Day 35 - Journey to Norway, Family Awaits
Reconnecting with my Norwegian family
July 26, 2023: On Wednesday, we moved to our next country on our journey, my grandfather’s homeland and my second home…Norway!! We got a taxi to take us from the Old Town to the airport. The check-in process was very easy and we were able to Fast Track through security in Edinburgh. We were flying Scandinavian Airlines. The experience with them was great. We had a short layover in Stockholm before landing in Oslo. My Dad’s cousin Knut and his wife Marit picked us up at the airport and we headed to Nina and Stian’s, my second cousin. Siv and Øyvind also stopped by and we spent the evening catching up and sharing stories. I was so happy to see everyone. It felt like it had only been a short time since we saw each other instead of 4 years!
A little background on my family in Norway. My grandfather Omar Otterson was the eldest of 10 children. In the early 1900s, many of the men in Norway came to the United States to work on farms in Minnesota in order to make money. All of his brothers returned to Norway, however, my grandfather met my grandmother and he decided to stay. They were married and had seven children. It is interesting to note that my grandfather has more descendants in the United States than all of his other nine siblings in Norway. He never returned to Norway and never met his youngest brother Arne because he was born after he left, although I recently learned that they did talk on the phone once. My parents went to Norway for the first time in 1975, and my Dad was able to meet all of his aunts and uncles. My father fell in love with the family and the country. He returned to Norway 6 more times during his life. On that first trip, he got names and addresses of cousins our age so we each had a “pen pal”. My pen pal was Marit, daughter of Kåre and Turid. We began writing when I was 10 years old and she was 9. We wrote back and forth for 6 years until in 1981, when I was 17 years old, I took my first trip to Norway so I could meet her in person along with the rest of the family. Like my father, I fell in love with the family and the country and have returned 8 times to visit everyone. Some of my siblings and my daughter and niece and have also now been here and many of the family here have travel to the United States, so the connection continues to flourish. Jimm has joined me three trips so he has also gotten to know the family.
Jimm’s rating for the day: **** (mostly a travel day)