ANCESTRAL STENSAAS-ROFSTAD FARMS—Norway #7

July 4, 2025

My Great Grandfather Anders Stensaas came from the Melhus/Kvål area of central Norway in the early 1900s and settled near Vermillion, South Dakota. After a few years, he went back to Norway to marry the girl from the neighboring farm, Anna Rofstad. Anna’s father Ivar was distraught and angry that Anders had taken his daughter away. It is hard to fathom these days how far Norway and South Dakota really were in the early 1900s; no planes, no phones, only a slow boat from Oslo and a long train ride to the prairie. Letters were his only connection to his daughter.

My Great Grandfather & Grandmother Stensaas on their 50th wedding anniversary

In the early 1930s, Anders and Anna (now Americanized to “Andrew and Anne”), returned to Melhus and had a homecoming with her father. They all made peace, and he soon died at age 99.

Anna and Anders Stensaas return to Norway in the 1930s to visit Anna’s father Ivar at age 98.

Our connection to our Norwegian family has always been through Anna’s family, the Rofstad side. That’s just how it goes sometimes…Connections shift from maternal to paternal and back and forth over time.

My dad with horse and sleigh at Rofstad farm

My father was stationed in Germany in 1957-58 with the highly prestigious “U.S. Army Accounting Corp,” a fearsome, highly-trained….okay, okay, I’ll stop now. Dad was drafted after graduating from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and his main interest while stationed overseas was to see as much of the European continent as he could on Uncle Sam’s dime.

Stan Stensaas in Norway in 1958 (my father)

He made trips to Paris (Eiffel Tower, Louvre), London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Holland, a cruise down the Rhine River, skiing in the Swiss Alps, and even attended the World’s Fair in Brussels. And then he contacted his second cousin Gudrun (Rofstad) Moum in Vikhamar near Trondheim to see if he could visit. He had a great time with Gudrun and Hermann, and they visited the Rofstad family dairy farm (see photos).

My dad visiting the Melhus Rofstad farm in the late 1950s

Gudrun (Rofstad) and Herman Moum in early 2000s. My “Norwegian grandparents”!

Fast forward to 2025, and I thought it would be neat if the boys could see the ancestral homeland. I had been there multiple times in the past, Bridget and I even visited on our Honeymoon, so I told Jan that we’d just have a short “stand-up” visit. Well, that is nearly impossible when visiting relatives in Norway!

The short “stand-up” visit went out the window when the phrase, “Why don’t we go in and have some coffee,” was offered. And the photo albums came out, and then here came the cakes. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it!

But almost none of the farm Rofstad relatives spoke English very well, but thankfully Jan, Liv and Anders did a lot of translating for us. Did I mention that there was cake(!) and more coffee, and lots of stories. Good fun! But my Bjorn was so tired that he fell asleep on Bridget’s shoulder.

Eventually the gathering migrated to the local Lutheran Church in Melhus where I thought we might see the gravestones of our common ancestor Ivar Rofstad (both Jan’s and My Great Great Grandfather). I had seen the grave marker on a trip in the 1980s and wanted to find it again. But I was told that after a gravestone had been in place for 20 years, the family must pay a maintenance fee for it to remain in the cemetery. And if they don’t pay, another, newer, gravestone is put in its place. This seems downright crazy to me, but then again, in the U.S. we don’t have many centuries of dead people in graveyards, and we have lots of space to make cemeteries bigger and bigger.

Long story, short…we couldn’t find his grave. But I did see the marker for Ingebrigt Rofstad. Such a nice man! I had met him here in 1986 I believe.

The current church itself dates to 1892 and is an impressive and imposing stone house of worship that holds 500 congregants. I could hear organ music coming from inside but did not go in.

Historically on this spot was the Medieval Church completed in 1190AD. It was torn down by Royal decree in the late 1800s to make room for the new church. But they did re-use some parts, including the portal. And in 1999 restorers found actual runic carvings in the portal. The best interpretation is “sea priest” or “male goat priest” or “Hafr (the) priest.” The Runic alphabet basically went extinct by the 1400s, so this inscription predates that time.