Here is the second part of the letter written by my great-great-grandfather to my great grandfather, whose beginning I posted on Tuesday. The previous letters are posted here, here, here, here, and here.

I also want to tell you that I have been fishing this winter too with our seine; ja, thanks be to the Lord who gave to us out of His blessing this year also. We got ourselves a nice little share, but we haven’t gotten it settled yet, for the berth-holders have postponed it until the first of April. We had our berth on an island called Hovring—that is right across from Kopervik, and we were there a month. There hasn’t been such a great herring catch in 35 years as this year, for imagine, the herring have been all around Karmøy this year. There was no renting of berths here this year. There was plenty of herring, but no seines at home then. There has also been good codfishing here for those who have been at it, but I for my part have not taken part in it, so that there is no fish to be found in my house now, and I haven’t gotten a herring home this year either, but that will have to be as it may be. We were so far away that we couldn’t bring herring home, and when I got home Mother was so unwell that I couldn’t go away codfishing.
But the worst of all for me was that she could not talk with me. You can believe that we had much to talk of together, but it was impossible for me to understand her, other than yes and no. I went home every single Sunday to her, if I was away. The last evening I was home with her, she could not talk any more, but she got up to prepare something for me to take with me. The next Friday I came home, and then I ran home from the valley, because I heard there that she was now worse than before. Continue reading Olsen letter #4b →

Katrina and Ole Olsen Kvalevaag
It’s been a while since I shared one of my translations of the letters from my great-great grandfather to my great-grandfather. (The first three are posted here, here, and here, and here.) This one is the most dramatic of them all. I’ll give it to you in two parts, but this section is the meat of it. Five years have passed since the last preserved letter, and John has moved from Illinois to Iowa.

[Envelope postmarked 7 IV 97, addressed to Mr. John Walker, Radcliffe, Harding co., Jova, North Amerika]
Kvalevaag, the 7 April 1897
Mr. Jan H. Olson,
Dear children of my heart,
I received your very welcome letter this afternoon, and re-read it with tears, and I want to answer it right away if I get the strength from the Lord to manage a letter to you at this time. I saw and heard from your letter to me that all was well with you when you wrote to me, which was precious to me to hear from you.
Ja, dear son and daughter and children, I have another piece of news to tell you today, and that is that the Lord has called your mother from me to Himself; and now, God help me, I am left here forsaken and alone as a wild bird, and have no one to cling to. Ja, God must now be my comforter and helper both now and preferably forever. Continue reading Olsen letter #4a →

[Tonight, the next Ole Olsen letter, one of the shorter ones. Letter 1 is here; 2a here; and 2b here. I know nothing about the life of the author’s father, my great-great-great grandfather (whose name was also Ole Olsen), except that he once sailed on a merchant voyage to China.]

Kvalevaag, the 12th December, 1892

Mr. Jan Hendrik Olsen,

Dear Son, with your wife and child,

After receiving recently your very welcome letter, with the accompanying contents which were a joy for us here at home, that all is well worth praising and thanking the Lord for, who holds His hand over us in every way, both for soul and body, and also provides us each day with all that we poor humans need for daily life. Ja, it is grace upon grace from our Lord that He is so good toward us poor sinful creeping things, who do nothing but what is against Him. Ja, Lord help us all to appreciate Him, that He is a good Father toward us, but I see that things have worked out poorly for me. I want to grumble against Him, that I always get too much suffering from Him. Oh, wretched man that I am, when and where will it be otherwise with me? The Lord knows. God help us all.

Also, as before, I can note for you children that the Lord, in His eternal grace and mercy, has borne us in His patient arms up to this day, granting us to remain in the day of grace thus far. Ja, that is a great thing the Lord has done for us, to bear with us a while longer here, we who are so disobedient toward Him as we are, ja, Lord help us.

