Summary in English

The text below was written when the first edition of the Berg, Selsbak, Winnem and Ravn genealogy was published online in 1997, and updated latest on 17th September 2000. It explains a bit about the beginning and development of this site. In January 2002, a major development took place when my cousin Steinar Winnem and I decided to join forces on the Winnem and Ravn genealogies. As this site had already been developed, we decided to use this as our foundation for the further work on these families.

I have kept the Berg and Selsbak genealogies of my father's side intact on the site, and Steinar is in the process of incorporating the Burchard genealogy of his mother and my aunt Mary's family on the same site. The Burchard genealogy has also been online for a number of years, but it has not been developed for a while. This genealogy will now be "woven" into the pattern of this site, a development we feel will enhance both our own feeling for the site and our reader's experience.

So: What you see here are TWO separate genealogies, tied together by the joint families Winnem and Ravn. All text about these two families are the same on both sites.

They will guide you to the Berg/Selsbak and the Burchard genealogies' Ancestor Lists respectively. These list form some sort of central core in the whole system; from here, you will find links to most personalities mentioned in the editorial part. Much of this, alas, is in Norwegian. To climb family trees, you may also use the Ancestor Reports (see right frame), where much of the text is (also) in English. The alphabetic name list in the left frame will also guide you to a number of English sites. Thus, for example the Ravn, Schjelderup and Bugge pages from the Ravn genealogy are already presented in English .

As long as your search is within the Ravn and Winnem areas, it does not matter which one of the buttons above you click. If you want to continue to either the Burchard or the Berg/Selsbak part of the genealogy, you must click the right button to come to the correct Ancestor List.

I am afraid that the material you find is mostly written in Norwegian. For those of you not familiar with the Scandinavian languages, you find some English, French and/or German texts on e.g. these locations: de Créqui , Jæger, The ancestor report. An American descendant of the Ravn family, Patti Trefethen-Goke of St. Cloud, Minnesota, has translated the Schjelderup text to English after finding the Norwegian text here. I am grateful for contributions like hers, as it would indeed be too much of a task for me to translate every part of this saga myself... Should some of you feel the urge to translate something of interest to you and provide me with some (free) English versions, please feel free to follow Patti Trefethen-Goke's example. I cannot promise to publish everything on the net, though.

On July 26th, 1980, I sat down at the library in Trondheim, Norway, with a small booklet that had been in my parents' bookshelfs for years. My grandfather Erling Michael Berg was arrested by the Gestapo in Trondheim on 3rd March 1943 and sat imprisoned until the war ended in May 1945. During this time, he met Mr. Joh. G. Reppe - a policeman as far as I can remember, and an amateur genealogist. When my grandfather died in 1948, Mr. Reppe gave my grandmother the Berg pedigree.

Those few, machine printed pages on the Berg family of Ramberg, Flakstad in the Lofoten islands were my starting point.

Mr. Reppe's work goes back to the great flood of 1789 in Gudbrandsdalen - the "Storofsen" flood that left people and animals alike dead, and Peder Olsen Hagen and his family homeless. An 'ofs' (as in ''Storofsen'') is an old expression from Vågå in Norway, meaning "something terrible". "Stor" meaning "Great", the Storofsen was indeed a large, scaring experience, the greatest flood ever reported in that area!

The Hagen family's hard times did not end with the flood. They bought a ship and traveled northwards, to what they expected to be a new life at Bardu. Here, people from southern Norway had earlier found new and promising land, and many southerners settled there. The Gudbrandsdal and Østerdal dialects could still be heard in that area until the 20th century.

On their way northwards, they lost their ship in a storm outside Ramberg. Luckily, they all survived and made it to the shore. At that place, with a few houses and a church on the northern side of the Lofoten islands, their journey ended. And here, the third known generation of the Hagen family, Birgitte Christine Olsdatter Hagen , married Tobias Berg.

The photographs of these two, born in 1818 and 1813 respectively, represent the oldest photographic documentation of our ancestors.

Even older are some paintings in churches, among them two from the Bodin church at Bodø, Nordland, Norway, of Hans Lauritzen Blix (1596-1666) and his wife Ingeborg Svensdatter (1603-1688).

