Petra Mikkelsdatter

Petra Mikkelsdatter is a figure in the history of Nils’s migration and family in Queens. The account names her among those who stayed in Queens after the Sloopers moved upstate, and later identifies Petra as Nils’s wife and the mother of his seven children. It gives little information about Petra’s own actions or perspective, but places her at the center of a family history shaped by migration, a dangerous bargain, and Nils’s refusal to repeat an earlier sacrifice.

Migration and Settlement

Nils left Norway intending to bring his wife with him, but doubted that the small sloop chosen by the Quakers would safely carry his family. He brought a monster as insurance, at a price that the account does not further specify. After the Sloopers reached New York and went upstate, Nils, Anna Sofie, and Petra Mikkelsdatter remained in Queens, which was then farmland and extensive forest rather than a developed parkland. The story describes this wooded terrain, with its hills and caves, as a fitting place for the creature to hide.

Marriage and Children

The account later says that Nils married Petra quickly and had seven children with her. It does not explain Petra’s relationship to Nils or Anna Sofie at the earlier point when all three are said to have stayed in Queens, so their precise family circumstances should not be inferred from these passages alone. Nils did not take the seven children into the woods. He had learned from the earlier events, and the account suggests that making such a sacrifice again would have been too difficult for him.

Place in the Family History

Petra’s significance is conveyed chiefly through the contrast between the bargain Nils made when he feared for his family’s safety and the later family life he built with her. His seven children were remembered as telling stories of his kindness, complicating any simple judgment of him as evil without erasing the harm associated with his choices. Petra is named as his wife and the mother of those children, but the available account does not describe her response to the bargain, her knowledge of it, or her own view of Nils.