We spent much of yesterday in the Gudbransdale Valley, near the towns of Vinstra and Gausdal. We had an excellent lunch with Ingrid #2 (who we love as much as Ingrid #1 back in Oslo) and her family on their farm. Dad really enjoyed talking with her husband Erling about farm life in Norway. Erling and his Belorussian farmhand Micha raise dairy cattle and also have some land for haying. And I had fun playing football (soccer) with her son Mikkel and his pal Kristian. We also met our relative Erik, a spry and handsome 75 year-old man who knows the region very, very well. He was our tour guide (and Ingrid our translator) as we searched out Mom's ancestral farms. We were able to find the farms of both her maternal (Ronningen) and paternal (Amundson, Smikop) grandparents.
I'm not sure the folks at Hertz Rental Car would approve of some of the routes we've been taking with the Volvo. Erik took us up and down some steep, windy, dirt roads commonly traveled by more sheep than cars. We're hoping for some rain today to clean off the dirty car.
We spent last night in a quaint, B&B style hotel near the Vinstra River. The owner, a friendly Dutchman named Maarten, served us a few cold beers which we drank on a table at the river's edge. And for the first time in a week, I was lucky enough to have my own little room, free from Mom and Dad's synchronized snoring!
1 comment:
I googled Smikop and found this webpage. I guess that we are related in some sense. My mum is from Kvikne, a valley next to Vinstra, and my grandfather was from a farm called Vistadbrenden. And my mum's birth name is Smikop :-) Take a look here: http://home.online.no/~es-an-f/esterfamily.htm
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