Story by Roald
History of my great-grandfather Ole Thorsen b.1817 – from Limmesand, Vik i Sogn
Ole was number 6 in a group of 8 siblings – five boys and three girls. (Within 17 years)
The siblings were: Anna 1806 (d.1813 7 years), Nils 1808, Sjur 1810, Brita 1815, Peder 1816, Ole 1817, Randi 1821 and Johannes 1823
Nils was the oldest and noble boy. It was then decided that he would take over the farm Limmesand, which had been in the family for three generations, since 1762. As the other siblings grew older, they just had to come up with something of their own. Preferably when they were 15-16 years old. The father Tor and the mother Brita did not have it easy. The family of 10 big and small demanded theirs. They had to have food and clothes. Eldest sister Anna died aged only 7. The small farm on the edge of the Sognefjord was difficult to live on, it was steep and rocky just up below the mountain. They had acquired a small field a little further up the mountain on “Vetlestølen”. There they had built a small seat of stone and turf where they could keep the animals in the summer. Fishing for cod, pollock, haddock and herring in the Sognefjord was small, but there could be a small increase. It was the soil that kept the family machinery going and where everyone had to contribute. Early on, great-grandfather had to help with all the usual work on the farm, such as picking stones and stacking them for walls and stone fences. It was weeding, putting and picking up potatoes and not least looking after the animals. Up on the slopes, they managed with scythe and sickle and collected enough to be able to deliver a small message.
Early on, Ole tried to get a job in Vik. To get there, you had to row by boat for several hours around Likvorholmen. Along the land it was far too steep to walk, and there was no road either. Inside Vik, it was a center for the villages around here in the Sognefjord. The post office and bank had just arrived here. A stone church and a stave church were here in the past
PICTURE 1
times. The first had also started traveling to America, but it was very expensive and uncertain. A trip to America then cost half a year’s salary. Here in Vik, it also happened that large sailing ships arrived from Germany and other European countries. Impressive to watch for a youngster like Ole. “Whoever could get a job and leave with a boat like that”, he thought. It probably didn’t work, but these tourists provided some work for the small villages along the Sognefjord. After all, there were rich people on board there! Ole was a hard-working fellow who took the job that presented itself. One day he was asked if he could
imagine joining one of the yachts that were ready for sailing to the north. It could be exciting. Ole discussed this with elder brother Sjur. They quickly agreed to model, both of them. The boys, who had now become men, aged 32 and 25, took their bags with clothes, bedding and other necessary equipment and mustered aboard the yacht.
PICTURE 2 – BOAT in Water
Parish eviction from 1895
The brothers Ole and Sjur were now crew on a Sognejekt that sailed between Western Norway, Bergen and up to Northern Norway. It was hard work on board, but the siblings were used to it. The voyages went north early in May, with grain, salt, spices, spirits and other necessary goods for the northerners. The yachts were the cargo boats of the time. They could not rule over arrivals and access times, as only the wind in the sails was the driving force. The Jekta was not a good sailor, but it could carry large quantities of cargo. To the south, the Sogne vessel was loaded with rockfish, dried fish, cod liver oil and roe in barrels. Dry fish from Lofoten and rock fish from other places such as Senja, Gratangen and Dragland in Tjeldsundet. In late summer they returned to Vik after a few months of sailing from south to north and then back. The brothers had probably done a good job, because the following year they are asked for patterns again. They both did, but now they had come up with an exciting plan.
In the spring of 1844, the brothers go ashore in Gratangen and try their hand as farm workers. The farms around Årstein in Gratangen looked promising, with large open fields where the farmers were after all looking for good and stable labour. The brothers settle in well here with farm work, which they were used to from Sogn. There was also plenty of fish here in the fjord. That the brothers thrived and had a good time here in the north, the rest of the family eventually heard about. After two years, in 1846, his brother Peder also comes up to Gratangen. He is probably a year younger than Ole.
Older brother and noble boy Nils, who has run the farm for 15 years, also realizes that running the farm by the Sognefjord is not easy. He is quick in his decisions, we will hear more about that later. He has heard about the opportunities that lie up there in northern Norway. He has now sold the family property at Limmesand, which has been run for 4 generations, and is traveling up to Gratangen with the whole family. Wife Karen and children Thor, Marie, Guttorm and Bertheus. Four brothers had now moved from Sogn to Gratangen and had taken up work on different farms.
