The Hunt
That Led to Haakon
By Bernie Shellum
The journey, as they say, was more interesting than the destination. The truth is, I wasn't even looking for Haakon. I was looking for anybody who might turn up. It happened to be Haakon Hundorp, but to this day his name is just about all that I know about him.That does not diminish the enormous impact that Haakon has had on my genealogy. Through him, I pushed back the date of my earliest ancestor by more than 400 years. Then, through an unexpected discovery, he turned two of my ancestral lines into one. He is the common ancestor for both by Lee and Nelson lines, families that had lived in the same Norwegian neighborhood for hundreds of years before some members of each clan emigrated to Minnesota, where they again settled in the same neighborhood.The story began in late summer of 1998, when I had largely finished my father's Shellum line, and started working on my mother's Lee line. Through a tip from another genealogist on the Norway List, I learned that Kaldor Farm, located in the same neighborhood as my ancestors, in Øyer parish 10 miles north of Lillehammer, had a database that might help.With my web browser, I took a look, and my eyes widened with wonder. I soon located my great-grandfather, Ole Frantssen Lien, who would take the name Ole Lee in America, and his brother Frants, who was later known as Frank Lee.At that point, the magic of html came into play.Nanna Egidius, who owns Kaldor Farm with her husband, Ole Austvik, had found ancient farm records and used them to reconstruct four families that had lived on the farm over the centuries before Norwegian churches took over this record keeping function for the government. This was, by itself, a remarkable achievement.To put the database on-line, she had to convert the names and relationships to html, which stands for hypertext markup language. This is the programming language that underlies everything on the internet.Applied to the right database, it allows genealogists to click through many generations and centuries in seconds.Starting with Ole Lien and his wife, Lisbet Magelie, I began clicking my mouse, looking for an ancestral line that I could pursue. Soon, I hit a dead end, retraced my steps, and tried another path. More dead ends.Eventually, however, I found what appeared to be a path to the promised land. Click. Click. Click. Suddenly, there I was, after many clicks, at Haakon Hundorp, who is believed to have been born in 1220. My Family Tree Maker told me he was my 19th great-grandfather.The news startled my cousin, Johannes Rusten, a native of Øyer parish and descendant of Ole Lee's sister, Rønnaug, who had remained in Norway. He examined the Kaldor database and found a connection between his and my Lee line and my Hagebakken, or Nelson, line.That news startled me. I returned to the Kaldor database for another look.This time, I clicked back from my great-grandfather, Johannes Nielsen Hagebakken, and his wife, Ingeborg Erlandsdatter Hovsveen. After hitting a number of dead ends, I found a promising path that took me back to the 15th Century, but stopped there.It appeared that the earliest ancestor in that line was NN (for No Name) Alfsdatter Skaaden, who died before 1452.In my many trips through the database, however, I had noticed a similar name spelled Skåden. The two names would have been prounounced exactly the same way.The clue was worth exploring.What did I find?One of Ole Lee's ancestors was named Finn Alfsen Skåden, who had a father named Alf Haldorsen Skåden and a grandfather named Haldor Gudbrandsen. From them, the line went straight back to Haakon Hundorp.In the Hagebakken, or Nelson, line, I found that the earliest apparent ancestor, NN Alfsdatter Skaaden, also had a father named Alf Haldorsen Skåden and a grandfather named Haldor Gudbrandsen.In other words, Finn and No Name were brother and sister, but hadn't been identified as siblings in the html database.I corrected that oversight in my Family Tree Maker program, and clicked my Nelson line all the way back to Haakon Hundorp.
There is little doubt in my mind that, from the 15th Century on, the Lees and Nelsons have been two branches of the same family. Alf Haldorsen Skåden and his children represent the fork in the family tree.I hasten to add that none of this should be taken as criticism of the Kaldor Farm database or its creator. Norwegians living under the same roof commonly spelled their names in various ways, and none of us uncovers all of the relationships that this practice has obscured.A genealogist can not answer any question, of course, without raising new ones.The most intriguing question, to me, is this: Did my ancestors - Ole Lee and his brother, Frank, and John Nelson - understand how intertwined their families were?Or was it simply happenstance that they traveled to Minnesota at different times, and by very different routes, in the 1860s and 1870s, but homesteaded contiguous farms on the south shore of Lake Hanska?
