Olsdatter from Ytrehorn

After I had spent hours entering data into an online genealogy data base my coworker asked me if I had found an ancestor of any notable achievement. My answer was that the only notable achievement in the family tree was surviving the Black Death, or the Plague. This disease reportedly came on a trade ship from England to Bergen, Norway in the summer of 1349. These drawings by Theodor Kittelsen are a good representation of the mood of that era. About half the population of Norway died during the reign of the Black Death. The records which my uncle has researched for our family only go to the 1600's; the Black Death was really old news by then, unless it really did reoccur in 1565-1567.

Those who survived the Plague were the ones who managed to avoid contact with fleas, rats and other people. They must have fled to remote mountain cabins and stayed there until the disease had extinguished itself for lack of hosts. In my casual perusal of my uncle's research I get the impression that I'm descended from a long line of "the youngest kid who didn't get the farm and had to move on", or individuals like the unknown Olsdatter.

In our tree there is a woman known as Olsdatter, born in Ytrehorn in1702; a little farm under the mountains on the edge of Hornindalsvatnet, the deepest lake in Europe. Olsdatter was not her name, it means simply “daughter of Ole”. But it was when I entered this unnamed woman into my family tree I got “smart matches” with other family trees on the web. At the age of 17 she married Knut Rasmussen. Knut was from Kringlen, the site of an illfated Scottish 1612 invasion led by Colonel Sinclair. His army of over 900 men was defeated by some 500 villagers. One hundred years later Knut the son of Rasmus grew up; perhaps there was not room for him on the family farm so he traveled looking for work and met the daughter of Ole in Ytrehorn, a distance of about 250 km away from his home in Kringlen.

The story of this unnamed woman is known. I think about her and wonder what her days were like, she likely cleaned and fried lots of fish, made flatbread, didn't plant potatoes, they didn't exist in Europe until early 1800; maybe she kept sheep? Knitted sweaters...she didn't have internet, but likely had a network of spools and threads and yarn; did she have a loom? We don't have any tokens to show show that the daughter of Ole ever did anything remarkable besides survive, but survival in itself is remarkable. She may never have had an umbrella; they were just starting to use them in Paris about then. There may have been a pair of scissors on the place, Scissors were manufactured in Sweden in the mid 1600's in a place called Fiskars. I also wonder how she kept cheerful in a sometimes rainy, gloomy valley. Did she brighten the gloom weaving bright rugs from worn out clothes in her loom? Why is her name unknown? Did she marry one of those men who begin to call their bride "mama" after the first child was born?

But regardless of what she did and regardless of what she didn't have, she is one who made our family tree come to life and connect with other trees in cyberspace as the unknown daughter of Ole of Ytrehorn d.o.b. 1702 who married Knut Rasmussen of Kringlen d.o.b.1695 and bore Rasmus Knutsen of Ytrehorn d.o.b.1719.

I wasn't expecting this -

I just like to make pencil drawings, so this one picture here intrigued me

The Part of You That No One Sees is Detached

You are aloof, mysterious, and distant. People feel like they really don't know the true you... Yet they're still drawn to you, almost by magnetic force. Underneath it all, you don't even really feel like you know yourself. It's easier to put on a front than really think about your life's purpose. You tend to seem pretentious, but it's just a mechanism you use to push people away.

What's the Part of You That No One Sees?

found on Bryan's blog

My aunt Ingeborg showed me this first a few months ago, just now saw it again on a friend's blog. It's beautiful.

Old fashioned Photography

I had been wishing I had an old fashioned SLR because I didn't like the way the mountains got all flattened out with the lens in the digital camera I've been using. Then during the fall I found a real deal at the salvation army shop right down the street. Here is the first roll I took just to see if it worked. I made the collage with Picasa 3 which is a free Google application. I'm giving the camera to my dad after I leave, because there are no mountains like the mountains in the west coast of Norway. And also my life is simple if I don't have too many extra bags.
We are more inland here, so no mountains in these pictures! In fact those who live here boast about the area's agricultural wealth. "Never been a crop failure yet!" they say.

this is truly amazing!

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Beautiful Music

We had a great experience today, we visited a dear family to the east, closer to the Swedish border. We were serenaded by our friend's husband on this flute. That is what he was doing when they first met, now they have a bunch of beautiful kids. This is the youngest one here, he loves music too, and when his dad finished playing for us little Paul took the flute and began to blow, and was successful!

From January 09

I tried too, and it's not as easy as the pros make it look.

From January 09

But the most beautiful music was we heard was the duet of thankfulness before they took out the instruments.

From January 09

See they really do use these sparks, I'd have loved to have taken one of these for a spin, but there were 3 men out there chatting, if you peer closely you will see parts of 3 sparks in this picture, the greater part of 2 of them are mostly at the outer left perimeter of the picture.

From January 09

a spark in the snow

These kick sleds are lots of fun. If you are a grown-up it's not so easy to just go out sledding, but if you have a spark (it means "kick"), you can sled standing up and look like you are just going about your normal business. Nobody needs to know that you're actually just having fun!
They are great for the old folks who need walkers, instead of wheels on the walker there are runners. If they are feeling frisky they can put one foot on the foot pad of the runner, hold on to the handlebars and kick of as if they where on a skateboard! (skateboard with a handle that is - what are they called? I remember at the train station in Vienna I saw a young gentleman in a suit gliding along the platform on his skateboard with a handle, we got to the train and collapsed his pogo stick(?) no, what do you call it?? and jumped into the train!)
Anyway this is about the spark, they are lots of fun unless the road has been sprinkled with salt or sand.

In this picture my uncle is just learning how to operate the spark and in the next one he's winning the town championship in kick sledding. It was one sport he could compete in without noticing the handicaps he was left with from polio.