No, I am not related to Håkon Bleken, who is probably the most famous living Norwegian painter, after Odd Nerdrum. And no, Bleken is far from common. In Norway 123 people had Bleken as their surname by 1-1-2007, according to the official sattistics. After that I have got two grandchildren, my daughter in law maried my son and my grandmother died. So let's say about 125 right now.

The little spread of the surname is also the reason why it was so easy for me to register both .no and .com from my surname. It's kind of cool when everyone in my family has firstname@lastname.no and thesame.com as their email addresses. :-)

>Are you related to Hakon Bleken? Or is it a common name?
>
>>Surnames related to nature is very common in Scandinavia.
>>
>>>How I manage to keep a surname dealing with forests, woods, or trees is surprising :o)
>>>
>>>>>It's been a joke in my family since I married a Holzer :o) I've had the Holzer lastname since then and I kept it after the divorce so I share the same lastname as my daughter. Holzer in German means to fell trees or perhaps woods some tell me. Very close to Skogen! :o)
>>>>
>>>>Close. Zu holzen means to fell trees. But after checking carefully with my German dictionary, I think that Holzer in fact is plural for Holz. So we don't have to fool in this case. Holzer means many trees, and many trees is a skog, in Norwegian.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>I just realized something funny with your "new" last name.
>>>>>>Holz = In German "Holz" means "tree".
>>>>>>Er: In Norwegian "er" in the end of a noun, means that it's plural.
>>>>>>So if you combine German and Norwegian, you can say that Holzer means many trees which is a forest. And in Norwegian Skogen means the forest. Coincidence? :-))
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>One of the reasons I picked it. I'm a Skogen :o)