I can vividly recall the summer days of 1980 when I found some material that I could add to Mr. Reppe's original work. Everything that I found, I wrote down by hand in a green book that I still have in my bookshelf. My first findings were on the Jæger and Castberg families, and the same summer, I found our French connection in the ancient, noble family of de Créqui (link to English version). Unfortunately, we still miss the actual link between the Dutch and the French branches of this family.

By 1981 or '82, I got a copy of a series of articles from Harstad Tidende on the Trondenes family Ravn Klæboe , Hveding and Bugge (link to English version) pedigrees, as well as valuable information from my grandmother's half brother Arthur Ravn's work. By the middle of the 1980'ies, I prepared some booklets which may still exist in some of my relatives' bookshelves.

In 1994, my uncle Reidar Winnem traveled to the southern part of Norway, where he got a copy of the Winnem family saga by Dr. Bjørn Bratland, Færvik at Tromøy. I owe much to Dr. Bratland, and even if his presentation form has been altered to suit my form, nearly every word from his work can be found here. Thank you ever so much!

The Winnem family lived in Kvinesdal and at Lista for centuries, and large parts of it is still there. My great grandfather, Oseas Emanuel Winnem , was born at Lista, then emigrated to the United States for three (some say seven) years - but later returned to his brother who had moved to Ofoten. My mother still remembers her grandfather's soft, southern accent, with his b's and d's instead of the more common Norwegian p's and t's.

Mr. Idar Kaare Loe of Trondheim, Norway, has provided me with information on the Selsbak and Loe families on my father's mother's side. This was empty space for me until April 1998, but with my relative (in the 4th and 5th generation) Mr. Loe's kind contribution, this family saga with deep roots in the Norwegian Trøndelag area now begins to shape.

I have selected only what I need from my many sources. Thus, I have merely written down, translated or transformed whatever I could find on my own ancestors, and left everything else behind. This is a form that I will continue to use in this presentation. Many of you may find other things of interest in the sources, though. For further investigations, I suggest that you contact the State Archives or the libraries in Norway - or, of course, search through the Web. I have made successful searches myself, providing me with information e.g. on the Schjelderup (link to English version) and Hveding families. A good starting point may be the Kvasir or Fast search generators.

Ever so many thanks to Mr. Bjørn Markhus of Drammen, Norway! He became my first close internet connection, and his contact with me has brought this family history a long step forward. Mr. Markhus is a remote relative of mine, a dedicated genealogist together with his wife, and a great lover of the important details. Having read my original internet base in November 1997, he informed me e.g. of some wrong information in the Hveding family saga by Johan Hveding (1944). By bringing in Riborg Danielsdatter Skunck instead of Riborg Danielsdatter Bull as Jens Christensen Hveding's , and later Nils Mortensen's wife, the large Skunck family line from Jämtland in Sweden (during the period covered in this family saga, Jämtland was still part of Norway) could be added to the Ravn as well as the Hveding lines.

There is still some uncertainty connected to the Riborg Danielsdatter theory. Mr. Karl Göran Eriksson of Uppsala, Sweden has made some critical comments regarding Riborg Danielsdatter's, or rather, her mother Maren Jensdatter's origin. However, even if Mr. Eriksson's comments should prove right, the Skunck (Skanke) line is still "intact" in our family history as it is also connected through the Blix family. Thus, Mr. Markhus' contribution to my family history is remarkable, even though both the Ravn and the Hveding connections to the Skunck line as early as Riborg Danielsdatter may prove to be wrong. The question is not if, but rather where there is a connection.

The serious part of the Skunck line brings us back to late Viking or early Medieval era, and is included here. The more unserious part of it brings us back to supposed ancestors like the Roman Emperor Claudius, Charles le Magne, king of France, Rurik, king of Russia, the Norwegian Viking king Harald Hårfagre and other spicy personalities. I have not included this lineage, as it is indeed most uncertain.

Mr. Sigurd Lambek of Oregon, U.S.A. and Mrs. Britt Jæger Lindhjem of Oslo, Norway

During the spring of 1998, a most peculiar thing happened when Britt Jæger Lindhjem of Oslo, Norway found these pages on the Web. Like myself, she descends from Ahasverus de Crequi , a military officer of the 17th century. She has, still today, in her position the silk cloth which was draped upon Ahasverus de Crequi's coffin or grave.

