Adjustments

The scenery on the western coast of Norway is a little like the Pacific Northwest on steroids, with water and mountains dominating the landscape.  It’s easy to see why so many Norwegian immigrants settled here years ago, as it has a comfortable familiarity to it all.  But when Norwegians come to visit us, we take them to Eastern Washington.  Our little piece of heaven west of the mountains is just too boring for them. They want to see something different.  They love the long straight roads, brown fields and mountains and tumbleweed blowing across the road.  They think it’s good for a visit, but of course, they’d never want to live there.

An old friend of ours emigrated from Norway after World War II.  He took a steamer ship to New York, then a train across America.  While traveling through the Dakotas, he got very worried that it was the end of the line.  He was sure he’d made a big mistake.  He couldn’t possibly imagine living in such a flat, desolate place with no view of water or mountains.  He started thinking right away about how he would earn enough money to return to Norway as soon as possible.  But lucky for him, the train kept going. 

As he traveled through Montana and on into Washington and over the Cascade Mountains, his fears dissolved.  He said he’d never forget the incredible sight of the sparkling blue waters of the Puget Sound framed in by the backdrop of the Olympic Mountains the day his train arrived in Seattle.  His soul was at rest and he knew he could now call America his new home.

His story made me wonder about all my maternal grandparent’s Norwegian grandparents that ended up living out their lives in the flat Dakota territories, taking advantage of the free land given by the Homestead Act of 1862.

The birth rate in Norway was always tempered by the high infant mortality rate, but when the small pox vaccine became mandatory in the 1840s, many of the children that would have otherwise died, lived.  This created a population explosion that Norway, a country with only 3% tillable soil, could not handle. There were just too many mouths to feed.  It’s what turned America into the Promised Land for so many Norwegians.

I’ve visited all eight of the farms my great-great grandparents left behind in Norway and each of the tracts of land they homesteaded in eastern North Dakota.  What a contrast.  The Norwegian farms are all unbelievably beautiful places, surrounded by majestic mountains only Norway can produce.  The flat North Dakota farms, on the other hand, are surrounded only by what the locals call the “North Dakota state tree” – telephone poles. 

It’s hard to imagine the adjustments my ancestors had to make in order to start a new life in America, but as my husband says, “You can’t eat a view,” so they must have been pretty darn hungry.