Gjesling (or ''Gjæsling'') is an old family at
Vågå
Vågå () is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Vågåmo. Other village areas in Vågå include Lalm and Besshe ...
in
Oppland
Oppland is a former county in Norway which existed from 1781 until its dissolution on 1 January 2020. The old Oppland county bordered the counties of Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane, Buskerud, Akershus, Oslo and Hedmark. The c ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
.
In 1130 Ivar Gjesling was the earliest-known owner of the farm Sandbu (just south of Vågåmo) in Vågå. He served as King Magnus IV's lendmann (governor) for the Opplands. Ivar Gjesling, allied himself with the Birchlegs (
Birkebeiner
The Birkebein Party or Birkebeinar (; no, Birkebeinarane (nynorsk) or (bokmål)) was the name for a rebellious party in Norway, formed in 1174 around the pretender to the Norwegian throne, Eystein Meyla. The name has its origins in propaga ...
ne) — who chose
Sverre as their king at Øreting in 1177.
[C. S. Schilbred and Terje Bratberg]
Sandbuætten
Store Norske Leksikon. Retrieved 18 September 2013 Sverre granted him the valley of
Heidal
Heidal or Heidalen is a valley in Sel Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The U-shaped valley follows the river Sjoa which begins in the nearby Jotunheimen mountains eastward until it joins the Gudbrandsdalslågen river in the main va ...
as a reward.
Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset () (20 May 1882 – 10 June 1949) was a Norwegian- Danish novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924 ...
's fictional Lady Ragnfrid, wife of Lavrans, was create a Gjesling from Sandbu.
Gjesling descendants still own the farm Sandbu in the Vågå region, Riddersandbu, which includes buildings built before 1600.
References
{{refimprove, date=September 2013
Norwegian families