Bjug Harstad

Bjug Harstad
Born	(1848-12-17)December 17, 1848 Setesdal, Norway
Died	June 20, 1933(1933-06-20) (aged 0)

Reverend Bjug Harstad (December 17, 1848 – June 20, 1933) was a Lutheran pastor and founding father of Pacific Lutheran University.

Bjug Aanondson was born on December 17, 1848 on a farm named Harstad near Valle, Setesdal, Norway. Bjug was one of ten children and his family was very poor.

In 1861 his family immigrated to America, seven years after the eldest son, Kittel. Bjug was a student at Luther College from 1865 to 1871. There he changed his last name to Harstad upon a suggestion from the president of the college. He studied theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis from 1871 to 1874 and it was his experiences there that became the model for the rest of Bjug’s scholarly and religious life. After seminary, he traveled as a pastor to remote places in Minnesota where he built schools and churches.

Bjug Harstad married Guro Svensdatter Omlid in 1877 and from 1877 to 1891 he was pastor and missionary in Maryville, North Dakota, and the Red River Valley. He was the founder of seventeen congregations; president of the Minnesota District (1884-1892); and founder of three academies: Franklin School (1878), Gran Boarding School (1880), and the Bruflat Academy (1889), all in North Dakota.

The church sent Bjug Harstad to the Pacific Coast in 1889 to start a school. He visited Portland, Seattle and Tacoma and when he returned to Minnesota, it was decided that Brookdale, as Parkland was called then, should be the important Lutheran education center of the Northwest.

A corporation named The Pacific Lutheran University Association was formed on 11 December 1890. Harstad was elected president of the Association, and the Norwegian Synod formed a new Pacific District in June 1893. Harstad had resigned his position as president of the Minnesota District, but he quickly acquired additional responsibilities by being elected president of the new Pacific District. As a result he spent a considerable amount of time traveling to supervise the new far-reaching district and to raise money for the university.

The cornerstone laying for this building was held in 1891 and Old Main as the building was called was completed in 1894.

Pacific Lutheran University opened for classes on 25 October, 1894 with 30 students and president Harstad taught religion, Latin, German and Norwegian.

On 3 October 1895 Harstad stepped down from the presidency at Pacific Lutheran University and was replaced by Reverend O. N. Grønsberg from San Francisco. Harstad, after leaving the university, devoted himself to church responsibilities. He traveled almost nine hundred miles through the Willamette Valley on a horse named Flyer ministering to churchless Norwegians. He then stayed in San Francisco serving the congregation that Grønsberg had left, which had had some difficulty securing a new pastor. In addition, Harstad spent much of this time attempting to persuade people to help the university out of its debt.

In April 1897 President Gronsberg, resigned. Harstad was elected president again and served for the next year

By 1898 gold had been discovered in Alaska, and both Harstad and the sober board of trustees were excited by the prospects of finding a fortune there. In February of the same year the fifty-year-old Harstad and Parkland resident Otis Larson, each paying his own way, left for Alaska on the SS City of Seattle. Harstad and Larson landed in Dyea, Alaska, and lived in a tent in subzero weather. They eventually staked a claim at Dawson. The two men encountered adventurers, cold, mud, irreligion, and human vagaries in the next year and a half, but no gold. Although no gold was found, Harstad and Larson did return with a pair of moose antlers.

Bjug Harstad did not return as president but continued as a member of the Board of Trustees until 1900 when his term was completed.

In 1917, the Norwegian Synod that Pacific Lutheran University was founded under merged with both the United Church and the Hauge Synod to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.

Harstad refused to join the New Norwegian Lutheran Church, thus formally separating himself from the school he had founded.

Bjug Aanondsen Harstad died on 20 June 1933 at age 84. His wife Guro, eight of his children, and eleven grandchildren survived him.

A granite monument was dedicated to Bjug Harstad in Valle, Setesdal, Norway on 26 June 1983. It was given by the community of Valle to honor the native son who became an important pastor and educator in the United States.