More Pieces to the Grimsrud Family Puzzle

More Pieces to the Grimsrud Family Puzzle

Grimsrud Name

Grimsruds are proud descendants of the Norse Vikings, among whom the name "Grim" was quite common. Various spellings are reflected by historical influences; 1401; Grimßrud,* German Hansa trading league occupation of Norway. 1593. Danish occupation. Grimsrød, 1668. Grimsrøed, Danish occupation, 1723 Grimsrued or Grimzrude, Swedish occupation. 1907 to date, Grimsrud.
*Note in the 1401 spelling of Grimßrud, the “ß” in the name comes from old German denoting a strong S, refereed to as eszett, it is in use to this day in the German language.

Fabled among the Norse Viking was the fierce “Skalla-Grim", whose exploits are described in the Chronicles of the Viking. Grim is, in fact, old Germanic meaning fierce. There are a number of localities in Norway with Grim as a noun, a prefix, or a suffix.

As to "Rud", also spelled in a variant Norwegian tongue as "Rød", it simply means a man-made clearance, whether in the forest, a hill, a plain, or whatever. Plenty of Norwegian names of places and families have the "rud" as a name or a suffix.

The best known "rud" in the United States is the famous Norwegian-American engineer Ejvind Rud, inventor of the outboard engines for boats. His name was, of course, changed in the United States to “Evinrud", which is the present brand of the outboard engines still being marketed today.*
*Note: Family names traditionally were taken from the farm where they resided.

First a brief history of Scandinavia:
The following are abridged excerpts from the book: Scandinavia: A History by Ewan Butler.
Norsemen...name for these marauders...applied to all three Scandinavian peoples. Normandy...reminds us of the Norse...and to this day Norwegians refer to themselves as Nordmenn. (The Norse invaders of Russia are alternately known as Varangians, derived from an old Norse word...meaning “confederate,” and Ruotsi, meaning the “rowing men” in old Finnish.)

Scandinavia fell victim to an invasion from England...The bubonic plague, or Black Death, had come to Europe... by infected rats from the holds of merchant ships...1349.
The pestilence spread to Norway and killed off two-thirds of its people...and spread to Sweden in 1350.

German traders brought the “hanse,” or League of Hanse Cities, a “protection racket” cities were expelled from the League for a breach of its rules.

Christianity took advantage to establish a monarchy in Denmark and quench Norwegian independence...Norway was a part of Denmark. Olaf Engelbrektsson, the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Norway, tried to lead an uprising.

1837...Ole Rynning published in Sweden and Norway a book entitled A True Account of America for the Information and Help of Peasant and Commoner. The book... inspired hundreds of families, especially in Norway, with dreams of settling in the New World. The first two ships sailed in 1825 and 1836...after the Civil War the American West settlement took off known as “the American Fever.”

1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden as a separate kingdom united to the Swedish crown. Denmark acquired in return Swedish Pomerania, Iceland, the Faroes, and Greenland.
Sweden’s Riksdag and Norway’s Storting - passed laws giving Norway full legal equality.

1905, the Norwegian government told Stockholm that Norway had the second largest merchant fleet in the world and was entitled to its own consular service worldwide...
The Norwegians stood firm... in June they issued a declaration.



From my blog Bing’s Buzz, October 26, 2017:
Excerpts from my blog post October 26, 2017, NORWAY, DREAMING OF THE OLD COUNTRY.
The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver, an amazing book, and the best and most comprehensive I have ever read regarding the Vikings, was published just before the 2017 discovery up the Hudson River in New York State of the Vinland, Norse settlement that was described in the Norse sagas.

In his book Neil Oliver wrote: “Archaeologists doubt that Newfoundland was the ‘Vinland’ reported by Leif Erickson. Instead L’Anse aux Meadows is usually interpreted as a sort of way station, a staging post used by people in transit to and from a more fruitful settlement further south. It seems Vinland itself still awaits discovery.”

In 2017, at Stony Point, New York, up the Hudson River at Minisceongo Creek between New York City and Poughkeepsie, the ruins of a Viking village dating from the 9th and 10th centuries was unearthed. The remains of six buildings containing an iron forage and carpenter shop were part of the village of up to one hundred habitats. This had to be the Vinland or wine land of Leif Erickson, described in the Norse sagas. New York, is definitely wine country and this thousand year old settlement has definitely been confirmed to be Viking.

My wife and I on the maiden voyage of our sailing vessel Dursmirg passed this very spot on our way to Florida in 1972. Our journey is described in our book Sailing Beyond Lake Superior: Travels of Dursmirg. Later in Florida we met Tex Downs who had sailed the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York, and found there a strange coin that was identified as being Phoenician and nearly a thousand years old.

In the book The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver, the author describes finding coins used by the Viking in America. “The Scandinavian world had grown increasingly dependent upon Arab silver. From early on the Arab Durhams were identified as containing the purest, most desirable silver and during the decades and centuries to come millions of the coins were funneled west. Like a supply of oxygen, the flow of the silver helped energize the whole area, supplying the power to create nation states.”

At the time of the famous Norseman (Viking) Leif Erickson, the Vikings’ influence extended to Russia, Scotland, England, Spain, Greece, Italy, and France. Leif Erickson did indeed make it to America.

Over a thousand years ago, Lief Erickson, the best known Viking a renowned traveling man crossed the Atlantic, built settlements in Newfoundland [unearthed in 1960] and up the Hudson River between NYC and Poughkeepsie, [unearthed in 2017].
A little known fact about Lief Erickson; He became a Christian in Denmark and proceeded to proselytize in Norway.

Norway was the last Scandinavian country to give up it’s Viking religion.

A monument to that conversion still is in use to this day at Skoger, Norway. Up the Oslo Fjord it branches off into Oslo Fjord and Drammen Fjord. Skoger is a suburb of Drammen and has been since the Norse Vikings first went to sea.

From that monumental old church you can gaze across to the Grimsrud family farm, also still in use and occupied by my relatives...the Grimsruds.

To conclude: When I was a child my grandpa Christ started me on this lifelong journey by planting the seeds of curiosity. The jig-saw puzzle that followed rewarded me and whet my appetite for more.




Recommended reading:
Scandinavia: A History by Ewan Butler gives a historical overview of the impact, distribution, consequential effects and heritage of these unique stand alone people.

The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver did the most to bring this story together and the clincher was the discovery in 2017 of a settlement of Vinland up the Hudson River near Poughkeepsiei n New York.

Additional Reading:

Discovery of settlement in New York
https://m.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/05/new-ruins-of-viking-village-near-the-hudson-river-seriously-question-where-were-the-borders-of-the-legendary-vinland/



Gold Run: The Rescue of Norway’s Gold Bullion from the Nazis, 1940 by Robert Pearson.



The Life Of John Ericsson, Volume I and II, by William Conant Church



Cycling North: from the French Mediterranean to the fjords of Norway by bicycle (Eurovelo Series Book 5) by Steven Herrick



Defiant Courage: A World War II Epic of Escape and Endurance by Astrid Karlsen Scott and Tore Haug



Norway To America: A History of the Migration by Ingrid Semmingsen



The Shetland Bus: A World War II Epic of Escape, Survival, and Adventure by David Howarth



We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth



Norwegian Newspapers in America: Connecting Norway and the New Land by Odd Lovoll