Norwegians in the Boer War: A Small Nation in a Distant Conflict
When we think about Norwegian emigrants, our minds usually go to the American prairie, not to the dusty battlefields of South Africa. Yet during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), a small but colorful group of Norwegians found themselves in the conflict – as volunteers, medics and, eventually, prisoners of war.
For anyone with Norwegian roots, this is one of those surprising side stories that may suddenly explain an odd place–name in the family lore, or why a great-grandfather once mentioned Ceylon or St. Helena with a sigh.
In this article, we’ll look at who these Norwegians were, why they ended up in the war, how one Norwegian family lived through it – and how you can start tracing similar stories in your own tree.
Why were Norwegians in South Africa at all?
By the late 1800s, Scandinavians had been drifting to South Africa for some time – as sailors who jumped ship, artisans and miners looking for work, or technicians recruited to the expanding railway and mining industries (Hale, 2000a).
In the Transvaal, a Scandinavian Organization was founded in 1899 by the Swedish engineer Axel Christer Helmfrid Uggla to help unemployed fellow Scandinavians with work and housing (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-a).
When war broke out between the Boer republics and the British Empire in October 1899, this existing Scandinavian community provided a natural recruitment pool for volunteers. Some sympathised with the Boers as a small, agrarian people facing a great power; others simply saw an opportunity for adventure or felt loyalty to the country where they had settled (Gerdov, 2016; Hale, 2000a).
The Scandinavian Corps: A tiny unit with a big story
The best-known Scandinavian contribution to the Boer side was the Scandinavian Corps (Skandinaviska kåren), formed in the Transvaal in late 1899 (Hale, 2000a).
According to a widely cited reconstruction of the corps’ roll, it initially consisted of about 114 men, including:
46 Swedes
13 Norwegians
24 Danes
18 Finns
A handful of Germans, Dutch, one Russian and one Italian (Wikipedia, n.d.; AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b).
Most were not professional soldiers. Many were sailors, artisans or workers who had already put down roots in South Africa (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b; Hale, 2000a).
The corps was commanded by the Swede Johannes Flygare, with Erik Ståhlberg and William Baerentsen as lieutenants. A separate ambulance unit of four men and four women was led by Dr. Wilhelm Biedenkap from Oslo, a Norwegian physician who had settled in South Africa (Wikipedia, n.d.; Klikk.no, 2022).
Into battle: Mafeking, Magersfontein and Paardeberg
The Scandinavian Corps fought in several of the war’s most famous engagements:
- Siege of Mafeking (October–November 1899)
Sir Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) was a British Army officer whose name became closely linked to the Second Boer War. His experience here shaped his ideas about training and self-reliance in young people, which he later developed into the Scout movement, founded in 1907–1908 and spread rapidly worldwide.
Elements of the corps participated in the Boer forces surrounding the British-held town, which later became legendary in British memory when Baden-Powell held out under siege (Hale, 2000a). Battle of Magersfontein (10–11 December 1899)
This was the unit’s defining – and devastating – moment. The Boer army entrenched itself in front of Magersfontein ridge to block a British relief column. The Scandinavians were placed as an advanced outpost roughly 1.5 km in front of the main Boer line, directly in the path of the Highland Brigade’s dawn assault (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b).When the British troops stumbled forward in the half-light, they ran straight into the Scandinavian position at close range. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the corps held its ground and inflicted serious casualties before being almost overwhelmed. Contemporary accounts describe them firing 18–20 aimed shots a minute until British troops worked around their flank and the losses became catastrophic (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b).
After the battle, many of the fallen were buried near the position where they had fought. A monument at Magersfontein carries the inscription in Swedish:
De kunde icke vika, blott falla kunde de –
“They could not yield, they could only fall” (Wikipedia, n.d.; Gerdov, 2016).General Piet Cronjé reputedly declared that, “Next to God, the republics have the Scandinavian Corps to thank for the victory” (Wikipedia, n.d.; AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b).
Paardeberg (February 1900)
The battered remnants of the corps later fought with Cronjé’s forces at Paardeberg, where the Boers were encircled and forced to surrender after a lengthy siege. Many surviving Scandinavians, including Norwegians, were captured here (Hale, 2000a; AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b).
By this point, the Scandinavian Corps had effectively ceased to exist as a coherent fighting unit. Some survivors later joined ordinary Boer commandos; others went straight into captivity (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-c; Hale, 2000a).
Norwegians outside the corps
Not every Norwegian on the Boer side served in the Scandinavian Corps. In his study of Norwegian prisoners of war, historian Frederick Hale points out that there was a constant flow of Scandinavians arriving and leaving, and that some Norwegians joined local Boer commandos directly without ever being formally attached to the corps (Hale, 2000b).
The AngloBoerWar.com database, which draws on museum and archival records, lists individual volunteers identified as Norwegian. For example:
A. B. R. Abrahamsen – “Volunteer from Norway serving with the Boer forces,” wounded and taken prisoner in February 1900 (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-d).
This kind of database entry is a helpful starting point for genealogists. A short note about being wounded or captured can often be cross-checked against POW rolls, ship lists or local newspapers in Norway.
