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Lakeland PBSpbs presents Common 
Ground, brought to you by the 
Minnesota Arts and Cultural 
Heritage Fund

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and the citizens of Minnesota. 
Production funding of Common 
Ground is made possible in part 
by First

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National Bank Bemidji, 
continuing their second century 
of service to the community. 
Member FDIC.

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Welcome to Common Ground. I'm 
Pproducer/Director Scott 
Knudson.

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In this 2- segment episode made 
by the two newest additions to 
Lakeland's Legacy production 
team,

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we visit the Butter and Dairy 
Museum in Vergas, Minnesota, and 
the Crow Wing Viking Fest in 
Brainerd.

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Welcome to the Crow Wing Viking 
Festival. It's August 21st, and 
the festival

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opened at 10 a.m this morning 
and it goes to 4 30 this 
afternoon. This is our 2nd 
annual

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festival. We weren't, of course, 
able to do it last year. There 
are a ton of fun things to do 
here.

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Viking Fest is a celebration 
of all things Viking.

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There's so much misinformation, 
and the first one is that 
Vikings had horns. The

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horns came about from an 1800's 
Wagner Opera. The costume 
designer thought that horns on 
helmets

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would be cool, and they are, but 
that wasn't what the real 
Vikings were about. There's a 
lot of

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misconceptions about the 
Vikings, my ancestors, and so 
this celebrates all things 
legitimately,

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real Viking. We came up with 
that slogan "Real Vikings, No 
Horns," There's a lot to learn, 
they're

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very interesting people, very 
sophisticated, very structural 
society, women were held in high 
esteem

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and there's a lot to know about 
the Viking culture. I'm Julie 
Guth, and I'm the coordinator 
for the

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Crow Wing Viking festival, and 
one of a group of 7 people who 
do the planning for this.

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I just, I love Vikings, and so I 
wanted to share actual Viking 
culture, "Real Vikings, No 
Horns"

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with people in the area and from 
all over. I'm dan Hegstad, and I 
am a volunteer with the Crow

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Wing Viking Festival. I do a lot 
of the PR and Marketing, and 
we're a small group so I do kind

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of whatever needs doing. One of 
the reasons there's so many 
people at the Crow Wing Viking 
Festival is

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because there's just so much to 
see and do here. If you look 
around, you see so many families 
and

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who wouldn't want to come to 
Brainerd, Minnesota for a nice 
weekend in the summer and enjoy 
this?

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The kids are having a great 
time, there's a whole building 
of kids crafts, and things for 
kids

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to do. Jacob, here, my new 
friend, was showing me the craft 
that he made, its a flying 
dragon. "Nobody else

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made it with the flame, because 
I thought it would be cool, so 
it's breathing fire, this is my 
shoe, the

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middle is supposed to be like an 
eyeball." There's also "rune 
writing," kids can write their 
names in

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in runes, and it's in 
self-hardening clay and there 
are few other crafts in the 
building as

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well. It's been a really popular 
area. We have lots of food for 
the whole family, and then 
behind me

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the Viking encampment. It's, 
what if these Vikings were 
traveling and they stopped for a 
few days.

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I'm here at the potters, we have 
almost everything here; we have 
pottery, we have wood supplies, 
we have

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jewelry, we have drinking horns. 
There's someone working on a 
warp-weighted loom

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over there, which is what they 
used to create the sails for the 
ships, among other things.

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There's so many things here, all 
the crafts, there's a 
blacksmith, people doing 
open-fire cooking.

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We also have somebody who wrote 
an epic poem that he has 
illustrated in a book that's 
going

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to be around here, too, and he's 
going to be doing readings. 
"some lumpish rings, a gilded 
aurochs horn

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crusted with gems, a sentry 
shrieked, the devils thronged, 
and all but 30 of my men were 
torn

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to shrimp." We have the mock 
battles, the people are really 
enjoying that, it's family 
friendly

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but still very realistic. They 
do a great job of balancing 
that, keeping it family 
friendly.

