Bucket List Item # 6 – Find Great Grandpa Hans house

Our next stop was just up the road, it was the house that our Grandfather lived in. It has changed thru the years. Here it is in an old post card sent to my Grandfather from his Grandmother for his birthday in 1908. His house was the two story house directly behind the first white house on the left side of the photo.

This photo is taken from about the same spot in 2010 by Inger for me. What a difference 112 years makes! The yellow house with the orange tile roof just before the tree line is the same house shown in the 1908 photo.

Inger share another photo of Great Grandpa Han’s house taken from a different spot looking west. It is from 1903 and the arrow is pointing to Hans’s home. If you look real close you will notice a fence line.

We have had a photo of Hans, Matilde (on the left)and Haakon (on the right) taken in the lane in front of the house for many years. The picture is not the best but we always thought that it was probably the home. The photo from Inger helped us confirmed it.

This is another of Grandpa Andrew’s photos of his father, our Great Grandfather, Hans Henrik, and his second wife, Matilde sitting outside of the home on a summer evening.

I am so grateful that Grandpa Andrew save all these photos and post cards for me to find all these years later. This is the only photo that we have of our Great Grandmother, Ingeborg Helene Jacobsen Lansrudattra, she died on September 18, 1894 when our Grandfather was eleven years old.

Hans’s house has changed through the years since he died in June of 1946. It has had some additions and an especially large addition to the north side of the house.  The current owner modernized the inside to make it a comfortable year round home. Many of the home in Grimestad are summer cottage which have been owned by the same families for several generations.

While going through the photos that my Father took while he and Mom visited Norway in the summer of 1973, I found several photos of Hans’s home.

Bucket List Item # 6 – Seeing the home that Hans and his sons, Anders, Hagbart and Haakon live in.

The Great Grandpa Hans might not recognize his house today.

We were welcomed inside by the current owner, Kristi Kinsarvik and her husband, Oystein Johnsen. Our excitement was a mixture of many emotions; ecstatic, disbelief, appreciative, endearing, love. The Norwegian people are the most friendly and loving people in the world. We saw it every where we went.  Inger had told Kristi all about our visit and she was so glad to open up her home to us. She wanted to give us time to feel the spirit of the people that we loved who had lived within these walls so many years before. And feel it we did!

Kristi, Oystein, Inger and I standing in the original part of the house. Kristi is an author and playwright. Oystein is a musician. He excused himself and went up stairs to watch the finals of downhill skiing which is the most important sport to the Norwegians.

As I write this the goosebumps and chills come in waves….the exterior walls are rough hewn oak walls which have been painted green. We all felt the need to touch them knowing that they provided security for several generations of our family.

Our hosts were very gracious and we can not thanks them enough.

Inger invited Ole to join us for our visit since he knew Hans when he was a young boy.  We sat around the table and talked about how and why we had come to Tjome that day. With a grin on his face, he shared some of his childhood memories with us.

The German occupation of Norway began on April 9, 1940 after German Forces invaded this neutral country. The resistance held on until June 10, 1940 when it finally succumbed to the German Forces. Matilde, Hans wife, died on June 19, 1940, just nine days later. The Norwegian King and the acting government of Norway had escaped and were in exile in England attempting to govern Norway from there.

Ole was a small boy then but he has vivid memories of Tjome at the time. The German soldiers only visited Tjome occasionally. Unlike cities on the mainland where the occupation caused great fear, anger and the total disruptions of their lives, life was not so different on Tjome. It was just a small island which the Germans thought was of no use to anyone. For the people on Tjome, the German occupation was really just a bit more of an inconvenience. There was rationing and food shortages but Hans could still fish and grow vegetables. Sometimes they went without some of the basics like bread, sugar, flour and even gas.

“Kari Zeiner is with me now” Hans writes to Anders on December 15, 1940 in a Christmas letter. He tells him of the death of his wife, Anders’s stepmom, Matilde. He tell Anders that she had not been well for sometime but was still preparing food for them until the day before she died. The Christmas letter was opened by the Nazis and read before it was allowed to be sent to the United States. He said nothing about the occupation or the war to his son. Hans knew better.