Ja, so I , Father and Mother, tell you that we have managed to be up [and about] every day this year too. God be thanked for it. But it should perhaps also be said that we aren’t always equally energetic, especially Mother, but what can we do? We must go on here as long as we can keep moving, for I have no one to trade off with at my side; ja, that is how things have turned out for me. Ja, God knows that it is often hard for us to think of, that we in our old age should have it so hard and weary as we have it. Ja, ja, that is our lot, but God who sees and knows all, He has a way out for us too, when He thinks it good. Ja, His will is best. Continue reading Olsen letter #3 →

[I hadn’t intended to post the rest of the second Olsen letter right away, but again I’ve got no clever ideas tonight, so here it is. By the way, there probably won’t be a post from me tomorrow night, as I’ll be driving up to Fargo in order to be on the spot for my 10:00 a.m. speech on Saturday. lw]

[Attached page:]

I must also tell you that here in Kvalevaag there will certainly be many weddings this summer. Anne Sirine and E. E. Ylveland the shoemaker will be newlyweds this next Thursday, that is July 9, and the wedding will be at the Mollene home. And Daarte Andresen will marry again now, and the banns have been pronounced; she will marry Ole Svehaugen Ylveland. Also there will probably be a wedding in our house this fall, according to what I hear, for Berthe. She will marry a widower. He has 3 children. The oldest is in confirmation. He is an engineer [i.e., operates a motorized boat], and makes good money, and he is said to be a nice man, so they say, and so he seems to be; I can say no more about that so far. So it looks as if we will see her married, if we weren’t able to see any of you who are in America married. You can tell your wife Lava that I will soon go and visit her family, and then I will write soon to you that I have been down south there, for I will take the opportunity to go to Stavanger and see about a net boat for us, for the net must and shall go out, if I live so long.

Ja, now I’d better close for this time of writing to you, for if my writing has taken time, I have done a good job of telling this and that. I must tell you that old Grandfather is still living, but is now very poorly and awaits death each day. Grandmother is now a little better than he. Continue reading Olsen letter #2b →

[I’ve started a project of scanning a series of letters which I have in my care, so that I can send them to some relatives in Norway. These letters were written by my great-great-grandfather, Ole Olsen Kvalevaag, to my great-grandfather, John Walker (whose original name was Jan Olsen Kvalevaag). I translated them some years back. It was almost my first job of Norwegian translation. I found them fascinating, for more than family reasons, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading edited excerpts here from time to time.

Kvalevaag farm is located on a rocky island called Karmøy, in southwestern Norway. The picture above was taken by me on that farm, and shows three of my Norwegian cousins in front of a large stone (I think they had a name for it—the Church, I think, but I might be confused) in the valley called Tobteskarsdalen, which is mentioned in the letter. “Dalen” means valley, but this one is actually a valley in a rather high part of the farm.

The first letter is only a fragment. Its beginning pages have been lost. My guess is that it was written around 1889, a year after Jan had emigrated to America. See if you can identify the subtext. Bracketed notes in italics are mine. lw.]

…but so we believed it was from you, and we didn’t get your letter before Christmas Eve; and then 3 came at once, one to me and one to Marta and one to Lava [sisters]. And then I had written a letter to Iver and Helvik [sister], to ask them whether you had come to them or not, for we were afraid that you had gotten sick in Dakota before you set out. You can’t imagine how worried we were about you before we got the letter. Mother, mother, how she wept and wailed, “Now he’s lost too.” Oh yes, we certainly have our troubles, you may believe it. When Marta got to the post office and got all 3 letters, she didn’t send mine, but came home with it, because she knew it was from you.

Yes, you say that we will come to America too, ja, ja, but in God’s name it would be hell in America for us who are old. What in the world would we do there? No, we won’t do that, for our time remaining does not suffice to lay upon ourselves and others the burden of getting us to America. No, the time we have left in this world we will spend in our dear Norway. We have wanted for nothing here, for we are content here and at peace in soul and body, so that we couldn’t possibly have it much better. So I will ask you, for Jesus’ sake, never to mention it; then your mother gets to crying again so that it’s terrible to hear. “Is that the promise that Jan made before he left?” she says. You must keep your promise and come home again to us, for all your saws and tools are still hanging and lying at home just as when you left; for we have touched none of them before you come yourself. Continue reading Olsen letter #1 →