d portion of the Strand Farm. It\u2019s currently a small village of its own, but we wanted to at least check out the Strand House on the Strand Farm and see if we could say \u201cHi\u201d to a Strand, take some Strand Pictures, etc.<\/p>\n
We found the address for the Strand Farm, but upon ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door, no one answered. We settled for pictures of the house (we knew it was the Strand House because it had a Strand Doorknocker on the Strand Front Door), then got back into the car and left.<\/p>\n
As we drove back to the main road, we saw someone biking toward us with a German Shepherd on a leash. He was giving us a curious look, which was understandable given that we were a strange car pulling out of a one-way street. (I guess I wasn’t paying attention earlier, but apparently, we crossed paths on our way in as well, so the fact that we were just leaving when he got back…) Mom slowed down, rolled down the window and we started talking.<\/p>\n
It turned out he was the reason no one answered at the Strand House: he was Mr. Strand. (He wasn\u2019t the official owner of the farm anymore\u2014he\u2019d recently passed the property down to his daughter.) He started telling us about the Helle portion of the farm, the location of the saw mill where Paul Pedersen Helle was the foreman and offered to search for more information in the future (he\u2019s currently on vacation). His friend is writing a book about the history of that area and Mr. Strand has a lot of the rough notes for the book and might be able to find something for us.<\/p>\n
From there, we followed his directions through Helle toward the saw mill, which closed in the 1920\u2019s and was replaced by a chain-building factory for WWII. It was on a river, so the chain factory could use the same source of hydroelectric power to run things. We took a few more pictures, but instead of backtracking to the roads on the map, we pressed forward into unknown territory.<\/p>\n
And it remained unknown for a very long time. We had a lot of spare time before getting to the hotel and we were pretty sure we were heading in the right general direction toward a highway, but that was it. There were a few areas with a lot of traffic\u2014usually the areas with a beach and\/or docks for boats\u2014but the roads remained curvy and never stretched beyond two lanes wide (and sometimes squeezed close enough that Mom stopped the car to make sure she wouldn\u2019t get sideswiped).<\/p>\n
It was out of the way enough that we even passed a fenced-off field with oxen in it, so we pulled out the camera again. It was just standing in the shade and munching on grass, not once giving me an accusatory look for eating one of its brethren. I appreciated that.<\/p>\n
We did get to a major road eventually, but by that time, it was a couple hours past noon and we were starting to get hungry. (Funny how the boondocks don\u2019t have a lot of roadside restaurants…) We eventually found an exit that led to a caf\u00e9, so we got inside and found a small buffet behind the counter. Unfortunately, everything was written in Norwegian, so we had no idea what they were serving.<\/p>\n
That was most important because Mom doesn\u2019t eat pork and for all we knew, even the lettuce was made of pork. However, they did tell us they serve hamburgers, which seems to have become somewhat of a staple of our diet. If all else fails, order a hamburger.<\/p>\n
Mom pulled out her credit card just before the cook threw the burgers on the grill and they made her stop. The caf\u00e9 didn\u2019t accept credit cards. The manager apologized to us in broken English (in a non-Norwegian accent), then asked where we were from. Mom explained that we were from the States, then pulled out enough cash to pay for the burgers, at which point… He. Kissed. Her. Hand.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not kidding. I was dumbfounded. He told us he was from Kosovo, but why that would inspire a smooch on the back of her hand when she was able to pay with cash, I haven\u2019t the slightest idea. Then he said he\u2019d cover something for us\u2014I think he said we were getting fries for free, I\u2019m not sure. Regardless, when the waiter brought out our plates, those hamburgers were huge<\/i>. With lots<\/i> of fries. I have to say that being on this trip with Mom, she\u2019s made things a lot more interesting.<\/p>\n
The hotel was fairly easy to find today, which was hasn\u2019t always been the case, but this was a very upscale hotel. You wouldn\u2019t necessarily think so because of the people checking in (not including ourselves). There were a few bald, yet hairy gentlemen with mustaches wearing muscle shirts, but the one who concerned me the most was standing on the front steps after we got back from a walk.<\/p>\n
He was a pudgy little man wearing a blue knit cowboy vest wide open with nothing underneath so you could see all of his chest and stomach hair, camouflage pants and two fanny packs turned around to the front. I couldn\u2019t help thinking that he might be a good addition to the Village People.<\/p>\n
