SEATTLE, Washington, June 12 (Norway Times) — Aslaug Giske, the 80-year-old “Mr. Mayor” of Kenmare, North Dakota’s Norwegian community, has led a life during which recognition has been largely conspicuous by its absence. But a January visit to the home of his cousin, Helga Halvorsen, renewed Giske’s hope that he could at long last be acknowledged for some lasting achievement, beyond his “political” contributions to Kenmare.
During that fateful visit, he spotted a copy of the most recent Guinness World Records. While leafing through the book, “the hand of God touched me,” said Giske, to describe how he had to remove a sleepy seed in his right eye before continuing to peruse the records.
“It was one of those ‘ah hah moments,’” Giske continued. “As my left hand held the book and my right hand cleaned my eye, I thought there had to be a reason for this coincidence. I quickly looked at the Guinness index and, lo and behold, there was, not surprisingly, no world record for the largest collection of those little reminders of Mr. Sandman’s visits.”
Then and there, the Old Norwegian set out to establish such a record. Of course, one sleepy seed would suffice absent an existing record. But as he learned when he contacted Guinness, their criteria are more demanding than that: specifically, one pound’s worth of seeds would do it.
Giske’s collection has now topped close to four pounds as he closes in on his goal of five pounds. He has relied on the Kenmare Norwegian community to spread the word to every one of their “six degrees of separation,” as his niece Helga describes their strategy for collecting sleepy seeds from near and far, including of course Norway.
Halvorsen told the Times that additional information on contributing to her uncle’s Guinness record could be obtained via email at aslaughelga@norsksand.org.
