University Place

Today we are pleased to introduce Julie K. Allen as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenters and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the Museum's employees. Julie K. Allen is the Paul and Renata Madsen Professor of Danish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Germanic languages and literatures from Harvard University in 2005. She is the author of such works as Icons of Danish

Modernity

Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen; and Danish,

but not Lutheran

The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity 1850 through 1915. She is also the editor of The Bridge, the journal of the Danish-American Heritage Society. Here today to discuss the Scandinavian Invasion of the Midwest, please join me in welcoming Julie K. Allen. (Applause) Hi and thank you for having me today. This is really exciting. From the title of my talk today and the provocative imagery on the screen, you might expect me to lecture about the Minnesota Vikings or the Kensington Stone which was unearthed by a Swedish farmer named Olaf Ohman in Minnesota in 1898. This rectangular piece of rock about three feet high and weighing more than 200 pounds is inscribed with runes on two sides. The text on the stone tells the story of a Viking expedition that penetrated far beyond the long abandoned Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland to reach the Midwest in the Mid-14th Century.

The runes on the stone declare

"Eight Geats and "22 Norwegians on this journey of discovery "from Vinland far to the west. "We had a camp by two shelters, "one day's journey north of this stone. "We were fishing one day. "After we came home we found 10 men red from blood and dead. "Hail Mary deliver us from evil. "There are 10 men by the inland sea looking after our "ships, 14 days journey from "this peninsula, Year 1362." The literal meaning of this text is about the only thing that anyone can agree on with regard to the Kensington Stone. The authenticity of the stone has been hotly debated for more than a century. Defenders of the Kensington Stone regard it as evidence that Vikings roamed through the Midwest nearly a century and a half before Columbus discovered America, building on the foundation of Nordic settlements in Newfoundland established by Leif Erikson and his compatriots three and a half centuries earlier. The stone's detractors call it a hoax, pointing out that many of the words used in the stone and even some of the runes themselves were not used until the 19th Century, not the Viking age. What's important for our purposes today is that public enthusiasm for the Kensington Stone underscored the desire of Scandinavian Americans to demonstrate their close and enduring connection to their new homeland. My purpose today is not to speculate about the possibility of a Viking invasion in the Midwest a millennium ago, but rather to focus on the people who embrace the story represented by the stone with such enthusiasm. Regardless of the runes voracity, the Scandinavian invasion of the Midwest is a historical fact, but one that dates to the 19th Century, not the 14th. Olaf Ohman and his fellows thrilled to the possibility of their ancestors having once claimed the land on their behalf, but the fact remains that those who actually made good on this claim were the roughly three million Scandinavians who immigrated to the US between 1825 and 1925. A large percentage of them as you know settled in Wisconsin as well as in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota among other states and this map, based on the 1870s census, shows these pockets of Scandinavian settlement, big ones right there on the Mississippi. They homesteaded farms. They built an extensive network of Lutheran churches and colleges and universities. They established agricultural cooperatives. They fought in the Civil War. They published newspapers and shaped the culture of the Midwest in countless ways. What I'm going to talk about today is how those Scandinavians dedicated their lives to building up an unknown, often unsettling place, and traced their legacy in the Midwest today. Although various Scandinavians, individuals, were involved in the early settlement of America, both in New Sweden and New Amsterdam, the regular waves of large scale Scandinavian immigration to the United States began in 1825 with a boatload of Norwegian Quakers who came to be known as Sloopers based on the type of ship that they arrived in. After initially settling in Upstate New York with the Quaker community, the Sloopers eventually moved west to Fox River, Illiniois. Subsequent groups of Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, and Finns settled throughout the Midwest from Muskego, Wisconsin in the east to Minot, North Dakota in the west. Others went onto Utah, Oregon, Washington, California, and Texas and other places, but that's a story for another day. We're going to focus just on the Midwest today. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 there were enough Scandinavian immigrants in Wisconsin, primarily Norwegians, but also some Swedes and a few Danes, to create the only non-English speaking regiment in the Union army, the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment under the command of Colonel Hans Christian Heg and they mustered at Camp Randall. Heg was born in Lier, Norway on December 21, 1829 and immigrated with his parents to Wisconsin in 1840 at the age of 11. Their home in Muskego became a sort of clearinghouse for Norwegian immigrants. They would arrive at the Hegs' home, meet other Norwegians, decide where to settle, and make connections with local Norwegian communities. This trend reinforced the cluster settlement pattern that Bob Ostergren documents in his book. This is about Swedes in Minnesota with the same pattern of transplanting entire villages from the old country to the new on this side of the Atlantic. In today's immigration debates this kind of dense influx and ethnically centered community construction would indeed be regarded as an invasion. (chuckles) Just as many contemporary immigrants to the US earn US citizenship through their service in the armed forces many Scandinavians became full-fledged Americans through their service in the Union army. After spending a couple of years prospecting unsuccessfully for gold in California, Hans Christian Heg became a major in the fourth Wisconsin militia and an active member of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and later the newly formed Republican Party. When war broke out between the states, Heg appealed to his fellow Scandinavians to join the Union cause, warning that "the government of "our adopted country is in danger. " It is our duty as brave and intelligent citizens "to extend our hands in defense of "the cause of our country and of our homes." Heg led his men to victory in the Battle of Perryville in October 1862, but was mortally wounded in the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 and died at the age of 33 in the service of his adopted country. A statue of Heg now adorns the State Capital here in Madison with another in Wind Lake, Wisconsin where he lies buried and a replica in Lier, Norway, that was a gift from the Norwegian American organization to the people of Norway in 1925 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Sloopers. Heg's distinguished serviced raised the profile of Norwegian Americans and demonstrated their loyalty and commitment to their new homeland while the intermingling of Scandinavians and native-born Americans in the Union army helped to integrate the Scandinavians into American society and eventually politics as the long tradition of Minnesota politicians with Scandinavian roots illustrates. Nearly half of Minnesota's governors were first or second generation Scandinavian Americans. I was really quite struck. Wisconsin's record isn't quite as good. (chuckles) Although it's common to talk about the Scandinavian American community as a group, there's considerable rivalry between Swedes and Norwegians for pride of place among immigrants in the Midwest in the late 19th Century. Well before the discovery of the Kensington Stone which seemed to promote the Swedes although it was Norwegians documented on the stone, one of the staunchest defenders of the Norwegian's supposed precedence in the Midwest was Rasmus B. Anderson, who in the words of Norwegian poet Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson: "Lived for one cause alone, "to make the Norwegians honored in America." Born right here in Dane County in 1846 to Norwegian immigrant parents, Anderson lived in Madison for most of his 90 years, except for a few years selling apples on the streets of Milwaukee, three and a half years spent attending Luther College in Decorah, Iowa from which he was expelled at age 19 for leading a student revolt against the strict regulations, cramped living quarters, and onerous labor requirements.

