Poulsbo AYPE Viking #10: Tenander Iversen

Tenander Iversen, of Poulsbo, Washington, was part of the "Viking" contingent to represent his community in the Norway Day parade at the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition (AYPE) in Seattle. See the explanatory blog entry for this series: Poulsbo Vikings at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, 1909.

Tenander Iversen was born in December 1864 to Iver Torkolson and Karen Knutson in Tysfjord, Norway.  He arrived in America in about 1887, and became a naturalized citizen about ten years later.  In Astoria, Oregon, he worked as a day laborer, and married Karen Hansen there on August 14, 1897.  The couple relocated to the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington in about 1901.  They had four children:  Gudrun (Nelson), Clifford, Rudolph ("Rudie"), and Arthur ("Art").  Rudie and Art continued to live in Poulsbo to help with the family livelihood.

Iversen ran a butcher shop on Front Street in Poulsbo.  Part of the shop extended out over the bay so that meat and fish scraps could be dumped at will.  No doubt, the local marine life was quite content with that arrangement.

The specialty of the Iversen butcher shop was lutefisk, which is brined and reconstituted dried fish.  It is a traditional Norwegian food that has been known to separate real Vikings from the wannabes.  Each fall when schooners returned to Poulsbo from the Bering Sea, Iversen piled salt-dried cod--the main ingredient for lutefisk--in front of his shop.  Rumor has it that the practice ended after a few local dogs were seen marking their territory there.

Lutefisk produced by the Iversens was said to be "light, tender, and melted in your mouth."  It was a popular addition to community dinners around the Puget Sound for many decades.  So, it seems a bit strange that Mr. and Mrs. Tenander Iversen once donated a large bologna to a Poulsbo Orphans Home Thanksgiving dinner.  Perhaps the discerning children did not welcome lutefisk as much as their elders from the old country?

After a long life as a Poulsbo businessman, Tenander Iversen passed away at the age of eighty-three on August 19, 1948.  He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Bremerton, Washington.


Sources:

--Ancestry.com.  Oregon, County Marriage Records, 1851-1975 [database on-line].

--Ancestry.com.  U.S., 1940 Federal Census, Poulsbo, Kitsap, Washington [database on-line].

--Driscoll, Judy. "Stories of Early Poulsbo Thanksgivings," Kitsap Sun, November 18, 2008, http://archive.kitsapsun.com/news/stories-of-early-poulsbo-thanksgivings-ep-421472528-358366411.html/.

--Driscoll, Judy. "The Iversen Brothers Were Local Lutefisk Pioneers," North Kitsap Herald, October 18, 2013, p.A11, https://issuu.com/pnwmarketplace/docs/i20131017134556883.

--Find-a-Grave (Tenander Iversen), https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/157908077.

--Poulsbo Centennial Book Committee.  Poulsbo:  Its First Hundred Years (The Committee:  Silverdale, Washington), 1986.

--U.S. Federal Census, Poulsbo, Washington, 1910-1940.

--Washington Death Index, 1940-2014.

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Chery Kinnick