Stadsbygd og staværinger

Hosting changes

I've contracted with a new company to host the stadsbygd.org web site, so expect some disruption over the next couple of weeks as that comes online.  Hope to have it done by the 1st of Feb., but I'm doing a lot of traveling in that time so time is limited.  In the meantime, if you continue to use http://technology360.typepad.com/stadsbygd/ as your access address, or if you're an RSS subscriber, you'll access it just fine.  The new web site will feature substantially easier access to the genealogy database for Stadsbygd, Rissa, Hasselvika, Lensvik, Ingdalen and neighboring areas.

Mvh,
Dennis

Update 9/9/2006:  With apologies, this transition has been delayed due to some problems in moving the stadsbygd.org URL and lack of time on my part to resolve them.  This is still in the plans, but delayed indefinitely.

200th anniversary of lofot-drifta

If you have ancestors from Stadsbygd parish (Stadsbygd, Rissa, Lensvik, Hasselvika, Ingdalen), the chances are good that they were involved in the fishing expeditions to Lofoten -- perhaps one of the most beautiful locations on earth.  However, they did not see much of it, because these expeditions -- about which rissværing Johan Bojer wrote in what probably is his most famous book, Den siste viking -- departed in open boats (staværingsbåter) after Christmas and returned before Easter, so there was very little daylight north of the Artic Circle during those months.

The origin of these fishing expeditions has been dated to 1806, so this is the 200th anniversary.  To place this in a U.S. context, when these expeditions began, Thomas Jefferson was in the middle of his second term as president and the Lewis & Clark "Corps of Discovery" expedition he commissioned was wintering on what is now the Oregon coast.

On 13 January, the Coastal Heritage Museum in Stadsbygd is having a reception (kl. 14.00) to celebrate this anniversary.  My own grandfather, Elias Jensen Haarsager, who was born 150 years ago last March, was one of these fishermen from perhaps the age of 15 to when he emigrated at age 25.  Coincidentally, his father (my great-grandfather, Jens Jensen Haarsager) was born just as the first expedition returned in April 1806.  And in early February, my father would have celebrated his 100th birthday.  So it is a great year for "jubilees" in my family.  --Dennis

New book lists taxpayers from 1520 in Stadsbygd and Rissa

Congratulations to Audun Dybdahl, leader of the Center for Middle Ages Studies of NTNU in Trondheim, on the publication of his latest book, Tiendpengeskatten som kilde til folk og samfunn ca. 1520, Med alle skatteytere fra Sunnfjord til Namdalen.  It's about tax records from ca. 1520 for Trøndelag and Møre og Romsdal counties and, of special interest to genealogists, it contains the names of each individual taxpayer (an amazing feat of deciphering archaic handwriting and obsolete spellings).  It sells for NOK 275 (about $41 USD) and is available at Bokklubben, at Tapir Akademisk Forlag (the publisher), and possibly elsewhere.

If you are in the U.S., I would strongly suggest using a credit card rather than sending a bank draft when buying books from Norway because the bank charges are very substantial.