NORWEGIAN MIGRATION TO AMERICA

Abstract

NORWEGIAN MIGRATION TO AMERICA1 BY EINAR HAUGEN In Oleana, thaťs the place I'd like to be, And not in Norway drag the chains of slavery! Ole - Ole - Ole oh! Oleana! Ole - Ole - Ole oh! Oleana! Ditmar Mejdell (1853), in a satirical ballad. Throughout the better part of a century many thousands of Norwegians were deeply stirred by the call of American opportunity. Their response to the alluring future that beckoned from this side of the sea was thought by more sober observers to bear the marks of madness. It was commonly said that they suffered from "America fever/' a highly contagious disease which spread with epidemic speed from man to man, from valley to valley, until it had enveloped all Norway and deeply changed the destinies of her people. In 1843 Henrik Wergeland, one of her great poets, wrote that "it is the most virulent disease of our times, a national bleeding to death, a true madness, since those whom it possesses will listen neither to their own nor others' reason; they scorn all examples, they toss aside the present in favor of a still more threatening, uncertain, darkling future, and 1This essay comprises the second chapter of Professor Einar Haugen's recently published two-volume work on The Norwegian Language in America : A Study in Bilingual Behavior (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1953). The book is sponsored by the American Institute of the University of Oslo in co-operation with the department of American civilization in the graduate school of arts and sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, and permission to reprint chapter 2 has been given the Norwegian-American Historical Association by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In reprinting, it has been deemed advisable to omit the original footnotes and one map as well as a final paragraph which forms a connecting link with later chapters. The essay is included in the present series because it is a comprehensive survey in brief compass of Norwegian emigration, done with genuine insight and broad knowledge of the entire field. It may be taken as a fair sample of the high quality of the notable monograph from which it is drawn - a scholarly and definitive study that integrates linguistic findings with social and cultural history. In its totality Dr. Haugen's book is one of the greatest of contributions to Norwegian-American history. T.C.B. 1 2 EINAR HAUGEN let themselves be driven into a maelstrom of unknown sufferings ." The pioneers of Norwegian emigration permitted themselves to differ with this and many other judgments in similar vein. Little by little they beat a path through the prejudices and difficulties that surrounded emigration, with the result that Norway became one of the countries which contributed most liberally of its brain and brawn to the building of America's new Northwest. I. INCITEMENTS TO EMIGRATION Many penetrating studies have been made of the causes and backgrounds of this movement. But the entire complex of causes which historians have analyzed was compressed by the emigrants themselves into a single idea: the hope of social betterment. This hope could mean different things to different men: into it were woven strands of religious dissent , escape from personal problems, adventurousness, a dream of political freedom. But economic advantage counted for most. To the first Norwegian emigrants this was synonymous with the ownership of land, the only basis of social prestige which they thoroughly understood. As the tide of emigration swelled and the character of Norwegian society changed, America also came to mean gold. But in either case the decision to emigrate was not exclusively based on a cold calculation of economic advantage. It was a break with tradition, a gamble with the future, a cutting of social ties which one might almost term a revolutionary act. Those who were well adjusted and only stood to lose in social prestige naturally did not emigrate. Those, on the other hand, who were too ignorant or sluggish to have their imaginations fired by the hope of America also stayed at home. Economic considerations alone might easily have driven 95 per cent of the Norwegian people to emigrate; instead we find that Norway's population actually tripled during...