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The Vikings have always 
fascinated me, and of course, 
you know I'm a Norwegian 
American, at

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least partly, and so it's part 
of my cultural heritage. I've 
always wanted to know more

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and I was absolutely delighted 
to find out that the Vikings did 
more than just raiding,

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there was a whole really complex 
culture that was highly 
artistic, for one thing, and the

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ships that they built were state 
of the art. I love this event 
because it's real, "Real 
Vikings, No Horns."

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It's fun, but the organizers 
were serious that it's not going 
to be silly. This isn't a 
costume party,

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this is about the real Vikings, 
my heritage. When I did the the 
genetic test, it showed

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a very small part of Norway and 
a little bit of Sweden. That's 
where my people are is right 
there.

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I'm all Scandinavian, and this 
celebrates my ancestors, and 
they were some really

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interesting people. They did 
some pretty nasty stuff, there's 
no question about that,

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but the culture was something to 
be celebrated, and I'm really 
glad to be involved in that. It 
started

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because I attended a Viking 
festival in Moorhead, Hjemkomst, 
and I thought it was so 
interesting and

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I started talking to the 
re-enactors and I thought "Wow," 
"wouldn't that be a great event 
to bring to the

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Brainerd community?" It's 
totally different from anything 
else that we have here. When we 
did

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the first Viking Festival 2 
years ago in Nisswa, we had no 
idea how many people were going 
to come

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200, 300? We had almost 950 
people at that first one. We 
knew we were doing the right 
thing.

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Nisswa was great, but just not 
enough room to even host the 
1000 people that came, but here 
we are

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at the Crow Wing County 
Fairgrounds, which is such a 
great venue for us because we 
have plenty of room to do

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the mock battles, a nice 
location here for the viking 
encampment, tons of free 
parking, all the

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food vendors, we have all that 
infrastructure power and so 
forth that they need. Animals, 
you

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can have animals at the 
fairgrounds, so we've got the 
horses and the sheep and we can 
expand that.

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I hope even bigger and better 
than this, we'd like to add 
re-enactors every year, we'd 
certainly like

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even more vendors who are doing 
Viking-related things to come 
in, but this could be a huge 
event

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for years to come. We could have 
thousands of people coming to 
the Crow Wing Viking Festival.

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I really think it's a regional 
event, there's a lot of 
Norwegians in North Dakota, 
Wisconsin, all

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over Minnesota. I think people 
can come here to Brainerd and 
enjoy this for years to come.

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We're in Gordon's Butter and 
Dairy Museum, which is located 
in the lower level of the bank 
in Vergas.

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Gordon owned the bank, and he 
was President and Chairman of 
the Board here at the bank.

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Gordon loved this sign that's 
behind me that says, "What they 
have created, let us preserve."

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If you do not know where you 
came from, or if you do not know 
what the beginning and

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the history of it was, it's 
really hard to understand where 
you're at. Gordon

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truly believed that, so he's 
like, "Okay, I loved farming."

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He was 11 years old when he was 
milking cows, once before he 
went to school, and after 
school.

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It was hard work, they did a lot 
of the stuff themselves, even 
built the barns and all the 
sheds.

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they built em themselves, of 
course with neighbors help. It 
was an interesting time and

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this is back in the 30's. He was 
very proud of his heritage, 
growing up on a farm, even at 
the bank

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here, he loved it when the 
farmers would come in and visit. 
Farming was always in his heart, 
and

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stayed there. He loved the the 
simplicity of it, he loved the 
genuine honest hard work of it.

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as he became older and went into 
a different profession, 
obviously,

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he still kept that passion. Back 
in the day, through the bank 
here, we also clerked auction 
sales

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and so I think a lot of the 
stuff in the museum here, he 
picked up at those auction 
sales, too, by

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clerking them, and so he was 
always the first one to bid on 
that stuff that came up on the 
auction sale.

