This is the story of your heritage through the Mattson and Neely families, whose unlikely blending occurred during World War II.
Our Mattson and Halverson families emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in the late 1870s. The Mattsons were farmers and loggers from the Västerdalälven valley, in the western mountain ranges hard against Norway – an area where the runic alphabet was still known in the 19th century. The Halversons (an assumed name for the voyage to America) were people of the ‘High Coast’, the western fjords of the Bothian Sea eastern Sweden. Also from Jämtland – a wild northern area where outlaw Vikings settled. The ‘Halversons left Sweden after years of living in Stockholm. Swedish records do not commonly go further back than the 16th century, the general limit to the ancestors included here. Both of these families made the journey America separately, made settled in central Minnesota just a few miles apart In a land of many Swedes. Starting on farms, they soon moved to nearby towns.
All ancesters of our Neely and Warner families have been in North America for centuries. This ranges from 1609 Jamestown Colony up to Christinah B. Kinder, who was born at sea enroute to America in 1738. Many families from the southeasten seaboard and backcountry, fought in the American Revolution, afterwards migrating southwest into Spanish West Florida (before the Louisiana Purchase), fought the War of 1812, and settled in Mississippi and Louisiana. Some branches of the family are traced back here well over a thousand years, and include Viking, Scot/Pict, and English royalties.
Saga – a history, narrative of events, exploits and achievements – is the story of family. Traditionally, Nordic peoples used sagas to record and preserve their culture and the things they thought were important for future generations. Skalds (storytellers), would recount these tales concerning who was related to who, going back generations, and included dramatic events, battles, and the migrations of people. While primarily set in Scandinavia, the sagas follow their characters’ adventures abroad, through the British Isles, Europe, and North America. This is the purpose of this website – to recount what is known of our ancestors, their adventure and struggles.
It is appropriate to use this vehicle of Saga. Classical sagas were written down in 13th century Iceland, less this oral history of the Nordic people be lost in time. One of these is the Orkneyinga Saga – the story of the Viking earls of the Orkney Islands. This is for us a family history (through several branches of our tree). Most of the important characters in it are our ancestors, and it can still serve today as a guidebook to where events that it describes took place in those islands, as well as northern Scotland, and Ireland. This seems fitting for this present recounting of family history. Another family source is the Heimskingla Saga, which concerns the legendary kings of Sweden and Norway, many who were our direct ancestors.
The tale continues down through time. This story of your ancestors, combined with those of other branches of your family tree, is the heritage you are responsible to pass on. It was the job of storyteller, the skald, to remember and re-tell these stories, to keep this knowledge alive. May you be that skald for your children’s children.
To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of our ancestors, is to build our identities. – Frank Delaney
We all carry inside us, people who came before us. ~ Liam Callanan
The sacrifice our ancestors gave yesterday, gave us today and our tomorrow. —Stephen Robert Kuta
When our hearts turn to our ancestors, something changes inside us. We feel part of something greater than ourselves. —Russell M. Nelson
Family is walking with you, always.