Where did my family come from? Are any of my relatives still there? What do they know about my immigrant ancestors and their reasons for coming to the new world? What would it be like for them today if they had stayed? These and other questions were on my mind as I visited Svanoe Island in 1994 with my daughter Colette. I was in Norway for a month singing with a men’s chorus and Colette was making a return visit to Estonia where she had previously sung with a college choir. We arranged to spend 3 days on Svanoe Island together. This is a report of our visit written shortly after our return in 1994. It may serve as an introduction of sorts to what we can expect in 2004.
We had written to all five persons on the Svanoe address list that lived at Svanoe Bay (Svanøybukt) to let them know we were coming. We were greeted warmly at the dock by Ingeborg Svanøe, 70 year old daughter of Bjarne and (Tante) Amalie. I remembered the latter as the one who at 75 had been the matriarch of the Svanoes who greeted us in 1961.
Ingeborg said that her mother had occupied the main house at Svanoe gård (Svanoe farm) until 1986, when she died three months short of her 100th birthday. Bjarne, my grandfather Atle’s cousin, had been a professor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and had died much earlier, in 1925. Ingeborg herself had been to the New World, having served the Norwegian Seaman’s Mission in Canada and in San Pedro, California. She was the one on the island who knew English well (most of the grown ups at the Island can speak English), and it made her a natural to be the one to greet us and play hostess.
We felt lucky to have her, of all the Island dwellers, as our guide and grateful for her willingness to give of herself to us new comers. She also lived closest to the dock, in a home right up from the bay. This house had been built by the chief of mining operations on the Island before the mine was shut down. It had also been taken over by a contingent of Nazi Germans, who built a guard tower that could watch the comings and goings at the dock during the occupation in the early 1940’s. Perhaps this was a fitting spot for the detested Germans, for also visible from that hill is a rock out in the sea (Pineskjæret) near the shore line with an old legend with a very disagreeable meaning. Myth has it that a person who got in trouble could be chained to the low lying rock in low tide so that they would struggle in high tide. This myth is depicted in a drawing in a small book about Svanoe Island published in 1977 which Ingeborg, a retired school teacher keeps in her living room book case.
SVANOEGARD’S MAIN HOUSE
Ingeborg and the other surviving members of Tanta (aunt) Amalie’s family moved out of Svanøe gård’s main house by prior agreement at her death in 1986. Ingeborg’s eldest brother Kristoffer had assumed title to the property in 1945 and in 1972 came to an agonizing decision. He decided to turn over the big house to Svanøy Stiftelse, a public foundation on the island. The foundation, in cooperation with private industry and research organizations, was established to further research, particularly in the fields of botany, zoology and private enterprises.
The Stiftelse has decided that the garden space better serves present purposes turned into a lawn. Some rose bushes remain however, and were prominently visible in a painting just then being finished as it stood on an easel out on that lawn. Bjarne Svanoe, artist son of Kristoffer, has one of the enterprises the Stiftelse aims to promote.
THE ISLAND IN 1961
The Island looked very different from what I remember in 1961. There are still four main farms, but I remember walking across a field to see one of the farms and going away with the impression that I had crossed the island. I hadn’t. The island is 6 kilometers long and 3 kilometers wide. Ingeborg estimates that there are about 100 people living on the island, at least triple the population I remember in 1961. Roads for cars came in shortly after that visit. Ingeborg showed us a picture of that visit which included Bill, Myrtle, Vic, myself, Carol, Ansgar and Melva, besides Tante Amalie and her clan.
THE FARMS
In 1961 I don’t remember having ever sat at meal with our relatives. This time we stayed two nights and parts or all of 3 days. Ingeborg generously devoted her time and energy to helping us make every hour count. We set out on foot to visit the places easily accessible from Svanoe Bay. The Island contains as many as six farms, according to the various written descriptions, with perhaps three main ones: Svanøe gård, Erikstad and Kvalstad. Except for the big house, now a museum and conference center, Svanøe gård (Svanoe farm) remains in the family. Kristoffer died last year (1993) and his son Ole has now taken up the responsibilities of his father.
OLE HELLING SVANOE (GENERATION 6)
At 49 Ole and his family run the farm and he is also active in local politics. He feels that the future of the Island depends on the development of industries and therefore jobs for persons who would move to the island. In this view he continues the philosophy of his ancestor Ole Torjussen Svanøe who came from Hallingdal in 1804 to develop the Island in the Haugian manner for economic independence.
