Uf-da! What a name!

(By Erik)

Tryggestad (we pronounce it “TRIG-es-tad,” but the actual pronunciation is closer to the two-syllable “TRIG-schted”) is Norwegian.

It’s the name of a small farming village in Norway — the home of my great-grandfather. “Trygg” is the Norwegian word for “safe.” (There’s a Norwegian company called Trygg Playground Co. that does business here in the States. They make playground equipment, so obviously having “safe” in their name was a good idea.)

Evidently the village was named “safe town” because it was a refuge from the avalanche-prone mountains that surround it.

For a long time we thought my great-grandfather’s name was Ole Iverson (because his father’s name was Iver), and he changed his name when he came to the United States, but I believe we’ve since found some records from Norway where he’s referred to as Ole Tryggestad. It’s a family name still in use in Norway today.

Great-grandpa came to the United States in 1910. And people have been mispronouncing his name ever since.

Two of Ole’s uncles, Andres and Nils Tryggestad, came to America in the 1870s. Their offspring settled in the Michigan, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin. Today there’s a bunch of Tryggestads up in those parts. (There’s even another Erik Tryggestad, believe it or not. I think he works with lasers.)

Ole Tryggestad settled in South Dakota and raised a family. His son, Irvin Orville Tryggestad, married Margaret Helen Loen, also the child of Norwegian immigrants. They moved to Sioux Falls, S.D., and raised three sons. The oldest, Thomas Nolan Tryggestad, is my dad (who, incidentally, hates cold weather and suffers from a malady our family refers to as “the hard chill”).

Dad joined the Air Force and moved to Washington, D.C., where he met my mom, Karen Puckett, from East Tennessee. My sister, Amy, and I were born in Alexandria, Va. (I'm the oldest.)

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