Washington Lodge 3-428
Washington Lodge has been holding, on average, 3 meetings a month by Zoom – each month we have a regular lodge meeting with a speaker, and also the Norwegian History Roundtable (NHR) and Genealogy Interest group meet monthly, frequently with speakers. For the May Lodge meeting, one of our members presented a very personal account of her parent’s and uncles’ participation in the WWII Resistance, which landed her father in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. The program drew over 80 participants. An even larger audience tuned in for the NHR May program on the Norwegian Merchant Marine during the WWII Battle of the Atlantic. To the right is a photo of Per Eskeland, father of member Phil Eskeland, who joined the Norwegian Merchant Marine to “see the world” but instead inadvertently became a “War Sailor” as they are called in Norway. Both of these programs were recorded – you can watch them on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/wderoche.
In July we will hold our first in-person event – an outdoor picnic at our lodge, Norway House, in Fairfax, VA. We’re so happy we can see our friends again!
Zone 4 holds 49th annual scholarship awards luncheon
Kaare Hansen, Zone 4 Directory and PAT Hansen, Zone 4 Treasurer at Big Valley Lodge June 5 at the Zone 4 Scholarship Luncheon!
On Saturday June 5th Zone 4 held its annual scholarship luncheon at the Big Valley Lodge in Susquehanna, PA. This was the first Sons of Norway event held at what was until recently the 3rd district’s Land of the Vikings. The attendees were pleased to see that most of the Norwegian themed décor was being maintained in the Viking Bar and dining room areas.
With the Covid restrictions having been recently lifted in Pennsylvania, 36 members from all of the zone lodges were in attendance. Third District President Kathy Dollymore was the guest speaker and the scholarships were presented by Assistant Zone Director and Credentials Coordinator, Julia Nilsen.
The three scholarship winners were William Dickson of Troll Lodge, Mark Jessie of Norrona Lodge and Maria Larsen of Scandinavian Heritage Lodge. Funds for the scholarship were raised through memorial donations, raffle books and a Viking auction.
Hello from Southern Star 3-630
We meet September through May and ended our “season” with fabulous meetings in April and May. For our April Zoom meeting, we had a guest speaker, who came highly recommended by his sister, Gladys Hyland, who is one of our lodge members. Our speaker was Roger Solberg, a professor at Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pa. and author of Reflections of a Nordic Time Traveler: My Three Days in a Danish Iron Age Village. Back
in the 70’s, Roger was a student at a university in Denmark and participated in a three-day excursion to a genuine replica of an iron age village that is open all year for people to experience. Visitors live and work under iron age conditions including even making crafts to use to barter for their food. The only modern comforts participants can enter the village with are the clothes on their backs and a sleeping back. Roger said many of his classmates couldn’t take the cold, hunger and extreme conditions and had to leave early. He told us participants were required to choose a traditional skill to learn and he chose blacksmithing. He reported it was the only warm place in the village and that he made an axe blade, which he still has and showed us. Roger’s presentation was much enjoyed as he shared many interesting stories. The presentation was followed by a Viking Trivia Quiz via PowerPoint. Connie Koprowicz and I have been writing and producing our monthly trivia games.
In May, 19 lodge members and three guests met for a bring your own lunch picnic at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells, Inlet, which is one of our neighboring towns. Brookgreen Gardens was a large, wealthy, and powerful rice plantation originally, but now it is the largest outdoor sculpture garden in America. Members thoroughly enjoyed seeing each other in person after months of Zoom meetings! We held an informal business meeting during which Dirk Hansen and Tom Hyland received SON certificates for new member recruitment and Svein Nilsen received all three bars simultaneously for stamp collecting. Svein has a massive stamp collection that he has been working on for decades. We are proud of all three of these guys! Some members stayed to enjoy the gardens and fine weather while others left after lunch.
Now we are on hiatus until September, when we will return to our usual location for in person meetings. Our September program is traditionally known as “Wine, Cheese and Chocolate” that has grown to include so many desserts over the years that we changed the name to “Wine, Cheese, and Desserts”. It always brings out a crowd.
Fraternally submitted,
Karen McIlrath
President Southern Star Lodge
Færder Lodge 3-109
Members of Færder Lodge participated in the annual tribute to the Krigsseilerne/Norwegian War Sailors, May 8th (Liberation Day), at Battery Park,
NYC. Longtime Færder Lodge member, Aksel Andresen, age 98, was honored at the event. Aksel is the last surviving Krigsseilerne in New York State. He received flowers from Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg and a letter of greetings from the King and Queen.
Færder Lodge and Lodge Brooklyn held their annual combined meeting and barbecue on June 6th at Sporting Club GjØa, Brooklyn. We were all comfortable enough not to wear masks, and everyone was smiling and happy to see one another again. The new lodge by-laws were unanimously approved. We celebrated Aksel Andresen’s 50thanniversary as a member of Faerder Lodge. President Sylvia Reich and member Lisa Martensson was given a certificate and pin for their 10th anniversary.
