The video above is a recording of “The Wellerman,” done by a Norwegian group whose name means “The Greedy Seagulls.” I’ve posted a version of this sea shanty before, and I’m not adding this one because I’ve sensed any clamor on your part for a reprise. My main interest is in the boat the singers are on (which, though it’s a sailing schooner, appears to be under engine power here).
That boat is the replica of the sloop “Restauration.” The original Restauration carried about 50 people on the first organized Norwegian immigrant voyage to the United States, back in 1825. There’s a plan to sail this boat to America next year, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the voyage.
I saw this replica, purely by accident, on my last Norway visit in 2023.
My own people did not come to America till the 1880s, so I can’t claim the honor of being what’s called a Slooper. However, the ship sailed from Stavanger, and a number of them were members of the Haugean sect, of which some of my ancestors were leaders. So they would certainly have known the Sloopers.
June 16: Mari Anne and her husband Michael drove me out to Bø farm, near Randaberg, north of Stavanger, where Cousin Sigve lives (turns out he’s not actually a cousin, but a relation by marriage. But he’s had trouble finding relatives in America, and has settled for me). He’s retired, but used to be a farmer and was be involved in scientific breeding programs for hogs and cattle.
He told me he had a chest that had belonged to the grandmother of Prof. Sven Oftedal of Augsburg College, one of the people we study in the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit. Oftedal’s mother, he explained, was born on a neighboring farm and he had acquired the chest.
Me sitting on the Oftedal chest. I’m happy to report I did not crush it.
He took me up to Hodnefjell on Moster Island (not to be confused with Moster on Bomlø, which I visited the other day). Some of my ancestors lived there and were converts to the Moravian movement. They heard about Hans Nielsen Hauge, the Lutheran lay evangelist, and invited him to visit them there. It was with them Hauge stayed when he first visited the Stavanger area. They became followers (“friends”) of his. One of their community was John Haugvaldstad, who went to Stavanger and became a prominent Haugean leader and businessman. He established several businesses, always with the goal of employing the poor and supporting mission work. I understand he was considered the de facto head of the Haugeans after Hauge’s imprisonment for leading meetings while not ordained. My relatives were friends and supporters of Haugvaldstad. There is a bust of him in Stavanger, outside the mission school.
Hodnefjell farm, home of my ancestors, in the background.
We visited Utstein Kloster, the only medieval monastery in Norway that remains standing. Smaller place than I expected, but very interesting. A chance to get in out of the rain, which was pretty steady all day.
We went to another medieval church, whose name I forget. But it is well preserved (or restored) and quite beautiful in a simple, Romanesque way. We visited a German coastal installation from World War II along the coast, which included gun emplacements and a tunnel through the rock.
On the island of Finnøy, we saw the replica of the sloop “Restauration,” in which Cleng Peerson led the first organized group of Norwegian immigrants to America. 52 people (53 on arrival, as a baby was born) traveled on this tiny vessel, which authorities later declared inadequate for the purpose and seized (after it had arrived). These people were mostly Quakers, along with some Haugeans, fleeing religious pressure from the state church. Finnøy was Cleng Peerson’s home.
The replica of the “Restauration”
Sigve also drove me past the one place he has found in the area where (he’s personally satisfied) Hans Nielsen Hauge set up a sea salt refinery. (After several years in solitary confinement, the pressures of the Napoleonic Wars induced the government to grant Hauge temporary parole so he could set up sea salt refineries to relieve the salt shortage. After he had performed this service well, the conditions of his imprisonment were eased a little.)
Plausible site of Hauge’s sea salt refinery.
Back to Sigve’s house and a lovely dinner with his wife and daughter. We talked quite a long time about Vikings and other matters. Then back to Sandnes and my hosts. I am stimulated but tired. I hope I’m not coming down with a bad cold.
If you’re looking for harbingers of a possible better summer this year, in terms of the lockdown, here’s one – I’m booked for my first lecture of 2021.
The location is Madison, Wisconsin – a bit of a drive, but if I sell books like I did the last time I spoke to these people, the Tre Lag Stevne, it will be worth it in book sales. The Tre Lag Stevne is a gathering of organizations of descendants of immigrants from particular regions of Norway.
They told me they wanted me to do a presentation on the Old Stone Church (pictured above), which I’ve written about here before. It’s the original building of my home congregation, Hauge Lutheran in Kenyon, Minnesota; it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
My natural grandiosity took over, of course, the moment I accepted the invitation. I rapidly prepared a comprehensive presentation on the whole Haugean movement – about which I’ve also written here before. The Haugeans were a pietistic Lutheran lay movement that began in Norway in the early 1800s. I prepared a brilliant PowerPoint (tastefully illustrated), about not only the Old Stone Church, but the entire history of the Haugean movement in Norway and America. Not neglecting the sociological and political antecedents and consequences. I have many insightful things to say on this subject.
Then I asked, and learned that they already have an expert (some guy with a Ph.D, as if that impressed anybody) coming to talk about all that stuff. What they want from me is the story of my own church.
I’m not sure I’m as well qualified to do that.
But I’ve got till August. I’ll come up with something.
I was out of town the last few days. I took a long weekend for a trip with my brothers. I’ll share a couple pictures in a few days, when I’ve cleared up some technical problems with my camera.
It was a family history trip. We went to visit the natural habitat of one of our great-grandfathers on Mom’s side.
The man has always been something of a mystery to us. He was larger than life in family memory, half joke and half cautionary tale. But we didn’t know where he came from in Norway, or where to look for the information. The clues I remembered steered me entirely wrong.
But one of my brothers did some digging in his spare time, and not only located the old man’s grave, but also made contact with a second cousin. That cousin met us in Iron River, Wisconsin, along with his wife (nice people; devout Baptists). So we heard some stories, saw some documents, and visited some locations. The result was a more detailed, and nuanced, story of our great-grandfather, John B. Johnson.
The story:
Our ancestor was born on the island of Ytreøy, near Trondheim. The first fact that caught my imagination was that his baptism name was Johan Arndt Johanson. The name “Johan Arndt” is significant. Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian in the 17th Century. Not strictly a pietist, his devotional writings were prized by the Pietists when they eventually came along. In Norway, they were particularly popular with the Haugeans, members of the evangelical lay movement (I’ve written about it here before) that changed Norwegian society, and to which my paternal family belonged.
So if a common family (and all my ancestors were common as dirt) named their son after Johan Arndt, that’s a pretty good indicator that it was a Haugean family.
Young Johan Arndt Johanson, however, was a prodigal son. A laborer and a sea cook, he was immensely strong, a prodigious drinker, and pretty much uncontrollable. Continue reading The Saga of Apple Johnson→