Anyway! When we first got to the hotel, they weren\u2019t ready for us. It wasn\u2019t that early in the afternoon, given our looooong side trek, but since it was Sunday, they hadn\u2019t cleaned a lot of the rooms. Thus, we parked the car in front of the building and went for a short walk.<\/p>\n
We headed down toward the harbor and saw a fountain in the middle of a roundabout. The statue in the middle was three people in a boat on top of a whale\u2019s tail with the third standing in the back holding up a giant whaling spear. We discovered later that the statue slowly rotates over time, given that the side we approached on the way back wasn\u2019t the side we walked away from.<\/p>\n
We also got a preview of the giant ferry that would be taking us across international waters to Sweden. And it was giant<\/i>. As it approached the dock, the front opened up and an arm extended to latch onto the dock, providing a little cushion to help slow the boat as well as prepare a ramp for the cars to drive down. It should be an interesting ride.<\/p>\n
One reason why Mom chose this hotel was because she saw a picture of the swimming pool and thought it looked like an elegant place to take a swim. I took a nap that afternoon and thought that it closed at 6:00, so I missed my opportunity. As it turned out, the pool closes at 4:00 on Sundays, so by the time they let us check in, taking a dip was no longer an option.<\/p>\n
Well, technically, that\u2019s not entirely true. The pool opened up again at 7:00am on Monday, but our alarm was set for 7:30 so we could have breakfast and get to the ferry\u2014waking up that early is hard enough, but even earlier just for the sake of a swimming pool? No way.<\/p>\n
When it was time to head up to our room, we found out just how convoluted this luxurious hotel actually was. Building the garage required some development plus they added a new wing to the building, so getting to our room was a mess. We took one elevator from the garage to the first floor, walked down a hallway to get to another elevator that brought us up to the second \u201cfloor\u201d, then had to climb up a short flight of stairs before getting to the rooms in the 300s. Thankfully, someone from the reception desk helped bring our luggage to our room because it was a pretty long trek.<\/p>\n
We decided we didn\u2019t want to get back into the car to hunt for someplace to eat, so we went down to the hotel restaurant for a quick bite to eat. When looking at the menu, nothing looked spectacular\u2014maybe we were just weren\u2019t that hungry at the moment\u2014but we decided to get a couple bowls of fish soup. (I thought we were getting the entr\u00e9e-sized bowls, but that\u2019s not what the bill said.)<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been taking pictures of some of our meals when they look very extravagant or have just been out of the ordinary: for example, the whalesteak and Norwegian trout from Bergen were both captured on film. Our soup was no exception, given that amongst the rest of the seafood, there was a giant red crayfish perched on top. I initially put it to the side\u2014I had no idea how to get to the meat of a crayfish\u2014but just before the waiter took the bowls away, I pulled the meat from the tail and ate it. Not great, but at least I can add that to the strange foods I\u2019ve eaten here.<\/p>\n
I guess our first waiter had a little trouble with English, because we soon had another one who spoke immaculate English. I knew something was up as soon as we started talking about our trip to Bergen and he compared it to Seattle, saying that Bergen has about 340 days of \u201cprecipitation\u201d every year. Seriously, do you know anyone besides weather forecasters who uses that word?<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s just popular in Nova Scotia. He grew up there, but eventually married a Norwegian woman and moved overseas. That in itself doesn\u2019t seem like that big a deal until you factor in his new parents-in-law who spoke no English at all. It was apparently an interesting few months when he first arrived.<\/p>\n
So we had a good dinner, had fun chatting with the waiter and are now about to have fun sleeping because we have to get up early for the ferry to Stromstad. It leaves at 10:00, but our reservation says we should show up 90 minutes before it takes off. One of the receptionists once made reservations to take the ferry a month beforehand, but she got there after the designated arrival time and ended up on a waitlist because they already sold her ticket to someone else.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d like to avoid a similar catastrophe, so early is better than late. Speaking of which, early to bed and early to rise makes one less sleepy than late to bed and early to rise, so I\u2019m done for the night. (I want to be well-rested when I get to Sweden, the other land of my ancestors. Three cheers for genetic links to dead people overseas!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Mom and Dad did a lot of research back when we were in Minnesota, there’s nothing like getting information from the horse’s mouth. Or a Norwegian’s mouth, for that matter. It was time to talk to Bertha and dip our toes into some family history of Norway from just a couple hundred years ago. … <\/p>\n