Romundstad - Madson
Pioneer Days in Romundstad Valley, Norseville & Strum, Wisconsin
-- mid-late1800's --
A Pre-1910 Photo of Romundstad Valley --
part of the Extended-Family Farm Village of Norseville,
North of Strum, Wisconsin
Showing are 3 of the 5 Romundstad cousins' farms:
Left to Right: Big Ole Romundstad, Even J. Romundstad, Anders J. Romundstad
Off the photo:
Center left: Fredrik Olsen's farm
Lower left: Ole J. Romundstad's farm -- his field has the horse in it .
Lower right: Lars Rone's farm.
Upper right: Hanson
farm and the Hagestads' first farm
Center background, hidden behind a grove of trees:
Norseville School,
Hagestads'
second farm, and a farm of another Olson descendent.
Twenty miles south of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA, is the little farming hamlet of
Norseville. The first settlers to come to Norseville from Rindal-area Farm Villages was
the Frederick Olsen family. Frederick had been born and raised in the Oppistua Farmhouse of the Romundstad
Farm Village, and in 18__ had left for Trondheim. In 1861, Frederick and his wife Serianna Halvorsdatter Varmdal and their 5 children had left Trondheim for America.
They first lived in two other parts of Wisconsin, then in Spring 1869 arrived at their final destination of Norseville.
Later that year of 1869 and in years to follow, the
Frederick Olsen family was joined in Norseville by many of Frederick's
relatives
from the extended-family Farm Village of Romundstad :
- All of his seven orphaned nieces and nephews from his own home, the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse
- Three of his cousins from next door, the Romundstad Austistua Farmhouse: Even, Ole. J. & Anders Romundstad.
- Many of these folks' cousins
and neighbors from other Rindal-area Farm Villages
Led by Fredrik Olsen from the Romundstad Farm Village, in the mid-1800's these young Rindalings left their ancient,
ancestral, Norwegian farm villages in Rindal. They came to Wisconsin and built farms next to each other, creating
a new farm village which they named Norseville. In doing this, they brought their Old World Norwegian tradition
of living in farm villages to their New World of America.
These young Norwegians also brought along their Old World tradition
of interweaving their families through marriage.
Some came here already married and with children. Other
Rindal-area immigrants intermarried after arriving in Norseville and
Strum.
For example, in Norseville, Fredrik Olsen's niece Gjertrud Romundstad
who had
been born at Romundstad Oppistua, married Ole J.
Romundstad, her 2nd cousin who had been born at Romundstad Austistua.
Also, one of Fredrik Olsen's
grandsons married one of his grandnieces: Chester Olsen and Esther
Stomprud -- the young people -- were 2nd cousins.
Origins in Norway for Norseville & Strum's White Settlers
Emigrants
from
Hardanger & the Vesterallen Islands
Hagestad Family History
by Jennie Hagestad Stomprud
(1866 - 1942)
Jennie Hagestad Stomprød's enchanting account of her childhood in Norseville & Strum.
Nils & Anna Hagestad were great friends of Frederick & Serianna Olsen -- see
Olsen Family History.
The Olsens & the Hagestads first homesteaded in southern Trempeleau County,
Wisconsin. Then in Spring 1869 they travelled together to their final homesteads in
Norseville.
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1860's-1911: Emigrants from the Rindal-area
An annotated list of people from Rindal-area extended-family Farm Villages
who moved to the American Midwest -- primarily to Norseville & Strum
Rindal-area Farm Villages
Rindal Farm Village --
a little south of the town of Rindal
Photo
Birthplace of widow Mali Rindal & her __ children, including Mikkel Rindal.
They came to Norseville in 1911, and Mali married Lars Haltli -- her long-ago sweetheart from Rindal.
They bought the farm of Even Romundstad, one of the brothers from the Romundstad Austistua Farmhouse.
