We recently connected with Shanna Lund and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Shanna, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Several years ago I started working on my own genealogy. At first, my heritage seemed super boring, being primarily from the Nordics. However, I learned to love the heritage I was given. What started out as a hobby soon became an obsession until finally I was able to trace my ancestors’ roots back to Norway, Sweden, and Finland! I was able to find out exactly what date they left, who they traveled with, where they had stopovers, and how many weeks it took to get to the United States. And once they got here they had to travel by train, not knowing much or any of the language. I found out some of my ancestors survived avalanches and huge fires, were avid reindeer hunters, and fought in WWI, coming home with no injuries or illnesses. All these people were unknown to me until recently. It’s exciting to see their stories start to come to life! Since my ancestors emigrated at a time when it was necessary to fully adapt to their new country, a lot of them severed ties with their past and my generation never knew them until I started researching.
In 2019, I took a trip to Norway with my husband. We met some distant relatives and found the farm where my maiden name, Sletten, comes from! It was profound to see the place where my ancestors lived and where they took the name that’s stayed with my family for generations. The name, “Sletten” means, “plain” or “flat land” and the farm was on flat land surrounded by hills and mountains. It also had a river out front, just a little smaller than the river in my parents’ backyard that is to this day my happy place. While we were on the Sletten farm I could see how difficult farming is on that land and it gave me a greater appreciation for why my ancestors left such a beautiful country. Norway at the time my ancestors emigrated was very poor and farming land was in limited supply.
After we returned from our Norway trip I knew I wanted to help others find their ancestral homelands and connect more with their past! The pandemic hit and I was put on furlough, so during that time of leave I started taking professional genealogy courses and many of my instructors kept saying, “You need to find your niche.” I knew then my focus would be on Nordic genealogy because that’s where I spend most of my time researching so I already know a lot of the ins and outs of researching in this region. I’m always open to helping anyone, regardless of where their ancestors came from or if they know their biological family, but I do feel my experience makes me better-suited to help others’ with a similar ancestry. It’s something that truly brings me joy and fulfillment.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Shanna and my business is The Nordic Genealogist, LLC. I specialize in Nordic and Midwestern genealogy, which is where my personal research has taken me. I originally came to California for the Film Industry and the weather, but after the Film Industry burned me out, I started spending more time on my hobbies. First it was photography, then it became genealogy. Growing up in Minnesota, I found all the Nordic homages dull. But after living in Los Angeles surrounded by so many different cultures, I started to wonder more about my own, which I had taken for granted as a kid. So in 2020 I launched my own business providing genealogical research and trip planning. What sets me apart is my smaller client base, which allows me to be more personal with each new client I have. I think it’s great there are major sites out there that can do what I do on a grander but more general scale but I like that doing this work in my own way enables me to deliver a much more customized experience for each person I help. I love being able to provide a service that people might not have realized they wanted, only to find out it’s far more meaningful than they ever expected.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
This year I’ve helped several clients, but most recently there were a few that traveled to Norway in August & September 2022. A couple were short-term clients that only needed help with trip planning but the most exciting one for me was my 2nd cousin, Megan, who traveled to Norway with her mom and son. They knew they would visit the Sletten farm but also wanted to find Megan’s maternal ancestors’ farms. I did several rounds of research for her and not only did I find the farms where her 2nd great-grandparents were born and raised, but I also got permission from the current farm owners to let Megan and her family visit! Not only were they super nice but they were also very excited to share what they knew about their farm’s history with Megan’s family. One of the homes was still standing from 1806 and the current owners have been on a mission to restore it to much of its original designs. They recently found that the paint they uncovered was most likely from Megan’s 2nd great-grandmother! The storehouse on this same farm was also built in 1801, presumably built by Megan’s 2nd great-grandfather. On another farm, there was a berry bush that’s been around for at least 150 years so it was probably planted by Megan’s family. All these things and more brought tears of joy and a sense of fulfillment like none other to my extended family. Seeing such success on this trip only inspired me more to keep doing what I’m doing.
Megan later informed me that several of her friends asked her how she managed this trip and she told them what I do and now there are others planning on saving up in hopes to do this kind of trip for their family. I haven’t spent a lot of time on advertising so all of my business so far has come from word-of-mouth.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When I started taking professional genealogy courses I realized much of how I had been doing genealogy was unorganized, sloppy, and highly questionable in terms of finding the correct people. Like most people starting out in this field as a hobby, I followed the shaky green leaves in Ancestry.com and traced my lineage back to the 1700s in a very short amount of time. That gave me excitement and motivation to keep doing this. When I logged into FamilySearch I entered in my husband’s name and it took his tree all the way back to Adam and Eve. While that was fun, it was at that point that I realized, just like everything online, you can’t trust it without proper analysis. While I use genealogy sites regularly and find them to be incredibly helpful tools, I now know I need to slow down, take detailed notes, and not accept every hint or smart match that comes my way. After all, they are just hints.
A lot of times a hint will pop up from users’ public tree data. If you’re researching Jane Doe, for example, it might suggest her father is John Doe. You’ll click “Review” and see that John is listed as Jane’s father in 10 family trees and think, “I’ve found her father! Ten others have said he is her father.” But if instead of clicking “Save to your tree” you click through each individual tree to find out where the information is coming from, you’ll often see that there is no documentation supporting how each user figured out John was her father. So if you accept that hint as correct, it might now show up in someone else’s hints as 11 trees suggesting John Doe is the correct parent. And it continues each time someone accepts the same hint. It’s similar to the “illusion of truth effect” where the more something is presented as true, the more it gets solidified as truth even if it’s not true. So I had to learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of others and not just follow the hints wherever they lead. I started my tree over from scratch with a research log and a research report that I would keep filling in as I went couple by couple. I note addresses, occupations, ages, friends, family, etc. I squeeze all the clues I can from each source and that helps me especially when it comes to ancestors that have the same or very similar names, or with very common names in general. Going slow was a pain at first but now I can’t do it any other way. It takes patience and time but it pays off in the end. Now I can feel confident declining hints that I know are wrong because I have enough evidence surrounding the person I’m researching. And at the conclusion of my research, I have a written report that can be shared with friends and family!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thenordic-genealogist.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenordicgenealogist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenordicgenealogist
Image Credits
Jessica Sterling Shanna Lund Nina Takvannsbukt