Tag: Norway
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Glimmers from a golden age
Norway is one of those countries – like Macedonia or Mongolia – that has a modest footprint today but once settled and ruled distant lands. This is not to say that Norway’s best days are behind it. But it does have a storied, almost mythic past. Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the Old Kingdom of…
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Bridges across the pond
To travel abroad as an American in 2025, particularly to Western Europe, is to open yourself up to questions about what it means to be an American. For 80 years, Europe knew it could rely on the U.S. as a bulwark against the forces of despotism and tyranny. That faith has been shattered. Norway was…
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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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Norway’s scattered children (part 1)
Two hundred years ago this year, a small ship set sail from Stavanger, Norway bound for New York City with 52 passengers and crew. This was Norway’s “Mayflower moment”.* Who could have guessed that over the coming century the number of migrants from Norway to the United States would reach nearly a million? The Norwegian…
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The ancestors of Erik Embretsen Veum, father of J. Oscar Veum
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about my biological great-grandfather, Johan “Oscar” Veum, even while asserting my belief that family is not biology. I still strongly believe this. You’d think then that I might leave this branch alone. But that’s the funny thing about genealogy; you tug at a thread and it tugs…
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The cup that launched a ship
The year is 1850, and in a small village perched at the end of a fjord in Western Norway, a young servant hurries through her tasks. Malene has no education and very little savings, but for the first time in her life she is hopeful. Earlier that year a young man named Ole had come…
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Oh, those Johnsons
My grandmother’s Aunt Glenrose – my great-great aunt – was a beloved character, full of stories, jokes and poems. A spinster for life, she was always taking care of others in the family: nursing parents and siblings through sickness and old age, looking after one and then the next generation of children. My parents sometimes…
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Missed connections
Hello from Iceland! This stop was not on my itinerary, but I missed my connecting flight in Reykjavik so I’ve spent the night here. This got me thinking about the less-than-obvious connections between the two countries I’ve just visited — Norway and Germany. Physically, Norway and Germany are separated only by a couple of modest-sized…
Deep Roots 