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Viking and Valkyrie couple Don and Julie Spigelmyre have announced that, after 26 years, they are retiring from their iconic roles. For decades, the Spigelmyres have been a large part of the Little Norway Festival tradition of fur clad, armor-wearing, weapon-wielding vikings and valkyries rampaging through Petersburg. The couple decided that this year's "Little Norway" festival would be their last as Vikings and Valkyries. The town's notorious party group is known for having fun and giving back...
At the Petersburg Community Foundation annual award reception Saturday, Desi Burrell was named 2026 Volunteer of the Year. Representing PCF, Glorianne Wollen, said the board's decision was unanimous and easy, citing Burrell's lifetime of community service. "She sees things that need doing, then she does them," Wollen said. Wollen described how the previous Saturday, Burrell was spotted at Sandy Beach with a shovel and a five-gallon bucket, cleaning up after other people's dogs to prepare the...
The 68th year of Little Norway Festival opens Thursday, May 14, for four days of parades, smørbrød, live music, competitive herring-tossing and all manner of communal revelry that could only happen in this town. The celebration runs through Sunday, May 17. "I love that everybody comes to town," said Kelli Slaven, who coordinates the festival schedule for the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce. "I love seeing all the people downtown - the kids running, familiar faces and new ones. It just kind of mak...
After 36-years leading Petersburg's Séet Ká Kwáan Dancers, Kash Kaaní Jeanette Ness is retiring and passing leadership of the group to veteran dancers Kalxeich Kayla Perry and Xáay Sháawát Laurel McCullough, both of the Wooshketaan clan. In 1989, Ness was on the parent committee for the Johnson O'Malley (JOM) program for Native students. The committee decided to hold a Potlatch in March 1990, inviting over 300 JOM students from Southeast Alaska to Petersburg. "Ruth Demmert of Kake came over t...
This year's Little Norway Festival is bursting with music. Local acts take the festival's downtown main stage across Friday and Saturday this year, spanning jazz, classic rock, Appalachian folk and everything between. Evening shows at Kito's Kave and the Harbor Bar keep the live music rocking and the dance floor bumping into the middle of the night. And the weekend closes with a classical music piano concert at the Lutheran Church. "I absolutely love it," said Robyn Cardenas, who curated the...
Sally Dwyer will arrive at Sons of Norway Hall at 5 a.m. this Saturday as she has been doing for the past 50 years. Dwyer coordinates the smørbrød - the traditional open-faced Norwegian sandwiches - served at the Sons of Norway Kaffe Hus, held Saturday, May 16, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Sons of Norway Hall on Sing Lee Alley. Even for those 18 years when she didn't live in Petersburg, she flew home for every festival to continue the traditions. Dwyer's preparations this year include 150 m...
"Anchor's Aweigh!" keeps the cast in constant motion, but not just since it's set on an old schooner, the SS Flounder. Intrigue and misadventure keep the characters coming and going, not to mention the fact that they're aboard for a singles cruise. After a long day at Little Norway, it'll be a treat for the audience to take a seat and watch the Mitkof Mummers work their magic. This magic doesn't make itself though. The Mummers have rehearsed 4-plus nights a week since March, all leading up to...
Mike Corl grew up with softball in his bones. He remembers that there were games practically every night. There was a local softball league. "Back 25, 30 years ago, I'd be in Little League or my mom would be playing softball," he said. "There were lots of teams. Traveling teams." That era wound down eventually, and the league went with it. But the tradition found a way back has been a fixture of the Little Norway Festival ever since, returning this year with six teams, roughly 80 players and...
Walk downtown Petersburg during Little Norway Festival and you'll find artwork just about everywhere you look. It's in the galleries and on the walls of pop-up shows. It's on the parade floats. And it's in the storefronts of Petersburg-Wrangell Insurance, IGA, First Bank and Wells Fargo - where the students of Rae C. Stedman Elementary School have their work on display for anyone passing by. "[The festival] is quite a concentrated experience of visual creativity," said Firelight Gallery owner Ma...
Somewhere along the way, a trunk ended up in the Clausen Memorial Museum's storage. Nobody knows how it got there. It has no museum reference number, no donation record, no accompanying note. What it does have is a name, carved into the wood: Gertrude, Arnie's daughter. "We don't know where it came from at all," said Anne Lee, curator at the Clausen Memorial Museum. That trunk - "an America trunk," the kind Norwegian emigrants packed for a one-way journey to the States - became the seed of the...
The Little Norway Festival closes Sunday evening with a world class piano concert at Petersburg Lutheran Church. Corbin Beisner - a concert pianist who has performed at the Conservatoire Liceu in Barcelona, the Liszt Saal in Rome, and concert halls across Europe and the United States - arrived in Petersburg this week for a 7 p.m. recital Sunday at Petersburg Lutheran Church. The program includes the complete Moonlight Sonata, a full Grieg section, Christian Sinding's "Rustle of Spring" and...