INDUSTRY ON SVANOE ISLAND
Ole laughingly referred to himself as the chairman of the board of the fish smoking operation. Besides fish smoking there is a saw mill, using pine and fir logs from the Island. A good supply of logs resulted from the New Year’s Eve/Day 1992 storm which left scars still plainly visible especially on the northwest side of the Island. Government disaster relief funds have paid for the clean up which has brought workers from nearby Florø. These funds have also paid for access roads which will help facilitate other developments on the Island.
In tandem with the saw mill there is a small ship-building industry near the bay where we first landed on the Island. While one of the two buildings for this has been turned into an art gallery for Bjarne’s original works, the other is still used for building or repairing small ocean going vessels.
SOLHAUG
We walked to Solhaug, which means “sunny place,” where we could see how the midday sun shines full force on the front of the house and the lawn. A large evergreen threw quite a shadow by the front door. Ingeborg said that a bachelor uncle of Atle Svanoe, Jens Rennord Svanoe, had planted the tree there, probably without anticipating its effects. Ingeborg was a girl of fourteen when Jens died in 1938.
INGEBORG’S CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Ingeborg also remembered a grove of scrub trees on a little ridge which ran along side the path to Solhaug. She told of how when she was a child the miners would sit on the little ridge between the trees with their alcoholic beverages and talk together in semi-darkness under the branches. The children were afraid to go by there and came to think of the word slusk (section hand), in a pejorative sense because of the associations of drinking, darkness, etc.
On the other hand, along the same path a little further on, there was an old oak tree which though dying still stands. Here the young people would sit on a bench, the place now marked by a large squared log. This place had connotations of romance, helped by the warmth of the sun, which had full sway.
ATLE SVANOE (GENERATION 4) STAYS ON THE ISLAND
Behind Solhaug Ingeborg showed us a sizeable cabin where Atle Svanoe stayed while he was on the Island for a while in the 30’s. He also stayed with his Uncle Jens on the mainland at one time, as well as with Wollert Svanøe’s family at Skogly on the Island. Not known as a family man in the sense of immediate nuclear family, he never strayed far from his family in the sense of extended family, it appears.
ERIKSTAD
Ole gave us a ride in his Volvo station wagon to Erikstad, a farm on the northwest side of the Island near where the storm of 1992 left the trees lying in broad swaths. I learned from the sight of this wind-born devastation that the barrenness of islands more exposed to the ocean than Svanoe Island is due not to the lack of soil on their rocks but to their exposure to the winds.
We were given a tour of the home museum, mostly old farm implements, and then had a nice visit with Alfhild and Solveig. Alfhild is the wife of Endre Olai Svanoe (5th generation), who is in a Florø rest home for a month’s respite care with Parkinson’s disease. Solveig is Alfhild and Endre Olai’s daughter and is married to Age Tansø, whose name reveals that he is from a neighboring island by that name.
SOLVEIG SVANOE TAMSO (GENERATION 6)
Solveig is a woman age 35 with two sons, 8 and 6, and now a daughter age 3 weeks. We had seen her picture in a tourist paper in Florø which had a feature section on Svanoe Island. She was shown with her four white horses of a fjord breed originating in Norway. With her sun bleached blond hair Solveig made quite a visual match with her horses. They are a mother and three offspring, one a castrated male and another a male that could be used for breeding. The mother horse had to be brought off the Island for breeding. Solveig called raising her racing and showing horses “a whole different life style.” We figured out that with baby Celia and her brothers the farm at Erikstad will have been in her family for six generations.
HANS SVANOE (GENERATION 2)
Ole Torjussen’s son Hans Svanoe, heir to Erikstad, had been without children and so had given the farm to Endre Olai Johannesen, husband of his sister Berthe, Ole’s oldest child. Berthe had six children with Endre including Endre Olai, Jr. Besides receiving his father’s first and middle names, Endre took his mother’s maiden name as his last name, Svanoe, due no doubt to the custom of taking one’s home place name as surname. Even though he was the last of six children, he was the only son (of 4) to survive with heirs and so took over the farm. He is Solveig’s great grandfather. A great uncle of hers and then her father also took the name Endre Olai, showing the strength of a tradition of a family that married into the Svanoe line.
It used to be the custom in Norway for the oldest surviving son to inherit the family farm. Thus Kristoffer, though the 3rd child, inherited the Svanöe gård farm as the oldest son of Ole Helling Svanoe, who, though the fourth child, was the oldest son and inherited the farm from Christopher. In turn Christopher, though the third child, was the oldest surviving son and inherited the farm from Ole Torjusssen.