Ole told us that Hans had befriended the Germans in an effort to keep his radio. He loved to listen to music and his radio helped to keep him from becoming so lonely. He discover that if the Germans trusted him and liked him, they would let him keep it. So he set out to make friends with them and was allowed to keep his radio. It was the only radio on the whole island.

At first this angered some of the locals. They wondered why on earth would he want to be friends with the Germans. Eventually the locals found out that his radio had not been confiscated. SO in the evening the men would go to Hans house and listen to the BBC to see what was happening in the War efforts. Ole remembered being in Hans’s house as a child with his father. He said that sometimes Hans was coaxed with liquor in order to let the locals hear the latest news. Eventually word got out that the men of the Grimestad were using the radio to listen to the BBC and it was confiscated. By that time though Hans had become quite the local hero!

As we sat around the table listen to the stories, Hans took on the role of hero for us too. It took a lot of courage to do the things that he did. He sailed his whole life in the Atlantic and the North Sea in wooden sailing ships.  Then after retiring he settled back in his hometown of Grimestad and the country get taken over by the Germans. We, the Great Grandchildren of Hans, are not surprised one bit. He passed that courage down to his sons. It took a lot of courage for Anders to get on a ship and sail to America at the age of 21. It took a lot of courage for Hagbart to sail to Australia at the age of 20. He unfortunately died aboard the ship when he became ill near the Cape of Horn. It took a lot of courage for Haakon to become a Christian missionary and work in China ( a non-christian country) only to have the Red Army take over the country and have to be smuggled out to Japan (another non- christian country). Haakon could not get back to his family thru all of WWII because of the Nazi Occupation. All of Hans’s sons were gone, when he had the courage to befriend the Germans. So as you can see we are not surprised, after all what did he have to lose accept his radio?

So sitting in Hans’s house was a thrill. I would love to say that it was on my Bucket list but it was not. I never could have expected Kristi to invite us in! Thanks so much for your kindness and Hospitality, Kristi!

We asked Inger to take a picture of the “cousins” standing in front of our Great Grandfather’s home. The emotions that we were feeling at the time are indescribable. Way beyond words and even still today all these weeks later. The energy in the house was electric. Hans was so glad we were there!

Part three coming soon.

Love, Jan

… of the rest of my blog life. It is time to change to a friendlier platform so going forward my Genealogy Blog will be here. Hope you visit soon. My second blog will be here soon!

Jan

If you had asked me six months ago, I never would have guess that we would get to visit Denmark and Norway this year…much less this winter. My sister Sharon just had this nagging thought that just would not let go. She felt that “we” needed in the worse way to get to Denmark to see Bjarne. Bjarne is the last remaining Norwegian cousin from my Mother’s generation. He has had several strokes and we just don’t know how much time we have left with him. She saw that airfares thru an Iceland airline were well under $500.00 per ticket so…the hunt was on.  After a bit of investigation, we determined that the Icelandic flights were only out of New York, Boston, DC and Atlanta…all places that we would have to get to one way or another so the cost of the ticket began to rise. Eventually she started to focus on Chicago because we could take the train in the early morning from Lapeer to Chicago at an affordable fare and be there in time for an afternoon/ evening flight. Chicago had direct flights daily to Copenhagen.  She found flights and before we knew it we were headed to Denmark.  Along the way, we picked up another traveler, Zach, Sharon’s son wanted to come too.

It did not take me long to decided at the price we paid for tickets to Denmark, we would be able to visit Norway too. I have a bucket list of things I need to do there! When we first started looking at flights to Norway, the tickets were running about $150.00 per ticket round trip but before we bought the tickets we needed to make sure that Rita (our Cousin who is our age) was able to spend time with us too. We were hoping to be able to stay with her but would find accommodations either way. We played a bit of email / Facebook tag with her so by the time we booked our flights the fares to Norway were now $200 but still within budget. My bucket list items are now within reach.

Bucket list Item # 1 – See Grandpa Anders birthplace

The plan was to go to Tjome, the birthplace of our Grandfather, Andrew (Andres) Anderson. For over 7 years now I have been in contact with a woman from the Tjome Historical Society. Her name is Inger Zeiner. In 2011, I wrote and article about our Grandfather and his life in America after leaving Tjome for the Historical Society’s Bi-Annual Tjume Publication. She is the Great Niece of our Great Grandfather’s second wife.  Our plan was to spend the day with her in Tjome so she could show us around.

