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HOME | STORIES FROM NORWAY | STORIES FROM BEAR LAKE | PHOTOS | LINKS | CONTACTThe Munthe Sisters (1758-1805)Anna Margrete (1758-1839) and Mette Andrea (1762-1805) are two of the three sisters who made the Thomsen family quilt now at the Minnesota State Historical Society. Mette Andrea was Marie Magdalene Thomsen's grandmother. The third sister isn’t known, but I suspect it was Marie Sophie Brun Munthe (1760-1840). She was born between the other two women, and it seems natural that three sisters roughly the same age would work on the project together.
The whole-cloth quilt has two cut-out corners for use on a four-poster bed. The top is an apple-green silk with an intricate design featuring a rose center encircled by a scroll-and-shell pattern. The reverse side is a print with small red flowers and leaf tracery. Family lore says the quilt was made in the late 1760s, but I think that estimate is too early by about 10 or 15 years. If the quilt was made in 1769, Anna Margarete would have been 11 years old and Mette Andrea 7. The work seems too difficult for girls that age, but young women often made such quilts in preparation for marriage. The quilt was handed down from Mette Andrea to Ingeborg Marie Olsen to Marie Magdalene Thomsen, who brought it to America in 1882. Marie Magdalene gave it to her oldest son, Tolleif George, who handed it on to his oldest daughter, Marie Gurine Thomsen. She donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1964. Based on Alf Craner's book 'Jordbundet og Himmelvendt' and an Olsen Family genealogy, translated and adapted by Keith Thomsen
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