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When he got that first piece at 
an auction sale, and then the 
next piece, and then people 
started

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hearing about it, and I think 
that's what happened in the 
community, too. People started 
hearing there

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was a place to put some of their 
items that they had the same 
passion about, that they wanted 
people

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to remember. You collect one 
thing, and it turned into 600 
items, so you know how that 
goes.

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He really loved collecting, we 
rode around with him, so we 
didn't miss an antique store.

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I mean, I was probably "that 
high," and we hit every one 
between here and Minneapolis and 
Arizona, so it

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was kind of fun. Us siblings 
would take turns driving him 
back and forth to Scottsdale, 
Arizona,

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where he wintered. You never 
took the interstate, you always 
took back roads, because that's

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where all the antique shops 
were. There's always one churn 
that he's been looking for, 
forever, even

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until the day he died, was a no. 
10 Daisy Churn. We've stopped at 
every antique store between

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Scottsdale, Arizona and Vergas, 
Minnesota looking for that no. 
10 Daisy Churn and we never 
found it.

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Here you had Gordon's 
vision of being able to

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display not only the churns, but 
then he was able to have enough 
space that he could

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expand it. All that you're going 
to see that's curated, that's 
Gordon, he displayed it.

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This is where it all started, 
this is the very first butter 
churn that Gordon purchased at 
an

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auction sale, and then he bought 
another one and then he bought 
another one, and then all

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of a sudden, it turned into... 
like you're going to see over 
600 items here. In this area 
here, are

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just a lot of the different 
churns that he had. We've got 
some of the cream separators 
over here,

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when you stop and think of this, 
this is how milk was delivered, 
this is an actual liquid 
container

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that the milk was delivered in. 
I think the thing that always 
intrigues me, too, is when you 
look at

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these butter churns, nothing's 
electric. There was a lot of 
work that was put into all of 
this, and so

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whether I think you were shaking 
the jar, or turning it, or 
whatever, there

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is just ...It wasn't electric, 
it was, to get to that point it

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took some some muscle, maybe 
that's why everybody was so in 
shape back then.

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Gordon liked to display things. 
One of Gordon's other passions 
was woodworking and

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so he built a lot of these 
display cases. He built all the 
little items that

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would hold, what we've got 
here is the butter molds.

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these butter molds are so 
intriguing because they are so 
intricate in what they have, as 
far as like a pineapple, or a

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and then that would kind of be 
your signature thing, when you 
would take butter to maybe a

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family gathering or whatever. 
You would put the butter in 
there, and you would put it down 
on a plate,

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and that mold would go on top 
and then the top of your butter 
would just have that 
beautiful ..

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whatever your symbol was, and so 
theres a lot of the different 
butter molds.

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Then these were the paddles, 
obviously these are smaller ones 
but

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I think one of the things that 
Gordon..Well, he loved De Laval, 
as you can see. He

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collected the different signs 
and anything De Laval, he would 
end up buying. This right here 
is a

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Franklin cream cooler, and Ed 
Franklin, who started Franklin 
Fence here in Vergas, he 
invented this,

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so this was a pretty big deal. 
There was a new cream-grading 
law thing that came out through

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the dairy states, and it 
improved the quality of 
everything, and he invented this 
and there were

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testimonials and there were.. it 
got to be a big deal. Gordon 
ended up with one of those

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Franklin cream coolers, and he 
was always pretty proud of the 
fact that a guy from Vergas is

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who invented that. As you can 
see back here, he kind of got 
into some of the De Laval,

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just the little intricate type 
things, they had letter openers, 
just some kind

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of those things that would come 
out at Christmas time. Then up 
above, and you'll see this

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throughout the whole museum, are 
the different cheese boxes and 
so anytime, if you couldn't find

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that No. 10 Daisy Churn, you had 
to buy a cheese box. There's a 
cheese box from just about

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every creamery that you can 
find, from Arizona to Minnesota, 
so that's what those are for, 
too,

