Seeking economic improvement or a fresh start, following family or news of a land of opportunity, Norwegians left their homeland for America in great numbers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They settled in Pennsylvania and Illinois and moved on to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, finding in the preire or prærie a promising and hospitable landscape—and they wrote home about it. 
 From these letters—some published in newspapers or newsletters, most found on family farms and in homes held for generation after generation—comes a polyphonic history of Norwegian immigration. Sent from towns and cities and rural outposts, from Chicago and Minneapolis (the Norwegian-American “capital”), from Four Mile Prairie, Texas, and Coon Prairie, Wisconsin, from Hot Creek, Nevada, and Rock Creek, Iowa, and from Christiana, Wisconsin, to Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, these letters were concerned with matters from the price of postage to the question of picking up stakes and moving halfway around the world and afford an intimate view of the vast and varied experience of Norwegian immigrants settling in this country.
 In this volume, edited and translated by Orm Øverland and covering the period from 1838 to 1870, Norwegian immigrants relate the successes, challenges, and sorrows of their new life to the communities they left behind.

From America to Norway: Norwegian-American Immigrant Letters 1838-1914, Volume I: 1838-1870 (Volume 1)

History

Americas

Norwegian Amer Historical Assn

Theodore Blegen

Flanagan, John T.

Land of the Free: Bjornstjerne Bjornson's America Letters, 1880-1881

Haugen, Eva

A Chronicler of Immigrant Life: Svein Nilsson's Articles in Billed-Magazin, 1868-1870 (Authors, Vol. VI) (English and Norwegian Edition)

Svein Nilsson

On Both Sides of the Ocean: A Part of Per Hagen's Journey (English and Norwegian Edition)

Naess, Harald

Stafford, Kate

In the annals of Norwegian Lutherans in America the name of Georg Sverdrup looms large. He was born into a distinguished family that had contributed a number of prominent leaders to Norwegian Church and political life. Arriving in America in 1874, he threw himself into the task of building a "Free congregation in a free church," by which he meant a local fellowship of believers within a church body in which such inhibiting factors as church hierarchy, clerical dominance, and secular law would no longer be problems. In such a setting both local congregation and church body would be free to realize their full potential. When Sverdrup died on May 3, 1907, it was clear to all - even those who disagree with him - that a man of stature and ability had passed from the scene

George Sverdrup: Educator, Theologian, Churchman (Biographical Series)

Hamre, James S.

Norwegian-American Studies

The Norwegian-American Historical Association

Marcus Thrane: A Norwegian Radical in America (Biographical Series, Special Publications)

Leiren, Terje I.

Immigrant Idealist: A Literary Biography of Waldemar Ager, Norwegian American (Author Series)

Haugen, Einar

Norwegian Americans and the Politics of Dissent, 1880-1924

Soike, Lowell J.

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Books by Norwegian Amer Historical Assn