Sigurd Bjørnsen Bonde Gulsvik (1412-1482) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 3) Theme: "Long Line"

It remains a mystery how my father was able to connect with someone in Norway in the area where his mother's ancestral line originated. In the spring of 1997, Dad received a package of information from a man named Tom Larsen in Oslo, Norway. Dad was delighted to see the long line of his maternal ancestors going all the way back 16 generations from his mother. I still chuckle over his comment at the time that he never knew he had ancestors that far back; I know what he meant though - if you can't name them, they don't really seem to have existed.

Long line of Norwegian Ancestors provided by Tom Larsen

The person on the long list with the earliest birth year is my 14X great grandfather Sigurd Bjørnsen Bonde Gulsvik born at  Flå, Buskerud, Norway about 1412 and died before the 7th of February 1482. (Sigurd is his given name. Bjornsen indicates that his father's given name was Bjørn. Bonde was an honorary name indicating he was highly respected or wealthy and Gulsvik was the farm name.)

Although the church records from Norway are excellent, they do not extend back this far, making it difficult to find sources for accurate information. One is forced to rely on the farm books and other histories. (Unfortunately, I have not yet had access to the actual farm book for Flå in Hallingdal; if anyone reading this story has it and would be willing to send me copies of the relevant pages, I would be very grateful!)

From the available sources posted online by several other generous distant cousins, it seems likely that Sigurd was married three times. It is thought that one wife (possibly Eli Guttormsdatter) was a daughter of Guttorm Rolvsen, a nobleman from Telemark, and that it was through this marriage that Sigurd acquired his significant property at Gulsvik.  He was also married to Unna Vebjørnsdatter who was left widowed by his death. We know that Sigurd had an older brother named Halvard Bjørnsen Ringnes since it was Halvard's sons who eventually inherited the property.

Our family descends through Sigurd's son Gottorm Sigurdson Bonde Gulsvik and then Guttorm's son Helge Guttormson Gulsvik (1484-bef.1569), a lagrettemann (lawyer) in Flå - and so on down the long line to my grandmother Louise Nelson and my father Kenneth Bardahl. (I must admit that I could have saved myself a lot of time and energy had I known earlier how Tom's ahnentafel charting system works for identifying both gender and parentage in long generational lists of names of people such as this one!)

Unfortunately, Dad died unexpectedly very shortly after receiving all this information on his long line of Norwegian ancestors. He never got a chance to write back to Tom Larsen in Norway to thank him and to exchange family history information. At the time, the keen genealogist in the family had definitely been my father Ken, not me. Not knowing the Norwegian language, I put away my copy of the long list for several years until my developing interest in genealogy overcame my trepidation. When it finally occurred to me in the early 2000s to write to Tom at his Oslo address stamped on the material, my letter was returned to me. He was, not surprisingly, no longer at this address.

I noticed immediately that my 2015 DNA test results included a match to a Tom Larsen in Norway. When I wrote and asked if he had once lived at a specific address in Oslo and had sent genealogy information to my father in Canada in 1997, he confirmed that he was indeed the same man. (We are 9th cousins once removed making it a bit of a miracle that we share much common DNA at all!) At that time, Tom provided me with more material on our common Lunde ancestors from Aadalen, Akershus for me to try to translate for use in my database.

Sadly, when I wrote to him again this week to ask if he would mind being named in this story, I learned from his relative that Tom had died of a heart attack at the age of 58. I write this story in his honour with great appreciation for the long line of ancestors he identified for our family. 

Sources:

Tom's Sources

Østro, Terje, Gards-og Slektshistorie For Flå i Hallingdal, Gulsvikvaldet av Gulsvikfjerdingen (til 1970) II, , 2003, v. II, p. 91, Søgarden/Nedregarden Gulsvik

Glimpses into the Families of Ole Sanderson Oyo, Gro Olsdatter, Rreide Hagen, Svein Olson Shruttegarden posted on Ancestry.com website by northshoregirl72 on 23 August 2016

Hallingdal to Amerika selection posted on Ancestry.com website on 17 January 2013