At Work: A Study of Norwegian Immigrants and Their Work Clothing

Abstract

4 At Work: A Study of Norwegian Immigrants and Their Work Clothing by Carol Colburn and Laurann Gilbertson The process of acculturation by immigrant groups into American society previously has been studied from the point of view of dress, but researchers have usually looked at ethnic festive and special occasion dress and concluded that the process of acculturation was quick and that wearers completely abandoned traditional clothing after migration.1 Swedish ethnographer Bo Lönnqvist found that in Scandinavia during the period from 1870 to 1920* people's customs of dress were most resistant to change when involving the practical functions of everyday Ufe. This was also the period when traditional dress was giving way to fashionable dress worldwide.2 We have looked at Norwegians and the Norwegian immigrants to the American Midwest to find whether these practical forms of dress for work persisted after immigration. Lönnqvist studied the changing dress of a group of individuals in one community in Finland over 50 years during a period of transition. In our study, we look at a range of years encompassing the same transitional period, but we add a geographical dimension by considering the migration and the new influences of America. Through photographic evidence , we have noted significant change in dress among the immigrants as a result of immigration, but also found some 105 106 Carol Colhurii and Laurami Gilbcrtson persistence of practical forms of dress. We looked at men's and women's dress in a range of occupations, from laborers to professionals, in the midwestern states of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota, and South Dakota. PHOTOGRAPHIC METHOD For this study, information about occupational or work dress comes primarily from images of people at work found in museum and private collections. Photographs are an important source of information and many times they are the only source of information on work dress. Because of hard use, work dress does not often survive to be studied, and it is seldom included in museum collections. Work clothing is mentioned in immigrant diaries and letters, though rarely with much description. Gro Svendsen didn't say what work clothing looked like, just that it wasn't durable: "Working people wear out their [American -made] clothes in just a few weeks." Even Olsen Gullord disagreed but wrote equally little. "Everything ... as well as work clothing can be had better than in Norway."3 Most photographs during this period were formally posed studio portraits that did not include work dress. Therefore, studying work dress with the use of photographs in the early part of this period requires use of collections by photographers who worked outside of the studio. In the NorwegianAmerican community in the Midwest, photographers whose works are available for study include Andreas Dalen, Herbjorn Gausta, Mathias Bue, and Ole G. Felland. Their work, as well as that of unknown photographers, has been preserved in museum archives and in other public and private collections in Norway and in the United States. For this study, written firstperson accounts and surviving garments were examined to corroborate the visual evidence found in these photographs.4 When using collections of individual photographers, it is important to consider the point of view of the person behind the camera. Each of the Norwegian-American photographers A Study of Norwegian Immigrants and Their Work Clothing 107 Anonymous family group, Wisconsin. Photographer: Andrew Dahl, ca. 1870. Dahl Collection #D3 1-45388. Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI. had a unique vision and came to photography from a very different starting point. Andreas Larsen Dalen (1844-1923) was born in Skrautvall ,Valdres. After the death of his father, Dalen and his mother immigrated to DeForest, Wisconsin, in 1869. In the United States, Andreas Dalen became Andrew Dahl,"Daguerrean artist ." Actually, Dahl, working from his horse-drawn darkroom, used the newer wet-plate collodion process. It is not known whether he learned photography in Norway or America, but his style was unique. Although traveling around the countryside photographing families and their homes and farms was not at this time unusual, his treatment of those images was. 108 Carol Colbum and Laurann Gilbertson His photographs were carefully composed to tell the story of the...