He said

Practically all the janitor service and kitchen and dining room work, except cooking, had to be done by the students. That's a cost saving measure we could consider. (laughter) He spent four years in Copenhagen as the US Ambassador. Despite his largely autodidactic education, Anderson taught at the University of Wisconsin- Madison for 14 years, from 1869 to 1883. Although he initially taught Greek, Latin, German, Ancient History and Anglo-Saxon, Anderson discreetly introduced the teaching of Norwegian as well, which proved so successful that in 1875 the faculty by formal vote established a Chair in Scandinavian languages and literatures, thereby laying the foundation for the oldest Scandinavian Studies department in the country of which I am currently the Chair. (chuckles) An ardent proponent of what would come to be known as the Wisconsin Idea, Anderson was,

as Paul Knaplund notes

"Very active in "the never-ending task of educating the people of "the state about their great institution." He interpreted the university to Norwegian Americans, translated papers by Presidents Chadbourne and Bascom into the Norwegian language, gave lectures about the university, and urged immigrants to send their sons and daughters here instead of to the church schools. He took the lead in establishing coeducational classes. He donated his own books to the university library and he persuaded Ole Bull, the Norwegian fiddler, to give a concert for the benefit of a projected Norwegian library at the University. Anderson also lectured Wiley on Leif Erikson and

