A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States. George T. Flom
to Gudmund Sandsberg in Kendall, New York, the former complains of the hard times in Norway. In the spring of 1836 the second party of emigrants from Stavanger County came to America. On the 14th of May of that year Andreas Sandsberg wrote his brother Gudmund in America as follows:
A considerable number of people are now getting ready to go to America from this Amt. Two brigs are to depart from Stavanger in about eight days from now, and will carry these people to America, and if good reports come from them, the number of emigrants will doubtless be still larger next year. A pressing and general lack of money entering into every branch of industry, stops or at least hampers business and makes it difficult for many people to earn the necessaries of life. While this is the case on this side of the Atlantic there is hope for abundance on the other, and this I take it, is the chief cause of this growing disposition to emigrate.[44]
Ole Olson Menes, who came to America in 1845, is cited in Billed-Magazin, 1870, page 130, as follows, illustrating the prominence of the economic cause nine years later:
The emigrants of the preceding year (1844) … wrote home … and told of the fertility of the soil, the cheap prices of land and of good wages. In a letter which I received from Iver Hove, he writes that there they raise thirty-five bushels of wheat per acre, and the grass is so thick that one can easily cut enough in one day for winter feed for the cow. Such things fell to our liking, and many looked forward with eager longing to the distant West, which was pictured as the Eden that loving Providence had destined as a home for the workingman of Norway, so oppressed with cares and want.
Of those here cited, Nattestad was from Numedal, Luraas from Telemarken, Menes from Sogn, while Sandsberg came from Ryfylke. But the conditions were the same also in other provinces. In 1844, Hans C. Tollefsrude and wife emigrated from Land. Of the cause of his emigrating and that of early emigration from Land in general, his son Christian H. Tollefsrude of Rolfe, Iowa, writes me:
The causes were, no personal means and no prospect even securing a home in their native district, Torpen, Nordre Land (letter of July 27, 1904).
Rev. Abraham Jacobson of Decorah, Iowa, a pioneer himself, writes:
Reasons for emigrating were mostly economic, very few if any religious. … Wages here were at the very least double that in Norway, and generally much more than that.
Of the emigration from Ringsaker, I may cite Simon Simerson of Belmond, Iowa:
The causes were economic. In the case of my parents, they came here to create the home that they saw no chance of securing in the mother country. (Letter of Oct. 12, 1904.)
Similar evidence might be adduced for other districts and for all the older settlements throughout the Northwest. At a meeting held at the home of Ole O. Flom in Stoughton, Wisconsin, on July twenty-eighth, 1908, when the present writer read a paper on “Early Norwegian Immigration,” testimony to the same effect was given by old pioneers there present. There is no need of further multiplying the evidence.
A highly developed spirit of independence has always been a dominant element in the Scandinavian character—I have reference here particularly to his desire for personal independence, that is, independence in his condition in life. Nothing is so repugnant to him as indebtedness to others and dependence on others. An able-bodied Scandinavian who was a burden to his fellows was well-nigh unheard of. By the right of primogeniture the paternal estate would go to the oldest son. The families being frequently large, the owning of a home was to a great many practically an impossibility under wage conditions as they were in the North in the first half and more of the preceding century.
Thus the Scandinavian farmer’s son, with his love of personal independence and his strong inherent desire to own a home, finding himself so circumstanced in his native country that there was little hope of his being able to realize this ambition except in the distant uncertain future, listens, with a willing ear to descriptions of America, with its quick returns and its great opportunities. And so he decides to emigrate. And this he is free to do for the government puts no barrier upon his emigrating. This trait has impelled many a Scandinavian to come and settle in America; and it is a trait that is the surest guarantee of the character of his citizenship. Here, too, a social factor merits mention.
While the nobility was abolished in Norway in 1814, the lines between the upper and lower classes, the wealthy and the poor, were tightly drawn and social classes were well defined. And while Norway is today the most democratic country in Europe, and Sweden and Denmark are also thoroughly liberal (in part through the influence of America and American-Scandinavians), a titled aristocracy still exists in these countries. The extreme deference to those in superior station or position that custom and existing conditions enforced upon those in humbler condition was repugnant to them. Not infrequently have pioneers given this as one cause for emigrating in connection with that of economic advantage.
CHAPTER VII
Causes of Emigration Continued. Special Factors. Religion as a Cause. Emigration Agents.
In the class of special causes which have influenced the Scandinavian emigration, political oppression has operated only in the case of the Danes in Southern Jutland.[45]
Military service, which elsewhere has often played such an important part in promoting emigration, has, in the Scandinavian countries, been only a minor factor, the period of service required being very short. Nevertheless it has in not a few cases been a secondary cause for emigrating. Those with whom I have spoken who have given this as their motive have, however, been mostly Norwegians and Swedes; but none of those who belong to the earlier period of emigration give their desire to escape military service as a cause.
Religious persecution has played a part in some cases, especially in Norway and Sweden. The state church is the Lutheran, but every sect has been tolerated since the middle of the century, in Norway since 1845. While few countries have been freer from the evil of active persecution because of religious belief, intolerance and religious narrowness have not been wanting. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followers of the lay preacher, Hans Nielsen Hauge, in Norway were everywhere persecuted. Hauge himself was imprisoned in Christiania for eight years. And the Jansenists in Helsingland, Sweden, were in the forties subjected to similar persecution. Thus Eric Jansen was arrested several times for conducting religious meetings between 1842–1846—though it must in fairness be admitted that his first arrest was undoubtedly provoked by the extreme procedure of the dissenters themselves. After having been put in prison repeatedly, Jansen embarked for America in 1846 and became the founder of the communistic colony of followers at Bishopshille,[46] Henry County, Illinois. No such organized emigration took place among the Haugians, but we have no means of knowing to what extent individual emigration of the followers of Hauge took place during the three decades immediately after his death. The well-known Elling Eielson, a lay preacher and an ardent Haugian, emigrated in 1839 to Fox River, La Salle County, Illinois, and many of those who believed in the methods of Hauge and Eielson came to America in the following years.
It was persecution also that drove many Scandinavian Moravians to America in 1740 and 1747. Moravian societies had been formed in Christiania in 1737, in Copenhagen in 1739, in Stockholm in 1740, and in Bergen in 1740.[47] In 1735 German Moravians from Herrnhut, Saxony, established a colony at Savannah, Georgia.[47] In this colony there seem to have been some Danes and Norwegians. In 1740 a permanent colony was located at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and in 1747 one at Bethabara, North Carolina. Persecuted Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish Moravians took part in the founding of both these colonies.
As we have seen, the first Norwegian settlement in America was established in Kendall, Orleans County, New York, in 1825. It has been claimed that the “sloopers” were driven to emigrate by persecution at home.[48] Another writer has shown that the only one of the Stavanger Quakers who suffered for his belief prior to 1826 was Elias Tastad, and he, it seems, did not emigrate.[49] The leader of the emigrants in Restaurationen, Lars Larson i Jeilane, had spent one year in London in the employ of the noted English Quaker, William Allen. In 1818, Stephen Grellet,