Today was heritage day for the Skogen family. The first stop was the stave church in Rollag where my Dad’s Father’s Father, Helleck, was baptized. We couldn’t go inside the church, but we wandered around outside looking at all the graves. There were about 4-5 Skogen graves there…my favorite name was Ninni Skogen.
Next, we stopped at the house where Helleck lived as a young child before moving to America. The family there was very friendly and let us walk around their land. They have remolded and are currently adding on, but the same structure was still there with the huge rock in the back. This is the house that is in the painting above the piano in our house in Madison that some of you may know about.
The pig in image below was an extra stop up we made at a Christmas shop just up the hill from Helleck’s home. The little boy wearing the Simpson’s shirt couldn’t get the pig back in the pen alone, so my Dad and brother, Nathan, tried rounding him up. They had their knees bent with their arms out while making some strange noises…I was recording the whole thing with my Dad’s video camera (You’ll see footage later). They still couldn’t get him back in the pen.
We drove for over an hour to the house where Helleck’s wife lived before moving to America. In the Oslo, Norway post, Roar is holding a photo album with a picture of my Dad’s Father, Orin, sitting on his mother’s porch. We stopped at this same place for my Dad to visit, sit and have his picture taken at the same place his Father sat.
*Helleck and his wife lived about an hour apart in Norway, but didn’t meet each other until both of them moved to Wisconsin. They married and had 10 children, my Grandpa (Orin) was one of the children.
