Will the Real "Norden" Please Flap Your Sails?

In family history research, it is all too easy to take a wrong turn, as I was recently reminded.

A good part of my research for a recently published family history dealt with the emigrant voyage of my great great grandparents, Baard and Thibertine Johnson, and their two children, Ole and Ellen Julie (Julia). There was no doubt, according to Digitalarkivet (Norwegian census), that the family sailed from Bergen, Norway aboard the bark-rigged ship, Norden, on May 5, 1866. Many of the passengers, including my ancestors, were destined for the midwestern United States via Quebec. It was a common route for America-travelers at that time.

Though my family book has been published, I am a firm believer in always keeping an eye out for new sources and details. So, even though the ink has dried on the page, it does not mean that every last word has been written. While sleuthing around for information concerning a different project, I found an obscure bibliographic reference on the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) website that caught my interest: Tollefson, Arne. "The Voyage of the three-masted vessel, the 'Norden,' in 1866, from Bodoe, Norway, to Quebec." Norden, 23 (Dec. 1931). The article is based on the recounting of voyage events by a surviving Norden passenger.

Wow! What's this? I excitedly tracked down the journal via interlibrary loan. When it arrived, I was a bit disappointed to find it is only two pages long, yet it is quite interesting, nonetheless. I had hoped to find detailed information about the exact voyage my great great grandparents experienced. Instead, I found something quite different--a valuable lesson.

It turns out there was not just one ship named Norden that made a voyage from Norway to Quebec during the spring of 1866, but two! How could that be? Well, I cannot claim to know how the mid-19th-century shipping industry handled vessel identification concerns, but from a 21st-century research perspective, the potential for making an incorrect assumption loomed large.

According to the article, the other Norden was built at Bath, Maine in 1849, and was sold in 1863 to a Bergen shipowner, who renamed it from the original: Zenobia. By 1866, this Norden was described as " ...old and decrepit. The hull was mellow with age. The masts were rotten. It was wide of beam and a slow sailer." "My" Norden was eight years older than that, so what did that make her, I wonder? At least she held together long enough to get my ancestors to dry land in North America.

Another interesting fact is that the Norden on which my ancestors sailed left Bergen on May 5, 1866, and took only 30 days to reach Quebec. The Maine-built Norden left Bodoe, Norway on June 3, 1866, carrying about 700 passengers, and it did not arrive in Quebec until ten weeks later. "...the Norden staggered westward on her unhurried way day after day, and through-out the long nights for weeks and weeks--aye months." The ship's supplies were running out, and the water supply was low, and what there was on hand became foul. At the end of the tenth week, another ship was hailed off the New Foundland coast so that flour and salt pork could be purchased. Ten whole weeks at sea... I can only think the good ship and crew must have fought a head wind the whole way.

Though fairly short, the article relates a compelling story, well told, even though it is not my own ancestors' story, as I had hoped.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that before we can assert something as a fact, we should always seek the "triangle of proof": three sources that indicate roughly the same thing. The instructors in a certificate program in genealogy and family history that I attended always cautioned their neophyte genealogists to seek the triangle of proof as a method of weighing the truth of any fact.

Early on in my research, had I not known from another source that "my" Norden was built in 1841 at Åbo Gamla Skeppsvarv, Finland (thank you, Norway Heritage), or seen the passenger list information, complete with dates, on Digitalarkivet, or known from family members that my Johnson ancestors lived closer to the port of Trondheim than Bodoe, Norway, I might have turned a wistful blind eye to some minor inconsistencies in the article and globbed onto it as one of my prime sources. And, I would have been completely mistaken. Thank goodness I was on the track of the correct Norden from the very beginning, and, thank goodness both "old and decrepit" ships named Norden managed to limp from one side of the Atlantic the other in 1866.

Nolens Volens: Norwegian Emigrant Recreation

On April 12, 1868, the Norwegian emigrant ship, Hannah Parr, left Christiana (now present day Oslo). As the ship crossed the Atlantic, headed for Quebec, severe storm damage caused the Hannah Parr to make its way back to the Irish coast, where it docked for repairs in Limerick.

My great-great-grandfather, Gulbran Olsen Berge, from the Gudbrandsdalen Valley in Oppland, was aboard the Hannah Parr during its ill fated trip. He was making his way to America alone to prepare a life for his family, and had planned that his wife and children would follow him to Minnesota the next year.

The ship eventually continued on its way to Quebec, but due to the long stopover in Limerick, Irish newspapers published many accounts of the strange Norwegian travelers and their customs. One area of interest to the Irish people were the games that the Norwegians played as they awaited repairs. In spite of worry, discomfort, and food shortages, the Norwegian emigrants found ways to occupy themselves by continuing their normal activities as much as possible.


As reported by Maurice Lenihan in Limerick, Ireland, June 1868:

"On Sunday evening [the Hannah Parr passengers] passed the time in dancing on the quay at the dock..."

The Irish people recognized the dances as some of the same taught in Irish schools, such as the waltz, the polka, and others. The Norwegians, however, seemed to have no predispostion toward the Irish jig.

"Whilst each week evening on deck, they indulge in the national game of fox [called 'Rævkrok' in Norwegian] a rather dangerous one apparently; and requiring nerve and muscular power. It is played in this way:- two men lie supine on deck, head to head, with the right arm of one locked into the left arm of the other; each then raises a leg-one the right-the other the left and so continue until the heel of the one is caught in that of the other, when both pull as violently as possible-and pull, and pull, with legs thus locked until the weaker is thrown over, rendered altogether powerless."


An example of two men engaged in the competition called "Rævkrok," a game sometimes known to Americans as "Indian Wrestling."

Even young children played games requiring strength. One required that a soft cord or rope be tied at either end, and placed on the back part of the heads of two children. Then, on all fours, they would drag in different ways, and the weaker, "nolens volens" [whether or not one wishes it], goes after the stronger. There were also other games, and they all required strength challenges.


The Norwegians. although Lutherans, appeared to consider the Sabbath as a day of recreation as well as devotion.

"On Sunday, one family might be seen stretched upon the grass on the Docks singing the Psalms out of the prayer-book of Dr. Martin Luther, whose merry eyes and goodly double chin were admirably depicted in the frontispiece. The singing was a sort of plain chant of a very monotonous and unmusical character, and the version, as far as we could judge, rhythmical prose. Another set were playing cards-game unknown,-while on board, the boys and girls got up some kind of a round game, at which there was some laughing and much enjoyment, but nothing like what is witnessed among Frenchmen or Italians.”

The Irish Press indicated that the emigrants, many of whom were headed to Minnesota, were mostly of the small farmer class, but very well educated. Many of them spoke up to four languages or dialects. The Irish called their Norwegian visitors a "cheerful, gay and exceedingly amiable sort of people."


Source: www.norwayheritage.com/ (Hannah Parr articles and forums)