Issue link: https://imageup.uberflip.com/i/956043
18 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | APRIL 2018 By Dick Roppé, Resident I was looking through some of my genealogy materials, getting ready for last month's genealogy meeting, and ran across a picture of me in Norway, posing with a statue of Edvard Grieg. I dwarfed the iconic Norwegian composer. Turns out the statue was life-sized and Grieg stood at only 5'0". So, you ask, what was I doing in Norway? My father was 100% Norwegian so that makes me (even at 6'6") half a Norwegian. Two of my cousins and I scheduled a trip to Norway way back in 1998 to get a sense of our ancestry. In a touch of irony, the tour leader happened to be a Roppé. In fact his first name was Sydney. Unusual? Maybe! Fact is, my father had the same first name with the same spelling. We were cousins with the same great-grandfather. Sydney, our guide, made arrangements for us to visit the area where the Roppés lived. At an outdoor museum we had the chance to see a cottage that housed farm workers on the Roppé farm. Notice the grass roof. A sod roof, or turf roof, is a traditional Scandinavian type of roof covered with sod on top of several layers of birch bark on gently sloping wooden roof boards. Green roofs serve several purposes such as absorbing rainwater, providing insulation and creating a habitat for wildlife. Until the late 19th century, it was the most common roof on rural log houses in Norway and large parts of the rest of Scandinavia. Today, green roofs are also referred to as eco-roofs. A large number of Norwegians who migrated to America took as surnames the farm name from whence they came. My father's mother was from the Rognlie farm and that became her surname. As did many early Norwegians, the Roppés settled in Minnesota. In 1998 Sydney (our guide) still lived in the small town of Mabel, Minnesota – population 780 – where the Roppés became prominent members of the community. Before he died, cousin Sydney passed along several pieces of information that helped fill in some of my family history. I have since learned that the pronunciation of my last name is not a true Norwegian pronunciation. I checked online and the language with the closest pronunciation is - drum roll please - Chinese! ? (Ain't that a kick?) DIGGING UP YOUR ROOTS