Bondelandet 3-612
Dear Bondelandet members and friends,
Wow! We reached a milestone on Friday night when we were able to meet in-person again. It was such a beautiful sunny evening, and we found a grass-covered garden area outside St. Thomas’ main entrance for our Syttende Mai picnic. Everyone brought their own chairs, tables, and food and drink, and I think it would be nice to have more outdoor picnics at this place in the future. Also, we gave many awards to members for membership and service, learned about member Arne Solbak’s memory of 17.Mai, 1945 in Alesund, had readers share information on the holiday, and saw my presentation on The King’s Guard and Sir Nils Olav III. Svein and Rannveig Klinge shared the news that they have purchased a home in Spring Hill, Florida, and will be moving soon. We are certainly going to miss them completely!
I hope you have enjoyed our ZOOM programs since September. We learned about the following: Crown Princess Martha, Project Heimatt and member Ron Bergum’s photos of this move of a stave church from Wisconsin to Norway, St. Sunniva, Norway’s freezing music festival, Norwegian soprano Sissel singing “Silent Night”, Nestor Johnson and his ice-skating company (Made in Chicago Museum), economist Thorstein Veblen, and (my favorite presentation) Norwegian band “A-ha” then and now. If you missed any of these, you can go to www.youtube.com videos for plenty of information and entertainment and just put the topic in the Search box. For Project Heimatt, google the District 5 Sons of Norway website and find “Project Heimatt” in their list of “Programs”. At our ZOOM meetings, our members added discussion afterward, which I really liked, especially their memories of ice skating when they were young. Also, I wish I had known all these years that the band A-ha was Norwegian!
June and July are our traditional months of rest for Bondelandet, so our next get-together will be our picnic at Stoner Park on Saturday, August 21, 3:30. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, you can read your books for our Bondelandet Summer Reading Challenge, vote on the proposal of changing our meeting time (see elsewhere in this newsletter; only members can vote), and read any email updates from me.
Tusen takk to everyone who has helped me this year, and I wish all of you a great beginning to your summer! Brian and I are beginning it with a visit to our son in Raleigh whom we have not seen since December 2019 because of Covid. Woo-hoo!
Sincerely,
Jeanne
Restauration Lodge 3-555
has continued to meet both by Zoom and in person to bring our lodge members together from afar. We’ve done videos on scenic Norway, discussed
Atlantic Crossing, had an interactive Norwegian Jeopardy game and a Sonja Henie narrative.
The members are happy to continue the hybrid way of conducting meetings. This is our 45th year anniversary and the lodge has plans for celebrating with a picnic over the summer and a bus trip to Ellis Island in the fall.
Loyal Lodge 3-252
Its a family affair….our children as well as the Carlsen children and I painted the lodge, our son Eric built a new shed for Loyal and now our youngest Kiersten is building this great patio. SON young adults that assisted included our other three Children Inga, Gunnar, and Eric – Erik, Kevin and Dan Stickevers and Laureen Carlsen.
Best regards,
ERIC JOHANSSON
Troll Lodge 3-476 celebrated 17th of May 2021 at a restaurant!
Hampton Roads 3-522
“Norway’s military is a big part of NATO and always a big part of the annual Norfolk NATO Festival in the spring time. This year,
there was no parade of nations floats as before due to Covid, but rather a static display of all 30 NATO nation’s floats at the Norfolk Scope Arena. As you see from the pictures, the Norwegian military uses Hampton Roads Sons of Norway Viking float in the festival. This float usually wins the “best overall” each year among all of the 30 NATO nation’s floats
At Nansen Lodge 3-410
on Staten Island June 2021 we presented the annual lodge scholarship awards to 5 high school seniors, 3 of whom were in attendance.
Fredheim Lodge 3-242,
celebrated St Hans at the home of members Dorie, Robert and Sophia Marrone on Saturday June 19th. After a swim in the pool, there was the traditional bon fire and Aquavit shots for all. We voted to make a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association and awarded two Lodge Scholarships to Peter Sorrentino and Silje Lorentzen. A late rain shower didn’t cause any problems as the Marrone’s had just installed a new canopy in their yard. We are looking to go to Solberg Field in New Jersey for the gas balloons show later in July. We will also be attending Monmouth Racetrack on August 7th. If any members from other lodges would like to join us, we would love to have them. Contact Bob Muller by email
Norskevenner 3-678
It has been a somewhat busy 2021 so far for Norskevenner Lodge. We have been working on the satellite lodge project. We don’t have a satellite yet but are getting closer. At the moment, we have potential satellite lodges in Athens and Augusta, Georgia
We had our first in-person meeting in May for the first time since our outdoor meeting last September. Our May meeting was Syttende Mai themed and was held at Roswell Area Park in one of the pavilions in the back of the park. We had approximately 21 people attending including several potential new members. We had our usual trivia contest, also Syttende Mai themed of course, and brought out our new bean bags boards. We had the boards custom made with our lodge name and SofN logo put on the boards. Everyone had a great time.
