I've written before about the Good Friday we spent in Norway, but thought this story was very appropriate for this week.
Our trip to Norway in 1999, included Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday weekends, or Paske, as it’s called in Norwegian. We attended the Palm Sunday service at Salemkirken in Oslo where our relatives Per and Esther Søetorp were members.
On Good Friday, or Long Friday as it’s called in Norway, we attended the service at the Lund Lutheran Church in Moi, where all my Østrem and Sherpe ancestors had been members. Our relatives, Arne Olav and Vivi Østrem, and Vivi’s parents attended the service with us. We appreciated them accompanying us to the service. They knew it would be a special experience for me because of my ancestral connection. Per and Esther were taking part in services at the Pentecostal Church in Moi, while we were at the Lund Church.
The alter painting was the first thing Linda and I noticed when we sat down. It was the same painting as the one in the Country Coon Prairie Lutheran Church in Westby. It’s a copy of the one in the Oslo Trinity Church painted by Adolf Tidemand showing the baptism of Christ. Many people from the Moi area settled around Westby and my ancestors helped start the Coon Prairie Church. I imagine they wanted something familiar from their church in Norway and had Norwegian emigrant artist, Herbjorn Gausta, paint a copy for the Coon Prairie Church.
As we sat there, I looked around at the alter, the baptismal font, and pews, and thought of all my ancestors who had worshiped in this same church. They were baptized, confirmed, and married here, and many funerals were conducted here for them. It was the one place that was central to the lives of all the Sherpe’s and Østrem’s who lived around Moi before immigrating to America. They had spent time here during both happy and sad occasions, and probably sat through some long-winded, fire and brimstone sermons too!
The Long Friday service included a communion service where everyone went and kneeled at the alter rail. I watched how others took the offering of wafer and wine. It was the same way we did communion at the Coon Prairie Lutheran Church in Westby when I was young. As I knelt at the rail, I thought, “This is the same place where my Sherpe and Østrem ancestors once knelt for communion.” That made it very special for me.
The service lasted about an hour and a half and of course was in Norwegian, so Linda and I were rather lost most of the time! Jeg snakker ikke Norske! (I don’t speak Norwegian!)
After the service, they had arranged for a member of the church to show us around and explain the history of the Lund Church. It was first mentioned in 1429. There’s an old burial vault under the church where several clergy members and their families are buried. Twenty-four coffins lie in the vaults under the church. They’re from the 1600’s and 1700’s and the coffins are well preserved. I couldn’t help but wonder if some were my ancestors, since at least one was the minister of this church in the 1600’s during the funeral when Hothead Sven got into trouble.
A model ship hung from the ceiling in the center of the church. This is quite common in Norway and symbolic of the ship of life. In 1877 a wood stove was installed. It must have been cold sitting through a winter service before that time. Perhaps the fiery sermons added enough heat to keep everyone a bit warm!
After our tour and history lesson, we went outside and I wandered off through the cemetery to look at tombstones. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the view was magnificent as I looked toward Lundevatnet (Lund Lake), at the far end of the cemetery, with the mountains in the background. In the days of the Vikings, my ancestors pulled their long ships onto boat landings on the shore where the church now stands. Two, large Viking burial mounds are nearby.
I was walking among the bones of my ancestors and relatives, probably hundreds of them. However, there were no tombstones with their names on them. As is the practice in Norway, after a hundred years the tombstones are removed and the graves reused, if no perpetual care has been arranged. Below the newer coffins, with new headstones of newer generations, lie the remains of many ancestors. The wood coffins have long since deteriorated. It’s not like today where we use vaults to hold expensive coffins. It would be hard to piggy-back them!
As I came back around a tall hedge at the front of the church, everyone had disappeared. They had also taken a stroll through the cemetery and I didn’t see them because they were in another part, looking at the resting place of Arne Olav’s father.
Just then I saw Per and Esther coming up the path toward the church to meet us. I asked if they had seen where the others had gone. Per smiled and answered in a booming voice, “Why do you seek the living among the dead!?” It was a very powerful and appropriate statement on a very special “Long Friday.”
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