July 13, 2015

Cousin Oddbjorn and Family

We started the morning at the Viking ship museum where the best preserved Viking era ships are found. The ship appear sea worthy although none of us are ready to sign up for a cruise. Despite the crowds, we were there early enough to see the ships and exhibits without much difficulty. The construction of the ships is still echoed in the small vessels we see in the harbors of Norway  and Sweden.

   
                 We were eager to get on the road to reach Hamar, the home of our Cousin Oddbjorn and his wife. We had no idea what to expect. Oddbjorn met us outside his century old house. Great smile and hugs. We were made to feel right at home with a huge lunch of waffles, lick meats and cheese. Oddbjorn then launched into his genealogy research. It was a fast paced hour where we retraced the last 500 years of family history including the Spanish sailors landing in Leirfjord and adding to the family gene pool.

   
       We agreed to work together on our mutual narrative. His son Robert will help with the translations via Google translate. We then embarked on a quick tour of Hamar. We stopped at the ice skating venue for the Lillehammer Olympics. The place is huge. It is built like a gigantic upside down Viking ship. It seats 17,000 instead of a crew of 30. We also visited the “glass church” that covers a Romanesque church destroyed by Swedes. We toured by the homes of Oddbjorn’s kids before returning to his house.

   
           By far the highlight was our visit to the farm of his daughter Nina and son-in-law Mikkel. We had a fantastic BBQ and met many of our relatives. It was great and we returned to Oddbjorn’s place for a good night’s sleep.