From the Hornets' Nest to Custer's Last Stand. The Immigrant Story of Norwegian Sergeant Olaus Hansen

On a spring day in 1861 a young Norwegian - Olaus Hansen - leaves his childhood home to embark on a long Atlantic crossing towards a prosperous future as a farmer in Iowa. 21 years later an exhausted, ill and broken down ex-soldier, a veteran from a dozen bloody battles with the 12th Iowa Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War and a 7th Cavalry survivor from Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn - Olans H. Northeg - commits suicide in the dark, frozen winter of Dakota Territory. It is the same man. His family both in Norway and the United States deliberately shroud his existence in the darkness of history for 130 years. What happened during Olaus' time in America, why did the family cover up his life, and why did he take a new identity? A true, extensively researched, dramatized story about youthful dreams devastated by war - about heroism, death, disease and PTSD during 18 years of campaigning in the American Civil War and Indian Wars.