"Based on a Norwegian edition in seven volumes, Fra Amerika til Norge"--Jacket. Comprehensive indexes and appendixes for the collection are forthcoming in volume 4. An online index is available at www.naha.stolaf.edu/pubs/currentpubs.htm. Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
v. 3. 1893-1914.
Summary:
Seeking economic improvement or a fresh start, following family or news of a land of opportunity, Norwegians left their homeland for America in great numbers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They settled in Pennsylvania and Illinois and moved on to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, finding in the prairie or prærie a promising and hospitable landscape-and they wrote home about it. From these letters-some published in newspapers or newsletters, most found on family farms and in homes held for generation after generation-comes a polyphonic history of Norwegian immigration. Sent from towns and cities and rural outposts, from Chicago and Minneapolis (the Norwegian-American "capital"), from Four Mile Prairie, Texas, and Coon Prairie, Wisconsin, from Hot Creek, Nevada, and Rock Creek, Iowa, and from Christiana, Wisconsin, to Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, these letters were concerned with matters from the price of postage to the question of picking up stakes and moving halfway around the world and afford an intimate view of the vast and varied experience of Norwegian immigrants settling in this country. In this third volume, edited and translated by Orm Øverland and covering the period from 1893 to 1914, Norwegian immigrants relate the successes, challenges, and sorrows of their new life to the family, friends, and communities they left behind. These documents offer a look at the life and social institutions of Norwegian-Americans in the period after the first great waves of immigration up to the eve of World War I. Letters included in this
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.