[gentle music]
- Jenny Pederson: Hello, everyone,
and welcome to today's "History Sandwiched In."
The Historical Society is excited to have you all
with us this afternoon.
For those of you that are joining us for the first time,
a few quick pieces of information.
This program, "History Sandwiched In,"
runs from March through November,
and it highlights a range of topics relevant
to the history of the people,
places, and spaces and events of Wisconsin,
as well as the broader Midwest.
For those of you that have joined us before,
welcome back to a new presentation.
It is our pleasure today to introduce Dana Kelly,
who is presenting "From Fjords to Fields:
the Norwegian-American Legacy in Wisconsin."
The opinions expressed today during the presentation
are those of the speaker, and not necessarily those
of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or the society's employees.
Before we hand it over,
it is an absolute privilege to introduce today's lecturer.
Dana Kelly is the executive director
of the Norwegian American Genealogical Center
here in Madison.
She earned her degree in Scandinavian studies
from UW-Madison
and lives on a dairy farm just east of Madison
with her husband and three children.
Thank you all again for being here,
and please do enjoy the presentation.
[applause]
- Dana Kelly: Thank you very much for having me today.
Like she said, my name is Dana Kelly
and I have been a member
of the Norwegian-American community
here in Wisconsin my entire life.
And I was born in Madison.
I was raised just east of here
in what was once the largest Norwegian-American settlement,
the Koshkonong Prairie.
And I attended UW-Madison, like she said,
got a degree in Scandinavian studies.
Incidentally, they are celebrating 150 years this year.
So, it's a big deal for the Scandinavian Studies department.
I've also served on the board of directors
for the Koshkonong Prairie Historical Society since 2009,
and in 2019, I joined the staff
of the Norwegian American Genealogical Center.
So, I'm what I like to call a professional Norwegian.
So, you may hear a little bit of bias about
how great the Norwegians in Wisconsin are,
because this subject is so close to my heart.
So, Norwegian Americans really don't make up a large percentage
of Wisconsin's population.
According to the 2020 census,
we make up about 6% of the population here in Wisconsin.
So, when people are thinking about where Norwegians settled,
Minnesota usually gets all of the love.
And it is true, there are more people with Norwegian ancestry
living in Minnesota than there are in Wisconsin.
But Norwegians came to Wisconsin before they came to Minnesota.
And this map actually comes from our historical society.
It's based on data from the 1905 Wisconsin state census.
So, each township is colored according
to the primary ethnic group found in that township.
Blue is German.
Green means that there's a real mixture in that township,
so it's kind of hard to pull out one particular
dominant ethnic group.
But yellow is Norwegian.
There are a lot of Norwegian townships
in the state of Wisconsin.
At least there were in 1905.
So, first things first.
There would be no legacy for Norwegian Americans here
in Wisconsin if everything in Norway had been perfect.
So, I took both of these pictures, actually.
Now, can you tell which one is Norway
and which one is Wisconsin?
[all laugh]
They are definitely not the same.
People often look at this image on the left and they say,
"Oh, why would anyone leave someplace
"that is so stunningly beautiful and come to this flat prairie
with a few trees here and there?"
Well, one of these places has a really good farmland
and the other one doesn't.
Only about 3% of Norway's land can actually be farmed.
And by contrast,
30% of Wisconsin can be used for agriculture,
and that was the primary driver out of Norway
and into Wisconsin.
People wanted farmland.
Norwegians wanted to continue that same agricultural lifestyle
that they had in Norway when they got here.
Now, yes, some immigrants left for other reasons,
and definitely Norwegians pursued other careers
other than farming, but for the most part,
they came here because they wanted to farm.
And Wisconsin created that opportunity.
And they definitely did it.
Based on the data from the 1930 U.S. census,
of all of the ethnic immigrant groups to the United States,
Norwegians were more likely to be engaged in agriculture
than any other ethnic immigrant group to the United States.
Norwegians were more likely to be farming
than other groups were,
and as Jenny mentioned, that I have a farm.
I am one of those stereotypical Norwegians
who has remained in agriculture longer than the average person.
And actually, I have a side note about that.
This morning, I'm all dressed for work.
I've got this dress on,
and I'm filling up my water bottle,
looking out my kitchen window.
We've got a calf loose.
So I, my kids aren't there.
I texted my husband down in the barn,
but he was milking,
so I think I got all the calf slobber off this dress
after getting her caught and put away
before I got here today.
So, I'm gonna back up just a couple of years
before Norwegians actually got to Wisconsin.
2025 is a really big year in the Norwegian-American community.