EQUALITY AND INHERITANCE LAW
Due to the importance for Norwegians of the value of equality, the law now specifies the oldest child, whether male or female, as heir. Another law gives a renter the legal right to buy a farm or the portion that he has rented and worked for a set number of years. As the oldest of five children, Solveig, the one that has been working the farm, and her children, are clearly in line to continue the family’s tradition at Erikstad that began with the gift of Hans to his sister. Pictures painted by Hans of the boat construction building, the boat house and the old church up behind still hang in the living room in Erikstad.
ERIK THE BLOODY AXE
The Erikstad farm was steeped in tradition, long before the Svanoes took possession in 1804. There is an unsubstantiated story about the Erikstad farm that a Viking Erik the Bloody Axe lived there as a child in the 900’s. The legend seemed of more interest to Solveig than to Ingeborg, who seemed to discount it, perhaps due to the association with a pre-Christian era. Even without the legend, Erikstad was an enchanting place. Solveig with her horses, Hans’ 150 year old original paintings, and the farm museum truly reflected the life style Solveig spoke of, close to the earth.
SKOGLY AND WOLLERT SVANOE (GENERATION 5)
As part of the Erikstad farm a house stands within sight of the sea called Skogly (formerly called Alders Hvile). Wollert Svanoe, brother of Endre Olai lives there with his wife Jorunn, originally from Lillehammer. At 72 Wollert has complaints with his feet. The décor and furnishings of his house reflect a simple way of life. He had an arrangement of feathers on the wall from one of the new breeds of birds brought onto the Island at one time. He grows small potatoes in a small plot by the gate. He has a boat that can be used to go to the other side of the Island. Not having a car they otherwise have to depend on a little bus which doesn’t run every day. Their main need for transportation is to go to a small store located by Svanoe Bay. Wollert showed us with some pride a chest dated 1806 which he had received from someone in Bergen.
MEMORIES OF ATLE SVANOE
Wollert had memories of Atle Svanoe, my grandfather, who spent a year at Skogly after the 2nd World War. Wollert was a young man of 24 and may have still lived at Erikstad with his parental family. Stories were shared by Wollert and Ingeborg about Atle’s activities, both in 1946 and earlier. Atle worked as a farm hand spraying fertilizer for his keep. He wrote articles for a local newspaper, engaging in dialogue through his writing on issues of the day. Some of these articles were clipped by Endre Olai and still exist in large scrapbooks, Wollert said. He seemed animated when he talked about Atle, his Norwegian interpreted for his American guests by Ingeborg.
He remembered Atle twirling the hair in the middle of his forehead. Atle advocated chewing one’s food 60 times before swallowing. This memory was one about my grandfather that I shared with both Wollert and Ingeborg. Ingeborg remembered the number of chews differently, as 32, and I remembered Grandpa urging us to even chew our water, as somehow an aid to digestion.
With a smile Wollert related how one of his uncles once said he wished he had a screwdriver that could tighten the screw that was loose in his head. As a minister Atle officiated at his Uncle Jens’ funeral in 1938; having lived for a time with Jens. Atle shared some stories about him that were a bit unsparing, Wollert said with a smile. Both Wollert and Ingeborg agreed that wherever you went in the area people would know Atle and all found him to be a good hearted man.
KVALSTAD—KARI SVANØE HJELLE
We were running out of time after Skogly and didn’t get to the last farm Kvalstad. Here Kari Svanoe Hjelle lives with her husband Kåre and children Kristin and Trygve, as do non-relatives by the name of Solheim. Mrs. Solheim is pictured in the same tourist paper as Solveig, feeding a newer, small variety of deer at Kvalstad. The hope in introducing this more tame variety is that they will cross breed with the larger native wild deer of the Island.
Other exotic or unusual varieties of plants or creatures have been brought in and tried in Svanoe Island’s mild climate. Ducks, chickens, Canadian geese, fish, etc. have been planted with mixed results. A plane dropped small fish in the lakes but not much came of it. Disease killed off some varieties of fish and ducks. An exotic variety of evergreen was brought in and planted in the lawn at Svanøe gård. The tree has a razor sharp pointed cone or leaf and is flourishing. There are salmon fishing farms in the salt water around the Island that are getting good results.