Ole is enjoying himself in Gratangen, but has a very important agreement in the south that he had to keep. Early in the spring of 1846, he musters again on one of the first Parish ships to come north, and is on his way south towards the Hanseatic city of Bergen with a load of fish. After almost two years in Gratangen, he is back in Sogn where his girlfriend Brita has been waiting for him. Ole is a steady fellow who can always be trusted. On 5 April he marries Brita Olsdatter Finden in Vik church. The two probably had future plans together. He had promised that one day he would return to Brita, marry her and take her to “the land of Canaan” in the north. He kept his word.
After a winter in Sogn, in the spring of 1847, Ole is once again crew on a hunt to the north. Now he has his beloved Brita with him. On 19 April, Ole and Brita are entered in the census in Årstein – Gratangen with a move from Vik i Sogn. He is proud and newly married, his wife Brita Olsdatter Finden is pregnant. In Gratangen, this new family will probably settle in. This is where they will live. Then happens what happened all too often at that time. During the birth of their first child, both Brita and the little girl die at Årstein on 17 June.
Ole is a beaten man and a widower. He steers for a long time, but still thrives in Gratangen. Eventually a relationship develops with a handsome neighbor girl in Årstein, Mette Jonetta Danielsdatter. Daughter of Daniel and Johanna Bertheussen. She is only 20 years old, has 8 siblings and is 13 years younger than Ole. In the summer, 7 June 1850, he and Mette had their first son, Theodor. He is baptized on 25 August in Tjeldsund church, where his brother Nils and the family have now leased a farm. The church register states that Theodor was baptized “illegitimate”, i.e. that the parents were not married, this was “not quite right” at the time. Not until October 22 of the same year do they take the time to get married. This then happens in Årstein church, the home of Mette. Well over a year later, in April 1852, the next one is born. It’s Nikoline Maria. She too is baptized in Tjeldsund church on 31 May of the same year. They have become a small family there at Årstein in Gratangen.
Peder, who had worked for a year on a farm in Gratangen, moved in 1847 to Dragland in Tjeldsundet, where he took a job with his brother Nils, who is a tenant there.
After four brothers had established themselves in the north, their sister Randi Thorsdatter also came up in 1848. She also took up work with elder brother Nils in Dragland.
In September 1853 Nils then buys his own property at Dragland in Tjeldsundet. The property belonged to Anna Marie Christensen, daughter of the Nesse king Rasmus Christensen at Sandtorg. Ole takes over parts of this property from his brother Nils on the same day. Ole and Mette have now become farm owners, and with their children Theodor and Nikoline they move from Gratangen to Dragland and establish themselves there.
At Dragland, there was extensive production of rockfish on the rocks (cliffs) down towards the sea. A little way up from the sea there are large, fine and lush fields up towards the mountains. There are much more opportunities for farming here than what the brothers were used to from the steep, rocky small fields on Limmesand in the Sognefjord. In good years, the Lofoten flounder also came past Lødingen and into Fiskefjorden, which is located just outside Dragland, on the Hinnøy side of Tjeldsundet. Now suddenly almost the entire Thorsen family from Sogn is established in Dragland. Only Sjur has gone back to Sogn again. Big brother Nils doesn’t quite settle down, in 1855 the family travels back to Sogn. But in 1860 they are here again in the north, now in Lavangen. Here they stay until 1875, when they emigrate to America. Here they use the name Lavanger.
My great-grandfather Ole and the gratang girl Mette are settling in very well at Dragland. Theodor and Nikoline grow up here. During the next 22 years, 10 children will be born at Dragland. Johanna-1854, Beret-1856, Dorthea-1859, Daniel-1861, Lars Olai-1863, Mikal-1866, Magdalena-1868, Emerentse-1871, Joakim-1873, Thomas-1878. Emerentse, who came into the world on a cold January day in 1871, is my grandmother.
