11. For striking photographic documentation of this ethnic presence, see Kristina Veirs, ed., Nordic Heritage Northwest (Seattle, 1982).
12. Louis M. Starr, “Oral History,” in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 20 (New York, 1977), 440.
13. James Bennett, “Human Values in Oral History,” in Oral History Review, 11 (1983), 5.
Part One / Homeland
Spread across the northern roof of Europe, the Scandinavian countries have been marked physically, economically, and culturally by their position on the periphery. The climatic conditions and challenging landscapes of the Far North influenced settlement patterns and circumscribed resource-based occupations like farming and fishing. Compared with other parts of western Europe, industrialization arrived late, and traditional lifestyles persisted to some extent into the early decades of the twentieth century. Precious literary and folk treasures like the sagas, ballads, and folktales were preserved in unique quantities, while modern artistic giants like Henrik Ibsen fled Scandinavian cultural provincialism to nurture their creative talents on the Continent.
Counterbalancing this image of life at the margins is the historical record of vigorous Scandinavian interactions with other cultures, most dramatically represented by the Viking expeditions, which reached both across the North Atlantic and deep into Russia. By the nineteenth century, the seafaring industries—shipping and whaling—and the steady emigration of Scandinavians to North America—and to a lesser extent other parts of the world—confirmed that Scandinavian isolation, never total, was crumbling rapidly in an era of improved transportation and communication.
Climatic conditions vary from the marine-influenced regions of Denmark and coastal Norway to the sub-polar continental zones of Finland and northern Sweden. The heavy forests of Sweden and Finland give way in the west to the mountains and fjords of Norway and in the southwest to the wind-blown heaths of Denmark. Out in the mid-Atlantic, Iceland’s hot springs and lava fields present a stark and arresting landscape. In much of the region, farmers struggle with rugged terrain and marginal natural vegetation. The spectacular light summer nights contrast with a winter palette of eery blues and blacks.
The ties among the five countries are long-standing and too complex to enumerate fully here. The historian Franklin Scott writes that the Scandinavians “have a common cultural tradition, have been in and out of various political combinations with one another, and think of themselves as a group. They have their differences, each of the five nations is an entity, yet each is far more different from other nations outside the group than it is from any of the brother nations within the group.”1 Of primary importance to this family relationship are the linguistic ties that make it possible for the majority of Scandinavians to communicate with each other without formal translation.
In 1900, when the immigrants featured here were being born, the five countries boasted a combined population of 12,500,000. Denmark, Finland, and Norway were roughly equal in size, with 2.5, 2.7, and 2.2 million inhabitants respectively. Sweden’s population numbered 5.1 million. Iceland was still part of the Danish kingdom.2
Industrialization came to the Nordic region during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Whereas agriculture still dominated the economic landscape in 1870, a fundamental shift had occurred by the turn of the century, and the manufacturing and service industries had begun to assume a leading role. Finland retained its rural profile longer than did Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; sixty-six percent of the Finnish population was still employed in agriculture and related fields in 1910. The four decades immediately prior to the First World War were a time of high economic growth, as exports increased, industry expanded, and emigration absorbed much of the natural population growth. People moved into the urban centers to take service and factory jobs and gradually the conveniences of modern life entered their homes.3
The oral history narratives document the continuation of subsistence farming alongside the development of an urban, money-based economy. Torvald Opsal notes, “You had plenty to eat, but there was no cash.” In order to pay for Torvald’s trip to Bergen to be cleared for emigration, the Opsal family sold one of their cows. Food and clothing production required steady and energetic workers. Ester Sundvik says of her mother, “She was never idle. When she sat down, she knitted stockings and spun wool and linen and all kinds of things that she was busy with.” Moreover, Ester’s mother ran the farm single-handed, raised three daughters, preserved and stored foods in the era before refrigeration, and served as the local midwife. Remarkably, this demanding lifestyle produced few complaints, perhaps in part because “we didn’t know anything else.” Torvald Opsal’s maternal grandmother was likewise a model of endurance—“just a quiet, hardworking woman, light, small, could outrun any sheep until the day she died.”
Andrew Johnson and family at his mother’s home in Sweden (see p. 47)
Torvald Opsal emphasizes the unrelenting physical labor of rural life: “Working, that was something we had to do when we started to walk. There was no playing; even going to school we never had any time to play.” According to Martin Rasmussen, the schoolteacher knew “how to use the rod” and his mother how “to keep us in line.” Likewise, when Martin left the farm to become a machine-shop apprentice, a strict disciplinary system applied—“the boss, he would hit you.”
On the whole, life in the country was quiet and peaceful. The daily routine revolved around survival tasks. Pleasure came principally from good hearty food. Christmas served as a cherished respite from routine fare and labor. The pastor and the schoolteacher functioned as the principal authority figures. People relied on each other for assistance. Ina Silverberg’s family had more resources than most, so her father distributed seed to the neighbors in the spring; in return, the neighbors helped him at harvest time.
At the same time, much was changing. Martin Rasmussen chronicles some of the innovations on their rather large farm in southern Denmark, including the transition from manual labor to farm machinery and the introduction of fertilizer. There was also substantial migration from the country into the cities. Else Goodwin tells of her father and his eleven siblings, “They were raised out in the country, but most of them drifted into Copenhagen.” Farm laborers became streetcar operators, prison guards, and small business owners.
The city dwellers recognized the importance of maintaining contact with the land. Gretchen Yost describes how the government would send children to stay with families in the country and how her mother always kept flowers in the kitchen window—a bright contrast to the dreary tenement apartment. Else Goodwin also received a school vacation in the country; what is more, her family leased a colony garden—“all these plots of land where you put up a little summer house and have your garden.” For Bergljot DeRosa, outdoor recreation as a skier and hiker provided the vital link with the natural world—“I could walk alone and just look around and be perfectly at ease and peace.”
Just as women filled a central role in the farm economy, so women often bore major responsibility within the urban setting. Gretchen Yost’s mother was a widow who relied upon her own manual labor and the odd jobs undertaken by the children in order to make ends meet. Else Goodwin’s mother helped run the family’s mangle shop. With Bergljot DeRosa’s father often at sea, her mother raised six children and managed the household; like her grandmother, she was “really, really strong.”
The traditional household units were not as static as one might imagine. One reason households fluctuated was the early departure of children to live and work outside the home. Large families and limited resources