We are commemorating 200 years
of organized Norwegian immigration
to the United States.
In 1825, a group of 52 Quakers
from the Stavanger area of Norway bought a sloop.
It was named the Restauration,
and they left Norway in July of 1825,
and they landed in New York that October.
So, their story deserves a lot more attention
than I can give it today.
We don't have all day, but suffice it to say,
this was the first organized group
of Norwegian immigrants to the United States,
and they formed the first Norwegian-American community
here in the United States.
And they blazed a trail for hundreds of thousands
of immigrants following behind them for the next 100 years.
After spending a winter in upstate New York,
the sloopers weren't very happy
with the conditions they found themselves in.
The land, they thought the land was too expensive.
They thought the winter was too harsh.
Now, think about that.
Norwegians thought the winter was too harsh
in New York. [chuckles]
So they sent a scout,
his name was Kleng Peerson, west.
And Kleng Peerson walked
all the way from upstate New York
to just outside of present-day Chicago.
And he found land there, and he said, "This is it.
This is where the Norwegians need to be."
So, he walked back to New York
and he told the group, "I found it."
And most of that colony from upstate New York
followed him to Illinois.
It's now called, appropriately, Norway, Illinois.
So, if you're looking on the map, that's where it is.
And they established the very first--
- Attendee: Where? - Norway, Illinois.
LaSalle County, so, it's just outside Chicago.
They established the very first
permanent Norwegian settlement here in North America.
So, during the 1830s,
Norwegians started venturing north into Wisconsin.
And this man, Ole Nattestad,
was the very first documented Norwegian
to visit Wisconsin.
In 1838, he came to scout land
for the folks who were living in those Illinois settlements.
And he and his brother, Ansten, were very influential
in encouraging immigration from Norway to the United States.
And this man here,
he was the very first Norwegian actually
to claim land in Wisconsin.
He had 180 acres right on the Wisconsin-Illinois border.
His farm was in Clinton Township, actually.
Just south of Janesville.
So, the very first Norwegian settlements here in Wisconsin
were on that border
on the Rock and Jefferson Prairies
in Rock County, just south of Janesville.
But Muskego is the settlement
that usually gets the most attention
when we talk about Norwegian immigration to Wisconsin.
The legend about this, the first group of people here,
was that they were coming from Norway in 1839.
Their plan was to go to Chicago.
And as they were coming through the Great Lakes,
the ship made its customary stop in Milwaukee,
and supposedly, a man got on the ship with two other men.
One of them was fat, and one was skinny.
And he told the immigrants,
he said, "This fat man lives in Wisconsin.
"This skinny man lives in Illinois.
[audience laughs]
Where do you wanna stay?"
And he allegedly convinced them
that they should get off the ship in Milwaukee
and stay in Wisconsin.
So, most of the good farmland was already taken
in the Milwaukee area by 1839,
so the immigrants wound up just a little bit south
in what is now the Muskego area.
Now, Muskego is a pretty low-lying, kind of swampy area.
And in 1839, though, they were having a drought,
so the Norwegians didn't know
that where they were settling really wasn't great for farming.
And, of course, the next year, the rain came
and the climate returned to what was more typical.
They were dealing with malaria and cholera and a lot of issues.
So, eventually, the settlement moved a little bit further south
to some drier, higher land
that was better suited for agriculture.
Now, in 1840, one of Wisconsin's
notable Norwegian immigrant families arrived,
and that's the family of Hans Christian Heg.
They settled in Muskego,
and Heg was definitely not a household name
until just a few years ago.
In spite of the fact that his statue stood
outside of the Wisconsin Capitol building for nearly 100 years,
most people didn't know who he was.
He was a politician.
He was head of the corrections system in Wisconsin, actually,
when the Civil War started,
and he decided to recruit Norwegian immigrants
to serve in the Civil War.
And Colonel Heg led the Wisconsin 15th,
and he was killed in battle fighting for the Union.
And his unit, his regiment,
was almost exclusively Norwegians
and the children of Norwegian immigrants.
They pretty much all spoke Norwegian.
Now, during 2020, his statue was vandalized.
I'm sure you all remember that.
And it was reinstalled a couple of years later.
So, the picture on the right
is one that I took the day that it was rededicated.
It was kind of a dreary day,
but there were a lot of Norwegian Americans
who turned out to celebrate Colonel Hans Christian Heg.
The Heg family was pretty influential
for Norwegian immigrants in those early years.
Colonel Heg's father, Even Heg was his name.
He was very prominent in the Muskego settlement.
His barn is where they held all the church services in Muskego.
His barn was kind of like a hotel.