Ole and Mette remained stable at the small farm in Dragland for the rest of their lives. The property now has here stretches from the sea and almost a kilometer up to the foot of the mountains Trolltind and Jotinden. Large areas with bogs that are well arable and good pastures for animals. Ole and Mette, with good help from the children eventually, run the farm. Ole also does Lofoten fishing from February to April, like the vast majority of men up north at this time. With good Lofoten seasons where Ole eventually has his own eight-hole or five-hole drilling, the family can have a good outcome. They could exchange for themselves the goods that they did not obtain themselves, such as flour, sugar, salt and equipment for fishing and farming. Now Ole is helping to obtain raw material for the cargoes of cuttlefish, for the same hunts that he brought north to Gratangen a few years ago. The small farm with a horse, 3 – 4 cows, 8 sheep, some goats and 12 chickens eventually provides the large family with what they need in terms of food and clothing. There is not much that is needed for a large family. The time from child to adult passes quickly even at that time and the oldest of the children move out when the youngest are born. E.g. then elder Theodor married when my grandmother Emerentse was only two years old.
“We had a good time as children” my grandmother used to say, we never lacked for anything. But everyday life consisted of hard work and we had to save on most things. Several of the girls eventually take on the task of carrying salted fish out from the jetty at Dragland, washing and rinsing it in seawater and laying it out on the smooth-cut rocks on the headland towards Tjeldsundet. The mountains here are excellent for this production. There was a lot of work with the saltfish. When it was sunny it was to lay them out, if there was a hint of rain then it was to have them stacked in piles. After many days and weeks of stacking back and forth, the saltfish had turned into rockfish and could now be taken onto the pier. A lot of hard work, but the rockfish were worth their weight in gold for Dragland and for the whole community. It was the most exclusive and best-paid product that was then exported to large parts of Europe. The rockfish and dried fish accounted for the majority of Norway’s foreign trade at that time. Many people in Bergen and Trondheim and down in Europe could make a fortune from the rockfish. The exception was probably the fisherman who did the first part of the job, but he also had some value. At the end of May, the fish were loaded aboard the yachts, which then sailed south to Bergen.
Ole and Mette lived in Dragland for the rest of their lives. Ole died in 1890, aged 72. Mette lived until 1913, died aged 83.
The desire to travel, or the craving and perhaps the compulsion to travel away and invent something new, also continued in the next generations. 7 of the 12 children of Ole and Mette emigrated to America from 1886 to around 1900. Nikoline traveled with the brothers Mikal and Daniel in 1887. While entering America from Canada in Quebec, she was lost from the brothers. Never heard from her again. It was said that she stayed kidnapped. My grandmother Emerentse and grandfather Petter, together with the brothers Joakim and Lars Olai, emigrated to America in 1892. Grandfather did very poorly on the prairie in North Dakota.
Grandma, on the other hand, she really enjoyed herself. Olga was barely a year old when they left. Their next child, Lars, was born on 11 May 1893 in Hatton, North Dakota. After three years, grandfather said: Emerentse, now we’re going home! And so it was! Petter made it home to Northern Norway and Tjeldsundet, among wild mountains and a sometimes wild sea. After all, he was a fisherman and enjoyed it. After a few years in a tiny living room in Fiskefjorden, they then moved to Hårvik and then Sandtorg, where they bought a large, considering the conditions. Petter then had his own modern fishing boat, MK Lyn. A 30-foot boat with an 8hp Dan engine. Now he had become a wealthy man.
Most of the descendants from Dragland who emigrated to America took the name Dragland after their home in Tjeldsundet. It is said that well over 1,000 descendants “over there” have the name Dragland. Others used the name Olson (Daniel Olson who was the son of Ole Thorsen). My grandmother and grandfather made no exception. When they emigrated, they did like others, they took the international name “Harvig” after their hometown Hårvik in Tjeldsund. I didn’t become an American because my grandfather was more comfortable with sea and mountains than the eternal great prairie. In 2019, my wife May and I visited the places where Petter and Emerentse lived for three years, on the prairie in North Dakota. We then visited several descendants of those who traveled in 1887 and 1892. I absolutely agree with grandfather Petter, Tjeldsundet is the best. We still didn’t experience the winter with 3 meters of snow and 30 degrees Celsius, nor the swarms of locusts on a blisteringly dry summer day with 40 degrees Celsius over there.
Living and living here at Tjeldsundet is probably the thing!
But you can sometimes feel a bit of the wanderlust in the family in your body?
Roald Petter Årbekk 25/11/2022
paarbek@online.no