published his lectures in 1874 under the title

America Not Discovered By Columbus. (chuckles) Anderson's activism was instrumental in the establishment of Leif Erikson Day on October 9th which was first adopted as a state holiday in Wisconsin in 1930 and nationally in 1963. Incidentally, the day October 9th was chosen because it was the day on which the Sloop Restoration reached New York Harbor in 1825. Despite the image of Vikings marauding and roaming through the area promoted by both the Kensington Stone and Anderson's popularization of Leif Erikson, the actual Scandinavian invasion in the Midwest was not a sudden nor armed incursion. Instead it took place in a much subtler, slower way, largely through chain migration. This excellent book, Come Join Me In The Spring, was published in 2011 and it documents the chain migration from the Helland farm community in Rogaland, Norway between 1861 and 1912 from the perspective of the Norwegians who stayed behind. During that half century, at least 50 people left the small neighborhood of nine farms which had an average population of 65 to make their way to America. Averaged out this works out to one person per year which would hardly be noticed, but of course, that's not how it happened. Instead small groups of two or three families would leave together with five or 10 years between groups. Although Norwegian Americans proudly celebrate 1825 as the beginning of large scale Norwegian immigration, the first group to leave Helland did so in 1861 well after 1,000s of their countrymen had braved the wilds of America and established Norwegian ethnic enclaves here. Geneologically it can be difficult to track the relationships between the different family groups from the region since so many of them adopted Helland as their surname. The fact that there are at least 40 farms named Helland in Norway means that there are more than 4,000 people in Norway and nearly 3,000 Americans of Norwegian descent bearing the surname Helland, but many of them are not blood relatives. Although this book does trace all of the people who left this particular Helland, this book focuses particularly on one family group consisting of the Reverend Kitl Kitlson Helland and his wife Ovidia, his 26-year-old niece, Ana Andersdaughter, and his sister, Brunla Kitlson, all of whom came in 1867 to Wiota, Wisconsin, where Reverend Helland had been offered the post as minister in the Norwegian Lutheran church. Although Reverend Helland, Ovidia, and their four children who'd been born in the US, returned to Norway in 1876, Ana and Brunla settled in Jordan Township, east of Wiota. Ana worked as a maid in Warren, Illinois for a few years before marrying in 1872 the recently widowed Ever Everson who'd immigrated with his parents at the age of 11 in 1844. I promise the names are going to get confusing. I apologize. Ana's brother, Kitl, joined her in 1872. Her cousin, Bertha Larsdaughter Helland, in 1883. Her brother, Krut, and her sister, Brunla, in 1880, leaving just two siblings, Anders, who would inherit the farm, and Barbara, at home in Norway to care for their elderly mother. In 1902, Ana's niece, Ana, her brother, Anders' oldest daughter, immigrated to Chicago where she married and had a daughter, but when her husband died suddenly Ana sent her daughter Caroline to live with her Aunt Ana Everson in Wisconsin. Ana Andersdaugher's sister, Alita, came to the US in 1909, fell in love with and married her cousin Christian Matthew Everson, her Aunt Ana's son, with whom she moved to North Dakota. The book takes its name from a postcard that Alita sent in 1910 to her sister, Christina, left behind in Helland, inviting her to come join her the following year. Instead, however, Christine married her father's cousin who was recently widowed and devoted herself to taking care of his three children from his first marriage as well as the six children they had together. Christine is the grandmother of Olaf Veka, the author of this book. He inherited his mother's trove of leathers and wondered who these people were and why they all left and where they went and so he started this project to find them all here. The last link in the chain migration set in motion by Ana Andersdaughter Everson's decision to accompany her uncle to Wiota in 1867 closed the circle when her cousin, Siegerd, the youngest son of Reverend Helland and Ovidia, who'd been born after their return to Norway, immigrated in 1905, just a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday. He made his way to Jordan where he lived with his widowed cousin, Sofia Everson Jackson, Ana's oldest daughter, and her son, Charles, before attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He visited Norway in 1908, the year before his father's death, but otherwise maintained very little contact with his family in Norway. You get a sense in how that works. Just little groups and little clusters that turned into a flood. Although some of the 19th Century Scandinavian immigrants like Reverend Helland and Siegerd and Rasmus B. Anderson, were able to return to Norway for a visit, most never had the means or the opportunity to do so. As a result the main driver of chain migration were the letters that immigrants sent back home. These letters are known as America Letters to distinguish them from the Norway Letters that they received from their friends and family back home and the America Letters exchanged between members of immigrant families and communities in America. Since the Nordic countries had introduced public schooling as early as 1793, the vast majority of Scandinavian immigrants could read and write, at least on a basic level. The letters they sent and received were often the only contact they had with their loved ones back home and letters were expensive to send. A single letter could cost up to half a week's wages in Norway so each letter was precious. They were often copied by hand and passed around or published in local newspapers at home and we gripe about public record's laws and want our emails private. These letters are then perhaps not surprisingly often very formulaic and strangely impersonal to a modern sensibility. They rarely discuss politics or world events, much as historians would like them to. Instead, they almost always reassure the recipient that the sender is in good health which was not something that could be taken for granted. They discussed the weather, crops, and expressed good wishes for the recipient. Many America Letters extol and often exaggerate the benefits of the new country, free land, good harvests, wealth, classlessness, and so on. They encourage others to immigrate as well, suggest places for them to settle, and offer assistance with the journey or with finding employment. Other letters are more cautious and warn against the dangers of this new place. For example, a letter from Knut Soveson Oker was published in the newspaper Drumand's Adresse on May 18, 1847. In a letter which he wrote to his son, Soveson Knutson Groven, who'd taken over his wife's family farm in 1843 and remained behind when his father, mother, and six of his siblings left Norway for America on June 7, 1845.