GOODBYES
As a thank you and memento of our visits, we left with Ole, Alfhild, Wollert and Ingeborg cassette copies of the album the 3 Svanoe brothers (Rennard, Alfred and Victor) made with a friend (Joe Nystuen) of their Augsburg male quartet program in 1961. These were songs sung on a 25 day tour throughout Norway. Some had been sung in person by the quartet at Svanøe gård for Tante Amalie and her family that year. A cassette was left with Ingeborg for Kari and a paper on the Svanoe-Hauge connection by Paul Hasvold and the English translation of Atle Svanøe’s book “The Work of Laypersons” were given to Ingeborg as a thank you for our stay. Ingeborg left with us items that we still treasure.
DAG SVANOE MYKLEBUST (GENERATION 6)
Another family on the Island related to us are Dag and Ruth Myklebust and their children Leni, Tore, and Kim who live at Solhaug. We met 21 year old Tore but we only learned about his family from Ingeborg. Ruth is also Dag’s second cousin, a relationship which does not prohibit marriage in Norwegian law. Ruth was one of two Svanoe family members who taught in the elementary school on the Island at the time, the other being Ole’s wife Eva. There was a third teacher in the school, built new with contributions from the Island’s residents due to the expanded population on the Island. The school district is headed by a school board out of Florø on the mainland, however.
Before she retired Ingeborg was the sole teacher for all the elementary grades; the old school building is being preserved. In her retirement, Ingeborg keeps active for the benefit of her community. The day we first proposed to come to the Island Ingeborg was busy soliciting around the Island for the heart disease association. We were happy to wait a day, staying in a cabin at a campground in Florø before taking the regularly scheduled public speedboat to the Island the next morning.
THE CHURCH AND SVANOE ISLAND
We took advantage of the extra day in Florø to visit the parish which Atle Svanoe served in 1913 and again at Kinn in 1919-20. We were greeted by the present pastor Odd Stubhaug who has served the Florø parish since 1974. We found Atle’s name in a Centennial book not for his service in 1913 where Atle’s son Sig was born, but for his service in Kinn where he served as the second pastor. He was the only second pastor in the parish during the period 1917-28 and is referred to as having had his apprenticeship in America. Kinn is now one of seven churches in the Florø parish, which once included also a church on Svanoe Island. Pastor Stubhaug said the Svanoes would now belong to the Stavang church in the parish. Baptisms have been held at Svanoe Island but weddings have to be held elsewhere. As he is known on the Island we mentioned him wherever we went, bringing his greeting.
The church on Svanøy, depicted in the background of Hans Svanøe’s painting is also referred to in the Centennial book of the Florø church, which is the center of a far flung parish that includes Svanøy. The only existing reminder of the church is the graveyard which contains the graves of Ole and Kjersti. A cast iron grave cover contains Ole’s words, “I lay myself down in the wounds of Christ,” giving his descendants witness of the faith that sustained him. His father, who died on a visit to Svanøy, is buried nearby. The removal of the church building from the Island must have come after a period of agonizing discussion and soul searching. As the population on the Island served by the church may have dwindled to a single extended family, the parish could hardly justify the expense. The linking of the family with the mainland through membership in the Stavang church was in the best tradition of Ole and Christopher, who represented parts of the mainland in the Storting. Perhaps the general lack of active participation in the church throughout Norway has affected Svanøy and its inhabitants.
These are the reflections of a pastor grandson of a pastor great grandson (Atle) of Ole Torjussen, the friend of Hans Nielsen Hauge. While disappointed in the lack of a symbolic presence of the Spirit of God on the Island in the form of a church, I nevertheless rejoice at the Spirit’s presence in the people on the Island. It is Ole Helling, namesake of his ancestor Ole Torjussen Svanoe, who keeps alive the purpose of developing the Island’s resources through imagination and hard work for the benefit of the community. Efforts to promote new species of plants and animals on the Island are an encouraging move toward wholeness and integration in the natural order for which we as humans bear responsibility to the Creator.
Perhaps the rest is up to God. He has through the storm of 1992 brought workers to live on the Island to clean up the fallen trees. The roads that were built, usable for further development, are a secondary effect of that storm. Perhaps the glory years of Svanøe Island of the mid 19th Century are about to see a renaissance. Svanøe Island remains the pride of the region and is attracting researchers, conferences, and tourists. It has the drawing power to reunite a family scattered beyond the ocean for a reunion in 2004. As sixty or more of us make this pilgrimage, we will remember the Spirit that has for 200 years infused the works on the Island that we will observe.