It's where all the newcomers came
when they first arrived in Milwaukee
and were looking for a place to get their bearings
before they launched out to the settlements farther west.
Norwegian immigrants
were very literate, generally speaking.
Norway had a state church.
So Lutheranism was very important.
Confirmation was a really important rite of passage
for young people in Norway.
And in order to get confirmed,
you had to be able to read the Bible,
you had to be able to read Luther's Small Catechism.
And so, as a result, the Norwegian immigrants
were generally quite literate.
And there was a very active Norwegian language press
here in Wisconsin.
One of the very first Norwegian language newspapers
was published in Muskego.
It was called Nordlyset, which means "Northern Lights."
And the Heg family was also very instrumental
in getting this newspaper off the ground.
One of the reasons they thought press was so important
was this is how the Norwegians could know about current events.
This is how they could learn how to become U.S. citizens,
learning about that process
and learning about what was going on in the United States.
So, I mentioned that Muskego
had its share of problems as a settlement.
It was pretty low-lying
and wasn't really very well-suited for farming.
But it was pretty conveniently located near Milwaukee,
so it did make a good launching point for a lot of immigrants.
But the immigrants wanted to farm,
an Muskego wasn't such a great place for that,
so a lot of them didn't remain in the Muskego area for long.
In 1839, a few men from some of the Illinois settlements
came into Wisconsin looking for cheaper farmland,
and they found some of the best farmland in North America.
And I am not exaggerating.
If you drive just east of Madison
and take a look at our fields,
you will not find an irrigation system
anywhere in this gray-shaded area.
It is outstanding farmland, this area.
This was the America
that the Norwegian immigrants had been hearing about.
This is what they were looking for.
This settlement was called Koshkonong,
and it became incredibly famous in Norway.
You can look at old letters, and they are addressed
to "Knud Larsen,
Koshkonong Prairie, North America."
And they got here. [laughs]
Everyone knew this place.
So, Koshkonong was not the first Norwegian settlement
by any stretch of the imagination,
but it didn't take long for the population
to overtake these older settlements
in Illinois and Muskego.
And Koshkonong continued to grow.
By 1850, two-thirds of the total Norwegian immigrant population
lived here in Wisconsin,
and 40% of them were in Koshkonong.
It was a huge settlement.
So Koshkonong is actually home
to the very first Norwegian Lutheran church
in North America.
And people always look at me
and say, "Dana, you are splitting hairs."
You bet I am.
Yes, there were church services
being held in the Norwegian language
in the Illinois settlements, in Muskego,
but none of the men conducting those services
had been ordained by the Norwegian Lutheran Church.
They were either lay preachers
or they'd been ordained in some other tradition.
But there was a wealthy businessman in Norway
who paid for this man here,
Reverend Johannes Wilhelm Christian Dietrichson.
Paid for his passage to Wisconsin
because he was genuinely concerned about the souls
of the pioneers out there in the wilds of Wisconsin.
So, Dietrichson arrived in Muskego in August of 1844,
and he got to Muskego, and they said, "Great to see you,
"but you know who really needs you?
Those folks over in Koshkonong."
So, Dietrichson walked from Muskego to Koshkonong,
and he started two churches.
On October 10, 1844,
he formally organized the immigrant families
on the eastern side of the Koshkonong settlement
and formed the East Koshkonong congregation.
Three days later, he did the same thing
on the western side of the settlement,
and he formed West Koshkonong Church.
So, I would argue
that East Koshkonong Lutheran Church
is the oldest Norwegian Lutheran congregation
in North America.
So, right after Dietrichson got these congregations started,
the parishioners got started building some churches.
They were logs.
This is a model that we have, somebody had created for the
Koshkonong Prairie Historical Society.
And West Koshkonong was dedicated first
on December 19, 1844,
and East was created, or was dedicated
a few weeks later in January of 1845
for East Koshkonong.
And these buildings were pretty much identical.
They were about 28 feet by 36 feet,
and they were pretty sparse.
They had some wooden benches
and a pretty plain old altar in there.
But the West Koshkonong church building was the very first
Norwegian Lutheran church building in North America.
The other Norwegian settlements didn't have dedicated churches.
They were worshipping outside, they were worshipping in homes,
they were worshipping in people's barns.
West Koshkonong had the very first building
that was established just to be a church.
And these log churches obviously are long gone,
but East Koshkonong still has some logs
from that original church,
so if you would like to see some logs from 1844, 1845,
they're on display in their church,
if you pay them a visit.
There is one other historic church in Koshkonong
that you can visit.
