A map of the Jølster area, from Wikimedia Commons. Vassenden, at the western end of Jølstravatnet, and Skei, at its northernmost point, are the largest towns on the lake. Helgheim is on the north shore of the lake, a few miles to the left (the west) of Skei. Kjøsnesfjord is the part of the lake that extends downward to the right (the east) beyond Skei. My family’s farm, Søgnesand, is located very near the end of Kjøsnesfjord, which is the eastern end of Jølstravatnet as a whole, just around the tip on the south shore. It’s at the very end of the road. Cliffs make the rest of the south shore of Kjøsnesfjord impassable. Three glaciers — Grovebreen, Jostefonni, and Jostedalsbreen (which is the largest glacier in Europe) — surround Søgnesand, creating many waterfalls. During this most recent trip, we stayed in a cabin in Stardalen (“Star Valley”), not far to the northeast of Skei.
I didn’t really finish my entries from Norway, because I ran into both time constraints and, out in the countryside, limited internet access.
Looking from the end of Kjøsnesfjord, a little arm of Lake Jølster, toward the town of Skei, which is out of sight to the right in the very far distance. The farm on which my grandmother grew up, Søgnesand, is (barely) visible on the left shore of the fjord, just beyond the glacial stream and the green ridge in the foreground. My wife took this photo with her iPhone.
But I did want to record what always thrills me most about my trips to Norway, when I can get to it. (I’ve now been there five times, I think.)
This was my fourth visit to the area of Jølster (or Jølstravatnet), where my grandmother grew up. She left at the age of eighteen for America, and never saw her parents again. The area is beautiful, and I love to see it for that reason alone. But it also affects me profoundly.
When she was a girl, my grandmother attended services in this church at Helgheim, which stands on the north shore of Lake Jølster. (She was a life-long Lutheran.) At least half of the family names represented in the churchyard also show up in my genealogy. They’re also mostly the names of places around the lake. (Photo by my wife.)
There’s a really quite good gift and souvenir shop in the village of Skei, and we’ve had remarkable experiences every time we’ve visited it.
Helgheim kyrkje in a photograph from 1880-1900, almost precisely the period when my grandmother knew it. It sits on the shore of Lake Jølster. In the background is the smaller valley of the Kjøsnesfjord. There were no roads in that valley when my grandmother lived there, and they came to church by boat or, sometimes in the winter, by walking on the frozen lake.
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons public domain)
This time, we got into a conversation with the shop’s owner, and he soon showed me a book of local history that mentioned my grandmother and all of her siblings, indicating those who had emigrated to the United States while the farm, Søgnesand, remained in the hands of her eldest brother. Then he introduced us to the man who owns the farm, Lunde, that’s nearest to Søgnesand out on the Kjøsnesfjord. We had a great conversation about farming and fishing on the lake. Family members of the man from Lunde had emigrated to the very same area in North Dakota, near Devil’s Lake, to which my grandmother eventually found her way.
Visiting Jølstravatnet, Kjøsnesfjorden, and Søgnesand is a deeply spiritual experience for me. I barely remember my grandmother. She died when I was just five, but I think I can still hear her voice in my mind. When I visit the place in which she spent her first eighteen years, I’m invariably moved more than I can express.
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