See Mildred Romundstad Madson, 1897-1992
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Romundstad Farm Village - - southeast of the town of Rindal
The cluster called "Inner Romundstad" - -
with its 3 Farmhouses: Oppistua, Austistua, & Nestua
by
Gunnar Bureid
from website for Rindal, Norway
Olsen Family History
by Laura Olsen Brill
(1893 - 1980)
In 1829, Frederick
Olsen Romundstad was born at the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse. In 1853 at age 24, he left his Romundstad Farm Village for the Trondheim- area settlement of
Strinda.
In early Spring 1869, he became the first Rindaling to settle in Norseville - - along with his wife Serianna
& 5 children.
From 1869-1874 followed all 7 of Frederick's
nieces & nephews from Romundstad Oppistua. From the
1870's-1900 also followed some of his nieces and nephews from the Stomprød Farm Village & Rone Farm Village.
Laura also tells of her Hanson grandparents from the Rindal-area farm villages of Elshaug & Skjørmø who emigrated to Norseville.
Another page of interest:
Olsen Family History - Corrections
-- described below this chart
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Mildred Romundstad Madson, 1897-1992: From Norseville & Strum to Out West, then back again to Strum
by Lisa
Lindberg (b.1952)
Mildred's
father, Anders Romundstad, was born at the Romundstad Austistua
Farmhouse.
In Summer 1869, Anders Romundstad, age 20, came to Norseville with 2 of his brothers
from the Austistua Farmhouse. Along with one of their 7 first cousins from next door at the Romundstad Oppistua
Farmhouse. Also with them was Laura Olsen Brill's Hanson grandfather from the Rindal-area farm village of Elshaug.
In the late 1890's & early 1900's, Mildred Romundstad
& her sister Nora grew up in Norseville among their large, extended
family consisting of Norwegian-Americans from the Rindal-area Farm Villages of Romundstad, Roøn (Rone), Elshaug (Hanson), Skjørmø, Rindal, etc., and also the extended family of Imislunds from the Hamar area.
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Stomprød Farm Village -- southeast of the town of Rindal
a little east of the
Romundstad
Farm Village
Photo of
Stomprød Farm Village
Stomprød Storli:
Birthplace of the mother of Frederick Olsen Romundstad
-- see
Olsen Family History
&
Stomprød Holtet:
Birthplace of husband of Jennie Hagestad: Ole Stomprød -- nephew of Frederick Olsen Romundstad.
See
Hagestad Family History
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Emigrants
from
Hamar -- on Lake Mjøsa
Imislund & Nelson Families
A daughter of Peder & Anne Imislund married Anders Romundstad.
See
Mildred Romundstad Madson, 1897-1992
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Additional pages of interest
Olsen Family History - Corrections by Lisa Lindberg
For many years I have had Laura Olsen Brill's account, "Olsen Family
History" among my family history materials on the Romundstad Family.
I have read it many times and have also done oral-history interviews with present-day
family members. I have also found and studied Laura's research sources, and have
discovered some discrepancies between Laura's story and her research sources.
From this background exploration, I have found more information on Frederick Olsen's early life in the Rindal-area's Romundstad Farm
Village, including about his leaving for Trondheim as a young man. I
have also found out more about the early life of Frederick
and wife Serianna in Trondheim before their 1861 departure for America. On
this webpage, I show the discrepancies in
Laura's essay, and also how I corrected them.
"Historical Bits,"
by F.L. Tronsdal.
An article
published November 20, 1923, in the Norwegian-language magazine,The Skandinaven,
which Laura Olsen
Brill used extensivelysource for in her account, "Olsen Family History.
In Tronsdal's Scandinaven article, he mentions a book entitled Livserindringer
fra Surendalen og Aure - - Memories
of Life in Surendalen and Aure, by J. Mogstad from Surendalen and (Kandidat)
Simonsen. Tronsdal noted that this book has much history about the Rindal area, and he briefly relates some of that book's extremely intriguing
stories. F.L. Tronsdal married Johanna Romundstad from the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse. See more about
Johanna Romundstad in Laura Olsen Brill's Olsen Family History.
