When you fly into Bergen, you are treated to glimpses through the clouds of an almost surreal landscape. Mountains rise straight up from the fjords with brightly colored buildings perched at intervals. Here and there a waterfall gushes down the steep slopes.

One branch of my mom’s family, the branch we call “the Johnsons”, hails from this wild western terrain. The Johnsons are the family of my mother’s maternal grandma, Jessie Johnson Reiner (1891-1972) – specifically, Grandma Jessie’s paternal grandparents, Ole Jensen Hauge (1826-1897) and Gunhild Malene Olsdatter Bruland (1824-1865). I never knew my great-grandma Jessie, as she died three years before I was born, but I inherited her name as well as her love of language and family history.

Ole and Malene reportedly changed their last name from Hauge to Johnson because there was a justice of the peace in the area who went by Ole Hauge. Besides, the Yankees kept mispronouncing it as “hog”. Johnson was probably an Anglicization of Ole’s patronymic name, Jensen. Malene also Anglicized her first name as “Malinda” after immigrating.

Much of our information on the Johnsons’ immigration and early years in America is apocryphal at best. In 1971, a first cousin of my great-grandma Jessie, Beulah Kringel Bell (1881-1975), relayed the Johnsons’ story like this:

It was the custom in those days for the daughters of the family to go to work for a neighbor, a sort of daughter exchange arrangement helpful in their education. Unfortunately, Malene had a hard task mistress and was quite unhappy.

However, after a time, she met a young man named Ole Hauge. They soon fell in love and became engaged. Malene was a lovely and charming young lady. She had deep blue eyes. Her blond hair was parted in the middle and hung in long curls around her neck, as was the custom in those days. Ole was a strong, handsome young man with bright blue eyes. He had a hearty laugh and was a good singer. He was a stonemason by occupation. They decided they wanted to go to America which then, as now, was the popular thing to do. They made plans to save as much as possible of their small wages so they could have a fine wedding and make the trip to America. One day Malene had the bad luck to break a cup, a beautiful and valuable porcelain china cup. Knowing or at least fearing she would have to pay for it out of her precious savings, she brokenheartedly told Ole. He was also deeply concerned. They did some hard thinking and finally decided to elope and go immediately to America.

(These passages were excerpted from the Johnson family history written in the early 1970s by my great-grandma’s sister, Glenrose Johnson).

A fascinating tale… but is it true? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. What we do know is that Ole and Malene arrived into New York harbor on July 11, 1850 aboard the brig Nordlyset from Bergen. According to the family history written by my great-grandma Jessie’s sister Glenrose, they married “in the Methodist parsonage” in Cambridge, Wisconsin on March 10, 1851. But my great-aunt Helen’s records list a “legal” marriage taking place on August 11, 1850 – exactly one month after their immigration.

Cambridge’s Methodist congregation was founded by the Danish minister Christian Willerup around the same time as Ole and Malene were establishing themselves in town. In the early 1850s, Ole put his masonry skills to use in helping build the congregation’s church building on Water Street. Today Willerup Methodist Church holds claim as the oldest Scandinavian Methodist congregation in the world. Aunt Glenrose wrote that Ole was a deacon and Malene was a Sunday school teacher in the church (I haven’t found evidence in the Willerup church archives to support these claims, but I did find my great-great grandfather Albert Johnson’s baptism).*

Until recently, Ole and Malene’s origins in Norway were a mystery. Aunt Glenrose wrote that Ole was from Bergen and Malene was from “South Fjord”. Thanks to the work of other family researchers online, Malene’s roots were traced to a town called Førde, located in a region of Sogn og Fjordane called Sunnfjord (which does translate to South Fjord). I’m not visiting Førde on this trip because it’s a good deal out of my way. But I did have the good fortune to visit Ole’s hometown today. [See correction below.]

Earlier this spring, through a series of happy accidents and (if I may say so) clever sleuthing, I finally discovered Ole Jensen Hauge’s family of origin. To anyone uninterested in family history, it’s hard to convey the excitement of unlocking a mystery that has been out of reach for decades. My mom’s Aunt Helen had made inquiries in the 1980s, and she and I had all but given up on ever solving this puzzle.

Ole Jensen was born on September 15, 1826 to Marie Monsdatter and Jens Andersen of the Hauge farm within the Haus Clerical District in Osterøy, Hordaland. Osterøy is technically an island, as it’s surrounded by fjords on all sides, but the Hauge farm is an easy 40-minute drive from Bergen today via the Osterøy Bridge. [CORRECTION MADE ON FEB 19, 2025: I was mistaken when I thought I had located the Hauge farm in Haus. Well, I had found a Hauge farm in Haus, but not the correct Hauge farm in Haus! Back in the 1800s, the Haus Clerical District was composed of three parishes: Haus, Gjerstad, and Ådna. Our family lived on the Hauge farm in Ådna parish (near the community of Indre Arna within what is now Bergen) — not the Hauge farm in Haus parish. I hope to return to Norway one day and locate the correct farm.]

While Ole and Malene’s hometowns are only about a 3-hour drive from each other using today’s technology, they were worlds apart in the 1840s when the two were courting. I wonder how they might have met. Did Ole travel north in his 20s looking for work? This is one mystery that may remain unsolved.

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* Given the Johnsons’ connection to this church’s founding, we might speculate whether their immigration was religiously as well as economically motivated. After all, dissenters from the Lutheran state church in Norway had been prominent emigrants since the sloop Restauration set sail from Stavanger in 1825. But unlike Quakers or Haugean Lutherans, the first Norwegian Methodists were actually American converts like Ole and Malene. Willerup himself left Wisconsin in 1856 to found some of the first Methodist churches in Norway.