Connecting Past and Present

Johan Stenslie ’21
Genealogist, Stone Hill Genealogy & Family History
Bergen, Norway
Major: Social Studies Education

From his home in Bergen, Norway, Johan Stenslie ’21 spends his time crafting stories about the past.

Stenslie makes his living as a genealogist, helping his clients connect with faces, places, and stories that often die with the relatives that hold them. A quick look at his business Facebook page, Stone Hill Genealogy & Family History, immediately shows his dedication. It’s not just dates and names he finds; it’s a personality, a farmhouse, a familial scandal, a new connection.

Stenslie stumbled into this passion after graduating from Concordia. With a bachelor’s degree in social studies education, Stenslie started his professional life as a full-time substitute teacher of history at Horizon Middle School in Moorhead. The work was consistent, the pay was good, and the lack of classroom prep he needed to do allowed him extra free time. His father, Peder ’85, also a history teacher, had always been interested in genealogy and explored his own family histories. In his free time, Stenslie decided to start researching his mother’s family history.

“I felt bad for any friends I had at the time,” he jokes. “I could wake up at 6 in the morning and just do research. If it was a weekend, I could keep researching until midnight or 2 in the morning. It was so hard to stop. It was the first thought I had when I woke up and the last thought before I went to bed. For the following two years, I was doing research nonstop. Eventually, I realized I was fairly skilled at this.”

Stenslie also has the advantage of being young and tech savvy — he knows where to find sources and how to keep up with all the changes happening in genealogy. There is also the fact of familial connection; his mom, Tone-Lise (Gjertsen) ’85, comes from Norway and many family members still live there. This led Stenslie to develop an intimate connection and knowledge of both the U.S. and Norway.

Because of his mom, Stenslie and his siblings grew up speaking Norwegian at home. Historical records written in Norwegian don’t present a barrier. This makes Stenslie extra useful to his clients back in the States — many of whom have lost the language through generations.

In one case, Stenslie was able to connect a family with the unique story of their family’s old farm.

“There’s a small island that their ancestors lived on right before they left Norway,” he said. “So the entire island ended up being named after the farm they established there because their ancestors were the first ones to live on that tiny island.”

It’s stories like this that Stenslie loves to help people find. His passion for history is what prompts his desire to go beyond the dates. Stenslie rarely found history compelling when he attended school.

I tried to craft history in a way that would be engaging to the students.

“In my humble opinion, teachers failed to really focus on what was important about history and what it means to be human,” he said. “When I was teaching, I tried to craft history in a way that would be engaging to the students. That’s the most important skill that’s transferred to genealogy.”

He doesn’t stop at where a person was born or their profession. Instead, he crafts a narrative about what their life might have been like. Did they have children out of wedlock? Was their family farm struggling? Were they good students? What music might they have heard? What did they look like?

Most of Stenslie’s clients are American and, for many, this knowledge is priceless. There’s a desire to know what life was like for the generations before and a curiosity about a life lived across the ocean.

A similar desire for deeper knowledge ultimately propelled Stenslie from his familiar home in Mandan, North Dakota, to Norway.

“My Norwegian is good, but it doesn’t compare to my English. I’m young; I don’t have children. If there was a time to live in Norway, it would be now,” he said. “Then I thought, how would I support myself? I started doing genealogy as a business and, if that didn’t work, I thought I’d be a substitute teacher in Norway. But from the first client I booked after I moved here in January of last year, I’ve been fully booked up until now.”

Stenslie is loving his time exploring Norway. However, he’s also quick to clarify that he loves teaching and can’t wait to return to it someday. Even among the wild mountains surrounding Bergen, Stenslie finds he misses the North Dakota prairies he grew up in.

“I love it here, but my dream is still to return to North Dakota. I do miss the prairies and the open skies,” he said. “Meanwhile, Bergen is such an incredible city. It’s beautiful, and I am just so grateful to be here.”

^{Published September 2025}