Bucket list Item # 2 – Meet Inger Zeiner

We arrived in Oslo on February 28. We took the Express train from the airport to downtown Oslo for the afternoon because Rita was working. We grabbed a beer and a burger at the newly renovated old train station. It was a cold rainy day but we were so happy to be in Oslo it really did not dampen our spirits. We spent the afternoon sightseeing.

We tried to watch the changing of the Guard at the palace but the process took too long and it began to rain huge raindrops so we ducked into the closest place we could find to get out of the rain. It was Hard Rock Cafe Oslo. It turned out to be a place we would return to! People were nice and the beverages were too!

Bucket list Item # 3 – Nurture our relationship with our Norwegian cousins from our generation – Rita and her family

Our plan was to rent a car for two days so we could make the two hour drive to Tjome on Wednesday,  March 1 and go to the Viking Ship Museum on Thursday before returning the car. SO we got back on the Express Train and headed to the Airport to get our car so we could make our way to Rita’s house after she got out of work. We had a great evening with our cousin. We spent the evening laughing and trying to learn Norwegian….lets just say we failed but Rita learned a couple of good American slang phrases that she used a lot!

The next morning we were off to Tjome. We were like 4 excited kids on Christmas morning ready for this new adventure. It was very easy to drive from Rita’s home to Tjome.  Norway has a really efficient roads.  They have tunnel systems in place which routes the most thru traffic under Oslo and keeps traffic moving pretty effectively. Many of the downtown streets are pedestrian only streets. We saw almost no parking so people use mass transit when visiting downtown Oslo.

It took about two hours and was a really nice drive. It was mostly freeway. We went thru a lot of tunnels.  Eventually we made our way to towards Highway 308 which was our exit for Tonsberg.  Tonsberg is the nearest medium size city to Tjome and where we will eventually cross the bridge to the island of Tjome.  Next time, I want more time to explore Tonsberg. It is a quaint fishing village and is the oldest city in all of the Scandinavian countries. It is referenced in print as early as 900 BC at about the time of the Vikings.

Bucket List Item #4 – Visit and explore Tonsberg

We made great use of GPS technology on this trip and were able to drive directly to Inger Zeiner’s home with the address that I had for her.  I have never driven in a foreign country, my nephew Zach helped us with that this trip but it was easy enough that I would not hesitate to drive myself next time.

By now we are shivering, not from the cold but from the sheer joy and excitement that this long awaited day had finally arrived. Up to this point, we could only imagine what it would feel like to be here, but now we know. It was just so hard to believe that this place was Grandpa Andres’s hometown, thousands of miles and an ocean away from the home that we knew was his. We were now in his neighborhood!  Inger and Rita were getting acquainted and planning our next move in Norwegian so we can not understand them but it gives us a few moments for the reality of it all to sink in.

Bucket list Item # 5 – Grandpa Hans’s Cove

Our first stop would be the cove that Great Grandfather Hans had lived on as a child and the place where he fished nearly every day of his life. I am sure that Grandpa Andres and his brothers spent a great deal of time here too.

Hans’s Cove today….as it looks today….

This is taken from a pier which was not there in Great Grandpa Hans’s time. Inger remembers a story that her Mother use to tell her about Hans.  Hans would loaded up an old wheel barrow with his traps and his poles everyday and walked to the shore to fish.  The wheel barrow squeaked and groaned like an old man as he pushed it first to the shore and then in the afternoon as he returned to his home.  They knew when to look up to see him as the noise of the wheel barrow got louder and then softer as he passed by and continued to his home.

This is a photo that Inger shared with me of Han’s Mother, Olava’s house.  It is the white house on the left of the photo. The path that you see by the house was the path that Han’s walked everyday to get to the cove.  The sail boat shown in the photo was about where the new pier is that we were taking photos from. Olava’s house is no longer there.

Standing on this pier and feeling the presence of the three generations who made this place their home was the first of many goose bump moments for the day.

Part 2…coming soon…

Jan