Viking Ancestors

Stavanger Harbour in February, taken from outside the Maritime Museum (22 Feb 2007), (Sjøfartsmuseum), where I go to do lateral research on the life of a Norwegian sailor. For this is what my great grandfather was (Oldefar). Born in in Bergen Norway in March 1882, into a large but poor family, the first son of many children, losing his mother by the age of 13, the same age I was when my father died, he shows us in government records as working as early as 9 years old. Many norwegian boys from poor families became sailors to get a free education and life skill trade. Life at sea became their teacher, a love that he held fast to his whole life, choosing upon his death, the year I was born, to be cremated and his ashes scattered out to sea. His final settling place was a holiday cottage by the sea, on the northern beaches of Sydney, at Harbord, the place where I grew up.

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His parents both came from farms, his mother from the south, in Førde farm in Sveio Kommune, situated about half way between Bergen and Stavanger, where I now live, and his father was born at Smørdal farm in Lindås kommune, about an hour's drive from Bergen, high up in the beautiful fjordal mountains to the north.

I had a hard time finding the marriage records of his parents, Anna Jørgensdatter Førde and Berge Klausen Smørdal until a clever research assistant at the Folkeregister in Bergen looked a little sideways and found their records in the Catholic Apostolic records. Which was most unusual as their was no indication to look in Catholic records in Norway and tradition usually dictated to search in the church records where the bride was born and baptised, which meant Sveio, whose church records in those days fell under Fjelberg, Hordaland kommune.

His parents married in October 1881, at Balestrand, a thriving industrial Iron Ore town at the time, situated east of Bergen. Anna was 4 months pregnant when they married, so the story behind their actions would certainly be worth knowing, but unfortunately these things are not recorded on government records, which are generally the only source of information for the poor. They went to Bergen for the birth of their son, who they named Claus Bertin Clausen Smørdal, born on 13 March 1882, in what is today known as Old Bergin. Their residential address was probably a communal place of residence where several families rented out rooms in a big house, 1 family per room, in the old Bergen residential area, on Geble Petersensgate (gate meaning street in norwegian). 2 residence addresses appear on their records around this time, GeblePetersgate and ....... I visited both places on my previous trips to Bergen. One was under renovation and I met the owner who said an apartment would be available for sale in 6 months. The idea of buying into the place where my great grandfather was born was very tempting but I never took further action as my husband is from the south so his roots are there and so there is where we live now.

Well so the story goes, he was the first of many children, about 8 or 9 to be precise, a few sets of twins, some dying, later ones being named with the same name of the deceased, as was the custom, until his mother died just after her 40th birthday when he was only 13, and his youngest sibbling was only 6 months old. Within a year his father, Berge Smørdal remarried a young woman from Askøy, a small island outside of Bergen, and that is where they lay buried today.

The next lot of records that appear for Claus Clausen Smørdal are found in the seamans records for Norway and the UK. As luck would have it, a UK census record on 31 March 1901, taken at Folkestone Kent, records him age ( just turned 19), as one of six sailors on a Norwegian vessel, docked there the night of the March census. This info changed everything which leads me now to believe that his life as a sailor took him well beyond the shores of Norway to other lands far and near and perhaps Australia was just another job he was on, delivering herring and collecting wool, which makes the family story even more believable, that he "jumed ship" in Australia with no looking back, an illegal immigrant as it were, keeping it on the down low as much as possible.

Stavanger was a prominent sea port in his youth because of the thriving herring, then sardine trade. How amazing that Norway finds its wealth from the sea. Herring, Sardines, now oil....By 1899,1900 the steamboat changed everything, and the glorious days of the sailboat were dying out. Perhaps this, in part, motivated him to end his life at sea for solid ground, perhaps not, but one thing is for sure, as many norwegians migrated to the United States by steam boat, my great grandfather Claus Bertin Clausen Smørdal to the path less travelled and sailed to Australia instead, as far as north is from south, never turning back and there he stayed til his death in 1965, where his lifelong passion for the sea was honoured in his request of his ashes being scattered in the ocean, which is the normal fate of a sailor who dies at sea, minus the fire.

I was recently back in Australia visiting family when I was emailed a copy of Claus Clausens naturalisation papers dated 1907, most likely circulating because of his marriage to my great grandmother and the birth of my grandmother 9 months later. This records gives us information that he disembarked at Newcastle and lived in the sailors home, then a residence in downtown Newcastle where he worked for 18 months before heading to Sydney.