Barbara Arbuthnott

Barbara Elrington Douglas Arbuthnott (12 September 1822 – 28 August 1904) was a Scottish woman who lived in Sunndal, Norway where she engaged in charitable work and wrote about her life. Biography Douglas was born into a wealthy Scottish family in Templemore, Ireland. Her father, Sir Neil Douglas, KCB, KCH (dies 1853) was a Scottish officer and Lieutenant General in the British army. Her mother was the daughter of a wealthy banker in Edinburgh. In her youth, she studied the Greek, Latin and German languages in Brussels (1831–1840). She met Queen Victoria in 1842. On her father's travels in the East she learned to speak Hindi. She first married James Allen (1846–1849) who died of cholera, then Neil Ferguson, who died in the Crimean War. In London she had met the famous Norwegian violinist and theatre founder Ole Bull. She came to Sunndal, in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway on her honeymoon with her third husband (married 6 December 1865), Hon William Arbuthnott, son of 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott. They were divorced, after her 20-year-old son from her first marriage died, allegedly because she thought her husband had provoked an epileptic seizure by quarrelling with her son, who then died at Fokstua coach inn on 15 September 1868. She was renowned, among other things, for driving her sick son with a horse and wagon across the Dovrefjell mountain range, while trying to save his life. After her son's death she bought the farm Løken, which is now a local museum.