Knut writes

"You should not think of immigrating to "America at this time, although we "would very much like to see you, but be satisfied "with your situation in your homeland. "I would not recommend that anyone immigrate now, "especially because of the epidemics of malaria "and cholera we've had here lately. "I've taken a homestead 16 miles from Madison. "The annual taxes are now from one and a half to $2 "per 40 acres, but will likely increase "when Wisconsin becomes a state." I can verify that they have. (chuckles) "Lars has made from 10 to $13 a month in "Dodgeville, about 60 English miles from here. "Your three grown sisters get $1 a week and "dear little Aaste (who was 13 at the time), " now gets half a dollar a week. "Because of this and since all of our children "are very good to us we are lacking nothing." Despite his father's advice, Sove did immigrate with his family in 1852 having lost his wife's farm due to some bad loans. Presumably, he fared well here in Wisconsin. Despite all of its possible positive benefits, immigration came at a high cost to Scandinavians, not least in terms of social standing and often financial stability as well. From an article that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1871, we can discern the way in which immigration transformed ordinary Scandinavian farmers into exotic creatures, as their removal from their familiar surroundings rendered them if not ridiculous then at least strange to American eyes. "It is curious to see such a heterogeneous crowd land. "The Swedes are usually distinguished by their tanned leather breeches and waist coats and their peculiar beforementioned exhalations." (gasp) (chuckles) "You cannot miss the Irishman "with his napless hat, worn coat, and corduroy trousers. "The Englishman you know at once by "his Scotch cap, clay pipe, and paper collar. "The Teuton you detect at once by his long-shirted, "dark blue woolen coat, high-necked, and brass-button "vest, and flat military cap or grey beaver. "Indeed, one of the officers told me, he could tell exactly "what part of Germany each individual came from, "from his dress alone and I believe he could. "Then there are the Bohemians, the genuine ones, with "their many colored scarfs and glaring jackets for the "women and natty military caps for almost all the men. "The French in their blue linen blouses and finally "the Norwegians in their curious national dress, " consisting of a grey woolen, stiff-necked jacket which "covers only about one-third of their back, while in front "it slopes down to a greater length and is profusely " ornamented with huge silver buttons set so close "together that they overlap each other. "Their breeches of dark woolen stuff, therefrom, "reach nearly up to their neck behind. "Only a small strip of jacket with "an enormous stiff collar between. "You cannot properly say a Norwegian in a pair of "breeches, but a pair of breeches with a Norwegian in them. (laughter) "This, of course, only applies "to the farmers from the interior parts of the country, "the Dolkeller and Troensere, et cetera." This perception perceived strangeness of Scandinavian immigrants recurs in the personal history of a woman named Thurine Oleson who was born in Wisconsin in 1866 to recent Norwegian immigrants. Thurine told her history to her daughter, Ema Oleson Xan, who published it under the title, Wisconsin My Home, in 1950 when Thurine was a lively octogenarian. Thurine recalls her parents' trials in the first few years after their arrival here. "They were not awed by the grandure of this new country. "It did not turn out to be as wonderful as folks had said. "Hardship started right away. "Then Mother had a baby before the year "was out, me, and two more followed. "She nearly cried herself to death for Norway, "never having known a day's want in all their lives, "now they felt the pinch of poverty wherever they turned. "Their money was worth very little here in America "during those high times after the war. "Calico was $0.50 a yard, where it had once been five. "Wheat was $2 a bushel, where it used to be about $0.80. "Instead of respecting them as one of the best families "in the country, the Yankees laughed at the newcomers " and their attempts to speak the English language. "They Haha'd right out loud at the embroidered clothing "and the silver button knee-breeches, but despite "the hardships the young folks loved it. "They looked out over the broad fields that would be "theirs

