This weeks prompt is “The Old Country”. Alot of my genealogy goes back to early Colonial times here in the United States. According to my DNA, I am 66 % from England, Wales, Northwestern Europe which includes Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. I am 34 % Scandinavian with 32 % Norwegian and 1% each of Sweden and Finland.

As a family we have done our best to stay in contact with our family in Norway thru the years. My Grandfather received post cards and letters from his family after he immigrated to America. He kept them in the top draw of his dresser wrapped in a piece of twine. They were well worn when my mother found them after he died. She remember them. She remembered him reading them. She loved the stamps so he cut them all out and gave them to her. She was flooded with memories when she saw the tattered letters. She also realized that is had been sometime since we had gotten any word from our family in .

Mom set out to make sure that she contacted her uncle, Haakon to tell him of his brother’s death. She wrote a letter to him and mailed it off to his last known address and hoped for the best. Meanwhile in Norway, Haakon had died a few months before and Anna, his wife, was trying valiantly to reach Andrew, my grandfather. Eventually after receiving her letter back, she tried to write my mother. Mom received the letter from Anna soon after Mom mailed the letter to Haakon.

This exchange pushed open the door of communication once again for our family. Our cousin, Bjarne and his wife came to visit my parents in 1972 in Michigan. My parents went to Norway to visit them in 1973. Mom took the letters,which were written in Norwegian, with the hope that someone would translate them for her. She wanted in the worst way to know what they said.

She met all her cousins and was so happy and felt blessed to have gotten to know them all. She left the letters with Tormod, the husband of her cousin Aslaug, he promised to translate them for her. Over the course of several years, Mom received the letters and translations a couple at a time even after Aslaug died of cancer in 1974 at the age of 44 years old. Mom would be so excited when she got mail from Norway.

Anna died in 1983 and once again we lost contact with our Norwegian family for a time. When I took up this family history mission in 1997, I knew we needed to find them again. Around the year 2000, I was using the old Rootsweb Message Boards. I went out to a Norwegian message board and posted an inquiry. You see “we” are “Andersen’s”! Andersen is as common in Norway as “Smith” is in America so we already had a lot in common. My Great Uncle Haakon decided to changed his surname . When he became a missionary and there were many Haakon Andersen’s in the Norwegian Mission organization. He decided to use his middle name, Ingwardo as his surname. He made my life so much easier! I posted that I was looking for Ingwardo ‘s in Norway and within 24 hours I had addresses and emails for three Ingwardos. My first contact was with Olaf, Bjarne’s older brother. We corresponded for several years. He sent me pictures and emails every few weeks. He told me that Bjarne had divorce and married a Danish woman and that they lived in Copenhagen. He was not interested in Genealogy or family history but it was nice to hear from him regularly. I thought that he would tell other family members that we were once again communicating. Late in 2003, I got an email from him. He said that he was going to the hospital and that he would email me in a few weeks.

I never heard from him again. I sent several emails and they were not returned so I assumed he was just not well enough to using his computer. After six months of silence I decided that something must have happened. So now it is spring of 2004. I once again went to the message boards and this time I went to a Copenhagen, Denmark board. I posted that I was looking for Bjarne Ingwardo. Once again within 24 hours, I had an address.

I wrote Bjarne a letter and I mailed it on the Friday of Memorial Weekend in 2004. I included my address and phone number and re-introduced myself. I told him I was hoping to re-establish contact with our Norwegian family members. I indicated that I had been talking regularly with Olaf through email and that it suddenly stopped.

On Memorial Day, the phone rang and it was Bjarne. He told me that Olaf never mentioned that we were communication thru email. He did inform me that he had died in 2003 after having surgery. We talked for over an hour and before we hung up, he was making plans to visit us in mid June, a mere three weeks away.

He and Ingrid came to Chicago, where I lived, on the Thursday before Father’s Day. Their visit lasted about sixteen days. After a couple of days in Chicago, I drove them to Michigan where they visited the rest of the family. They spent several days with each of us and my mother. I returned to my brother’s house at the end of their visit to retrieve them and get them back to the airport in time for their return flight home. We had a wonderful visit full of great memories.

My Mother died in 2009. After her estate was settled in early 2010, her six children decided that we should visit Bjarne in Copenhagen and hopefully his homeland and our Grandfather’s Norway. We called him to make arrangements and they were thrilled that we all wanted to visit. We set the trip up for September of 2010. He and Ingrid decided to once again visit us during the summer of 2010.

We had the opportunity to very briefly visit Oslo, Norway and meet several of our cousins before returning to Denmark for the rest of our visit.

In 2017, we were troubled by medical issues that Bjarne was having. My sister, Sharon started to investigate flights to Denmark in January and we discussed the possibility of traveling there to see him. I told her that if I was going to Denmark than I would also going to Norway and it had to be for a few days. I started investigating how we could make that happen. So we contacted Bjarne’s daughter, Rita, to see if we could visit her. With in a few short weeks the trip quickly became a reality. My sister told her son what we were planning to do and he wanted to come too. By the end of February, we were on a train headed to Chicago to catch a flight to Copenhagen.

It was an extra special trip for all of us! We spent the first 4 days in Denmark before going to Norway. We spent the next 3 days in Norway, with Bjarne’s daughter Rita and a couple of days on our own in Oslo. On our second day in Norway we rented a car and drove to Tjome, the island where my Grandfather and many generations of our family lived before him.

I have through my research connecting with several distant relatives from Tjome. Inger Zainer is one of them and she arranged for us, Sharon, Zach, Rita and myself, to visit the home where my Grandfather lived. We were graciously invited inside. The energy was electric and moving as we entered the home. Inger invited an long time Tjome residence, who knew our Great Grandfather Hans, to come and answer any questions that we might have about him and his sons. It was a truly amazing afternoon.

Sadly, both Rita and Bjarne, have died. Rita died suddenly in 2018 and Bjarne died this spring. We did not know how important that 2017 trip would become to us.

With the use of technology today we have managed to remain in contact with our Norwegian relatives. Now one hundred and sixteen years after my Grandfather left Norway, I send texts thru Facebook to Olaf’s granddaughter, to Bjarne’s wife, to Rita’s children and Bjarne’s sons and their children. It is truly amazing that we can today stay in touch with those family member who remain in the “Old Country” .

Happy Hunting,

Jan

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