An on-line event via ZOOM with pre-registration required.

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Photo courtesy of Eric Stavney

An ocean-going ship has long been a metaphor for a journey, literal or spiritual, and model ships are still found in some Scandinavian Churches today. It was on a tall ship that immigrants from Scandinavia came to America, carrying their prized possessions in storage trunks, adorned with colorful flowers and vines – an art form called rosemaling.

Eric Stavney, our speaker will  trace the origins of rosemaling in Norway and then in the United States, and learn about a group of rosemalers and parishioners who renovated the Glendale Lutheran Church chapel with rosemaling paintings. But after 25 years, the congregation, largely of Scandinavian descent, moved away or passed away, leading eventually to the sale of the church property in Burien, Washington State (USA) in 2023. The rosemaled panels and decorations, which included a model ship, were given away or returned to their owners – one church received and hung up the ship in their building.  Lastly, Eric recounts his conversations with people who used to call Glendale Lutheran their spiritual home and asked them what that church life meant to them, He also met someone from Peace Lutheran who received the ship that hung in Glendale Lutheran and considers what “community” means in today’s world.

 About our speaker:

Eric Stavney is a journalist, teacher, and promoter of Nordic culture. He earned a degree in Norwegian at the University of Washington and has co-hosted the Scandinavian Hour radio show on KKNW AM in Seattle.  In 2019, he started reading Nordic folktales to a global audience, who somehow found them engaging, inspirational, and fun. That led to interviews with interesting people with a Nordic connection, forming the basis of his podcast Nordic on Tap at nordicontap.com