Tag: Greibesland
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Norway’s scattered children (part 2)
One-third of Norway’s population left the country between 1825 and 1925 — nearly a million people. As a citizen of a country that has more often been the recipient of migrants, I can scarcely imagine the impact those departures would have had, both for individual families and for the nation as a whole. In a…
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Echoes of home: visiting Greibesland and the Øvrebø Church
(This post is a continuation from yesterday’s post about the Greibesland family of Øvrebø in Southern Norway.) Back in June, I wrote about having a sense of place, a sense of origin. And even though my family left Wisconsin when I was five years old (and even though I have no plans to live there…
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A reunion with the Greibeslands
My grandpa Eugene Smith’s mother, Elvina Anderson Smith (1898-1983), was born in Wisconsin to Norwegian immigrants Marie Alfsdatter Greibesland (1867-1950) and Anton Andreasen (1875-1931). Elvina never visited Norway, but she felt a close connection to her parents’ homeland. In her later years she jotted down notes about the family’s history and passed those along to…
Deep Roots 