The cloth clearly tells the time and place of his death, and this information differs from all sources I have read so far. Thus, we now know that Ahasverus de Crequi ended his life in Danish-Norwegian duty in the occupied, Swedish town of Marstrand close to Gothenburg, on 15th January 1678. He was then a Lieutenant Colonel at the Carlsten fortress . This ancient, Norwegian landscape had been Swedish for 20 years by 1678, but was occupied by Denmark-Norway in 1677 during the so-called Gyldenløve War from 1675-79.

In addition to Mrs. Jæger Lindhjem, Mr. Sigurd Lambek of Oregon, U.S.A., a descendant of the Norwegian branch of the de Crequis himself, has been most helpful to me in my investigations around both Ahasverus de Crequi and his French origin . Mr. Lambek has also participated in the translation and adaptation of the English version of the Dutch-Norwegian branch of the de Crequi family history. Our hasco-operation been very close, and I want to give him my most sincere thanks for many humorous moments and all the valuable, new knowledge he has given me.

Thanks, also, to Mr. Eiwe Svanberg, present Commander at the Carlsten Fortress in Marstrand, for receiving my family and me with such kindness and interest when we visited his fortress on 23rd July, 1998. The tour to picturesque Marstrand remains one of my most memorable events of the 1998 summer vacation!

My encounter with Britt Jæger Lindhjem and Sigurd Lambek has, in turn, led to the publishing of an article I wrote about Ahasverus de Créqui dit la Roche in the genealogy magazine "Norsk Slektshistorisk Tidsskrift" (NST vol. XXXVI, book 4 1998). This, and even more so these internet pages, has in turn led to the formation of the genealogical society SIEC - Societé Internationale des Études de Créqui . Members of SIEC are descendants of Ahasverus de Créqui dit la Roche or people with a strong interest in the studies of his, his ancestors in The Netherlands and France and his descendants in Norway and abroad. By September 2000 SIEC counts members in Norway, USA, Germany, Austria, Italy and Denmark. The results of studies performed by SIEC is published on this site (in Norwegian ), together with a SIEC Newsletter (in English). There are many names I could mention in connection with SIEC, but each and every member is equally important and I would like to thank them all!

SIEC is truly a result of the Internet era. Without easy publication and extended contact through e-mail, our resources would never have been put together like this.

Mrs. Tami Jenson of Utah, U.S.A. is herself a dedicated genealogist, who has selected the northern part of Norway as "her" area. I recommend a visit to her own home page, in particular to those of you who are interested in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Nordland. Mrs. Jenson is in close contact with many hobby genealogists throughout the world, but in particular in Norway and the U.S.

After she contacted me, we have had a most rewarding co-operation which has brought new information to the family history never published before. Our joint task has become the family on my grandmother's mother's side, the Olderøy family of which we have had very little previous knowledge. This work is, as of today, still in progress and contains many unanswered questions. It is, however, a most interesting task which include basic research both in Salt Lake City and in Oslo.

Mrs. Patti Goke is a relative of mine on my mother's side, and she has voluntarily translated the texts on both Schjelderup and the Ravn families into English.

this family history to the point where it is today. Many are those who have brought me small pieces of information which have been integrated in the original texts. I have tried to be careful and honour them all both in connection with the articles and in the reference list.

I feel confident that more adventures await me in the future, and that other "chance contacts" will bring even further development to these pages in the years to come!

The complete Ancestor lists pops up when you click on the 'Ancestor list!' sign (see left). The list is the "hearth" of this web site; a page that will bring you straight to every essential part of the family history. The page is divided in two part (1st to 10th generation, and 11th generation upwards). Here you will find all our known ancestors for up to 27 generations!

You also find the Ancestor list sign at the bottom of each family saga, and if in frames mode, at the top of the frame.

The Ancestor list is organized like this: The letter "f" in front of a name means "father", "m" means "mother" - and thus you can find your way through any connection that may be of interest to you. The letter "f" after a name means "born" (Norwegian: »født»), "d" means "dead". Dates are written DD-MM-YYYY. "Foto!" means a photograph just one click away. Each article - which you find by clicking on the name - may have further pictures and illustrations connected to them. The list starts with my two brothers and me as Generation No 1, our parents as Generation No 2, etc.

I can also recommend the Ancestor families reports for the four main families, created with the genealogy programme Gene 2.1.4 for Macintosh. These reports have internal search functions throughout the ancestor lines. Please note that the Ancestor families reports have no links to editorial texts. Use the Ancestor list or the Pedigree overview for such links.