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All right, what we've got here 
is just a beautiful case that 
Gordon loved to display probably 
some

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of the more breakable things, 
and because he was always hoping 
that kids would come down here, 
and

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so he'd have some of those 
little butter dishes down there 
that definitely are antiques, 
and

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some of the little items came 
from the creamery here, the 
different things that they would 
use to

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test the different cream and 
different things that would make 
sure that everything was working

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good. That's where he kind of 
put his books and everything. 
That cow he got from Germany,

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this is a hand-carved cow that a 
neighbor of his went to Germany 
and then they were talking

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about the butter museum, and so 
they came, this came in the 
mail. I remember when that 
happened.

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We keep in a prominent place 
here - the picture, this is the 
first picture of Gordon,

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milking cows back when he was a 
young kid. You don't see a lot 
of machines there, I think it

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was pretty much done by hand. I 
think one of the things here, 
too, that I always think about, 
are

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these watch fobs. You see the De 
Laval, you see the cow, and I 
think of this only because

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you get to a point where you've 
probably collected everything 
that you can as far as

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molds and separators and churns 
and things like that. This was 
one of the last things that he 
was

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working on collecting before his 
death, and I know that he was 
looking for those watch fobs

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in a lot of different places, 
and was trying to grow his 
collection

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a little bit in that. He became 
very fond of having the watch 
fobs. These little milk

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covers here, again, just like 
the butter boxes and just like 
the cheese boxes, these were

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what identified you as a dairy, 
or as a farm that would deliver 
milk. This would have

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your name, "Shady Lane" or 
"Catski Farm", or whatever it 
was on it, and so these little 
milk caps that

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went on top of the milk bottle 
like this, which was, you can 
see, that identified who your 
dairy was.

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We're back in the area where 
the ,,, When the creamery here 
in Vergas closed ,

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Gordon obtained, of course, a 
lot of the things that were 
there. You've got like your test 
tubes, this

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machine here would test the 
different cream content, and 
that was for making butter.

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You would have all of that, you 
would have the cream cans which 
would bring in the cream.

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The farmers would actually just 
bring in their cream cans and 
the scales, obviously this goes

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back before it would get to the 
creamery, these were what were 
used on the farm after

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you got past that point where 
you had to do the milking by 
hand.

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Then, what was in this display 
case is, you know how at 
Christmas everybody, all

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of the businesses, when they 
used to be able to economically 
afford it, they would give that

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Christmas gift away to their 
patrons, to their customers; and 
these are some of the 
different..

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whether it be the little cream 
pitchers, or some years you had 
utensils, and so there's

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a display of that too. We also 
have, comes back to the dairy 
days, and so it's fun, he kept a 
lot of

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the posters from that era too, 
and so you can see the evolution 
of that, from how it was such a, 
it was a

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big deal in town. It was a lot 
of fun and he had him dressed up 
all the way back there to the 
60's.

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Okay, so what you're seeing here 
is, obviously all the milk 
bottles and stuff,

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but these are the churns. You 
notice the lone spot up here 
where the No. 10 Daisy Churn

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is missing. That spot will stay 
there until we get that number 
10, but these are the churns

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that Gordon just, I mean, we 
love, we would take these two 
when we would go to Dairy Days 
and

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would just take them and put 
that cream in and kids would 
watch all of the cream turned to

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butter. What we've got here, 
which is really an interesting 
machine to me, and couldn't you 
just

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see a kid just loving this you 
sit on the seat there this a 
farmer oh just outside of 
virga's

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had this you sit on the seat 
there, and then you, of course, 
attach this to the cow for the 
milking.

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Then, it's got the hand, you 
would take your feet like that 
and it would go, and it was just 
kind

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of a way that you didn't have to 
use your hands. You got to build 
up those leg muscles a lot.

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A lot of people talk about "Okay 
Gordon, why do you have a Maytag 
washing machine in your butter 
museum?"

