by KRISTOFFER F. PAULSON 4 Berdahl Family History and Rflvaag's Immigrant Trilogy OLE in 1896. EDVART In 1908 R0lvaag he married migrated Jennie to America Berdahl, in 1896. In 1908 he married Jennie Berdahl, whose grandfather, Johannes E. Berdahl, had come to America in 1856. The Berdahls joined with other Norwegian families in 1873 to form a caravan of eleven covered wagons that moved from Fillmore County in Minnesota to Dakota Territory. In June of that year, they arrived at a location near what is now Garretson, South Dakota, in Minnehaha County. Their four-week trek across southern Minnesota followed approximately the route that Per Hansa's family takes in Giants in the Earth.1 Jennie Berdahl's father, Andrew J., and her uncle , Erick J., who made the trip with the family, homesteaded their own quarter sections in the Dakota settlement and were invaluable sources of first-hand knowledge for R0lvaag's pioneer novels. In an article for The Editor , R0lvaag discussed the genesis of Giants in the Earth, the first novel in his celebrated immigrant trilogy: "I had not worked very far into the material which I had assembled before I felt 1 See Theodore Jorgenson and Nora Solum, Ole Edvart Rölvaag: A Biography , 326 (New York, 1939). 55 Kristoffer F. Paulson compelled to make a trip to South Dakota in order to get more of the air of the place. And so, late in the fall of 1923 I visited the great prairies out there, got hold of a few of the old timers and had session after session with them. At certain points I lingered longer than at others, as for example: the trekking westward; the interminably long journey to town in those early days when the railroad came no further west than Worthington, Minnesota; the impression of the virgin prairies upon the different temperaments among the immigrant pioneers; the locust plague; that terrible winter of 1880-1881." 2 In the same article, R0lvaag states that "some of the incidents - many of them, in fact - have actually happened ; they are taken from stories told me."3 Some idea of the wealth of information the author was able to gather for his novels is now available with the discovery of the autobiographies of Andrew and Erick Berdahl and from Andrew's letters to R0lvaag preserved in the R0lvaag Papers in the archives of the Norwegian-American Historical Association.4 The incident that started the search into the historical background of R0lvaag's Giants took place at the Eleven 2 O. E. R0lvaag, "The Genesis of the Giants," in The Editor , August 5, 1927. 3 R0lvaag in The Editor , August 5, 1927. 4 1 interviewed James O. Berdahl, Mrs. R0lvaag's brother, at his home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in April, 1975. During our conversation, I discovered that his father Andrew and his uncle Erick had written autobiographies. E rick' s account of 46 pages was written in 1925 or 1926 and seems to have served as something of a model for Andrew's later autobiography. The latter record of 29 pages was begun at least as early as 1929 and was probably completed in 1940. Andrew Berdahl also wrote a separate manuscript, "Beginnings of the 'Slip Up Creek' Settlement," 14 pages in length, which deals exclusively with the Slip Up Creek community. The manuscripts, written in English, were copied by James O. Berdahl and mimeographed for distribution to family descendants. The "Beginnings of the 'Slip Up Creek' Settlement" was retyped, mimeographed, and distributed at the Eleven Covered Wagon Centennial in Sioux Falls, August 3-5, 1973. This pamphlet is inaccurately labeled as coming "From the Diary Account of Andrew J. Berdahl Who Came in the Caravan"; it is actually a separate section added to Andrew Berdahl's autobiography, completed in 1940. Copies of these three typescripts have now been deposited with the R0lvaag Papers in the Norwegian- American Historical Association archives. 56 BERDAHL FAMILY AND RjÓLVAAG'S TRILOGY Covered Wagon Centennial in Sioux Falls in August of 1973, a gathering that celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the land-taking in Minnehaha County. A monument to the original pioneer families was dedicated on August...
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Sep 1, 1977
George Feaver 
