Nineteenth-century Norway Research Articles

Women and Power in Henrik Ibsen and Adrienne Rich

My classes were stumped by my question about societal differences; in their estimation, the dissimilarities they saw were inherent. At the NEH Institute at Auburn University, Poovey urged the participants to teach literature which reveals how sex, the biological distinctions between men and women, becomes gender, the set of social meanings we attach to those anatomical differences. Upon my return to school in the fall, I particularly wanted to explore, with my world literature classes, how my students' beliefs about gender serve to consolidate patriarchy, the social dominance of men. I found Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1976, trans. William Archer, Of Time and Place, Ed. James E. Miller et al., Glenview, IL: Scott, 126-73) a fitting choice for a study of the cultural production of gender and the ways such an ideology denies a woman access to power. Four poems from Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language (1978, New York: Norton) helped, through common themes with Gabler, to bridge the attitudes of nineteenth-century Norway and twentieth-century United States, and a variety of interview and investigative projects rooted their study of women and power in their immediate surroundingsKnoxville, Tennessee. My classes quickly came to understand, by participating in Hedda Gabler's troubled life, the patriarchal production of the helpless woman stereotype, the woman unfit for any real share of power in society. Ibsen's fascinating protagonist is a woman frustrated by male society's constraints upon her talents and freedom. Dominated by her father in early life-his lasting presence is symbolized by the great portrait which hangs in the living room-Hedda submits to patriarchal expectations and makes a respectable match with George Tesman. Rejecting her favorite suitor, the unconventional author Eilert Lovborg, Hedda throws away a chance at an equal partnership in marriage, or Comradeship in the thirst for life as Eilert says (Ibsen 152). Although vastly her inferior in intelligence and energy, George-as representative of male bourgeois culture-expects his wife to remain without a vocation other than socializing and child rearing, a frightening possibility to Hedda. In spite of this patriarchal society's harsh condemnation of any improper behavior in a woman, the men in the play accept Eilert in spite of his tempestuous per-

Secular Changes in Size and Maturity: Causes and Effects

Secular changes in body size, proportions and composition, in maturation rates during childhood and adolescence, and in adult size have been considered in the preceding chapters. This chapter addresses possible causes and effects of the secular trend evident over about the past 150 years. Before considering the causes and effects of the secular trend, one can inquire as to what may have operated to delay maturation and depress growth before the secular trend became apparent. Backman (1948) estimated the mean age at menarche at about 14 years from ancient through medieval times in Europe, while Amundsen and Diers (1969, 1973a) estimated the mean age at menarche in Classical Greece and Rome and in Europe from the sixth to the fifteenth century at about 12-15 years. These estimated ages are not appreciably different from average ages for some contemporary European populations (12.5-14.0 years; Eveleth & Tanner 1976). Yet, menarche was later in Europe during the nineteenth century; earlier estimates vary between 15.5 and 17.4 years for several European countries (Backman 1948; Tanner 1962). More recent estimates for the earlier data give an average age at menarche of about 16 years in nineteenth-century Norway (Brundtland & Wall0e 1976) and about 15.5 years in nineteenth-century England (Tanner 1966). The apparent discrepancy among the estimates relates to the interpretation of age; for example, does the thirteenth year refer to the thirteenth year of life (12.0-12.99 years) or to the year after the thirteenth birthday (13.0-13.99 years)? Brundtland and Walloe (1976) consider this problem in the early Norwegian data. Since the early-nineteenth century in Europe, there has been a marked decrease not only in age at menarche in girls but also in the age of breaking of the voice in boys (Backman 1948; Daw 1970; Tanner 1966; Taranger, Engstr6m, Lichtenstein, & Svennberg-Redegren 1976).

