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.