Introduction to these stories & their authors
- Background & kinship among the authors
- Revelations about places, patterns, & ages
Storytelling
The essays compiled here were
written
in intervals of a few decades from the 1930's to the present. The accounts are samples of the work of three women spanning four
generations,
with the oldest and youngest being born nearly a century apart.
Each tells of people leaving Norway to come to America and settle in one farming
community in Wisconsin twenty miles south of Eau Claire : the farm hamlet of Norseville and the nearby town of Strum. These stories tell of early
pioneer life in the last third of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th Century.
The authors and the people in these three stories were/are cousins and/or neighbors. All have ancestors who came
to the Norseville and Strum area from Rindal,
Norway.
Jennie Hagestad Stomprud's husband, Ole Stomprud, was a cousin of both Laura Olsen Brill
and my
grandmother, Mildred Romundstad Madson. In Norseville, Wisconsin, cousins Laura and Mildred lived in farms
near each other,
and the children of both farms made shortcuts through the woods to each others' houses.
Laura Olsen Brill was a
little older than her cousins Mildred and Nora, and was one of their teachers in the Norseville School, which went
up to the 8th grade. Mildred's and Laura's weddings were five days apart in June 1923, one in Strum, one in Norseville.
Nearly 50 years later Mildred and Nora attended the 1971 Olsen Family Reunion at the Olsen Family Farm in Norseville,
the gathering for which Laura Olsen Brill wrote her story "Olsen Family History," and read it
aloud at that gathering.
Interestingly, the Hagestad and Olsen families had connections before settling together in Norseville. Both families
had lived in other parts of Wisconsin before traveling to their final destination of
Norseville. Immediately preceding their final homesteads in Norseville, both families had lived
in southern Trempeleau County. When these families decided to move north,
they traveled together on their final leg of their journeys, and remained life-long
friends, including by a marriage of each family's grandchild. Even though Jennie Hagestad had moved
from Strum to Duluth and married raised her family there, in the summers this
family went back to Norseville to visit relatives and friends. In those
summer visits, the generations maintained their aquaintanships, including a
Hagestad granddaughter -- Esther Stomprud -- and an Olsen grandson -- Chester
Olsen. In 1927 -- nearly sixty years after the beginning of these
families' friendship -- 2nd cousins Esther and Chester married. The descendants
of this couple are fortunate to have such fine writers on both sides of their family.
As you can imagine, many of the events and lives of the people in these three stories are interwoven.
All three stories tell of daily life and of the people's love for their land. Each story is written in a distinctive voice,
offering to the reader varying views of this little corner of Wisconsin. Each story is complete in its
own right and can stand alone. But together these three stories offer a rich kaleidoscope of early life in this
Wisconsin farming community.
Storytelling and Research
I like good storytelling. Even more, I like good storytelling based on accurate
information. Therefore as editor of two of these stories and author of the third, I personally wanted to gain
a good foundation of places, time, sequence of events, and kinship -- both in
Norway and America -- and be as certain as possible that the dates, ages, places, and kinship accounts were
both accurate and in accord with each other. To that end, I looked for and investigated all possible research sources
: the Rindal, Norway-area's "bygdeboks"
of local history and geneology, records in the Strum Lutheran Church, and numerous conversations with cousins from
the Rindal, Norway area and the Norseville & Strum area. In addition, I used both large-scale and also
detailed topographic maps of both the Rindal and Strum areas, so detailed they include place names for very small
places, and have little squares indicating individual houses, barns, etc.
Through this investigation, I made some interesting discoveries about places, names,
kinship patterns, and ages:
Names & Places. The
organization of the Norwegian countrysides is of small, commercial towns surrounded within a close radius by extended-family Farm Villages. Each Farm Village has a name -- e.g., Romundstad. Each Farm Village consists of various Farmhouse Clusters, with each cluster also having a name -- e.g.,
Romundstad Yttgaard ("Outer Yard"). Each farmhouse also has a name -- e.g., Romundstad Oppistua and Romundstad Austistua. When people emigrated
from these places, they chose as their surname either the Farm Village
name -- e.g., Romundstad; the Farm Cluster name -- e.g., Yttgaard; the
Farmhouse name, e.g., Holte (from Stomprud Holte); or a derivitave of
their father's name, e.g., Olsen or Hanson.
