My Dalager Ancestry

Icebergs off the coast of Greenland.

Christopher Carl Dalager was born April 8, 1726 at Dragsminde, Rødby, Denmark, the son of Jens Laursen Dalager and Anna Goës. Some time after 1752 he sailed to Grønland as a “pioneer” of the Danish colony. On May 24, 1759 he married an indigenous Grønlander named Juliane Marie at the village of Christianshåb. It was very common in those days for indigenous people to receive Christian names from European missionaries. Juliane Marie was most likely named for the Danish queen who ascended the throne in 1752. Her true birth name was probably never recorded and subsequently lost forever.

Christopher and Juliane Marie lived at the village of Sarqaq (later named Saqqaq) on the western shore of Grønland. There she gave birth to a son, Mathias Ferslev Dalager some time in 1769.

Mathias left Grønland in 1789 and studied at the Royal Academy of Arts at Copenhagen. He studied art until 1792 and then returned to the land of his birth. As it turns out, the hunter families of Grønland had little interest in his paintings, so he left once again and became a teacher of art in Trondheim, Norway. He mostly painted scenes of ocean ports and ships. Some of his works are still visible online.

Mathias became the father of many children, including my ancestor. According to some sources, I descend from his son Frederik Dalager; other sources claim I descend from his other son Mathias Anton Dalager. I still seek confirmation of the true father.

One of the Dalager sons fathered my ancestor Carolina Dalager. The generations from Carolina Dalager were:

Iver Olsen
Odin Bernhard Olsen
Donald Engwald Olsen
Alice Elizabeth Olsen
Shelly Marie Nichols
Me.

And that’s the story of my Dalager ancestry.