Gunnar and Marie Lund Biographies

Gunnar and Marie Lund Biographies

• Undated (Creation)

Two biographies: one of Gunnar Lund and one of Marie Vognild Lund as well as copies of pictures of each of them. Also included is a letter dated 1990 from Roald Lund to Capt. Gunnar Olsborg explaining that he made corrections to the dates in the biographical sketch.

Biographical Note

Marie Pauline Vognild was born in Vardø, Finnmark, Norway in January 1870 to Johan Vognild, a watchmaker, and Eva Sande Vognild. In early childhood her parents moved to Archangel, Russia, with their business. Educated by her governess, Marie, she spoke Russian, German, French, and English fluently. When her parents died she and her sister lived in Oppdal, Norway, with relatives and then moved to Chicago, Illinois, to live with their uncle. She attended the S.T. Taylor School of dress design and opened a dressmaking establishment in Evanston, Illinois. She gave up the business in 1900 and married Gunnar Lund in Seattle, Washington, who became the editor of Seattle’s weekly Norwegian language paper, Washington Posten. She organized and became involved in service organizations, founding and presiding over Barnevene, which became the Norwegian Hospital Association, as well as the Daughters of Norway Valkyrien Lodge. She was also an active church member at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seattle, Washington, presided over the Pacific Coast Grand Lodge, the Federated Church Women, and the Belmont Unit of the Music and Art Foundation, and contributed to many other local Norwegian culture and heritage events, including directing 17th of May Pageants and hosting explorer Roald Amundsen's Fram crew. She received the highest award of the American Red Cross for her World War I work, during which she organized a speaker's bureau, and was decorated by King Haakon of Norway for organizing a 1925 celebration in Seattle for the first Norwegians in America. When Gunnar died in 1940, she also became acting publisher of the Washington Posten, and earlier also contributed a series of articles to the newspaper that were reprinted as the book Dette er Norge (This is Norway). She and her husband had three children and she was active until her health failed. She died in 1943.

Gunerius Emanuel Abrahamson was born in 1866 in Stavanger, Norway. He immigrated to America in 1889 through Ellis Island, at the age of 23 and changed his name to Gunnar Lund (his mother’s family name). While he was educated in law, Gunnar began work in Seattle and Oregon laying railroad tracks, and loading lumber schooners, and doing other forms of manual labor. In 1893 he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and started his own dairy business, teaching English to Norwegian newcomers at night, and it was there that he met his wife Marie Vognild. From 1900 until 1905 he lived in Seattle doing more manual labor jobs, until he purchased the Washington Posten paper and became its chief editor, focusing its articles on helping its Norwegian immigrant readership become more accustomed to American life while maintaining ties to their native Norway. The paper expanded its circulation into Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas. Gunnar was also a founding member of the Leif Erikson Lodge and its first vie-president, as well as a founding member of the Norwegian Commercial Club. He was also actively involved in the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association and Signma Delta Chi, and was made a knight of the Order of St. Olav. He died in 1940.