The Nome Nugget

Seppala Feted
And Feasted In
Native Norway

(Jessen's Weekly)

Leonhard Seppala, famous pioneer dog musher and long time Fairbanks resident, returned to Seattle recently from a seven-month visit to Norway which he had left in 1900 for Alaska. He was feted and feasted.

In mid-Atlantic, according to the Alaska Weekly, a cable announced that members of the Oslo Kennel Club wished to meet him.

He was escorted to the Grand Hotel where the entire club held a reception to welcome him home.

He was made an honorary member of a half dozen organizations --the Norwegian Kennel Club, Sled Dog Club, Norwegian Peoples' First Aid Club, Trekkhund Club, Tromso Trekkhund Club and others. They were delighted with his pictures of life in Alaska.

In Oslo he helped celebrate the 17th of May which is equivalent to the American 4th of July. He met the champion long-distance woman skier, Solveig Iversen, also a dog-team driver, at a reception.

She gave him flowers in behalf of the clubs of Oslo, accompanied by a Norwegian bear hug.

When he left Oslo on May 18 for his family home at Skjervoy it was still snowing. He had organized a Youth Club in 1898, and its members were on the dock to greet him with a brass band of 14 men from the original group.

Seppala still owns the family home in Skjervoy, built about 75 years ago. It was used as German headquarters during the last war and practically everything was stolen. One of his friends, however, managed to conceal a ring of Alaska gold that Seppala had given his father in 1903.

At Lyngenfjord, his birthplace, the town gave a reception in his honor and everyone joined in the oldtime dances.

With cousins by the dozens and hosts of relatives in northern Norway, Seppala climbed mountains, basked in the sunshine and was popular with the children of former playmates and his own kin as he told stories of Alaska.

He met many friends in Norway he has known in Nome who had returned to Norway to live permanently, all of whom are doing well.