As the Koshkonong settlement grew,
the East and West Koshkonong congregations
felt that a church was needed in the northern part
of the settlement.
In Deerfield Township,
they built the Liberty Prairie Church in 1851,
and this church is built of limestone.
It's not a log church.
So you can see what a contrast it is
to the log churches that were built six years earlier.
There's only a six-year difference
between this building and the log church.
And this was never meant to be a temporary home
the way that the log churches were.
This was meant to be forever.
So, in 2026, St. Paul's Liberty Lutheran Church,
that's what it's called now,
will be celebrating its 175th anniversary.
And this building is the oldest standing
Norwegian Lutheran church building in North America
that has been continuously used as a house of worship
by its congregation since it was built.
It's never been moved from its original site.
They dug the basement with the building sitting right there.
And you can go see it.
It's still sitting there.
If you're driving on 12 and 18 from Madison toward Cambridge,
it'll be off to your left, just past the round barn.
You can't miss it.
It looks, still looks just like this.
Now, not every Norwegian immigrant was devoted
to the Norwegian Lutheran State Church.
There was a movement
that was particularly popular in western Norway
that was started by Hans Nielsen Hauge.
And he believed that anyone who could read the Bible
can and should lead religious gatherings.
So these so-called Haugeans started Lutheran churches
here in Wisconsin too,
not just illegal churches in Norway.
They started legal ones here.
Many of the Haugean churches have eventually joined other--
As the synods merge,
like, the Missouri Synod and the Norwegian Synod.
Eventually, they all became ELCA.
And that happened to most of these Haugean churches.
But the oldest intact Norwegian log church
is here in Dane County.
It's over by Mount Horeb.
The Hauge log church is there preserved.
It's in a park.
There's a nonprofit organization
who takes care of it.
You can go visit it.
It is still sitting there.
Do you remember Little Norway?
There was a folk museum near Mount Horeb for many, many years
that closed just a few years ago
that was dedicated to celebrating Norwegian heritage.
And this building was the centerpiece.
It came from the 1893 World's Fair
in Chicago originally.
And Little Norway was owned by the Dahle family.
Daleyville is named after them.
They're a Norwegian family from over by Mount Horeb.
A side note about the Dahles:
Marie Dahle was the very first woman of Norwegian descent
to graduate from UW-Madison.
But that's not what Little Norway's about.
When Little Norway closed, this building,
the Norway Building, it was called,
was sent to Norway and reopened there
as a museum in Orkanger, Norway.
So, that's actually where I took this picture.
When I was visiting Norway,
I took a picture of this while I was there,
and it was kind of like standing in Mount Horeb again,
but I was in Norway!
So, when we're talking about the Norwegian legacy in Wisconsin,
there are definitely some things you can't skip over,
and one of those is the impact of Norwegians
on agriculture here.
Norwegians engaged in all of the forms of farming
that you can do in Wisconsin.
I'm not going to pretend that there aren't Norwegians
who had orchards or hog operations.
But the one crop that is particularly associated
with Norwegian Americans is tobacco.
And I have a map here from 1919
that shows U.S. tobacco production.
And I zoomed in on Wisconsin.
It's not high-res, but you can see which parts
of Wisconsin were growing tobacco back in 1919.
And when we put that side by side
with our ethnicity map, we can see
that the tobacco production is concentrated
where the Norwegians were living.
And this is not a coincidence.
This is uniquely Norwegian American,
and it's really unique to Wisconsin.
We don't see this same trend
in Iowa or Minnesota or North Dakota.
It is pretty much just here.
Tobacco, historically, and still is, for sure,
primarily grown in the South.
But you can grow tobacco here.
I took these pictures just outside my house
over the weekend.
This is tobacco being grown in Wisconsin right now.
And the reason it is here is because, during the Civil War,
the North got cut off from its tobacco supply.
So, they started growing tobacco here in the north
so they could get ahold of their chewing tobacco
and their smoking tobacco.
And if you have ever worked in tobacco,
you know that this is a hands-on, labor-intensive,
monotonous, hot, dirty, just awful job.
And who gets hired
to do monotonous, unpleasant, manual labor jobs?
Well, oftentimes it's the new immigrants.
And during the Civil War,
who were the new immigrants in Wisconsin?
Well, it was the Norwegians.
So, Norwegians did not come to Wisconsin
with tobacco-growing skills.
This is something they learned when they got here.
But they realized it was a really good cash crop,
and so they kept growing it even after the Civil War was over.
I just absolutely love this picture.
It's from a journal article that was called
"Norwegians and Tobacco in Western Wisconsin,"
written by Karl B. Raitz and Cotton Mather.
