Crossings 200

Spring Grove: Minnesota's First Norwegian Settlement is a tribute to the state's earliest Norwegian emigrants, and to generations of Norwegian Americans who have made this small farming community amongst deep valleys, fjord-like bluffs, and winding streams their true vesterheim. It is a tale told through striking historic photographs, many previously unreleased, and personal narratives, often humorous and always insightful.The area was first settled...

In the nineteenth century, the United States, "the land of newspapers," was also fast becoming the land of immigrants, with increasing numbers of Norwegians arriving amid the European influx. Already Skandinaven, published out of Chicago, kept newcomers and their Old World friends and family informed of political, religious, and social matters discussed in burgeoning Norwegian American communities.
From 1847 to today, more than 280 Norwegian-language...

This is an engaging, richly detailed biography of a family of Norwegian immigrant homesteaders in eastern North Dakota in the late 1800s. Educator and world traveler Aagot Raaen wrote this reminiscence late in her life. Like Giants in the Earth and Old Jules, Grass of the Earth deals frankly with a darker side of pioneer life on the prairie.

"Oline Muus was many things: a Norwegian immigrant, a pastor's wife, a mother, and a valued member of her rural Minnesota congregation. But when she sued her husband to recoup her inheritance, she gained notoriety throughout Norwegian America and beyond. In the eyes of the Norwegian Synod she had erred by not bringing her complaint to the congregation first, and by refusing to defer completely to her husband. In her new home of America, the law regarding...

"From 1850 to 2020, Minnesota's urban Norwegian American community expanded and contracted, as did the complexity of its economic, political, and cultural activities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. In The Heart of the Heartland, personal interviews, demographic research, and archival exploration inform stories of assimilation, ascendency, and collaboration among Minnesota's Norwegian Americans and their neighbors over the past 170 years. The resulting...

In the winter of 1841, a Norwegian immigrant in Wisconsin strapped on a pair of wooden boards and set off across the snow to buy flour--leaving tracks that perplexed his neighbors and marked the arrival of Nordic skiing in America. To this day, the Midwest is the nation's epicenter of cross-country skiing, sporting a history as replete with athleticism and competitive spirit as it is steeped in old-world lore and cold-world practicality. This history...