some day and whispered

'Wisconsin. "Wisconsin, this is my home.'" Driven by such treatment and their own desire to fit in and succeed in America, Scandinavians were generally quick to learn English and to adapt to American ways, but that did not mean that they abandoned or rejected their native culture. Although the children of the Scandinavian immigrants in particular quickly became American through and through, they still carried with them some of the cultural trappings of their heritage, both in the form of songs and stories, and the shape of treasured tools and heirlooms. By preserving their treasures and traditions, Scandinavian Americans set their own imprint on American culture, particularly here in the Midwest. Scandinavian Lutheranism has been a major force associated with the establishment, spread, and persistence of Scandinavian culture in the Midwest. The Norwegian and Swedish synods served as centers of gravity for their respective immigrant communities and attached universities and colleges. Although the Danes were split between the happy Danes who followed Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig's folksy inclusive Lutheranism and the pious Danes who espoused a more pietistic quality to say nothing of the nearly 20,000 Danish Mormons who bypassed the Midwest to settle in Utah. Danish Americans preserve their cultural identity through the twin and intertwined traditions of the folk high school and communal song. The folk high school is one of Grundtvig's most enduring legacies. A school that thought to enlighten and inspire young people, from peasant and working class backgrounds, by introducing them to the great ideas of human civilization in a religious and patriotic framework, but without examinations, grades, or credits. Students were expected to learn for love of learning. Less emphasis was placed on knowledge than an inquiring attitude of mind. Sounds good to me.

Dorothy Burton Skardal explains

"Both formal and "folk cultures were taught and music, "song, and dance were often daily practice. "Some schools also introduced instruction in farming, "and dairying methods, along with other practical skills "and provided impetus to the developing "cooperative movement in Skandinavia. "They encouraged social criticism, trained future political "leaders and thus contributed to "growing democracy in politics." Danish Americans founded six, began folk high schools in the United States and Canada between 1878 and 1921, spread across the country from Tyler, Minnesota to Solvang, California. These schools are initially run almost exclusively by Danish Lutheran pastors. A prime example of this is the Danebod Folk High School in Tyler. The folk schools prove to be an important element in the empowerment of Scandinavian American immigrants, as well as a valuable tool in their struggle to introduce the most positive aspects of their native culture into their adopted one. Danish Lutheran pastor Enok Mortensen was an outspoken advocate of the folk school movement. Born in Frederiksberg, Denmark in 1902, Mortensen immigrated to the United States as a teenager together with the rest of his family. He initially worked in a furniture shop and then in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then in his father's shoe shop, but a summer stint at the folk high school in Newstead, Nebraska, probably not Newstead, Newstead? Put him on the path to becoming a pastor. He took courses at Iowa State Teacher's College, Grandview Seminary, and the University of Minnesota in the 1920s before becoming the minister of St. Stephen's Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago in 1929 which had a very, very large Scandinavian community. In addition to his pastoral work, he was instrumental in revitalizing the Danebod Folk High School in Tyler, Minnesota which had been founded in 1888 by the Danish community there under the direction, and you can see from the stone, this Ebenezer in his honor, of Reverend H. J. Petersen, but which was suffering like other Danish folk schools from declining enrollments. Mortensen oversaw Danebod's transition from being a formal year-round educational institution to a place where summer camps, short courses, and conferences for adults and families were offered.

