The Scandinavian American Family Album

By Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler

Book Overview

One of the first Europeans to discover North America, Leif Eriksson landed on its shores around the year 1000. His expedition was part of a great era of exploration and migration for the Nordic people and the beginning of a long history of Scandinavian involvement in the New World. By the middle of the nineteenth century, huge waves of America fever had spread through the Scandinavian countries and by 1907 an official of the Swedish government reported that it was difficult to find a farm where none of the immediate family was in America. Today, approximately 11.5 million Americans describe themselves as being of Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, or Danish descent, a number that equals half the population of the five countries from which they and their ancestors came.
The Scandinavian American Family Album tells the history of this tremendous wave of immigration and of the contribution of Scandinavian people to the growth and development of the United States. Through their own diaries, letters, and through interviews, rare photographs, and songs, we are treated to a firsthand account of the hardships, challenges, and triumphs that awaited the generations of Scandinavian immigrants who made their way across the ocean to start new lives in America. We learn about their day-to-day life before emigration, the factors--such as social inequality, financial hardship, and overpopulation--that contributed to their decisions to leave, of their experience upon landing at Ellis Island, and the various occupations that they settled into as they began to establish homes and communities. We discover that the Danes were the first European settlers in the Bronx and Harlem in New York City and that Swedes and Finns built the first log cabins. Personal accounts describe homesteads and early colonies set up all over the country, from Maine to Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, and as far west as Utah and Nebraska. These early immigrants and their descendants tell us about pioneering farming ventures, the dangers and hardships of logging and mining, the thrill of the gold rush, and the struggle of early labor movements.
All across the country, Scandinavian Americans played a key role in building the institutions and communities that still exist today. Among those who made distinguished contributions to American life and culture are Jacob Riis, the founder of modern photojournalism; Thorstein Veblen, renowned economist; sports legends Knute Rockne and Babe Didrikson Zaharias; aviator Charles Lindbergh; and Knute Nelson, the first Scandinavian American governor of Minnesota. Others profiled include actress Candice Bergen, dancer Peter Martins, Norman Borlaug, the first agricultural scientist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, novelist Ole R lvaag and Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created the giant heads of four presidents on Mt. Rushmore. The stories and memories contained in this album, illustrated with vivid photographs drawn from a vast array of archives, make this volume a valuable window into the past of Scandinavian Americans and the country they now call home.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195105796
• ISBN13: 9780195105797
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.9" x 11.4"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

Holy Moly, Olle!

Hej, Cousin, did you know that us Scandihoovians are an ethnic minority with colorful Old World customs, and not just ordinary white-bread Americans? This here book tells the story of how we Swedes and Finns were the first colonists in Delaware and invented the log cabin and cranberry sauce, and how a Swedish Pennsyvanian named Morton, originally Mortonson, cast the deciding vote for Independence in 1776, but then most of us came to Minnesota and other states after the Civil War like our mothers' mothers' kin, about a quarter of the whole population of Sweden at the time. Judging by the photos, they had more work than fun in the early days, but other than that, they all look just like our uncles and aunts when we used to picnic on the Henriksson farm out there by Blue Earth. There's a picture of some Henrikssons on page 40, which I'm pretty sure is our great-gramma's kinfolk in Nebraska, and another on the contents page of a kid that looks just like you holding three big lake trout but I guess the picture must be too old. Anyhow, the book tells all about the kind of work our ancestors did, and how well they adapted, and which of them became famous like Ole Bull, and Gutzon Borglum, and Hubert Humphrey (did you know he was a Norski?), and Carl Sandburg, and Charles Lindbergh. Some of the pictures will carry you back to our childhood in the '40s, though I still haven't forgiven you for stepping on my pet bullfrog that time. Let me know if you're planning to show up at the family reunion in Hibbing this August so I can practice up on my Indian wrestling and tin can shooting. Take it like you find it, Your cousin Göran

A Family Album for Anyone

Leafing through a family album of photographs is a pleasant experience, especially when in the presence of a grandparent. This book is exactly like a fine evening spent with an older relative and a stack of photographs, recipes, memorabilia, and the rich storehouse of memories in an old person's mind. I loved reading this book. It provided me with a chance to learn about the life of my grandparents. Even though they died when I was a child, this book helped me to find answers to the types of questions that I would have loved to ask them as an adult.