A child of Grønland
Bergliot was born on 12 March 1902 and baptized at Grønland on 31 August. Her baptism records the full name Bergljot Signora Helene. Bergliot and Bergljot are spelling variants; Helene, absent from some later records, belongs to her recorded name.
Her parents had married at Gamle Aker on 26 January that year. The baptism gives their home as Urtegata 12. Gustav was a dockworker, and both parents were born in 1877. Sofie Anstensen, a widow, appears among the baptism sponsors. Together with Marie's own baptism and the later census household, the records connect this sponsor to Bergliot's maternal grandmother.
Three generations at Nordal Bruns gate
Gustav died on 31 January 1907, while Bergliot was still four. His death notification says that he left his wife Marie Sofie and one minor child. It names their home at Hausmannsgate 30 and reports no estate assets.
The 1910 census finds eight-year-old Bergliot with Marie and her grandmother in apartment 19 at Nordal Bruns gate 3. They shared its two rooms and one kitchen with Marie's sister Cecilia, her husband Paul Nessjø and their infant son Arne. All six relatives occupied the same apartment, although the census counted them as two separately numbered households. Sofie Gurine Anstensen headed the household that included Marie and Bergliot and worked as a cleaning woman. This was a shared family home, a closer connection than simply living in the same building.
July 1911
The Gamle Aker death register records Bergliot's death on 16 July 1911 and burial on 20 July. She was nine years, four months and four days old. It identifies her by her full name, her deceased father Gustav Hansen and the family's Nordal Bruns gate address.
The cause is written as Poliomyelitis acuta, acute poliomyelitis, or polio. A marginal note appears to say that she died in Gjøvik. That reading remains probable. The research has not securely identified a hospital, cemetery or grave, and the following abbreviation in the register is too uncertain to supply one.
The half sister Alfhild never knew
Alfhild's working birth date is 14 November 1914, more than three years after Bergliot died. A year in the baptism manuscript remains disputed; the transcription and her 1953 travel record support 1914. The half sisters shared Marie as their mother but did not grow up together. Alfhild's middle name may have commemorated Bergliot; no record found states that intention.
Marie also had an earlier son, Sigurd, who died in infancy in 1894, and later children Ruth, Alf and Ragna with Olaus Johnsen. Remembering the children who died young gives a fuller account of the family than a tree built only from surviving adult households.
Separating two Bergliots
A passenger hint once suggested that Bergliot sailed to New York in 1920. That traveler was a different young woman, born on 21 October 1902 and living in Trøgstad. Bergliot Signora Helene had died nine years earlier. The American relatives, destination and physical description attached to that passenger do not belong to this child, and a later 1989 death attachment likewise conflicts with her original death record.