In addition to authoring several novels including

Saaledes blev jeg hjemlos, Thus I became Homeless in 1934; and Jeg vaelger et land, I Choose a Country, 1936, Mortensen chronicled the history of Danish American folk schools in his 1977 book,

Schools for Life

the Grundtvigian folks schools in America. Today Danebod hosts family camps and an annual folk meeting where academic presentations are interspersed with Danish folk dancing, Danish food, and lots of communal singing. Unified by their Lutheran faith, Danish Americans in the Midwest share a common cultural heritage, expressed in their own books of songs based on the Danish folk high school songbook. The two most important ones are the Danish Language Songbook for the Danish Folk in America which was compiled by Frederik Lange Grundtvig, the Danish pastor Grundtvig's son in the 1880s is known as Dan Rod, the Red One, and the English language, World of Song, compiled by S.G. Wilhelm on behalf of the D.E.L.C.A. in 1941 and reached in 1958 and it's green. You have the red one and the green one. In addition to classic Danish Lutheran hymns by Thomas Kingo, B.S. Ingemann, and Grundtvig, these songbooks contain songs about the Danish American experience. Although the songs are different from those sung in Denmark today, the tradition of communal singing is still a shared cultural bond. Not just singing in church, but for all manner of festive occasions, from round birthdays when someone turns 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 to retirement parties and wedding anniversaries. The Danes celebrate copper at 12.5 years, silver at 25 years, golden at 50 years. As an aside, in addition to custom written songs for familiar tunes, these events are celebrated in Denmark with a floral arch over the happy couple's front door, but only half an arch for copper, bitters, speeches, and the tradition of cutting off the toes of the groom's socks or a piece of his tie. Very few of these other aspects are part of the Danish American tradition. The last area I want to talk about with regard to the Scandinavian invasion of the Midwest is the material cultural heritage they left behind which gives some of the most tangible and enduring clues to their lives, beliefs, and customs. The Wisconsin Historical Society houses hundreds of items of Scandinavian origin including many of the accouterments of 19th Century rural Norwegian wedding traditions as you can see here that include not only an arch, but also a bridal crown. The crown in the upper right side of the screen is one held by the Wisconsin Historical Society, but as you can see from the image on the left it is by no means as elaborate as many others. These crowns were often passed down in families, but occasionally would be rented from a neighbor or borrowed from the local parish. The wedding costume also included a black dress with rows of red braiding, a belt of silver plates, silver chains, and an elaborately embroidered and beaded bodice. The one on the lower right is part of the Norwegian collection at the Historical Society. It's important to remember that 19th Century Scandinavian immigrants to the US owned very few things, but they valued them for both their functionality and their beauty. Very few items like these wedding clothes were purely decorative, however, and most endured steady use that wore them down and often wore them out so the selection of items that have endured to be handed down and preserved in museums today privileges sturdy items that could endure much abuse. One such category of items is wooden chests. Hundreds of thousands of heavy wooden chests, often known as America chests, made the Atlantic crossing along with their owners, by no means excludes the Norwegians, and made their way to the farthest flung corners of the United States so you should look in your attic and see if you've got one that you may not have noticed. They're all similar in that they're designed to transport and protect an individual or family's belongings in a stout, rectangular wooden box with a lid. Yet they're all different as well, in terms of size and decoration and each one tells a story about the owner as an individual and as a member of an immigrant group. I've been told that the chest that had rounded lids were for wealthier families who wanted their belongings on the top of the stack of chests. This particular trunk here belonged to a Norwegian woman named Mette Kristina Larsdotter Mokrid, a picture of her on the top right, who brought this painted trunk to the Readstown area of Vernon County, Wisconsin from her original home in Luster, Norway in about 1845. Over time the trunk became a treasured family heirloom that passed first to her daughter, Guri Olson, then to Guri's husband's niece, Ellen C. Byers, who eventually donated it to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 2000.

