24 Feb 2021

This is the background to the Hvaal connection.

I was looking over mine and my Dad’s Ancestry DNA results and noticed how strong the Scandinavian portion was. I had seen this previously and also on 23andme but it suddenly struck me that the results were referring to recent history, not distant origins as I had thought. In fact the level of Norwegian influence was the largest in my DNA Ethnicity profile:

• 38% Norway, clustered on Eastern Norway: Telemark-Buskerud Border / Buskerud / Rollag. Tinn & Notodden / Rollag, Sigdal, Flesberg & Krødsherad
• 36% England & Northwestern Europe, clustered on East of England: East Anglia
• 18% Scotland
• 3% Indigenous Americas—Mexico
• 2% Greece & Albania
• 2% Ireland
• 1% Sweden

I began looking at some of the DNA matches on the Ancestry site, particularly those with Scandanavian looking names. None of these seemed to match an existing part of our trees so I felt this must be an undiscovered part of our ancestry. The thought immediately occurred to me that this could be a connection with my Dad’s unknown father.

For all of his life my Dad has believed that his father was a French soldier who had a short relationship with his mother in 1941. She had been working in Cambridge at that time and later moved to Bath in Somerset to give birth to my Dad. She never knew the man’s full name but said that he had been called Jean Michel, naming my Dad after him: Michael John. After years of searching, my Dad has never found a trace of his father. Then the DNA results showed no French ancestry at all, which was surprising to us both.

I took a closer look at the Scandinavian matches, wondering if I could trace any of them back to the UK. One close connection in particular stood out: Joyce Crooks. Ancestry predicted she was a 2-3rd cousin on my father’s side with a 69% chance of being a 2nd cousin, 1st cousin 2x removed or half 1st cousin 1x removed. This meant that she could be my Dad’s cousin, the child of one of his father’s siblings.

From her public tree I could infer she was born Joyce Wall in 1936 in Seattle, her parents were Walter Wall born 1914 in Seattle and Evelyn Alfares born 1916 near to Seattle. Walter Wall’s parents were Halvdan Volman Larsen Hvaal Hvaal and Karoline Olausen Kongelf, both born in Norway.

I reconstructed this tree in my own account and then used Ancestry’s hints and search to extend the tree backwards. I found that Walter Wall had a brother Haakon also born in Seattle. Their parents had emigrated from Norway in 1909. Halfdan Larson Hvaal had been a carpenter baptised in Lardal, Vestfold, Norway in 1883¹. He married Karoline Olausen Konglelf in 1912 and was natiralized in 1913.

My first thought was that either Walter or his brother Haakon could have been my grandfather. But I wasn’t able to place them in Europe. I found that both had been drafted to serve in WW2 as part of the peacetime selective draft that President Roosevelt had instigated in 1940. Both men’s draft is dated 16 Oct 1940² but there is no record of Walter serving in the military. Haakon enlisted in the Navy on 11 Apr 1945³

In addition, the U.S. didn’t enter the war until 8 Dec 1941 and the first troops didn’t arrive until 26 Jan 1942. My Dad was probably conceived in December 1941 so it’s unlikely that his father was from the U.S.

I traced the family back a generation and started looking at Walter and Haakon’s parents families to see if I could find a cousin who I could to England in 1941. By sheer luck I stumbled across a marriage of an Emil Gustav Hvaal in London in March 1942. I ordered it straight away.

I identified this Emil Gustav Hvaal as the cousin of Walter and Haakon Wall, the son of Halfdan’s brother Lauritz. I felt that this was the strongest lead yet. But the problem was that this marriage was in London and my Dad was conceived in Cambridge.

I then discovered that Emil Gustav Hvaal had been recruited by the Special Operations Executive and sent back to Norway as an undercover agent. I spent some time researching the Norwegian department of SOE and learned that an old house named Grendon Hall had been used as the base of operations for the Scandinavian agents. Grendon Hall is just a few miles from Cambridge. This was the link I had been looking for. I now had good reason to believe that Emil Gustav Hvaal could have been in Cambridge in 1941 at the time my grandmother was working there.

Another thing that might be significant or may simply be coincidence is that my grandmother was working at the Pye radio factory in Cambridge and Gustav Emil was a radio operator. It’s possible that he was sent to Cambridge to be trained in the use of the radio equipment they were producing.

I was fairly confident in the connections by now and I arranged a Zoom call with my Dad to take him through it. It was exciting being able to draw these connections and provide him with the possibility of knowing who his father was after all these years. He was convinced that we were onto something and now we are investigating it in a lot more detail.