And it was published in 1971.
And what I love about this picture
is you can see the "Welcome to Westby" sign
is in Norwegian,
and in the background is a tobacco shed.
So, why did Norwegians continue to stick with this crop?
Why did they outlast the Germans
and the, you know, the other Yankee farmers?
Well, Norwegians were very supportive
of agricultural co-ops.
They were very supportive of that movement.
And during the Depression,
when the Germans and the Yankee farmers and the Irish farmers
got out of tobacco because the prices were unpredictable,
the weather was unpredictable, Norwegians supported each other
with pricing information and market information
and tips for growing under different conditions,
different varieties you could grow
for different conditions.
They were able to weather that storm
and continue this tradition.
So, even if farms still aren't supporting a tobacco crop,
you will often see this lasting shadow
of Wisconsin's tobacco history.
These are all tobacco sheds
that I took pictures of over the weekend
just driving around the block where I live.
And they're scattered all over Wisconsin, though,
and most of them have been repurposed.
Most people are using them as machine sheds
and for storage and other things.
But you can tell that they are tobacco sheds
because you can see that about every third board is on hinges
and can be opened to allow airflow for the tobacco crop
that's hanging in there as it's curing and drying.
Now, three of them are old,
but you'll see in the bottom right-hand corner,
there's a fairly new tobacco shed there.
This is my next-door neighbor's.
The Lund family still raises a lot of tobacco,
and they built a more state-of-the-art tobacco shed
to accommodate their crop.
And they have a-- You can see they have a barn quilt
on the end of their barn with tobacco leaves on it
to honor that tobacco heritage for their family.
Now, it wasn't just tobacco where Norwegian Americans
made their mark in Wisconsin industry.
Lumbering was another place that Norwegians
really spent a lot of their time during the 1800s.
Now, unlike tobacco, lumbering was something
they came knowing how to do.
They were familiar with that.
They had the skills already when they got here.
Norwegian immigrants were in the lumber camps.
They were working in sawmills.
They were riding the logs down the Mississippi River.
They were doing all of that.
It was a great winter job for them.
When they weren't farming, they could go
to the lumber camps in the winter.
And this gentleman on the left here
is actually my husband's great-grandfather.
His name is Albert J. Anderson, and he was a lumberjack.
And I don't know why he took a picture
in his lumberjack outfit like this,
with his heavy woolen coat and his turtleneck sweater on,
but I think it's fantastic.
Otherwise, how would we know what he looked like
in the lumber camp if he hadn't done that?
Waldemar Ager actually took quite, took a notice
of the Norwegians in the lumber industry.
He was a Norwegian immigrant
who ran a newspaper in Eau Claire.
For decades, he ran a newspaper there,
and he also wrote some novels.
Sons of the Old Country is one of the novels that he wrote,
and this is, it's historical fiction.
Takes place in the 1850s, 1860s.
And it's about Norwegians in the Wisconsin lumber camps
and Norwegians in the Civil War.
Agar was a pretty interesting character, actually,
in Norwegian-American history.
They have turned his house in Eau Claire into a museum.
So, if you would like to go visit that,
you can learn more about him.
He was also pretty politically active.
He was a staunch Prohibitionist.
And actually, a lot of Norwegians were.
There were a lot of Norwegian Americans
who were very, very opposed to alcohol consumption.
And, in fact, the Volstead Act, which basically was what
made alcohol illegal in the United States,
was named after a Norwegian American
from Minnesota, so we don't have to claim him.
[audience laughs] But it was very popular.
The Prohibition movement was very popular
with Norwegian Americans in Wisconsin.
And in fact, Ager's newspaper
basically was a mouthpiece for the Prohibition movement.
That's, his readership wanted to read that.
Norwegian immigrants brought something else with them too,
that became quite a novelty when they first got here,
and that's skis.
A lot of Americans had never seen skis
until they saw a Norwegian immigrant.
So, the Snowflake Ski Club is located near Westby.
It is one of the final two all-volunteer-run,
large-hill ski-jumping clubs in North America.
And each winter, they have a ski tournament.
It attracts thousands of people to Westby.
And the competitors come from the United States, Canada.
They come from Europe to compete here.
You will never catch me on this.
You can go up to 50 miles an hour on that ski run.
There's no way I'm doing it.
But it was a pretty popular pastime
among the early Norwegian immigrants,
and it still is today.
Skis weren't just for recreation for Norwegians.
"Snowshoe" Thompson was, he was born in Norway.
His name in Norway was Jon Torsteinsson Rue.
His family first immigrated to Illinois,
then they went to Missouri.