The website for the Historical Society notes of this trunk

"Constructed mostly of pine boards, the trunk's "dovetailed corners and wrought iron brackets " and strapping provide strength and durability. "The domed lid is made from a single piece of wood "and the entire trunk is painted black with floral and "acanthus leaf accent motifs on top, sides, and front. "A painted inscription on the front of the trunk, "and you can just see it there in this top picture, "documents a variation of the owner's name."

It says

"Metta Kirstine Lars D. Morkri 1845." Her name actually appears in numerous different spellings on her wedding certificate, census records, and from her family's accounts. "In the 1800s, Norwegians distinguished their trunks from "those of other immigrant groups by the colorful "painted designs, owner's names, and dates. "This trunk features an extensive rosemaling, "a folk tradition of painting functional "objects with colorful floral designs. "Begun around 1750, Norwegians painted everyday "household items with such decorative motifs "as S scrolls, C scrolls, and acanthus leaves. "Rosemaling became popular in the US largely through "the efforts of this man in the lower right, "Per Lysne of Stoughton, Wisconsin. "The son of a tradesman rosemaler, "Lysne came to Wisconsin from Norway in 1907. "He developed a thriving rosemaling enterprise "and instructed the art to a select few." Now that has spread to a select many and it thrives as a folk art in Wisconsin and around the country. Besides those things, the sturdiness and durability and its rosemaling, what is the value of this trunk? On one level, it's just a trunk, one of thousands, even millions of others, a piece of luggage and furniture designed to be used and abused and perhaps eventually discarded or chopped up as firewood. On another level, however, it's an expression of Mette Kristina's hopes and dreams for a new life in America, a tangible reminder of her courage and fortitude of the trans-Atlantic traveler in a century when most people never left the county, let alone the country of their birth. As a pioneer in a foreign country, it also demonstrates her economic status. This trunk has survived in part because it is a symbol of its owner that her descendants valued enough to preserve, but also because it was so well crafted and solid as well as beautiful that they wanted to preserve it. If Mette Kristina could not have afforded such a well made chest, it might not have survived the voyage, let alone the century and a half since then. If she could not have afforded to have it decorated so beautifully or have been able to do it herself, it might not have been decorative enough to be displayed in a house and have been shunted out to a barn or garage for dirtier work. If she had gone through a rough spell financially after immigrating she might've been forced to sell the trunk to raise money for more immediate necessities which is true of many of other objects in the collection at the Historical Society. The last item we'll look at today illustrates the way in which Scandinavian invasion of the Midwest was less a matter of imposing Scandinavian culture on America and much more the case of creating a new hybrid Scandinavian American culture that drew from both in terms of physical geography, religious practices, farming methods, and artistic traditions. Each of these sticks is known as a primstav, or a calendar stick. Used as far back as the Viking age and possibly earlier, they represent a kind of ancient seasonal calendar. Given the short growing season, it was imperative to know the best time for the sowing of seed and the time when cattle might be safely let out to graze. In measures that varied from valley to valley, Norwegians notched off the days from that week in winter when the sun barely crept above the horizon or from the day the ice broke up on the lake. The days were carved on a stick or board and eventually an elementary almanac of weather and crops evolved. With the coming of Christianity to Scandinavia right around the year 900, it became more important to keep track of the days. Not only Sunday was now a holy day, but there were other holy days, saints feasts, and days on which certain behaviors were prescribed. The church had written almanacs of these days and the priest was responsible for informing people of them, but average people couldn't keep track of the days without some sort of a calendar and so they inscribed symbols on these sticks to remind them of which holiday fell on which day and which day you could do which activity. One side of the stick tracks the winter season which began on October 14th, three weeks after the autumnal equinox while the opposite side keeps track of the summer which began on April 14th, three weeks after the spring equinox. These dates hint of the pagan origins of the primstav, since the pagan Norwegians celebrated their three great festivals on April 14th, October 14th, and January 14th and they called the latter Ule. The celebration of Ule was changed to coincide with Christmas after the introduction of Christianity in the 10th Century. Each side is carved into 26 weeks by the notches along the narrow edge. Each week corresponds to seven notches carved in the surface between two grooves. The Norwegian American scholar Einar Haugen who used to be a member of my department explains in

