Their destination
BACKGROUND
The project
Emigration
Memories
IN AMERICA
The
emigrants
Their
destination
Work
Daily
life
Returning home
IN NORWAY
House
and home
Recipes
Words and
phrases
OTHER INFO
Funding
Archive
Links
BACK
Where did they go?
Most of those from Vest-Agder who emigrated to America did not go to the American prairies to cultivate the land. They went to big cities like New York, Chicago and Seattle. All these cities had large Norwegian colonies where newly-arrived emigrants could get help finding a job and accommodation. The destination was often decided purely by chance. If someone had an aunt in New York, he chose to go there. If you had a brother who had emigrated to Chicago some years previously, then this city was the obvious destination.
It must have been something of a transition to come from a rural community in Kvinesdal or Lista to one of these big cities. The traffic, buildings and crowds made them totally different from what the emigrants had been used to at home. They subway and the cars at the beginning of the twentieth century must have impressed them – most of those at home in Vest-Agder were still traveling by horse and wagon. Many were likewise impressed when they came to New York in the 1950s and took the tunnel from Manhattan under Hudson River to Brooklyn.
Postcard portraying New York, 1917.
New York and Brooklyn
Brooklyn, New York, had the largest colony of Norwegians, and very many of them spoke the soft dialect of southern Norway.
Read more
Seattle
Seattle also had a large colony of Norwegians. In 1948 Karsten Reiersen traveled from Lyngdal to Seattle.
Read more
Logging in the Midwest
The brothers Rasmus and Tom Bjelland did not go to Brooklyn but to Minnesota to work as lumberers. See more pictures of their stay there in the 1920s.
Read more