Welcome to Rossland, Norway

In southwest Norway lies the village of Rossland. Wikipedia tells us it’s also known as Vikebø and had a population in 2019 of 333. It’s on the northern part of the island of Holsnøy, in Alver municipality, Vestland county, on the shores of Rosslandspollen bay. Judging from the map below, Rossland is actually on the north end of the bay and Vikebø is on the south end. Bergen is 43 km away.

Google Street View (below) lets us drive along Rosslandvegen (Rossland road) to explore the town. It’s a very pretty rural area that appears primarily residential. It has a post office and a school, labelled “Rossland skule” on the map, but otherwise there are few obvious businesses or public amenities.

I’ve long wondered when the village was named and who its namesake was. While I still don’t know the answers to those questions, it turns out Rossland (also spelled Rosland) is an Anglicized form of the Norwegian surname Røyseland or Røysland. According to the Dictionary of American Family Names, it is a “habitational name from about 30 farmsteads mainly in Agder named from Old Norse reysi ‘heap of stones’ + land ‘(piece of) land farmstead.’”

What’s more, some Norwegians named Rossland came to BC. Gunder Rossland arrived in Canada around 1900 and in BC in 1908. He married a Finnish woman named Sabe Sasi, and they had a couple of children. Sabe died in 1923 but Gunder later remarried. Gunder died in 1955 in North Vancouver. His death registration said his father’s name was John.

There was also Thomas Torkleson Rossland, born in Norway in 1906. Intriguingly, when he got married in Vancouver in 1956, a newspaper noted he was the “son of the late Mr. and Mrs. T. Rossland of Rossland, Norway.” So he was part of the village’s namesake family. Sadly, he died the same year as his wedding, age 49. His death registration didn’t give his parents’ names or specify his exact birthplace.

Some people with the surname Rosland lived in BC as well, including Tonnas (Thomas) Rosland, who was born in Stavanger, Norway in 1896. He married fellow Norwegian immigrant Edwina Erikson in Trail in 1928 and they moved to Rossland, where they raised five daughters. Tonnas died in 1951, age 54. Edwina outlived him by 57 years. She died in 2008, age 108! While several stories were published about Edwina after she turned 100, none remarked on the fact her surname almost matched the place where she lived.

(There are still some phone listings in Alberta for people with the surname Rosland, but no one named Rossland is left in Canada, at least with a landline.)

The naming of Rossland, BC had nothing to do with Norway. It’s after Ross Thompson, who preempted the townsite. Thompson was born in Ontario, of Scottish descent. But coincidentally, Rossland has a big Norwegian connection: Olaus Jeldness is credited with introducing skiing to the area. His statue stands on Columbia Avenue, and Mount Jeldness is named after him.

The Olaus Jeldness statue.

Jeldness was from Stangvik, more than 550 km from Rossland, Norway, so there’s no real reason to believe he would have connected the two Rosslands in his mind. I’m not even sure how long the Norwegian Rossland has been on the map, although I found an obituary for a woman said to have been born there in 1839.

In 1896, Norway Mountain, about 17 miles north of Rossland, BC, was the subject of mining speculation. I don’t know how the mountain got its name, but it’s not official. I don’t know what it’s called today.

There was also a Norway mining claim half a mile from Trail that belonged in 1898 to the Bruce Gold Mining Co. of Rossland. It didn’t amount to much at the time, but nearly 40 years later, it produced a little silver. I don’t know how it got its name either.

In a previous post, I looked at people with Rossland as their first or middle name.