View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

Tourists have always loved Norway. The west coast consists of many fiords ringed by majestic mountains. Down the mountains waterfalls cascade into the clear blue waters of the fiords. It takes your breath away. But wait! Way up high, balancing precariously, it seems, on top of the cliff, one can see some small houses. The tourists will take out their binoculars and stare. Houses? High up. Barns? How do they get up there? And how can they live there?

These days, people probably don’t live in these houses permanently. These days, they are most likely vacation homes. Norway is rich and most people own vacation homes. But Norway wasn’t always rich. In fact, in the 1800s, Norway was very poor, and most people were peasants trying to scratch a living on farms like the one on the top of the cliff. Farms that hadn’t been in use since the Viking era were now resettled due to a population explosion. This was caused by the introduction of the potato, which could be grown on these mountain farms. Suddenly people had enough to eat and the infant mortality rate went down. But as the children grew, the prospects of how they could make their own way in the world were slim. There was no more land to farm. The industrial revolution had yet to reach this remote corner of the world. So, what should one do?

Historians believe that if there hadn’t been for the lure of America, there would have been a revolution in Norway like what happened in France. But America had been “discovered” by Norwegians in 1825 when Cleng Peerson led a group of Norwegian Quakers on the ship “Restauration” from Stavanger. Here, in the New World, they hoped they could worship without fear of persecution.

Since most Norwegian immigrants were peasants, they worked their way to the rich prairies of the Midwest. Here, clusters of Norwegians settled. They built a whole society with church and school, all speaking only their native tongue of Norwegian and upholding their traditions from their home country. Other people were mystified by their ways, thought them stupid and coarse and called them “Norskies.”

And at that time, in a valley called Herfindal, among the tall mountains of Western Norway, there was a small farm belonging to a man called Ole. When one of his sons, also called Ole, looked over his ever-increasing brood of siblings, he realized his opportunities there were nonexistent. So, he worked as a hired help for other farmers and fishermen in Voss. He scraped and saved and finally had enough money to make it to the Land of Wide-Open Prairies with fertile soil. Here, he took the train to the end of the line. To a place called Benson. There he homesteaded on a hill about four miles to the north. His family worked hard through wet and dry years. Through grasshoppers and prairie fires. Somehow, they managed to hang on. Most of his sons and many of his grandsons became farmers. Most of them discontinued speaking Norwegian.

But Ole’s great-great-grandson was curious. He wanted to learn about his family’s roots. So, during his junior year in college, he went to Norway. And there he met a native. They married and his wife too became a new immigrant.

And together all of us immigrants helped build this great American nation.