Discover your Ancestry

This is our older website. Please visit our newest website for the latest info: https://giantsoftheearth.org/

A woman in a viking helmet and red shirt that reads "Norway" on the back runs across the image to the left. She is carrying a Norwegian and American Flag. Five smiling children carrying water squirters run after her.
Norwegian Ridge Language Camp
A viking ship on wheels passes in front of the Heritage Center, a large yellow building. In it ride an assortment of young children waving small Norwegian flags, as well as a few adults, smiling.
Syttende Mai Parade

About Us

Giants of the Earth Heritage Center is a nonprofit historical society that empowers individuals, families, and communities with a sense of meaning through our many cultural and historical programs. We are located in Spring Grove, which happens to have been Minnesota’s first Norwegian settlement. Our ancestry and heritage programs bring young and old together in lots of fun ways.

Activities such as creating family trees and recording family stories build multigenerational bonds and understanding. These are two things that are often lacking in today’s world. There are so many different ways to get started on your family’s narrative, including DNA ancestry testing. Thus, it often helps to be part of a nonprofit organization where you can learn from the experiences of other members and be assisted by an expert staff. Our Genetic Ancestry members’ results can remain anonymous or private, but some members are happy to share their ethnic ancestry experience so that others can compare their own results and decide what tests and analytical tools are best for them.

Please note we have another site at giantsoftheearth.org where you can learn about our film festival and other special opportunities for leaving your legacy.

Ancestry research unites us with our unique culture.
Giants celebrates our cultural heritage on Syttende Mai.
Discover your story
Preserve your story with our
  • Historical Media Preservation
  • Videotaping of Family Stories
Share your story
  • Create Family Trees and Family History Books
  • Create Family Oral History
  • Your Donations and Memberships Help Preserve Your Story
Interpret your story
  • With others by booking our beautiful Immigrant Hall for your Family Reunion or Lag Convention
Leave a legacy

So, why not get started today? Join at our Genetic Ancestry level ($175) or higher and get a complimentary DNA based genetic ancestry test kit, fill in what you know about your family tree, and begin your genetic genealogy adventure. Genetic ancestry will jump start your family tree. Genetic ancestry will fill in the blanks on an existing family tree. Read more under Genetic Ancestry from the header menu.

National ancestry finding service, small town friendliness

We help our members build their family stories through traditional and genetic genealogy, oral histories, and photo preservation. We believe an empowering heritage narrative is everyone’s birthright. We hope you will bookmark this page, like our Facebook page, and recommend us to your friends on Facebook.  Trueheritage.org –empowering families to optimally live, love, learn, and leave a legacy.

Join Giants of the Earth Heritage Center today and enjoy our special community.
Giants of the Earth Heritage Center welcomed local, national, and international members as we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Norway’s constitution.
Promoting multigenerational stewardship locally and internationally through:

1. Helping you honor the “giants” in your family and community whose life work helped or will help subsequent generations to receive a true heritage: health, good will, furosemide self-control, and understanding.

2. Empowering you to reconnect with long-lost cousins, even those across the oceans, using the latest genetic ancestry testing and social computer technology.

3. Bringing young and old together with fun intergenerational activities that build multigenerational bonds.

4. Helping members critically analyze what skills and lifestyles have empowered real people like themselves in past generations.

5. Providing a forum for members to deconstruct their personal heritage narrative and rebuild it in a way that treasures the uniqueness of the patchwork quilt they are.

 Learn more at our new website: https:/giantsoftheearth.org