Читать книгу A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States - George T. Flom - Страница 5

Table of Contents

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 again with Denmark, where seventy-six per cent of the land is cultivated, while in all Europe the ratio is forty per cent.

Norway’s climate is noted for its healthfulness,[5] and its inhabitants attain a higher degree of longevity than those of most other European countries. Nearly seven per cent of its people reach the age of sixty to seventy, while one per cent attain to the age of from ninety to one hundred years. That is, reckoned as a whole, about twelve per cent attain to the age of sixty years or more. This is considerable in excess of that of nearly all other European countries.

The average age in Norway is fifty, while for instance, in Italy it is thirty-five. But the expectancy is far more than this for him who passes infancy; thus if one attains to the age of fifty in Norway, one still may expect to live twenty-three years. Such is the health and the expectancy of life among our immigrants from Norway.

The predominant pursuit in Norway is agriculture, cattle farming and forest cultivation. Herein forty-eight per cent of the population seeks its maintenance. The immigrant pioneer generally selects in America the pursuit or occupation for which he has been trained in his native country. And so we find that the great majority of Norwegian immigrants have sought homes in rural communities and engaged in farming and related pursuits. In fact, more than eighty-eight per cent of our Norwegian immigrants have come from rural communities. Twenty-three per cent of the population of Norway are engaged in industries and mining. To these occupations in this country, Norway has, especially in the later period of immigration, contributed a considerable share. A little over eight per cent of her people are engaged in fishing. And so we find that a proportionately very large amount of the New England fisheries is conducted by fishermen who have come from Norway. Navigation engages six per cent of the population of Norway. In this connection I note that our warships in the Spanish-American war were many of them manned almost exclusively by Norwegian sailors;[6] and there were Norwegians in the American marine service as early as the War of Independence, as again in no small proportion in the Civil War in the sixties.

Perhaps about five per cent of Norway’s population is engaged in intellectual work. Here, too, the contribution of Norway to our population in America has been considerable, especially during the last twenty years.

Nearly all of the Norwegian population is of the Protestant faith, and the great majority of these are members of the state church, which is the Lutheran. Somewhat similar are the affiliations in America.

The constitution of Norway is liberal and the government highly democratic. In these respects the people of Norway are now perhaps as favorably circumstanced as we in America. The Norwegian readily enters into the spirit of American laws and institutions, for their laws are not essentially different from his own. Being accustomed to a high degree of freedom, he has been trained to a high conception of the responsibilities that that freedom entails. He has long been accustomed to representation and sharing in the rights of franchise, and he exercises that right as a privilege and a solemn duty. It may be said, I believe, that no people has a higher sense of right and wrong and a stronger moral incentive to right. Frauds in elections and graft in official life are yet unheard-of among our Norwegian-American citizens.

Norway is, next to Finland, the most temperate of European countries. The sale of liquor is permitted only in incorporated cities and towns, and only by an association that is organized under government supervision. It is the so-called Gothenburg system that is in use. Of the earnings of such organization the government takes five per cent, the county ten per cent and the municipality fifteen per cent, while the net profit of the association must not exceed five per cent on the investment in any one year. The hours of sale are very much restricted. Not only is there no sale of liquor on Sundays, but places of such business must close at one o’clock on Saturday and on days preceding holidays. Norway is essentially a temperate country. Statistics show that out of every thousand deaths, only one is due to drink. The Norwegian people have educated themselves to abstinence, and the temperance movement found wide support earlier in Norway than anywhere else. Det norske Totalafholds Selskab[7] was organized in 1859; ten years ago it had ten hundred and twenty branches and a hundred and thirty thousand members, while other temperance associations also have a considerable membership. Here in America, the Norwegian immigrant has taken a prominent part in legislation looking toward the restriction of the sale of intoxicating liquors,[8] and the Prohibition party finds its strongest support among the Norwegians, as it finds a relatively large number of its candidates for state and county offices from among them.

Crime conditions in Norway are similarly significant. Comparative statistics are difficult of access, but Norway’s proportion of serious offences is very low. In the whole period from 1891–1895 the total number was only two hundred and sixty-one. Norway has its poor as every country has, but it has its excellent system of taking care of the poor. Thus every municipality has a Board of Guardians (fattigkommission), which consists of the parish minister, a police officer, and several men chosen by a local board. Norway keeps her criminals and takes care of her poor; she does not send them to America, as has only too often been the case in some other countries.

Norway has a highly developed school system crowned by the Royal Frederik University at Christiania. It has compulsory education, its boards of inspection and its great Department of Public Instruction. It has its People’s High School, its Workingmen’s Colleges, and a system of secondary schools, whose curricula are still on a conservative basis. Its one University ranks with the foremost in Europe, and with it are connected various laboratories and scientific institutions, and it has a library of three hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Here too are located its Botanical Gardens, the Historical Museum, the Astronomical and Magnetic Observatory, the Meteriological Institute and the Biological Marine Station.[9] The salaries of its teachers in Middelskole Gymnasium, and of instructors and professors in the University, reckoned by the purchasing power of money, is approximately thirty per cent greater than that of our middle western universities. I shall also mention The Royal Norwegian Scientific Society at Trondhjem, founded 1760, a similar society in Christiania, founded 1857, the Bergen Museum, founded 1825, with its literary and scientific collections illustrative of the life and cultural history of Western Norway, The Norwegian National Museum in Christiania, founded 1894, similar, but more general in character, The Industrial Arts. Museum,[10] and the various archives of the Kingdom.

As to the Norwegian language I shall merely speak of its highly analytic character, in which respect it has for a long time been developing in the same direction as English, though of course, absolutely independently. Being closely cognate with English, a large part of the vocabulary of the two is of the same stock. Further, its sound system is fundamentally similar. These three considerations, especially perhaps the first, will make clear to us the reason why the Norwegian so readily learns to use the English language, and if he learns it in youth, even to the point of mastery. This is of the greatest importance, for language is in modern times the real badge of nationality. A correct use of the English language is the first and chief stamp of American nationality, the key without which the foreigner cannot enter into the spirit of American life and institutions.

Norwegian literature I cannot either discuss here. The great movements it represents in recent times are fairly well known; its significance and its broad influence are beginning to be understood. The genius of Norwegian literature is morality and truth. It expresses herein the high ethical sense of the nation, which is pagan-racial, but which is also Christian-Lutheran, a church which in its preëminent spirituality is the typical Teutonic church.