Case study: From Norway to the Witwatersrand – the story of Ole Johnsen Honnstad
To see what this history looks like in a real family, we can follow the life of Ole Johnsen Honnstad, a Norwegian who tied his fate to the goldfields – and to the Boer side in the war.
Ole was born in Norway on 29 May 1861. at the Honnstad farm in the municipality of Surnadal, Møre og Romsdal. He was the youngest of ten siblings. As a young man he travelled to South Africa, where he married Christina Magdalena Pauley in Johannesburg in 1888. He was 27; she was 18. The wedding took place in the Dutch Reformed Church, Goldfields parish, and Ole’s address on the marriage certificate is given as Roodepoort, Witwatersrand Goldfields – right in the middle of the gold rush that had begun only two years earlier, in 1886 (Family archive, n.d.).
Christina’s background already reflects the multi-ethnic world of the Transvaal. Her father was a German immigrant; her mother was of Dutch descent. She was born at Schoonspruit, Ventersdorp, about 150 km west of Johannesburg, and several of her brothers appear to have farmed in the Ventersdorp area. South of Ventersdorp lies Klerksdorp, where gold was found soon after the discoveries on the Witwatersrand. Later records place Ole in Klerksdorp, Potchefstroom District, with the occupation “amalgamator” – someone involved in the mercury process used to separate gold from ore – while Christina is listed as a “customs collector”, likely referring to the government tax on gold production (Family archive, n.d.).
By the time the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, Ole and Christina already had five children: Christiaan (1891), Jacomina (1892), John (1893), Anna (1896) and Christina (1898). Their sixth child, also named Ole, was born on 3 June 1900 and baptised in Ventersdorp on 14 October that same year (Family archive, n.d.).
Settler and soldier
When war came, Ole joined the Lower Schoonspruit, Ventersdorp commando. Like many other Norwegians on the Boer side, he was not part of the Scandinavian Corps but attached to a local commando drawn from the farming community where he lived. At the battle of Paardeberg on 27 February 1900, he was captured – on the same day, and in the same battle, as three of his Pauley brothers-in-law (Family archive, n.d.; Hale, 2000b).
Ole was sent as a prisoner of war to the Broadbottom camp on St. Helena, a bleak island in the South Atlantic where the British held thousands of Boer and foreign prisoners (Family archive, n.d.; Hale, 2000b).
Meanwhile, Christina and the children were drawn into the machinery of war on the home front. In September 1902, after the peace, Ole was reunited with his family in the Klerksdorp concentration camp and released two weeks later. The documentation notes his “Reason for departure” simply as: “Gone to farm.” In the National Archives of South Africa there is also a claim file, Claims for Compensation – Burghers – Potchefstroom – Ole Johnsen, which hints at the material losses the family suffered (Family archive, n.d.).
Back to the family
Remarkably, life went on. After the war, Ole and Christina had five more children – Johanna, Johannes Hendrik, Pieter Emil Lindstrom and Johannes Christoffel (born 1909) On the subject of Pieter Emil Lindstrom, the name Pieter fits in (it was the name of Ole’s grandfather), but Emil Lindstrom is nowhere to be found in any of the ancestors. It is a rather unusual name for South Africa. It was, however, the name of a Swedish member of the Scandinavian contingent killed at Magersfontein. Is there a link? Did Ole name one of his children after a fallen comrade? Who knows…
Ole lived to the age of 73, dying in Johannesburg on 24 August 1933 (Family archive, n.d.).
In one family’s story we can see the entire arc: Norwegian youth, gold rush migration, mixed European ancestry on the South African frontier, service in a Boer commando, imprisonment on St. Helena, the disruption of concentration camps, postwar claims for compensation, and finally a return to farming and town life on the Highveld.
Norwegian prisoners of war: Ceylon and St. Helena
The British Empire captured tens of thousands of Boer fighters and foreign volunteers during the war. To keep them from rejoining the struggle, they were shipped to remote camps – including on the islands of St. Helena in the South Atlantic and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the Indian Ocean (Hale, 2000b; Finland at War, 2020).
Luke McKernan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
St. Helena is a small, rugged volcanic island in the South Atlantic, best known as the place where Napoleon Bonaparte spent his final years in exile (1815–1821). The island’s tiny capital, Jamestown, clings to a narrow valley between steep cliffs, and even today St. Helena feels like a world apart—windswept, self-contained, and steeped in imperial-era history.
Norwegians were among those sent to these camps. Hale’s detailed study of Norwegian POWs traces individuals from capture, via transport on British ships, to their months or years in captivity and eventual release (Hale, 2000b).
Their memoirs and letters shed light on:
Daily life in the camps – working, boredom and occasional conflict.
Relationships with British guards and officers.
The mixed feelings many had about the Boer cause once the adventure turned into long imprisonment (Hale, 2000b; Klikk.no, 2022).
For family historians, a reference to St. Helena or Ceylon around 1900 in a Norwegian story may not point to missionary work or the merchant navy at all, but to time in a Boer War POW camp – as in the case of Ole Johnsen.