STILL MORE LIGHT ON THE KENDALL COLONY: A UNIQUE SLOOPER LETTER

STILL MORE LIGHT ON THE KENDALL COLONY: A UNIQUE SLOOPER LETTER BY MARIO S. DE PILLIS The discovery of any new material concerning the "sloop folk" or "sloopers" will always be a matter of joy and excitement to Norwegian Americans and to historians of American migration. For these sloopers, the vanguard of Norwegian immigration, belong to the heroic age of that great movement to this country and have an importance almost as great, in their own way, as the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620. Their cultural and ethnic impact on wide areas of the United States and even their effect on American religious history approach that of the English Puritans. The story of the sloopers is known by more than specialists and is easily retold. In July, 1825, fifty-two Norwegians under the leadership of a Quaker by the name of Lars Larsen sailed from Stavanger, Norway, for New York City. Their tiny vessel, the "Restoration," was even smaller than the "Mayflower"; so small, indeed, that it was confiscated by the Federal government for breaking safety regulations, and released only after a pardon had been granted by President John Quincy Adams. But the sloop carried more than human freight; it was heavily laden with the same religious and social aspirations that have drawn people to America from the beginning : to obtain freedom of worship and economic opportunity . Religiously, the sloopers were mostly of the Haugean Lutheran persuasion - the Norwegian form of Lutheran pietism - with a handful of Quakers among the leaders. Neither denomination enjoyed complete freedom of worship. And while they sought economic opportunity, the immigrants did not come from the lowest classes of Norwegian society. Most of them had been free farmers and artisans sadly oppressed by social conditions in early nineteenth-century Norway. 24 A SLOOPER LETTER 25 Upon their arrival the sloopers were met by their advance agent, the famous Cleng Peerson (1783-1865). A half-legendary figure, Peerson was an adventurous and somewhat eccentric dreamer who nevertheless accomplished a great practical feat: the successful colonization of the first Norwegian groups in the United States. From him, and from the movement of sloopers, stems the great nineteenth-century flood of Norwegian immigration. In proportion to Norway's population, this flood was exceeded at its peak, among all the European countries, only by Ireland. Among Peerson's just titles are the Father of Norwegian Immigration and the Norwegian Pathfinder. The main purpose of the letter that follows was to request a loan from the Harmony Society of Economy (now Ambridge ), Pennsylvania. This German communistic society was, with the Shakers, the most successful of all those religious communitarian ventures in which the nineteenth century abounded. The Harmonists were also known as Rappites, after the name of their founder, "Vater" George Rapp, a Pietist who had brought the group from southern Germany in 1804. By the 1820's they were rather affluent. And in 1825, just before the letter was written, they had sold their colony of Harmony, Indiana, to the famous Robert Owen. The longer statement on the first page of the letter describes to the wealthy Rappites the piteous conditions of the Norwegian settlers and is signed by seven of them - all sloopers. They are writing from Murray (Kendall) Township, Orleans County, New York, then a wilderness area which later became known in Norwegian-American history as the "Kendall colony" - the first Norwegian colony in America. The signers wanted to borrow $1,600 to purchase land. Apparently their capital had all been tied up in the sloop, which they had hoped to sell for about this amount in the port of New York. After their legal troubles had ended, they were able to get only $400 for the ship. Of the seven persons who signed the letter with Cleng 26 MARIOS. DEPILLIS Peerson, one, "Andrew Knudson," has not been positively identified. This may have been the slooper Andrew Dahl (Endre Knudson) . Or it may have been Andrew Stangeland (Andrias Stangelan, Knudson), who arrived before the sloop and had been a comrade of Peerson. The other six had been passengers on the sloop. The usual spellings and complete forms of their names follow: Thormod Madland, Daniel Stenson Rossadal, Gudmund Danielson...

Norwegian clergy

Abstract The purpose of this important book is, in the words of the author, 'to throw light on the Norwegian clergy as a social group' in nineteenth century Norway. Dr. Mannsaker emphasizes that, as implied by the local and temporal definition of his subject, his approach is historical rather than sociological or demographic. This means that he is interested not primarily in the most general aspects of his subject, but in those which are peculiar to conditions in Norway in the historical period under consideration.

NORWEGIAN MIGRATION TO AMERICA BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

NORWEGIAN MIGRATION TO AMERICA BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR* By Brynjolf J. Hovde For a generation American historians have been supremely aware of the importance of the frontier in the development of the American people. Professor Frederick Jackson Turner has had the satisfaction, vouchsafed to very few historians, of seeing the thesis that he propounded become almost the obsession of students of American history. It has been an exceedingly fruitful "obsession," and there are adequate reasons to indicate that it has not, even yet, yielded all the results of which it is capable.1 So far, however , the frontier has been studied almost entirely as an isolated phenomenon; usually the frontiersman has been accepted as having arrived, and has then been studied in his new environment. There has been comparatively little emphasis placed upon his European origins. It ought to be obvious, however, and fortunately it is becoming so, that of all American historical phenomena the frontier, the westward thrust of population, is probably least to be considered as an independent unit. The behavior of the individual under frontier conditions was no doubt determined in very large measure by that immediate environment, but no one in this age of the biological and sociological sciences would dispute the contention that the pre-frontier racial and social heredity of the individual must also be taken into account. The interest in the westward movement therefore carried within * Theodore C. Biegen, Norwegian Migration to America, 1825-1860 . (Northfield , Minnesota, The Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1931. xi, 413. $3.50.) 1 Cf. Professor John W. Oliver's interesting résumé of the assessment of the results produced by this school of historians made at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association at Louisville in 1931, in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 18:218-220 (September, 1931). 162 NORWEGIAN MIGRATION TO AMERICA 163 itself the germ of a new interest, namely that in immigration . There has always been some interest in immigration history , to be sure; but it has been cultivated chiefly by emotional enthusiasts who had not the disciplined critical faculty that is characteristic of the best historical scholars. There are, of course, worthy exceptions to this statement; in the special field of Norwegian immigration, for example, the work of Professor George T. Flom might be mentioned. It remains true, nevertheless, that the brightest prospects for the field of immigration history have come with the assumption of this field by such men as Professors George M. Stephenson, Marcus L. Hansen, and Theodore C. Biegen. Professor Blegen's recently published volume, Norwegian Migration to America , 1825-1860 , affords excellent proof of what may be expected in immigration history when it is cultivated by scholars who have adequate background and preparation. This book is a marker in the literature of its kind, not because it inaugurates the study of Norwegian immigration, for few immigrant groups have been so conscious of their own history as the Norwegian-American; not because it reveals hidden causes and startling movements; but because it presents what will probably for a long time to come prove to be the most exhaustive and most definitive study of a limited period of Norwegian immigration that has been made. The volume is marked by a skillful organization of a highly complex and varied body of material, achieved by a happy blending of the topical and chronological methods of arrangement. The first five chapters deal with the first origins and earliest development of the emigration movement in nineteenth-century Norway, and carry the story down to about 1840. The first chapter contains an adequate, though highly compressed, exposition of the general political, economic , and social conditions of Norway in the nineteenth 164 STUDIES AND RECORDS century, especially during the first quarter. By constant allusions, in specific cases throughout the remainder of the volume, the author makes up very largely for the brevity of this discussion. There is nowhere in either Norwegian or English a more authoritative account of the " Sloopers," the first party of Norwegian emigrants to America (1825), than is to be found in Blegen's second chapter and in the appendix to his book. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters measure up well to...