Benkestok (noble family)

The family's progenitor is Tord Benkestok, who lived in Strand in Forshälla, Bohuslän, then a part of Norway.

Jon Tordsson Benkestok was the first known family member to move to Norway's largest and most important city at the time, Bergen.

On 4 December, he took part in a council meeting in Copenhagen, where a ruling by King Christopher on the right of Hanseatic merchants in Norway was confirmed.

Later members of the family lived in Ryfylke, where Talgøy in Sjørnarøyane and Haraldseid at Skjold were their seat farms, as well as at Jordanger in Sogn.

Trond Torleivsson Benkestok actively supported Johan Kruckow, who wanted Frederik I on the Danish and the Norwegian throne.

1593), was a signatory when the Norwegian nobility in 1591 paid homage to King Christian IV at Akershus Castle.

Due to Jon Benkestok's marriage to a so-called unfree woman, Birgitte Nilsdotter, their children lost their noble status.

According to a myth, the family's founding father saved the King of Norway from Swedish soldiers by hiding him in a wooden bench, wherefore he was rewarded with noble status, name, and arms.