President


Mark Haugen – President – District #1

Halo! Greetings!

I’m Mark Haugen, President, Sons of Norway District 1 Lodge. Thanks for electing me! Although I’ve been working on things, it’s YOU I feel I work FOR. Feel free to contact me and let me know what I can do for you, your lodge, and most importantly, your zone. I enjoyed my tenure as Zone 2 Director (thanks to Chris Elwell for introducing me to that). Most people I met greeted me with sympathy: “Oh, Zone 2, that’s a tough one!” But, I honestly enjoyed the people, the time spent, and solving… let’s say, “situations”. So please, feed me ideas, issues, whatever it is I can help you with and use to help others. I look forward to continuing serving the people I’m lucky to have met the past couple of years.

A little background about me:
I first got involved with the Sons of Norway shortly after I lost my oldest brother to a heart attack and my dad six months later to a post-surgery infection in 2011. I was losing family who knew the family history and had a lot of pride in our Norwegian background. I wanted to connect with that. My dad’s dad came over from the Hegra Parish region, half way up the Stjørdalselva river, between Trondheimfjorden and the border with Sweden. He came here and settled in the Sogn valley in Minnesota. My dad was born in the wagon on the way to Northfield hospital. I grew up in Northfield which had the nicknames at that time of “Norwegianville” (the Swedes were primarily east of Northfield, in the Cannon Falls area) and “Lutheranville” (a town of under 10,000 and a dozen Lutheran churches; I was Catholic). My first involvement was with “Corporate” and the NorwayConnects program. I developed marketing plans and sponsorship sales data for Erik Evans and Linda Pederson. Then, being one of the few in Draxten Lodge that was NOT a Sons of Norway employee, I became the Lodge Delegate for the 2014 convention in Duluth, where I was voted in as Zone 2 Director. Which leads us here…