Argonauts of the North

Abstract

1 Argonauts of the North by Kenneth O. Bjork Although Norwegian Americans in general showed little interest in Alaska prior to the depression beginning in 1893, to fishermen in the Pacific Northwest it was familiar territory at an earlier date. Scandinavians in Astoria, Oregon, were hired in the early 1890s to work in the Alaskan fisheries during the summer months. One of them, L. O. Belland, wrote in 1890 of the fine quality and abundance offish, especially salmon, "up north" and described the activities of canneries in Bristol Bay. Captain E. L. Skog sailed north each year on a four-month trip to fish for cod in the Bering Sea. He was skipper of the Puget Sound Alaska Commercial Company s schooner Moonlight, one of the firm's organizers, and director of its operations at Mukilteo, Washington. Similarly, Norwegian sealers out ofVictoria, Vancouver Island, often visited Alaska. Others, with no personal interest in drawing their countrymen to Alaska, saw great possibilities for Scandinavians in the territory . A prominent Swedish American, John Lind, then a member of Congress and later governor of Minnesota, wrote in the spring of 1892 of a visit to Puget Sound and British Columbia and of his association in Washington, D.C. with Dr. Leonard Stejneger, a brilliant Norwegian ornithologist with the Smithsonian Institution. In a letter to Skandinaven in April, he discussed a common Scandinavian interest in Alaska and urged persons with capital to look into the possibilities for profitable investments along the west coast and 3 4 Kenneth O. Bjork in Alaska. Lind also enclosed a letter from Dr. Stejneger that was actually a detailed report on the special attractions from Alaska, which the ornithologist knew well from having lived there, written for immigrants from Sweden and Norway. Southeastern Alaska, in particular, he maintained, resembled their homeland and contained riches in the form of gold, fish, and furs. Stejneger was convinced that Alaska one day would have a relatively dense population, and that persons from the coastal regions in northern Europe were best suited for life there. But in the early 1890s it was virgin territory, resembling Scandinavia "when our ancestors landed there." The land would have to be cleared, but "in an age of steam and electricity, it would require only decades for what then took centuries, and the yield would be greater and more gratifying." Skandinaven gave strong editorial support to the suggestions of Lind and Stejneger and added that Scandinavians could be lords in the North - but it would be well for them to have some capital. When a businessman like H. C. Wahlberg of Seattle discussed Alaska in early 1893, he saw profits in fish - to Norwegians the most readily extracted form of wealth. The territory, he reasoned, would become the Lofoten Islands and Finnmark of the New World. The best way to begin realizing this goal, he thought, was to start a Norwegian or Scandinavian colony in southeastern Alaska warmed by the Japan Current as Norway was warmed by the Gulf Stream. He proposed a meeting inTacoma or Seatde to explore the possibility of a settlement and suggested that, in addition to fishermen , it should have sailors, farmers, loggers, coopers, and other artisans . If ten or twenty such men - each with cash in the amount of $500 - would go to Alaska together, they could do very well for themselves. They should choose a committee of four or five men to work out the rules for a colony, decide basic business matters, and hunt out a suitable location. They should secure a good ship, find a desirable site, and return by fall, when a cooperative program could be worked out. Such views were confirmed in part by William A. Kjellman (Kjellmann), who in the employ of the American government went to Alaska in 1894 in charge of a group of Norwegian Sami chosen to train Eskimos in the reindeer culture. He explained that Argonauts of the North 5 twenty-two canneries were annually packing 646,000 cases of salmon, and that the salmon and halibut industries were monopolies owned by companies with large capital reserves. There was, he wrote, "no prospect at all that a private individual would be able to...