Pattern of Acquaintance & Kinship. The people
in Laura Olsen Brill's and my stories came primarily from adjacent Farm Villages around the commercial small town of Rindal,
Norway, southwest of Trondheim and north of Trollheimen Mountain. From studying Farm Maps, I saw which Farm Villages were near
each other around Rindal, and could imagine how people got acquainted -- with some ending up marrying.
When Laura Olsen Brill's two sets of grandparents --' Frederick & Serianna Olsen
and Nils & Anna Hagestad -- chose the Norseville and Strum area as
their final homesteading place, their decision had great bearing on the
lives of countless people: On Frederick Olsen's side, it set in motion a transplanting of a virtually intact group of Rindalings.
It is interesting to note these Rindalings from the Old World came to Norseville and re-created their
old-country cultural fabric: a village-kinship pattern
of of interwoven marriages in their New World Farm Villages. In addition, new people from other areas added new blood
to the gene
pool, e.g., Laura Olsen Brill's other grandparents, Nils & Anna Hagestad.
Ages.
I thought it would be helpful and interesting
at each cited date of an event, to also offer a feeling of when
in the people's lifespan each event took place. For this, I inserted
within brackets each peron's age
at the time. As I calculated the dates to arrive at these ages, I made
the striking discovery of how very young most of these people
were when they made momentous, life-changing decisions. Their extreme
youth at these critical junctures
gives one pause to stop and reflect on the courage and enthusiasm --
and possibly foolish recklessness
-- with which they struck off into the unknown.
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World Map
North America, upper left
Scandinavia, center top
from rijkens.de
Scandinavia -- Land of the Midnight Sun
-- shaded relief map of Norway and Sweden --
University of Texas map library, 1996 utexas
Norway's
Lowlands & Mountains:
Highest mountains in dark green
worldatlas.com
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Norway's
Provinces
Trondheim is in Sør Trondelag
Rindal is in Møre og Romsdal
norway.no
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Trondheim Region -- with the town of
Rindal indicated by a push-pin
from norway.com
Trondheim Region: Provinces & Townships
Rindal Township is the eastern-most portion of the Møre og
Romsal Province
-- sticking into the Sør Trondelag Province to the east.
( Boundaries shown as purple lines:
thicker lines = provincial
boundaries.
thinner lines = township boundaries. )
Møre og
Romsal Province: center-left
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Rindal
township: center
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Sixty miles southwest of the city of Trondheim, north of Trollheimen Mountain where the Rinna River
flows into the Surna River, is the small town of Rindal. This town is the social
and commercial hub for the many extended-family
farm villages in the surrounding area. See Rindal-area
website
The Town of Rindal --
Rindal Area -- Overview Photo
Taken from the south near Jobo.
The town of Rindal -- with its Rindal Kirke steeple-- is in lower
left corner.
Photo by Gunnar Bureid,
The Town of Rindal
-- closer view, taken from the south --
Photo by Gunnar Bureid
Farm Villages Southeast of Rindal along the Rinna
River
(The road is indicated by the red line.)
[ Note: In this map, the term
"Rindal" beside the word "Romundstad" refers
NOT to the commercial hub/town of Rindal, but rather to "Rindal Township."]
Southeast of Rindal along the Rinna River is the the Extended-Family Farm Village of
Romundstad,
whose founding dates back to Viking times. Livserindringer
fra Surendalen og Aure - - Memories
of Life in Surendalen and Aure, by J. Mogstad from Surendalen and (Kandidat)
Simonsen, has an interesting mention of the Romundstad Farm Village (see
"Historical Bits,"
by F.L. Tronsdal.