In 1846, Thompson and his brother came to Mount Horeb.
Thompson himself was kind of a wanderer,
so he didn't stay in the Mount Horeb area very long,
but his brother did, and they still have descendants
in the Mount Horeb area, this family does.
Eventually, Snowshoe Thompson found himself
living at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains out west.
And his name suggests that he wore snowshoes.
But he didn't; he wore skis.
He made the skis himself, and he delivered mail on skis
between California and Nevada for 20 years.
He carried the mail over the mountains for 20 years.
And he was never paid
by the U.S. Postal Service for doing that.
He did it for 20 years and was never paid.
Now, if you've heard of him, perhaps you heard his name
in a Johnny Horton song that was recorded in 1956
about his life delivering the mail over the mountains on skis.
Perhaps not surprising,
Norwegian immigrants were pretty prevalent
in the shipping industry on the Great Lakes,
especially from Manitowoc.
Working on the Great Lakes
was pretty appealing to Norwegian immigrants
because they didn't have to spend as much time
away from home working in the shipping industry
on the Great Lakes.
If they were in Norway,
it was a lot of international, ocean shipping.
But on the Great Lakes, it was just the Great Lakes.
So it was a pretty appealing career choice for Norwegians.
And they were recruited
by a lot of the Great Lakes shipping companies
to come here and work for them.
Norwegians were naturals on the water, you could say,
and Ole Evinrude was no exception.
He was born in Norway, and he immigrated
to Cambridge, Wisconsin, with his family as a small child.
And there's a couple stories about him.
I don't know if they're all true,
but allegedly, when he was a child,
he built a boat, and when his dad found it,
supposedly his dad busted it up with an axe
and told him, "Farming is your future.
There is no future in boats."
[all laugh]
Maybe for anybody but Ole Evinrude.
The story goes that he was inspired
to invent the outboard motor because he rowed across a lake
to get his girlfriend some ice cream,
and by the time he got back to her,
the ice cream had melted.
And he said, "There's got to be a better way."
[audience laughs]
The Evinrude motor was born out of a need
for frozen ice cream for Ole Evinrude's girlfriend.
So, if you have a passion, though, for his motors,
the Koshkonong Prairie Historical Society
has a wonderful collection of these,
and it's housed in the Cambridge Historic School Museum
over in Cambridge.
They have a really good collection
of Evinrude and ELTO Motors.
But Norwegian Americans definitely found their way
into every corner of Wisconsin life eventually,
but there are a handful of notable Wisconsinites
who have Norwegian heritage who really did make a mark.
And one family is the Trane family of La Crosse.
"It's Hard To Stop A Trane."
You've probably heard that slogan.
You've heard of their products.
They made furnaces and air conditioners
and all sorts of stuff like that.
And I've always wondered why, when I would see those trucks,
I would look at it and think, you know,
"I really just wanna say 'trunnuh'
"when I see that word.
Why does it look Norwegian to me?"
Well, it turns out I'm right.
Jens "Trunnuh" was known as James Trane
after he immigrated to Wisconsin.
He came in the 1860s,
and he started a plumbing business.
And then he later invented many things related
to heating and cooling for homes and industrial uses.
And his son, Reuben, attended UW-Madison,
where he got an engineering degree,
and he joined his father in business in La Crosse.
The company's been in existence since 1913,
and it's gone through a lot of changes in the last 100 years.
It's changed ownership.
I believe now it's held by an Irish company.
But it is a multibillion-dollar company now.
And this business got its start with the ingenuity
of a couple of Norwegian Americans
from Wisconsin.
John A. Johnson was another manufacturer here in Wisconsin.
He was born as Jens Anders Skibsnaes in Norway,
and he immigrated with his family as a child as well.
They farmed east of Stoughton for a while,
and then he founded a machining factory in Madison.
Gisholt Machine Company.
It was named after a farm that he spent a lot of summers on
as a child in Norway.
It's actually pronounced "Gees-holt" in Norwegian,
but we call it "Gish-holt" here.
And Gisholt employed hundreds of Norwegian immigrants
here in Madison on East Wash.
And it was affectionately, or not affectionately,
known as the Norwegian Sweatshop,
but he provided an entire community
to Norwegian immigrants.
He provided housing, they had a library.
They had a theater in Gisholt Machine Company.
It was absolutely amazing.
And Johnson was also a philanthropist.
He never attended college,
and he wanted other Norwegian-American young people
to have that opportunity,
so he started a fund, and it's actually still held
by the Madison Community Foundation today.
And it was originally established for Norwegian
and Norwegian-American grandchildren of immigrants
to go to college.
