Aardahl Cemetary was associated with the founding of the Aardahl Free Lutheran Congregation. Many of the first members were from a place called Aardahl in Norway. It is one of the earliest churches and cemeteries established in Beltrami county.
A Norwegian language journal written by Iver O. Ungstad, founding member of Aardahl, revealed many interesting details about the settlement and organization of Frohn township and the beginnings of the local church and school.
In 1883 a group of Norwegian immigrants headed east from McIntosh into Bemidji in search of land for homesteading. They reached Lake Bemidji and the Carson Brothers Trading Post. The immigrants rejected land at Bemidji because it was too sandy for farming. A few miles southeast, they found better soil in the Rosby area and they filed their claims on land there. In the spring of 1894, they built the first of the homestead cabins. Beltrami County had not yet been organized, so they had to travel extensive distances to file their claims or petition for organization of a school. Travel was with a team of oxen as there were no good roads. They had to travel to Park Rapids in order to petition for citizenship.
One of the first to take land for himself was Johannes B. Hanson. He was born in Skabo, Northern Frohn, Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. He emigrated to the U.S. around 1873 and went to Skogdalen in Vernon County, Wisconsin and was there for several years. In 1882, he married Karoline Evensdoter Norbo who was born in the same place in 1863, and that year he traveled to Grafton, North Dakota and began blacksmithing there with a Lars Dalen from Skabo. In 1882, when the eastern part of Polk county was opened to settlement, he took land there, but in 1893, he was among the first to file for a homestead in Township 16, R. 32 in Section 31. He moved there in the summer of 1894 and the first Norwegian services were held in his home. His life was cut short by cancer in 1908, leaving a wife and an adopted son.
Johan Evenson Norbo was born in Konvalle, Vernon County, Wisconsin in 1860. He married Torbjor Hegland in Crookston in 1885. She was born in Sitisdalen, Norway in 1853. They homesteaded in Section 30. They had nine children. He died in 1935; she died in 1939.
Ole Torgerson Hegland was born in Sitisdalen, Norway in 1863. He came to Beltrami County and took land in Section 32. He married Anne Haakenson in Polk County on March 30, 1893. In March 1897 Aardahl and Malvik congregations held a meeting at the home of Ole Hegland for the purpose of making plans to build a parsonage. He died in 1931.
Oluf Larson was born in 1858 in Norway. He married Anna Pederson Skablan in Trondheim, Norway, She was born in 1863. They emigrated to America and he worked in Willmar for a time and came up to this area and homesteaded near Bemidji. He moved to Frohn in 1896 and became a member of Aardahl’s Congregation.
Iver Ungstad was born in Norway in 1867. He took a trip back to Norway in the spring of 1900 and met Kari Pedersdoter Brenden. She was born in 1875. They were married in Kristiania (Oslo) on April 5, 1901. They had nine children, six girls and three boys.
Johan Finseth was elected chairman of the building committee in March of 1897. He also owned property in Bemidji which he purchased in Feb 15, 1900. The church building was started in 1900. John Dahl gave one acre of land for the church. The church building was constructed under the direction of head carpenter John Finseth and was completed for use in 1900. Money was raised through donations and the efforts of the Ladies Aid.
Some of the members of that first group who stayed and are buried at Aardahl are Johannes B. Hanson, Gunder H. Aakhus, Gunder Gunderson Moi, John Norbo, Ole S. Huset, Halvor Jenson Reise, Paul Kvale, Ole Hegland, Elvind Langerak, Paul Froirak, Gunstein Froirak, and Ole Vassen.
With the founding of the church came the need for a cemetery. The congregation voted on January 6, 1897 to accept a two acre tract of land from Iver Ungstad for a cemetery. The first burial in Aardahl cemetery was Knut Moe, a fourteen year old boy killed in a gun accident in 1898. The cemetery separated from the church in 1963 and now operates as an independent organization. [Material on Aardahl was summarized from the Aardahl file in the vertical files of the Beltrami County Historical Society, Bemidji, Minnesota]