News Across the Ocean

By Lori Ann Reinhall

Imagine a world without any internet, and no cell phones or telephones of any sort. No radio or television. No airplanes to carry your letters across the Atlantic.

That was the world of the Norwegian immigrants who came to North America in 1825 on the sloop Restauration. They left their homes in Norway, not knowing if they would ever hear from their loved ones again, let alone ever see them. And once in America, they faced the challenge of learning about what was going on in the world around them. Few understood even a few words of the English language and depended on others to guide them along as they set down roots and built new communities.

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Back then, it could take months to receive a letter from Norway. News from the old country was scarce. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was in place first in 1858. The Norwegian immigrants were dependent on each other, as new immigrants would arrive in their settlements. And with time, they would rely on newspapers that they would write in their own Norwegian language. The printed word came to play an important role in holding immigrant communities together, keeping their readers in contact with the world and each other.

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Between 1846 and 2010, 280 Norwegian-American newspapers — give or take a few — were established in the places where Norwegian immigrants had settled. There were papers in the large metropolitan areas — New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, to name a few — as well as smaller cities, including Decorah, Iowa, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Muskego, Wisconsin, to name a few. And then there were much smaller communities with Norwegian newspapers scattered around the county.

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One thing for sure is that these newspapers ended up on the kitchen tables of many Norwegian-American homes and were a lifeline for Norwegian-American women and their families, often bringing news of the old country and what was happening right there at home. It kept many Norwegians immersed in their language and culture and also documented their own unique culture in the New World. Reading through old issues of the Decorah Posten, one has to chuckle at the adventures of “Han Ola og han Per,” a humorous comic strip depictions of the trials and tribulations of two quirky immigrant settlers in Spring Grove, the oldest Norwegian settlement in the state of Minnesota.

When World War II came, the Norwegian-American press would play an important role in keeping the Norwegian diaspora informed about what was happening back home in the old country and helped to support the war effort there, with Norway at the forefront of the reporting. New waves of immigrants landed in the United States and Canada after the war and would become avid readers of the Norwegian-American newspapers.

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But time marches on, and over the decades, Norwegian-American immigrants and subsequent generations have assimilated into American society. Readership of the Norwegian-American newspapers began to wane, and they began to disappear. Today, only one Norwegian-American newspaper remains, The Norwegian American, a merger or amalgamation of publications that survived over time, most notably the Western Viking in Seattle and Nordisk Tidende in New York. Now owned by Norway House in Minneapolis, The Norwegian American is published monthly in a print edition and on the web at norwegianamerican.com, with the mission to connect Norwegian Americans to their heritage and build bridges to Norway today.

Even now, for many elderly readers, The Norwegian American newspaper is their only lifeline to their heritage and homeland. But the paper is also evolving with a changing demographic. With fewer speakers of Norwegian on this side of the Atlantic, most of the paper is in the English language. Third-, fourth-, and even fifth-generation Norwegians are subscribing to the paper to rediscover their roots and to embrace the lifestyle of contemporary Norway. You will still find it on many kitchen tables as it continues to enrich the lives of Norwegian Americans today.

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^{Cover Photo: The Norwegian American. Today, The Norwegian American is a full-color publication, published monthly, with news from Norway and special features to connect Norwegian Americans to their heritage}

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