Sylvia’s Church

2012 Oil on Canvas
14″ x 11″ unframed
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The Four Mile Scandinavian Lutheran Church, located outside Fairview, Montana, was originally constructed in 1910, though the inside was not completed until 1917. Services were held in Norwegian every other week with their minister’s handling two other churches as well. It burned to the ground in 1926 and was immediately rebuilt. This painting is of the second church. As the years passed and fewer of the parishioners understood Norwegian, the services were held in English. One parishioner, Sylvia Kjos, remembers being taught the native songs, which she proudly sang in a duet with another child, Sonja Jacobson Tomalino. Neither understood the Norwegian they were singing.

The Church had no well, and toilets were the two outhouses out back. Baptismal water was brought in a thermos bottle, and when someone forgot that one Sunday, folks quickly drained a Model T, and the minister used that water for the baptism. Afterwards the water was replaced in the car’s radiator.

The congregation separated by sex, with men sitting on one side of the church and women on the other. Once a visiting family attended and, not knowing the seating etiquette, they sat together, which occasioned much staring from both the visitors and the regular attendees. Communion was not a common part of the service, and when it was to be distributed, those wishing to receive had to visit the minister privately beforehand. The church did not receive electricity until 1950, just three years before it closed. It had gas lights, but since all the services were during the day, no one remembers them ever used.

In 1925 Leonard Thorbjornson was the first person baptized in Sylvia’s Church, and in 1954 his son, Larry, was the last. Roads had improved as had vehicles, and farms had become bigger, so fewer lived rural. Those that did, attended services in Fairview. The structure was sold, dismantled, and hauled away, but in 1969 the old congregation built a native stone monument to their beloved Church in the parish cemetery. The base contains the original Corner Stone along with the weather vane from the 1910 Church.