Genealogy Jottings

As 2019 begins, I have my office all cleaned up and ready to go for the new year. Now I can begin work on fresh genealogy projects. I have several in mind:

1. To get ready for a trip to Norway and the Baltic later this year, I will turn my attention to research on my family lines from those areas. I need to post and file all the Bentsen, Lampinen, and Mattila documents I have collected since I last worked on those ancestors.
2. My husband/tech advisor teaches a Norwegian genealogy research class in connection with our Sons of Norway lodge. Beginning this Saturday, I will start attending those meetings. There I can get some expert help in using the database at the Norwegian national archives. I hope to extend my Bentsen line back in time from the mid-1800’s when my ancestors settled in Vesterålen in the northernmost part of Norway’s Nordland county. Before that, many of them may have lived in southwest Norway, near Bergen.
3. For my Finnish line, I will continue corresponding with recently-discovered cousins in Finland. One of them has posted a tremendous amount of information for our common Lampinen line on WikiTree. I plan to explore the idea of joining that group.
4. The Colorado Genealogical Society, to which I belong, sponsors a writing contest I hope to enter this year. They suggest a couple of themes including Black Sheep—The Skeleton in My Closet for submissions to the contest. I have several black sheep in my dad’s family. It will be fun to tell one of their stories.
5. Another writing project I do every year involves collecting photos and writing a character sketch of an ancestor for distribution to relatives at Christmas. This year’s subject will be my Norwegian great-great grandparents, Karen and Nick Bentsen. They left Vesterålen and homesteaded in Montana in the early 1900’s.

Can I accomplish all this in a year? I do not know, but I am eager to get started. My Scandinavian families may offer an easier research path than I have pursued in recent years. My dad’s line has so many brick wall ancestors, and I have not made any significant breakthroughs there in a long time. Perhaps I can make quicker progress on my mom’s Nordic roots.