Coveting His Neighbor's Wife (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 16 Theme: "Oldest Story")

Perhaps not the very oldest story, either in Christendom or my family tree, this story about a man who coveted his neighbor's wife harkens back to the age-old admonition contained in the Biblical Ten Commandments. This certainly makes it a very old human story.

Christopher Olsen Leirol was my 5th great grandfather on my father's Elton line who had lived for generations in Vang parish in the Valdres district, Oppland, Norway.

Øye Annex in Vang, photo provided by Anstein Haugen 2004

Official family records can be found in the Vang kirkebøker. Unfortunately, these church books for the area do not start until 1730, too late to contain Christopher's 1711 birth and baptism record or even his Confirmation record. Christopher was the "brukar" or holder of the Leirol farm from 1738-1778.

In 1736 he married Anne Torleivsdtotter Remme (1713-1748) and had four children with her, the youngest baptized 4 April 1748 (perhaps indicating that Anne died from complications of childbirth). 

Just a couple of years before Anne's untimely death, the farm book for the Leirol farm, page 147 contains this little gem in Norwegian:

I 1746 gjorde Kristoffer avtale med Trond Hamre om makeskifte, men Trond fekk retten til å omstøyte avtala, fordi dei var drukne, då dei gjorde avtala i eit barsøl på Hamre. 

Translation: 

In 1746 Krisoffer made an agreement with Trond Hamre to swap spouses, but Trond got the right to overturn the agreement because they were drunk when they made the agreement in a bar mess in Hamre.

One can easily picture the two men enjoying their drinks until the  conversation veered into unexpected territory where this unseemly agreement was struck. No thought seems to have been given (or at least reported) as to how their children would be divided between the households and certainly it seems that no thought was given to how the wives might react to this "news"! Still, for this to appear in the records must indicate that Christopher tried to enforce the agreement. 

Very shortly after the death of the wife he had tried to swap, he quickly married again, this time to my ancestor Tore Andersdatter (1727-1798). The Vang church book contains this record for 26 May 1748.

Marriage of Christopher and Tore from the Vang Kirkebok 1848 marriages, p. 149

Christopher was about 37 and Tore 21. Their first three children  born in 1749, 1750 and 1752 all died before they were two years old. They went on to have 5 more children between 1755 and 1765; these survived into adulthood. The youngest of Christopher's dozen or so children was my 4th great grandmother Anne Kristoffersdatter (1765-1815). 

Thankfully, there is no record of Christopher trying to swap my ancestor Tore for another wife!

Some Resources:

•  Frøholm, Anders and Aars, Ivar (Skriftstyrar),  Valdres Bygdebok I Del B: Garder og slekter i Vang, Valdres Bygdeboks Forlag 1990, 133-158 (Leirol)
• Vang Kirkebok which can be accessed through the Norwegian Digitalarkiveret at https://media.digitalarkivet.no/en/kb/browse?counties%5B%5D=05&clerical_parishes%5B%5D=0545P&start_year=&end_year=&text=

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