Jesse Mullan

Falla, det gamle huset

Written on Wednesday, the 15^th of December, 2010 at 12:31 am and was filed under: Diversions

So I emailed a pastor from Norway, and she even responded!

Hello from the USA! I have been researching the history of my family, and I think that Falla is the farm from which my great-great-grandfather emigrated.

In this article, it looks like you performed a church service at the
farm. Is there anything that you can tell me about it?

Thank you!

But, would she respond?

Yes. We celebrated an outdoor church service at the Falla farm last August.
Quite many were gathered there.
In former days the Falla farm was located in the community of Gran, Hadeland, and it was a quite big forest farm (big after Norwegian standards in those days). However, borders between Gran and Hurdal were changed many years ago, and after that the farm was located in Hurdal, as it is today.

Today Falla is owned by Mathisen Eidsvoll Verk, wich is a private family company that owns much of the forest land in Hurdal and surrounding communities. Nobody lives at Falla any longer, but the Andersen family rent it for vacation purpose. They invited the Hurdal congregation to have a summer service at Falla. The house has simpel electricity. No indoor bathroom or other modern facilities.

The house for cows and horses is still there, and also the barn for storing hay. The soil is not kept for farm harvesting any more. There is grass around the houses and forest is planted at former farmland. The weather was fine, and we had a nice celebration there. You can go by car to Falla, but the road is not very good for cars. Consequently many of us walked up there, at a nice path through the old forest. In former days they did not have cars, and the old path was for people and horses. From the main road it is about 1/2 hour’s walk.

If anyone is interested, I’ll post the results of our correspondence.