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