an article in the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 1947

"From these day marks proceed at irregular intervals " a series of strange symbols, each representing "one of the holidays of the Norwegian year. "Most of them were saints days from the Catholic period, "but three centuries after Norwegians had given up "the Catholic faith, these days still held deep "significance in the lives of the Norwegian countryside "and remained turning points around which was "gathered much rural lore about the time and the weather. "In all their simplicity, these carved sticks can therefore "serve to conjure up before us a way of life that was " once normal to the ancestors of "many a modern American citizen. "They take us back to a rural culture in which life was "regulated by more by the rhythm of nature " than by the metronome or the iPhone. "Precise dates were of little moment in a countryside "where trains and foreign markets did not exist "and the increase of the crops was all important." Some scholars refer to this as an economic year in contrast to an astronomical or liturgical year. One of the calendar sticks in this picture, the one on the bottom of the screen was carved out of birch wood in 1773 and was brought to Wisconsin in 1843 by a Norwegian immigrant farmer named Ole Knutson Dyrland who immigrated from Seljord in Telemark. Since printed almanacs had been widely available in both Norway and America since at least 1804, and since the seasons are different in Wisconsin than in Telemark, Ole did not need this stick for its practical function, nor would it have worked for him here. Instead he seems to have valued it for its family associations and not that he made room for it in his America chest alongside his Bible, hymn book, and his wife's spinning wheel. The initials of his mother's sister, Hege Olstuter Roosmoen, who was six years old when the stick was made are carved into the pommel of the stick. The stick is well worn and many of the notches are almost obliterated, particularly at the narrow end while the whole stick has been cracked and mended near the handle as you can see in the photo. The fact that Ole also valued the stick for its representation of the farming culture from which he came is clear from his careful dictation of a list of the signs carved into the stick and their meaning. He allowed also no fewer than three copies to be made of the stick by Thorbjorn Vick of Stoughton, one of which is also in the Historical Society's collection. Picture at the top of the image, so the much newer one was made in the 1870s. Unlike the first, however, this new stick is a Norwegian American product made with Norwegian skills from American materials. These two sticks, one from the old country, one from the new, render visible the blending and adaptation of cultures that took place as a result of Scandinavian immigration to the Midwest. While the immigrants held onto some of their old country traditions and artifacts for either practical or sentimental reasons, they also acquired new traditions and views that were uniquely Scandinavian American. Rather than invading and conquering, they were themselves transformed by the decision to seek out a new and different ideally, but by no means guaranteed, better life in a land that they could not be entirely sure existed. Once here they lay claim to this land by the expenditure of their blood and sweat as well as the assertion of long distant historical claims, both verifiable as in the case of Leif Erikson and dubious in the case of the Kensington Stone. They contributed their passion for community, for music, for education, for equality, for alcohol, for Christianity, and many other things that continue to inform and enrich the culture of the Midwest. In closing, I want to quote from the Muskego Manifesto which appeared as an open letter from 80 immigrant Norwegians in the newspaper Morgenbladet in 1845. Barely 20 years into the century of Scandinavian immigration that would shape this region so profoundly, these immigrants had to decide whether the experiment of leaving home, of abandoning family, friends, lands, and a world in which they knew their place and were known in turn was worth it. Facing malaria especially in Muskego, crop failures, nativism, and other dangers, these Norwegians declared

on behalf of themselves and their countrymen

"We harbor no hopes of acquiring wealth, but we live "under a liberal government in a fertile land where " freedom and equality prevail in religious as well as civil "affairs and without any special permission we can enter "almost any profession and make an honest living. "This we consider to be more wonderful than riches for " by diligence and industry we can look forward to "an adequate income and thus we have no reason "to regret our decision to move here." The abundant labors and lives of Scandinavian immigrants that permeate the Midwest and contribute to its uniqueness and strength justify, in my opinion, a belated response that we here in Wisconsin can give to these immigrants, that we also have no reason to regret their decision to move here for we have all benefited from their choice. Thank you. (applause)