Category: Aaland

Elusive Homeland: the Wedding of Anders and Ragnilde

Elusive Homeland: the Wedding of Anders and Ragnilde

Posted on by spuddled

I have nothing gruesome to report today. Instead I am commemorating the wedding of my 5G-grandparents, Anders Torgjersen Aaland and Ragnilde Christensdatter, who were married 7 July 1786. Anders (a name which would repeat itself through our Norwegian ancestry) was born 13 February 1760 in Innvik, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. Ragnilde was also born in Innvik, in about 1766.

They had at least 9 children: Christiana, Torger, Anna, Kristen, Giertrud, Arne (my 4G-grandfather), Anders, Rasmus, and Christian. Arne’s grandson, known in Norway as Anders (see?) Svendsen, was my great-great-grandfather who emigrated to the U.S. in 1875. As sometimes happened in America, he dropped the patronymic “Svendsen” and used the farm name (Roberg) as his surname, which is why the only great-grandparent I was able to meet was known as Sophie Christine Roberg. The “Aaland” in Anders Torgjersen’s name is also a farm name.

I don’t have a lot of detail about the lives of the earlier Anders and Ragnilde, so I’ll round out this entry with more information about Innvik. Innvik is a village of about 430 inhabitants and is located in western Norway along the shores of the Nordfjorden, which Wikipedia tells me is the sixth-longest fjord in Norway. In 1997 I had every intention of trekking to Innvik, and I came very close. My friend Abbey and I made it to Norway from England where we were studying at the time. We made it to the Nordfjorden. We made it to the village of Sandane, where there was (and apparently still is) a folk museum. But…the last bus that would have taken us to Innvik had just left, and we weren’t able to stay another night there as we needed to start making our way back. At least I think those are the details; it’s been a while. And if they are accurate and Sandane was where we missed the last bus, we were 22 1/2 miles from Innvik. So close. I have yet to make it back to Norway, but I’m not giving up hope. One of these days I’m determined to make it to the stomping grounds of Ragnilde and Anders…and Arne and Ingeborg…and Svend and Synneve…and Anders…

Norway and the Folk Museum, 1997

Those Places Thursday – Innvik

Posted on by agnette

One of my many ancestral homelands is the small (population 378) village of Innvik, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway.  Innvik means “inner bay” in Norwegian; the original spelling of the name was Indviken and was in use by the 15th century.

Our earliest known connection to this village was the February 1760 birth of my 5th great grandfather, Anders Torgjersen Aaland, and that of his wife Ragnilde Christensdatter around 1766. Anders’s birth on the Haga Farm appears as the fourth entry on the following record from the Digitalarkivet website:

Anders and Ragnilde married July 7, 1786 and had nine children.  Their sixth child was Arne Andersen Aland, born in 1799.  He and his wife Ingeborg Svensdatter had a daughter Synneve, and a son, Svend Arneson Roberg.  Svend was born June 2, 1824 and married another Synneve: Synneve Arnesdatter.  Svend and Synneve had six children; the second was my great-great-grandfather, Anders Mathis Roberg.  Several of the Roberg children emigrated to the U.S.; Anders and his brother Arne both emigrated in 1875.  Three years later Anders married another Norwegian, Agnette Evansdatter Lien, eleven years his senior. Agnette had a child, Emil Martin, from a previous marriage; and she and Anders had three children of their own: Severin, Sophie (my great-grandmother), and Sena.

Digitalarkivet

Posted on by agnette

I’m still intending to post here more often but was in Vancouver for work for a week. I’m back now, though, and intend to get back on track (eventually!). Before I left, I discovered some new databases posted on the Norwegian site, Digitalarkivet. This site contains thousands of digitized Norwegian records covering census data, births, marriages, confirmations, emigrations, tax lists, and more. I’ve visited this site in the past, but the “digitised parish records” feature was recently added, and this has provided a wealth of new primary records on our Norwegian ancestors. The records are sorted by county and then parish, so it is fairly easy to look through the images for Sogn og Fjordane County, Innvik Parish, and locate many of our Roberg/Aaland relatives. You can now find a number of these records for Anders Roberg, Svend Roberg, and others posted in my genealogy database.