The Land as Metaphor in Two Scandinavian Immigrant Novels

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In the last half of the nineteenth century, driven mostly by the effects of overpopulation and the industrial revolution on a traditionally agrarian society, increasing numbers of Scandinavian emigrants sought sanctuary in the American West. To these emigrants, as well as to the thousands of native pioneers who responded to the promise of the Homestead Act of 1862, the American Midwest and its rich, fertile prairie land offered success, freedom, and adventure. To these settlers, this vast, untamed country attained metaphorical-sometimes even mythical-dimensions. The prairie became not only the garden of the world1 but also the pioneer's lover, his god, and, at times, his daemon. Of the many immigrant novels written about the Scandinavian pioneer experience, Ole Edvart Rdlvaag's Giants in the Earth and Sophus Keith Winther's Take All to Nebraska vivify with particular effectiveness the symbolic relationship between the pioneer and the land. Having left countries where both land and opportunity were scarce, the immigrant protagonists of these novels are overwhelmed by the vastness and power of the new land. To the men, the land symbolizes the American Dream and becomes a source of identity and masculinity, but to the women, life on the barren prairie becomes a nightmare of loneliness, fear, and physical discomfort. Thus, the men look forward to America and the future; the women turn backward to the past and the old country. R0lvaag's Giants in the Earth,2 set in the Dakotas during the 1870s, is a complex blend of metaphor and stark realism which reveals both the positive and the negative aspects of the prairie. The land's malevolent aspects are realized most keenly by Beret, Per Hansa's sensitive wife, who feels lonely and exposed on the vast and desolate plains. Convinced that she has sinned by surrendering to Per before her marriage as well as by leaving Norway, she believes that the prairie is an evil spirit which tempts man away from his true home and his true beliefs.3 On