Construction on a long-planned sewer line repair project at the Petersburg Community Aquatic Center will begin May 18, and the pool will close for at least the first month of work as contractors cut through concrete slab floors to access blocked and disconnected drain lines beneath the locker rooms. Parks and Recreation Director Stephanie Payne told the Petersburg Borough Assembly on Monday that the project, carried out by Ketchikan Mechanical Inc. and Rainforest Contracting, will run through...
Petersburg’s street sweeper is back on the job after a weeks-long breakdown, as the borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation race to clear months of accumulated safety sand from local roads ahead of Little Norway Festival week — and ahead of the annual repainting of lines on the state’s highways. The heavy sand load is evidence of the region’s punishing winter. Relentless snowfall through the season required repeated applications of sand and grit to keep roads safe, leaving more material on the ground than a typical year. Getting...
18 – There are no issues in the archive until May 19, 1926. Thank you for your patience. April 6, 1951 – With the coming of spring rains the snow is fast disappearing in the woods and ice has gone out of most of the creeks. This has meant an upswing in activity among those men concerned with predator control. Hosea Sarber, wildlife agent, and Doyle Cisney, skipper of the Black Bear, returned late last week from a field trip on wolf control. They found wolves very scarce along the Narrows, so scarce “there don’t seem to be any on Mitkof,...
Stephanie Pfundt has spent the better part of a decade building a career in classical music far from Petersburg - graduate school in Boston, performing across the East Coast, a produced opera in Massachusetts, a growing network of colleagues at some of the country's top music institutions. And now the award-winning Petersburg-born soprano is bringing a long-dreamed-of project to life and bringing chamber music home to Alaska. "This has been a project I've dreamt of for six years," Pfundt said....
“It’s got a boat, it’s got crazy characters, it’s the perfect play for Mayfest,” said Tiffany Glass, director of the Mitkof Mummers. The play is centered around a singles’ cruise on an old schooner, the SS Flounder, which may or may not be on her last voyage. The captain is trying to make sure it’s all smooth sailing, but the owners have disguised themselves among the guests to decide the Flounder’s fate. Then there are the stowaways, a couple of hoods hiding from their nefarious boss, who of course has followed them aboard, disguised as we...
January 2025 The Petersburg Borough Assembly agreed to transfer seven parcels of borough-owned land in the Airport Addition Subdivision to Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority (THRHA) in exchange for the developing road and utilities for 11 residential lots. The snowpack at the Raven's Ridge snow survey site at 1,650 ft elevation measured zero inches. One of only two years on record without snowpack in January. Rock-N-Road Construction was awarded the contract for the borough's Pump Station...
January 1, 1926 – The freighter LaTouche was in port Tuesday the 29th and delivered 25 tons of coal at Ohmer’s dock, 100 tons of coal at the Trading Union and 100 tons at Hoge & Tvetens dock. Also Tuesday, the Alameda arrived with mail from the south. Tuesday night, the Laddie took a large party to Green Rocks and despite the rain everyone expressed themselves as having a dandy time. December 29, 1950 – Kayler-Dahl cold storage workers voted unanimously on Tuesday to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. They gave as their reaso...
"Just get it out of me. I don't want to play games," this is what 68-year-old Jim Stolpe said when he got diagnosed with prostate cancer. His choice lead him to needing several types of therapy: radiation, drugs, etc. in hopes of slowing down the testosterone, one of the things that makes prostate cancer worse. Since his diagnosis in 2005, Stolpe has, as he would describe, "gone up and down the chemo ladder," which has resulted in the loss of several things for Stolpe. "Get in the shower and...
After years of planning and development, Petersburg's Scow Bay Boat Haulout project is nearly ready for construction. PND Engineer Dick Somerville presented a progress report on the 65% design completion at a joint work session with harbor board, assembly and economic development officials on Wednesday morning. Somerville highlighted that all the necessary funding has been secured for the $15.07 million project, the permitting is in progress, and as long as the federal government eventually...
July 24, 1925 – Fishing banks now visited by vessels of Canada and the United States give promise of little increased production. The depletion of these banks is recognized by the two governments in their halibut treaty of May 31, 1924, providing for an annual closed season on the Pacific coast banks from November 15 to February 15. Halibut fishing is a joint enterprise between the vessel owner and his crew of fishermen. Certain items of cost are paid jointly while others are paid by one or the other according to agreement. The Pacific coast m...
This Saturday marks a historic milestone for Petersburg as the community celebrates the first-ever Amy Hallingstad Day, honoring the Tlingit civil rights pioneer who transformed education and social justice for Alaska Natives. "This is the first year we are having Amy Hallingstad Day. We had it formally proclaimed by the borough as an annual holiday now, and it's to commemorate Amy Hallingstad, who lived in Petersburg most of her life and was a huge proponent in a lot of civil rights matters,...
May 22, 1925 – John Thompson has the framework up for a two-story building, adjoining the Citizens Steam Laundry, to be used as a machine shop and blacksmith shop downstairs with living apartments upstairs. Alongside of the machine shops will be built gridirons for small boats and boats of a larger fishing class. Also will be built a covered runaway on the shore side where autos can be repaired. There will be a pit so that it will be easy to work under the machines. “And you may say,” said Mr. Thompson, “that my gridirons, when not in use, wi...