Now, this is a name I wish more people knew.
Clairmont Egtvedt.
He was born outside Stoughton to a Norwegian immigrant father
and a mother who had Norwegian immigrant parents.
He became an engineer, and it turned out that
he was a really talented airplane designer.
So he found himself working for Boeing,
and he began climbing the ranks there,
and during the 1930s, he convinced Bill Boeing
that the company could pull itself out of the Depression
if it would just invest more in larger aircraft.
And he managed to get them to do it.
And so, Egtvedt is now known as the father of the B-17 bomber.
The B-17 dropped more bombs
than any other aircraft during World War II.
And, uh...
[voice breaks] That's a pretty cool legacy,
that a Norwegian American from Wisconsin
had a massive hand in the outcome of World War II.
So it's starting to sound like Norwegians
maybe only invented and manufactured.
But that is not true.
Here's a man whose name you maybe have never heard,
but his ideas you've definitely heard.
Thorstein Veblen was born near Valders, Wisconsin
to a Norwegian-American family,
and he grew up to be an economist and a sociologist
and a really huge critic of capitalism.
You may have heard some of the terms that he coined.
He coined the expression "leisure class"
and "conspicuous consumption."
And those terms became just part of our vocabulary
here in the United States.
And we owe all these ideas to a small-town
Norwegian American from Wisconsin.
Now, this is a little more recent in history.
Tom Loftus was born in Stoughton,
and he was raised in Sun Prairie,
and he was the longest-serving Democratic Speaker
for the Wisconsin Assembly
before he was named ambassador to Norway
during the Clinton administration.
He released his memoirs last year.
It's a really good read.
If you haven't had a chance to read it,
I encourage you to grab a copy.
He's out kind of on a speaking circuit too.
If you get the chance to hear him talk about the book, even,
it's really entertaining to hear some of his stories
about his time living in Europe in the '90s.
Now, this is a gentleman
my generation probably knows pretty well,
but maybe not a lot of people know
he's Norwegian-American.
Butch Vig is a celebrated producer and musician.
He produced Nirvana's best-selling album.
He produced for Smashing Pumpkins.
He was a founding member of the band Garbage.
And he is very influential
in the rock music scene, for sure,
and he's originally from Viroqua, Wisconsin.
Legacies come in all forms.
[audience laughs and exclaims]
And horrifying legacies are still legacies.
And I'm including this
just so you don't think I'm totally biased
and think all Norwegian Americans
are fine, upstanding humans.
We do have one black sheep,
who is only a quarter Norwegian on his mother's side.
[all laugh]
For the sports fans here in the audience,
we have a NASCAR legend from Rockdale, Wisconsin,
which is near Cambridge.
He happens to be descended
from some of the very first immigrants to Wisconsin.
His family has been here since the 1840s, a very long time.
Matt Kenseth was the final winner
of the Winston Cup in 2003 before they changed sponsors.
Two-time Daytona 500 champion.
Pretty well known in the NASCAR world for sure.
And Norwegian Americans from Wisconsin
have also represented the U.S. on the Olympic team.
Tim Mickelson from Deerfield won a silver medal
in the 1972 Olympics on the rowing team.
Andy Rein from Stoughton won a silver medal
in the 1984 Olympics for wrestling.
And Rein, actually he went on to be inducted
into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame a few years ago,
and he was on the coaching staff of UW-Madison for a while.
And in 1992, he was named Big Ten Coach of the Year.
Speaking of Olympians,
Mark Johnson was born in Minnesota,
but I think we can claim him.
He scored two goals against the Russians
during the 1980 Olympics,
and he was part of that hockey team
that went on to win the gold medal.
He was part of the Miracle on Ice.
And, of course, he went on to play professionally,
but he came back to Madison
and he coaches the women's hockey team.
He's been here since 2002.
And they've had many, many good seasons under him.
Conrad Elvehjem.
Born in McFarland, Wisconsin.
In 1937, he identified vitamin B3,
previously unknown until Conrad Elvehjem found it.
I know nothing about biochemistry,
but allegedly, this is the distillation column
he used back in his lab in the 1930s.
He eventually became the president of UW-Madison in 1958,
and his name was on the art museum on campus
up until just a few years ago
when the Chazens gave $20 million
and they renamed it The Chazen.
But we still remember him.
Brilliant scientist and UW faculty member.
Believe it or not, I almost forgot this guy.
Gaylord Nelson was born in Clear Lake, Wisconsin,
to a Norwegian-American family,
and here, we probably remember him most as a politician.
