introductory pages I shall discuss briefly individual immigration from Norway from its earliest known beginnings down to 1825.

Immigration from Norway resulted in the founding of settlements in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa successively; I shall try to give a correct narrative of the beginnings and the growth of these settlements. In this part of the work I shall stress the oldest and largest settlements in Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, for the relation of these to the whole movement and later colonization of the Northwestern States by the Norwegians is one of especial importance. I shall treat somewhat fully of the causes of emigration, of the growth of the movement, and the part in it that each district or province in Norway has played. The leaders from each district and the founders of the settlements here will be named and in many cases, sketches will be given of their lives. Such questions as the course of the movement in Norway, the cost of the voyage, the course of the journey, early wage conditions, the economic conditions of the immigrants, the geographical trend of settlement, will also be considered, and approximately complete lists of the accessions in each settlement for the first few years will be given. The limits of this volume, however, will preclude the treatment of social or cultural questions, or to take more than the briefest notice of the pursuits and occupations of the Norwegian-American and his contribution to American life. I hope to be able to treat elsewhere, later, of some of these problems.

The story of the immigrant settler is one that is well worth the telling; it is one that is justly receiving increased attention in recent years. I believe that the writer of American history will, in the future, pay far greater attention than he has in the past to the immigrant pioneer as a factor in the development of the nation. There are in America today about one million people of Norwegian birth, or Norwegian parentage. That is, there are nearly half as many of that nationality in America as in Norway itself. The transplanting of so large a proportion of a race from the land to which it is rooted by birth and by its history is indeed remarkable.

Various European peoples have contributed to the growth of the American population; they have each given something to the sum total of present American life and in some measure helped to shape American institutions. As a people America is yet in the formative period; racially, at least, one-half of the population is not Anglo-Saxon. It is by the amalgamation of all its ethnic factors that the future American people will be evolved. The contribution that each foreign element will make to that evolution will be determined by the civilization, which each represents as its racial heritage, the culture which, in the course of its history, each has evolved as a people and a nation. As the true student of American history takes note of these things in the future, the significance of the foreign factor in the growth and the upbuilding of the country will receive its just recognition.

We of Norse blood, but American birth, if we are true to the best that is in us, cannot fail to have an interest in the trials and the achievements of the pioneer fathers. We must recognize the true heroism of the men and women who braved the hardships and suffered the privations of frontier life in the thirties, the forties and the fifties. The part that the pioneers of those days played in the development of the Northwest was a great one; in comparison with it that of the present generation is wholly insignificant. It is to the memory of those pioneers, in recognition of their true worth, that this record of their coming is dedicated.

CHAPTER I
Norway: Population, Resources, Pursuits of her People, Social Conditions, Laws and Institutions.

Norway is, as we know, a long and narrow strip of country in the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula, stretching through thirteen degrees of latitude, and in the north, extending almost three hundred miles into the arctic zone. Nearly a third of the entire country[1] is the domain of the midnight sun, where summer is the season of daylight and winter is one long unbroken night. Even in Southern Norway total darkness is unknown in summer, the night being merely a period of twilight. In Christiania the nights are light from April twentieth to the third week in August, in Trondhjem, a week more at either end. In the latter city there is broad daylight at midnight from May twenty-third to July twentieth. Correspondingly there is a period of continuous darkness in the extreme north. Thus at Tromsö the sun is not visible between the twenty-sixth of November and the sixteenth day of January. The long night is therefore short as compared with the long day of summer. Climatically, also, Norway is naturally a land of extremes, extending, as it does, over such a vast area north and south. Yet the populous portion of the country, the southern two-thirds, is not appreciably colder than the State of Iowa and the southern half of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The winter is severest in the great inland valleys. Gudbrandsdalen, Valders and Hallingdal, but especially in Österdalen. In the last-named valley the lowest temperature ever observed has been recorded, namely, 50°, mercury often having been frozen.[2] The winter is also excessively long in these valleys; in Fjeldberg and Jerkin in the Dovre Mountains the temperature is below the freezing point two hundred days in the year. In the south and in the west coast-districts the climate is more uniform and more temperate. Northern Norway, with its gulf stream coast, presents the same general climatic conditions as Western and Southern Norway; the inland region of extreme cold is limited because of the very limited inland area, which also is very sparsely populated.[3]

The population of Norway[4] is very unevenly distributed, the north being rather thinly settled. The area of Norway is 124,495 square miles, or somewhat more than that of Wisconsin and Illinois together. About four per cent of this, however, is covered by lakes, and the average number of inhabitants to the square mile is only seventeen. The corresponding figures of inhabitants to the square mile for Sweden is twenty-eight; for Denmark, however, it is one hundred and forty-eight, and for all Europe, it is ninety-eight. The density of population is greatest in Larvik and Jarlsberg on the south (barring the cities of Christiania and Bergen). In these provinces there are one hundred and sixteen inhabitants to the square mile. In Hedemarken the number falls to twelve. The western fjord districts, those of Trondhjem Fjord, the Sogne Fjord and the Hardanger Fjord are thickly populated.

Norway is a land of fjords and lakes, of mountains and glacier expanses. Less than one-fourth of the country is capable of cultivation, and eighty per cent of this is forest land. This leaves less than five per cent under actual cultivation. We may compare