BiblioVault - Books about Norwegians

Norwegians in Michigan

Clifford Davidson

Michigan State University Press, 2010

In Norwegians in Michigan, Clifford Davidson shows how Norwegians took advantage of opportunities when they began settling in Michigan in the nineteenth century. Norwegians sailed Lake Michigan, joined the lumber trade, farmed the northwest part of the state, and mined copper and iron in the Upper Peninsula. At the same time, they brought a unique culture that came to be associated with Michigan and the Midwest. The first generations of Norwegians in Michigan maintained close cultural ties with their homeland.
Some Norwegian immigrants adjusted to life in a new land more quickly than others. Among these, according to Davidson, were engineers trained in Norway who developed Michigan's bridges, tunnels, and eventually even the cars that used them.
Illustrated with photographs, maps, and documents, Norwegians in Michigan vividly chronicles a now-familiar pattern of immigrants' cultural understandings prodding and shaping the culture of an emerging region and nation.

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Norwegians in Wisconsin

Richard J. Fapso

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001

This perennially popular book, now revised and expanded with additional historical photos and documents, offers a concise introduction to Wisconsin's Norwegian immigrants. The narrative examines the mass migration of Norwegians from 1837, when Ole Nattestad became the first Norwegian settler in Wisconsin, to the late nineteenth century, when Norwegian immigration largely came to a close. This volume demonstrates the efforts of immigrants to balance newfound American customs with the most treasured traditions of their homeland.

New to this edition are selected letters of Ole Munch Ræder, a scholar sent by the Norwegian government in 1847 to study the American legal system. Ræder visited several Wisconsin cities and villiages and paid special attention to the Norwegian community. His compelling accounts, which appeared in newspapers in Norway, offer a contemporary view of Norwegian life in Wisconsin.

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The Rise of Jonas Olsen

A Norwegian Immigrant’s Saga

Johannes Wist

University of Minnesota Press, 2005

The road to riches for the hero of this sweeping historical novel ends up being rockier than he initially expects. Norwegian immigrant Jonas Olsen arrives in late nineteenth-century Minneapolis with little money and less English. He quickly learns to reinvent himself—from laboring in sewer construction to building a successful dry goods business, from losing everything in a banking collapse to settling the Red River Valley. While an eminently likable character, Jonas can also be ruthless in his ambition to find success in America.

The Rise of Jonas Olsen is at once an immigrant novel, business novel, political novel, and a western, offering a rich and panoramic view of Scandinavian immigrant life in the Upper Midwest. Wist combines realism and satire to depict the role Norwegian Americans played in the economic, political, and cultural life of the Upper Midwest.

Originally published serially in the Norwegian-language newspaper the Decorah Posten in the 1920s, The Rise of Jonas Olsen illustrates an immigrant’s struggle to preserve his identity and heritage while striving to become fully accepted as an American.

Johannes B. Wist (1864–1923) was a journalist and editor of the Decorah Posten from 1900 to 1923.

Orm Øverland is professor of American literature at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the author of The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America and Immigrant Minds, American Identities: Making the United States Home, 1870-1930.

Todd W. Nichol is editor of the Norwegian-American Historical Association publication program.

Published in cooperation with the Norwegian-American Historical Association.

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Wisconsin My Home

Thurine Oleson; As told to her daughter Erna Oleson Xan; Introduction by Odd Lovoll

University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Wisconsin My Home is the story of Thurine Oleson, born in Wisconsin in 1866 to parents who had emigrated from Telemarken, Norway. This much-loved book was first published in 1950 when Thurine was a spry octogenarian. In it she not only vividly recalls the pioneer life of her childhood in a Norwegian American settlement, but also tells her parents’ stories of their life in Norway and their reasons for emigration. This new edition restores the twenty-nine photographs that appeared in the original 1950 hardcover edition and includes an introduction by emigration historian Odd Lovoll.

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