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Well, it's not just the mixers 
that we get now that have all 
the attachments with the pasta. 
Back

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then, they figured that out, you 
put an attachment onto the 
washing machine, and it'll churn 
your butter!

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So Gordon got one of those 
Maytags that had the attachment 
to churn the butter, and then, 
of

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course, the information 
regarding it. That was a lot of 
fun for him to obtain that.

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We are in the overflow room, is 
what I would call it, because 
this room here was created

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when Gordon had too many things 
in the other room that we were 
in. It's just created a

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nice area to add some extra 
things, some of the bigger 
things. This cream separator 
right here

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is, actually, there's only 2 of 
them in the whole United States 
that anybody knows about. When

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Gordon obtained it, the people 
that he got it from said "You 
know, it should actually be in a 
museum."

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Then cream carts and the cream 
cans and of course, more cheese 
boxes, but

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one fun thing that we have here 
is an old Vergas Street Light. 
This was

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the actual street light, there's 
a photograph here with it that 
shows people would go around at

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night and they would light those 
lights up on the streets, by 
hand again, of course, it

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wasn't an electric thing. I 
think I mentioned the Land O' 
Lakes Creamery Christmas 
ornaments

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and things too, and so he got 
into that with Land O' Lakes and 
just really supporting

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our area dairy people and dairy 
production areas. So, all the 
milk bottles here, too, so it's

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a nice spot, and of course, I 
think a lot of people understand 
what this is, because I think 
that

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a lot of people have in their 
homes, it was one of the old 
coolers, too so those are kind 
of fun.

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Here we are in Gordon's overflow 
room, but what it was able to 
create in here was

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just another nice display case, 
a beautiful display case, and 
this one here obviously has 
always been

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one of my favorites, because 
it's the dome butter dishes. 
These are

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very valuable, very beautiful, 
intricate pieces. I don't think 
that you would find these on

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your typical farm table for 
lunch every day, but if the 
family was coming for a Sunday

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dinner, or some special event, 
you know they would use a butter 
dish something like this.

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Gordon was, like I said earlier, 
always very loyal to the Vergas 
Creamery and the people that

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worked at the creamery. This 
gentleman right here donated, 
his family donated, this because 
he

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was the Creamery Manager for a 
number of years. Then what 
you've got there is

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items that were actually used in 
the creamery, so he liked to be 
able to showcase those items,

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but he also liked to be able to 
showcase the person, who helped 
promote dairy, who

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helped work in the creamery, and 
was part of that passion of, let 
us preserve what has

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been created, so if you come 
down to Gordon's Dairy and 
Butter Museum, you cannot walk 
away

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without one of his books. This 
chronicles a lot of different 
information, a lot of different 
pictures,

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and one of the old Vergas butter 
dairy boxes. They're here and

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you're welcome to take one home 
with you, so that when you go 
home, you can, when somebody 
sees

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them, they can say "Oh, where's 
that?" you can say "Well, it's 
located in the Vergas State 
Bank, Lower Level,

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you can go check it out because 
it's a piece of history that we 
just want to preserve."

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You come down here, and you just 
kind of step back in time, you 
just take a little bit of time 
and

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if you do a little bit of 
reading, you just understand 
that Oh, man, somebody actually

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60 years ago was handling that 
butter dish and were putting 
butter on the table for their 
family.

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There's something really cool 
about that. The bank is open 
every day during the week, 
Monday

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through Friday, 9:00 nine 
o'clock until 5:00 o'clock. 
There's somebody here that can 
let you

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come down here and let you 
wander around and just go back 
in time and and enjoy it. I 
can't

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believe that his family and his 
kids and people who knew him

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00:24:40,345 --> 00:24:44,516
walk down here without feeling 
the presence. I'm glad that he 
did it, I mean, it was 
interesting,

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00:24:46,952 --> 00:24:50,989
and he was really proud of it 
and I think the whole family's 
proud that he did it because

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it started out with one churn 
and turned into 600 items, so, 
yeah, we're proud of him.

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