class="tdr">6.6

6    8.9 10.7 10.6 11.4 Scotland and Wales 4.4 3.7 3.8 3.8 3.7 3.2 Scandinavia .9 1.7 4.3 6.6 10.1 10.3

Thus it will be seen that among European countries Scandinavia, considered as one, stands third in the number of persons contributed to the American foreign-born population, exceeding that of Scotland and Wales in 1870 and that of England in 1890. Both the Irish and the German immigration reached considerable numbers at least fifteen years before that from the North, Ireland having contributed nearly forty-three per cent of the total in 1850, and Germany twenty-six. By 1900 the Irish quota had fallen to fifteen per cent, while the German is nearly twenty-six and that from Scandinavia ten per cent. In 1870 our Scandinavian-born immigrant population was twice as large as the French and equalled the total from Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Russia.[14]

The Norwegians are the pioneers in the emigration movement from the North in the nineteenth century; the Danes were the last to come in considerable numbers. Statistics, however, show that one hundred eighty-nine Danes had emigrated to this country before 1830, while there were only ninety-four from Norway and Sweden. The Norwegian foreign-born population had in 1850 reached 12,678; while that from Sweden was 3,559; and Denmark had furnished a little over eighteen hundred. The Danish immigration was not over five thousand a year until 1880 and has never reached twelve thousand. The Swedish immigration received a new impulse in 1852; it was five thousand in 1868; it reached its climax of 64,607 in 1882. According to Norwegian statistics the emigration from Norway to the United States was six thousand and fifty in 1853, but according to our census reports did not reach five thousand before 1866; the highest figure, 29,101, was reached in 1882 (according to our census).[15]

The total emigration from the Scandinavian countries to America between 1820 and 1903 was 1,617,111. This remarkable figure becomes doubly remarkable when we stop to consider that the population of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden is only two and one-half per cent of the total population of Europe; yet they have contributed nearly ten per cent of our immigrant population. There are in this country nearly one-third as many Scandinavians (counting those of foreign birth and foreign parentage both) as in the Scandinavian countries; for the German element the ratio is one to thirteen.

At this point I may refer the reader to the table in Appendix I of this volume, showing the growth and distribution of the Scandinavian factor, especially in the northwestern states, since 1850. Table I shows Wisconsin as having almost as large a Scandinavian population in 1850 as all the rest of the country. Wisconsin was the destination of the Norwegian immigrant from the time emigration began to assume larger proportions, and it held the lead for twenty-five years. Iowa and Southern Minnesota began entering into competition prominently since 1852 and 1855 respectively. The growth of Swedish immigration in the fifties and sixties gave the lead to Minnesota by 1870, Illinois taking second place in 1890. Returning now to the Norwegian immigration specifically, it may be observed that it was directed to the Northwest down to recent years, almost to the exclusion of the rest of the country. The reader may now be referred to Table II in the Appendix, which shows the growth of the Norwegian population in each state since 1850.

This table tells its own story. In New England the Norwegian factor is unimportant. There has been a high ratio of growth in New York and New Jersey since 1880, but the total number is not large. In the rest of the Atlantic seaboard states, as in the gulf states, the Norwegian population has remained almost stationary at a very low figure. Such is also the case with the inland states of the South, as in the Southwest. The effort to direct Norwegian immigration to Texas, which goes back to the forties, has been productive of only meagre results. Even Kansas is too far south for the Norwegian. In the extreme West, however, considerable numbers of Norwegians have established homes since about 1882, particularly in California, Oregon and Washington, since 1895 also in Montana, and in recent years even in the extreme North, in Alaska.

What were the influences that directed the Norwegian immigrants so largely to the Northwest in the early period and down to 1890?

The great majority came for the sake of bettering their material condition. They came here to found a home and to make a living. Moreover, as I have observed above, immigrants in their new home generally enter the same pursuits and engage in the same occupations in which they were engaged in their native country.

Three-fourths of the population of Norway live in the rural districts and are mostly engaged in some form of farming.[16] Thus seventy-two per cent of the Norwegian immigrants are found in the rural districts and in towns with less than twenty-five thousand population. The fact that the influx of the immigrants from Norway coincided with the opening up of the middle western states resulted in the settlement of those states by Norwegian immigrants. Land could be had for almost nothing in the West. Land-seekers from New England, New York and Pennsylvania were in those days flocking to the West.[17] About ninety per cent of the Norwegian immigrants at that time were land-seekers. As a rule long before he emigrated the Norseman had made up his mind to settle in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, or Minnesota.

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CHAPTER III
The Earliest Immigrants from Norway, 1620 to 1825.

Our data regarding Norwegian emigration to America prior to 1825 are very fragmentary, but it is possible to trace that emigration as far back as 1624.[18] In that year a small colony of Norwegians was established in New Jersey on the site of the present city of Bergen.[19] While it is not known that the names of any of these first colonists have come down to us, we do have the name of one Norwegian, who visited the American coast on a voyage of exploration in the year 1619, that is, the year before the landing of the Mayflower. In the early part