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Studies and Records
Volume IV
Published by the Norwegian-American
Historical Association, Northfield, Minnesota
Copyright © 1929 by the Norwegian-American Historical
Association
Preface
In the years past the historians of the Great Republic have
sought diligently for some reasonably correct answer to the
question: what was it that induced the immigrant to leave the
old haunts and to seek a new home amid the hardships of the
New World? The replies have been various and all, no doubt,
contain a varying element of truth.
Important as this question is, it is only the first of a
series that will have to be asked and answered, if one wishes
to understand the great migration of the nineteenth century.
There is also the story how the immigrant found his way into
the West and the Northwest; the account of how he reached and
founded his new home; the record of his achievements in the
new land and in the new citizenship; and the question whether
he has exerted any appreciable influence on the development of
American life.
The membership of the Norwegian-American Historical
Association is interested in all these questions and the
present volume of its publications deals with important phases
of all of them. Professor Stephenson presents the results of a
study of the sources which show what motives led to migration
in the Northern lands and discusses the mentality and the
outlook of the men and women who made up the bulk of the
migrating hosts. Dr. Henrietta Larson contributes a
contemporary account of a tragic occurrence on Lake Erie which
brings vividly before us the hardships and the perils that
beset the wandering alien on his long journey.
Miss Larson's contribution has a further interest in that it
adds another document to the growing body of sources for
American history in the wider sense. The same holds true of
the letters edited by Professor Horde and of the narrative oŁ
a journey overland to California in 1852 (translated by Einar
Haugen), both of which contributions serve to illustrate
important developments in the making of the Republic.
That the alien was not immediately lost in the new environment
is shown convincingly in Dr. Schafer's paper; on the contrary
he often stamped the new localities with his own ideas of what
a beautiful and satisfying life ought to be. But this effort
to adjust Old World conceptions to New World conditions was
not always achieved with the same easy success, as is
abundantly shown by Miss Karen Larsen's study of the effort to
make such an adjustment in the case of President Laur. Larsen,
who is still well known to our membership as one of the
outstanding intellectual leaders of his people in pioneer
times.
It may seem a far cry from Laur. Larsen to Elling Eielsen, but
the distance may not be so great after all. They both sought,
each in his own way, to transplant to the Western prairies
what seemed to be the best and the most essential in the
religious system of the North. The sources for the history of
church and religion in the new Norwegian communities in the
decades before the Civil War are not plentiful; it is
therefore with a feeling of real satisfaction that the editors
have included the Report of the annual meeting held by
Eielsen's "Friends" in 1854. The story how this
document was found is told by Professor Rohne in his editorial
introduction. Inasmuch as this Report is unique as well
as important, it has been thought wise to print it in the
original as well as in translated form.
Mr. Swansen's paper, while dealing more directly with Old
World affairs, is also concerned with our own history both as
an immigrant group and as American citizens. The question
whether our government should take early note of the political
situation that suddenly appeared in the North in 1905 was of
great interest to all Scandinavian-Americans and an objective
study like the one contributed by Mr. Swansen will be a
welcome addition to the literature of the subject.
Laurence M. Larson
University of Illinois
Urbana
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