Father's Family

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Our grandparents, Olaf (1866-1929) and Theodora (1871-1934), with their six children, photographed Capetown 1905. To learn more about each click their names, or their faces in the pic. Our father Rolf (1904-1973), the youngest, sits on his mother's knee while Hilda (1902-1941), the second youngest, stands in front of her father. Those inbetween are, from left to right, Leif (1896-1935), Sylvia (1894-1984?) seated, Krissie (1892-1964?), and Paul (1893-1954?). I have used their familiar names though the girls' original names were Borjhild, Solveig and Kristofa. The parents and their children were born in Norway, apart from Rolf who was born in Capetown.

If you follow these links you'll soon see (a) that the family had more things to be unhappy about than some families, (b) that many of them do appear to have had unhappy lives.

Something else about them is that overall they were not very fertile. Only our father and Krissie produced children, the rest dying without issue. That is why we brothers are the sole transmitters of the family name. Not that the name itself matters; it is not ancestral, just a handle, since Olaf changed it. There is even some uncertainty about whether Olaf or Olai was his first name.

The family has not proved very cohesive, different branches tending to lose contact with each other relatively quickly. Most of Krissie's fairly meagre progeny have been lost sight of by us and there has never been a strong sense of having something in common, not in our generation, anyway. Maybe this is because there are relatively few of us. An effective family network probably needs more nodes and connections than has been possible, given the way descendants of the original family have tended to be separated in space, time and experience.

In terms of fertility, cohesiveness and (probably) happiness our father's family differs from our mother's.

Follow the links above for individual family members - or click one of these for:

• Top of this page
• Mother's family
• The menu page