Mogstad & Simonsen reported that accounts in Heimskringla -- (The Sagas of the Norse Kings)
-- say that around
the year 1000 C.E., the sons of Viking King Erik Bloodaxe and his wife
Gunhild (the sons were known as "Gunhilds-sons") lived in the Foldal
valley along the Folla River -- just south of the Rindal area. Other
histories add that many of the descendents
of these "Gunhilds-sons" lived in Farm Villages in the Rindal area,
including the Romundstad
Farm Village.
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The Old-World Extended-Family Farm Village of Romundstad, southeast
of Rindal, Norway.
The center group of farmhouses is called "Inner Romundstad." Surrounding is "Outer Romundstad."
Taken from a distance away to the south, with Tifjellet (Ti Mountain) in the background
by Gunnar Bureid
Inner Romundstad
Two of the Farmhouses of Inner
Romundstad:
Oppistua and Austistua
by Gunnar
Bureid
In this picture are 2 of the 3 farmhouses of Inner Romundstad
-- the inner core of the extended-family Romundstad Farm
Village:
- The white-painted farmhouse on the left is the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse,
the birthplace of
these Romundstads from Laura Olsen Brill's
Olsen Family History:
Fredrik Olsen Romundstad and his 7 nieces
and nephews Big Ole, Gjertrud, Johanna, et al., Romundstad
- The rust-colored farmhouse on the right is the Romundstad Austistua
Farmhouse,
the birthplace of these Romundstads from this story,
Mildred Romundstad
Madson,1897-1992:
Peder, Anne, Even, Ole
J., Anders, et al., Romundstad.
Further out from Inner Romundstad is Yttgaard - the "Outer Yard."
See this page from the Rindal website with more photographs around the Romundstad Farm
Village.
Outer Romundstad has two dozen or so more houses, a
few of which date to the 1600's and 1700's,
but most from the mid- and late-1800's. Some are tenant houses, and
some are from mid- and late-1800's subdivision
of the land to land-owners' children as the population
grew rapidly.
The Romundstad Midtstua Farmhouse - - one of the mid-1800's farmhouses in the Yttgaard - -
was the birthplace
of Lars Olson Romundstad Yttgaard, who emigrated to Norseville and went by the name of Lars
Yttgaard.
Romundstad Yttgaard - the "Outer Yard"
The Stomprød Farm Village
-- on the Rinna River a little further southeast
from the Romundstad Farm
Village --
Sigrid Larsdatter Stomprød
(1794-1830) came from the Stomprød Storli Farmhouse.
In 1816, Sigrid, age 22, married Ole Olson Romundstad Oppistua, age 22 (1794-1859).
They had 7 children, then Sigrid died at age 36.
Their youngest child was 1 yr old -- Fredrik Olsen Romundstad
Røen Nestua
-- on the Surna River north of the town of Rindal --
Røen Nestua was the birthplace of Jon Pederson Røen, who married Marit Olsdatter
from the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse.
Peder and Marit took over the farmhouse next
door -- Romundstad Austistua
They had __ children
Peder, Even, Ole J., and Anders Romundstad, et al.
Photo by Gunnar Bureid
Scarcity of Good Farm Land
Due to the mid- and late-1800's subdivision of these ancient farms, there grew
an ever-increasing scarcity of available good farm land to offer the younger
generations. They increasingly felt crowded out of any real opportunity for a good life as independent
farmers, and
looked to
America for its promise of opportunity and abundance. Many emigrated -- mostly to Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Norseville Wisconsin -- the New-World Extended-Family Farm Village
North of Strum, Wisconsin
Wisconsin Map
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Website by Lisa Lindberg, lisa@lisalindberg.com Lindberg-Work Family
Work log
2008: 9/15
2008: 10/29
2009: 11-1,21
2010: 2/26, 3/1
2011: 2/22-25, 6/13, 7/11
2013: 10/29
2018: 1-20: Rom Valley photo caption to top