He was elected to the senate back in 1948,
and then he served as Governor of Wisconsin from '62 to '81,
so quite a while.
And as a politician, he's remembered for his activism
to regulate the pharmaceutical industry.
His so-called Nelson Pill Hearings
resulted in side effect disclosures
being put in with birth control pills,
something that had never been done until he insisted on that.
But I think probably the rest of the world
remembers him best as the man
who founded Earth Day back in 1970,
and he has since been inducted
in the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame.
Now, we can't really talk about influential Norwegian Americans
if we don't mention this man, Rasmus B. Anderson.
He was born in Wisconsin in 1846.
So pretty early, before we were a state.
He was an instructor at Albion Academy,
which was the first co-ed institution
of higher learning here in Wisconsin.
And then, he went on to found
the Scandinavian Studies Department at UW-Madison.
He was a translator.
He was a writer.
Of all the books he wrote, my absolute favorite is called
America Not Discovered by Columbus.
[all laugh]
Because he insisted that Vikings were in North America
before Christopher Columbus got here.
He is often credited with establishing Leif Erikson Day,
which, incidentally, is on October 9 every year,
usually just a few days before Columbus Day.
Anderson was also a businessman.
He was a diplomat.
He served as the ambassador to Denmark, actually,
during the Grover Cleveland administration.
There are 16 schools in Wisconsin
who have the Vikings as their mascot.
Obviously, I didn't put all 16 of them on this slide
'cause they pretty much all look the same.
But it's a pretty popular mascot here.
DeForest also is known as the Norskies rather than a Viking.
Whitehall is known as the Norse.
Westby, they're the Norsemen.
So, even after all of these years,
these Norwegian-American communities
are still appreciating this legacy, this history
in their communities
by using a mascot that's so overtly Scandinavian.
There are a number of Scandinavian festivals
here in Wisconsin still that are held nearly every year.
I'm sure I'm missing a bunch.
Some of these are pan-Scandinavian,
so they include Danes and Swedes in them as well.
But some of them are exclusively Norwegian,
like the Syttende Mai celebrations
in Stoughton and Westby.
Those are just to celebrate Norwegian heritage.
Have you been to a lutefisk dinner?
[audience exclaims] You've probably heard of them,
even if you've never been to one.
They're often held as fundraisers
for Lutheran churches or Sons of Norway lodges.
They're usually in the fall, so, you know, be watching for them.
They'll be announcing them soon.
The Sons of Norway Lodge in Stoughton, actually,
if you want to get on their e-mail list,
they have a lutefisk dinner announcement calendar
that goes out, so you can track all of the different ones
and make sure you hit them all so you don't miss any.
[audience laughs]
This is actually...
These pictures are from a couple of years ago.
It's me and two of my kids at the lutefisk dinner
at the Lutheran church in DeForest.
This year, it's on November 8, so mark your calendars.
They will serve over 1,000 people.
Last year, I think they did 1,300 dinners that Saturday.
So they will sell out.
Get your tickets as soon as possible
or you might miss it.
You may miss the lutefisk.
And if you're wondering, did my kids like it?
My son probably ate three pounds of lutefisk.
It was absolutely insane.
[laughs] He absolutely loves it.
My daughter, whose name is Lena, not so much.
[audience laughs]
But my son adored it.
So, I took this picture here
during Syttende Mai in Stoughton one year.
10,000 people descend on Stoughton
that weekend to celebrate Norwegian heritage.
The event is full of Norwegian-American organizations
who are gathering to celebrate their heritage.
So, I made a list of all the ones I could think of,
the different clubs and museums
and cultural centers here in Wisconsin
that are specifically dedicated to Norwegian heritage.
I probably missed some, but I know I could list more
if I was listing some other groups
from Iowa and Minnesota and North Dakota.
And if I listed all the ones that no longer exist,
it would be one heck of a list.
So we are, we're a very proud group,
we Norwegian Americans,
and we have quite a legacy here in Wisconsin.
And throughout the country, really, not just here.
And we all show our pride in different ways.
And I don't really know if I could have come up with
a more Norwegian Wisconsin image than this one.
If you're driving around rural Dane County
and you see a barn quilt on the end of a barn
with a Norwegian flag on it, that's where I live.
[all laugh]
So, these are my cows, and this is our barn.
If you would like to learn more
about the Norwegian American Genealogical Center,
our website is here.
Our e-mail address is here.
We'd love to hear from you.
We can help you discover more about your Norwegian ancestry.
We offer Norwegian language classes,
genealogy classes, translation services.
We'd love to see you if there's anything we can help you with.
So, thank you very much for having me today.
[audience applauds]