How this matters for genealogy and local history
For a Norwegian genealogy or local history project, the Boer War can connect several strands:
Emigration patterns
Norwegians who ended up in South Africa often had previous experience at sea or in foreign service. A man who appears in South African sources might be missing from typical emigrant lists to America but still follow familiar patterns of seasonal work, shipping, or mining (Winquist, as cited in Gerdov, 2016).Unusual place-names in family stories
Mentions of Transvaal, Magersfontein, Paardeberg, St. Helena, Ceylon or Klerksdorp concentration camp in letters or oral tradition may hint at Boer War service. In Ole’s case, St. Helena and Klerksdorp become crucial signposts when piecing the story together (Family archive, n.d.).Local reactions in Norway
Contemporary Norwegian newspapers reported on the war and on “our men” in the Scandinavian Corps, often with pride mixed with concern (Carlsson, as cited in Gerdov, 2016).
If you know the home parish, you may find short notices when a volunteer left, was wounded or came home.Sources you can consult
Name lists and notes on Scandinavian volunteers on AngloBoerWar.com (AngloBoerWar.com, n.d.-b, n.d.-d, n.d.-e).
Academic articles by Frederick Hale on the Scandinavian Corps and Norwegian POWs (Hale, 2000a, 2000b).
C. Gerdov’s article on the memory and commemoration of the corps, useful for understanding how these events were remembered in Scandinavia (Gerdov, 2016).
Family summaries and private collections like the Ole Johnsen material, which often bring together certificates, camp records and archive references in one place (Family archive, n.d.).
Taken together, these sources let you move from a vague “he was in some war in South Africa” to a more precise story: which unit he joined, where he fought, whether he was captured and where he was held – and how his family lived through those years.
Bringing the story home
Norwegian participation in the Boer War was numerically small, but the story is rich: a handful of seamen, miners and artisans who threw in their lot with the Boers; a Norwegian doctor leading an ambulance unit; young men from a far northern kingdom finding themselves entrenched under a South African sun.
In the life of Ole Johnsen, we see how this global conflict wove itself into one family’s everyday reality: marriage and baptisms, work at the stamp mills and tax office, sudden mobilisation with the local commando, imprisonment far out in the Atlantic, life in a concentration camp, and finally the long, quiet work of rebuilding a home and farm after the war.
For family historians, stories like this offer a way to connect local Norwegian communities to world events at the turn of the twentieth century. A mine worker from Trøndelag or a sailor from Vest-Agder might suddenly reappear in the records of a commando in the Transvaal, a POW camp on St. Helena, a compensation claim in the National Archives of South Africa – or a carefully preserved family summary on a modern researcher’s desk.
If you suspect a family connection, start with the online volunteer lists, then work backward into Norwegian parish records, census entries, local newspapers and your own family papers. You may discover that, for at least one Norwegian in your tree, the route to utvandring did not lead to Minnesota – but to a forgotten foreign war on the other side of the world.
References
AngloBoerWar.com. (n.d.-a). Scandinavian Corps – Page 2. AngloBoerWar.com. https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/boer-units/1955-scandinavian-corps
AngloBoerWar.com. (n.d.-b). Scandinavian volunteers – Boer units. AngloBoerWar.com. https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/boer-units/179-foreign-vols/1955-scandinavian-vols
AngloBoerWar.com. (n.d.-c). The Scandinavian Corps – Boer War forum discussion. AngloBoerWar.com. https://www.angloboerwar.com/forum
AngloBoerWar.com. (n.d.-d). A foreign volunteer in the Boer forces. AngloBoerWar.com. https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/boer-units/179-foreign-vols/3250-a-foreign-volunteer-in-the-boer-forces
AngloBoerWar.com. (n.d.-e). Foreign volunteers. AngloBoerWar.com. https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/boer-units/179-foreign-vols
Family archive. (n.d.). Ole Johnsen 1861–1933: Summary for Martin. Unpublished manuscript.
Finland at War. (2020, March 8). Finnish Kommandoes – Finns in the Second Boer War. Finland at War. https://www.finlandatwar.com/finnish-kommandoes-finns-in-the-second-boer-war
Gerdov, C. (2016). A Scandinavian “Magna Charta”? The Scandinavian Corps and its commemoration. Historia, 61(2). https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0018-229X2016000200003
Hale, F. (2000a). The Scandinavian Corps in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Historia, 45(1), 220–237. https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/historia/article/view/1851
Hale, F. (2000b). Norwegian prisoners in the second Anglo-Boer War. South African Journal of Cultural History, 14(2), 1–12. https://journals.co.za/doi/10.10520/AJA10113053_725
Klikk.no. (2022, May 18). Eventyrlystne nordmenn kastet seg inn i den fremmede krigen – flere måtte betale en skyhøy pris. Klikk/Historie. https://www.klikk.no/historie/eventyrlystne-nordmenn-kastet-seg-inn-i-den-fremmede-krigen-flere-matte-betale-en-skyhoy-pris-1-7156070
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Boer foreign volunteers. In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 5, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_foreign_volunteers