Norskevenner Lodge will also be participating in our new Zone 7 Book Club, and I’m excited about it. The platforms we will use are Zoom and Slack to speak about the books we are reading and exchange notes. Because we are using Slack, we can set it up to have three books going at the same time. This means there should be something for everyone to read at any given time, i.e.: history, mystery, biography, etc.
The book club is open to Zone 7 lodge members AND anyone else in Sons of Norway who wants to participate. For more information on the book club, send an email to .
By the time you all read this, our June meeting will have come and gone. It will be Saturday, 19 June and will have a Midsommar theme. We will be going back to Roswell Area Park again. It’s very good to be able to meet in person again.
Bill Browning
Norskevenner Lodge will be participating in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Atlanta this coming November. We are strongly behind our District 3 in supporting Alzheimer’s research, helping victims of this terrible disease…and especially putting an end to Alzheimer’s quickly.
I strongly urge all Sons of Norway members to walk in November in your local march and help raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association. If you can’t participate in your local march, you might consider donating to the Alzheimer’s Association through their website for the walk. You can do this by going to the Alzheimer’s Association website:
https://act.alz.org/site/SPageServer/?pagename=walk_homepage
Zone 7 Book Club Forming
There is a new project in Zone 7. It is the Zone 7 book club.
In July, Zone 7 will kick off its new book club. Club members will read across the board in areas of Scandinavian interest, such as fiction, history, biography, mystery fiction, etc. The platforms to be used are Zoom and Slack.
There will be a monthly or bi-monthly, depending on interest, meeting on Zoom. Slack is an online meeting place designed for work teams to communicate. However, a lot of book clubs have adopted it for their members to be able to communicate frequently, i.e.: between Zoom meetings, about the books they are reading. We will be using the free version of Slack.
The neat thing about using Slack is that it can be set up to include multiple “projects” to communicate about. In our case this means multiple book groups can be set up concurrently. Simply put, we can have three separate reading groups going at the same time (the free version of Slack only allows for three work groups). One group may choose to read a mystery, a second group may read a book on some aspect of Norwegian history, and another can read a biography…or anything else they choose to read.
Any SofN member is welcome to join. For more details or to say you want to join, send an email to .
Bill Browning
404-953-2525
Blå Fjell 3-646
Blå Fjell Lodge participated in two cultural events
On March 19, Blå Fjell was involved in Colonial Day at Faith Christian School. Our Children’s Activity Coordinator, Cheri Johnson led a presentation to the 5th Grade class at our lodge’s Sons of Norway adopted school, Faith Christian School in Roanoke. Cheri is a retired teacher, and teaching children is her passion. Cheri always makes sure to state she is leading these Faith Christian special sessions on behalf of Sons of Norway. Note the Sons of Norway poster at lower left of Colonial Day display picture. Because of privacy requirement, we did not include pictures of the children. Following is the text copied from the school’s Facebook posting. “On Friday, the 5th Grade class participated in the annual Colonial Day, culminating a week of activities about life in Early America. On Friday, they arrived dressed in period costumes. Mrs. Johnson from the Sons of Norway presented to the students and shared about Native Americans from the time period, and what their daily life was like. Students then enjoyed an authentic meal from the time period, prepared by parents.” March 19 event pictures from our April 2021 Newsletter copied from Faith Christian Facebook site. Colonial Day display created by Cheri and the Colonial Meal, Cheri Johnson.
On May 15, Blå Fjell participated in Roanoke’s Local Colors Event in Roanoke, as we have for over ten years. This is our chance to educate people about Nordic culture, and used as a fund raiser for our budget expenses. Until year 2020, there were over 100 booths exhibiting culture/selling food from 80 nationalities. Because of the pandemic, the event was cancelled in 2020, and was held on a much smaller scale this year, with 26 booths at a different more-open location, limited to 4-5 workers under the canopy. We were the only booth providing homemade baked goods. Our booth represented Sons of Norway International organization. During the event, we provided free Nordic cultural literature, handed out Trifolds stating history of Sons of Norway and Blå Fjell Lodge with meetings-events listed for the year. We provided a table of children’s activities (especially popular is “write your name in runic”). Each child received pictures to color, free small bags of Swedish Fish, and a sheet showing Nordic country flags with a small United States flag keychain. We sold member home-made baked goods and artifacts. page 2 of 2 Our Membership Secretary visited each person who stopped by, asking their heritage and giving interested visitors a chance to sign a clipboard with contact data. Each signee received Sons of Norway “Join Us” pamphlet and folder of SON pamphlets. If a person was not ready to commit, we invited that person to attend our meetings and to sign up to receive our newsletter for a six-month period.
Thanks to all of the lodges that sent in articles and pictures for the TDT. Very much appreciated and I hope to receive many more as more issues of our District 3 newsletters are published —— ED