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It’s the last day of August and I’m in Bergen, Norway (which will return in a later post). For now here are some photos from Trondheim. I stopped over there both as a base from which to go meet the Swedish cousins and also to experience a little of where my South Dakota grandfather, Ole Floren, originated. I spent a couple of days in Trondheim years ago but wasn’t as deeply into… Read More
Crossed the Arctic Circle a couple of hours ago. Southward bound. Another lazy day—should I be doing something? Writing, thinking, planning, making lists, reading, puttering, planking? Not really. Days on ships are time out from real life—adventure on the Linden, sloth on the Finnmarken. I have just spent a couple of hours on ancestry stuff—stimulating hours actually. Day after tomorrow I take the train from Trondheim over into rural reindeer-herding ski-country Sweden… Read More
I’m just back from a few days in South Dakota, adopted land of my mother’s family. The time with my first cousins was just as family time should be and the reunion with more distant cousins likewise. Then there’s my ongoing exploration of the family tree and the grandparents and cousins that go back…and back…and back. Now I am considering ‘extended family’ in a whole new way—in layers and branches and trees…. Read More
THE ‘BEGATS’ According to cousin, Arne Neset, of Stavanger, Norway, Neset history begins in the late 17th century when one of our ancestors, Knut J. Haugen, appears to have bought the farm Haugen from the bailiff Christian Mouritzen Torup in Grendi around 1695. Thanks to Arne’s fairly extensive research here’s what we know. First a ‘begat’ paragraph to bring the family up to the 1860s. For five generations, the family name was… Read More
Since Neset is my name and since I grew up on the Minnesota land homesteaded by Grandpa Torgus Neset, it was probably inevitable that Neset family history is where my ancestral search would first lead me. Here’s a true story about reaching a first branch of the family tree. The first DNA-focused post shared what few facts I have about Grandma Asborg Eilifsdotter Neset—followed by three short stories about her journey to… Read More
ON THE TRAIL OF MY DNA: Part 1 What better place to begin then the waterscapes of Byglandsfiord and a mountain lake nearby; this is a view from whichever cabin I’m in at Neset Camping or on a drive up the mountainside. These are photos from 2016, interspersed with today’s tale. The search begins here, with me, Marjorie Neset, and with dad and mom, Svein Neset and Ovidia Mathilda Floren…and quickly moves… Read More
What percentage of Americans have contact or interactions with family members abroad or across a border or perhaps an island or two away? The numbers are large I think, depending on culture and country of origin. In Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Philippines or Iraq there are a whole lot of families with parents, children, siblings and cousins in America with whom they are in touch on a regular basis—their cultures of origin… Read More