Johannes B. Wist

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Johannes B. Wist (6 April 1864 –1 December 1923) was a Norwegian American newspaper editor, journalist and author. [1]

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Biography

Born Johannes Racinus Benjaminsen, he was the son of Benjamin Olaus Johansen Wist (1829–97) and Magdalena Arnoldusdatter Sliper (1836–66). He was born on the Sund farm in Inderøy parish in Nord-Trøndelag county, Norway. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 during his early 20s. [2] [3] He lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin prior to settling in Decorah, Iowa.

Inderøy Municipality in Trøndelag, Norway

Inderøy is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Innherad region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Straumen. Other villages include Framverran, Gangstadhaugen, Hylla, Kjerknesvågen, Kjerringvik, Røra, Sakshaug, Sandvollan, Småland, Trongsundet, Utøy, Vangshylla, and Venneshamn. The municipality is primarily an agricultural community, but also has some industry.

Nord-Trøndelag County in Norway

Nord-Trøndelag was a county constituting the northern part of the present-day Trøndelag county in Norway. The county was established in 1804 when the old Trondhjems amt was divided into two: Nordre Trondhjems amt and Søndre Trondhjems amt. In 2016, the two county councils voted to merge (back) into a single county on 1 January 2018.

Decorah, Iowa City in Iowa, United States

Decorah is a city in and the county seat of Winneshiek County, Iowa, United States. The population was 8,127 at the 2010 census. Decorah is located at the intersection of State Highway 9 and U.S. Route 52, and is the largest community in Winneshiek County.

Wist served as editor of a number of Norwegian-language newspaper serving the immigrant Norwegian American community. He was the editor of Fakkelen Glenwood, Minnesota 1885–1886, Arbeitets Ridder Minneapolis, Minnesota 1886–1887, Skandinavisk Tribune Madison, Wisconsin 1887–1888, Nordvesten St. Paul, Minnesota 1889–1897 and Norge Granite Falls, Minnesota 1899–1900. [4]

Norwegian language North Germanic language spoken in Norway

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.

Glenwood, Minnesota City in Minnesota, United States

Glenwood is a city and the county seat of Pope County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,564 at the 2010 census. It is located on the northeastern shore of Lake Minnewaska.

Madison, Wisconsin Capital of Wisconsin

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Dane County. As of July 1, 2017, Madison's estimated population of 255,214 made it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 82nd-largest in the United States. The city forms the core of the Madison Metropolitan Area which includes Dane County and neighboring Iowa, Green, and Columbia counties for a population of 654,230.

Most notable Wist was the editor of the Decorah-Posten from 1901 until his death in 1923. During the period 1905 to 1914, he additionally was the founder and co-editor of Symra , a literary magazine which was also published in Decorah, Iowa. In 1914, he edited a survey of the Norwegian-American press entitled Norsk-amerikanernes festskrift (Decorah, Iowa: Symra Co., 1914). Wist was also the Norwegian vice-consul of the State of Iowa from 1906 to 1917. [5]

Symra was a Norwegian language periodical published between 1905 and 1914.

Wist wrote a column in Decorah-Posten about a fictional Norwegian pioneer named Jonas Olsen. Originally published serially during the 1920s, the stories were subsequently published in book form. With translation by Orm Øverland, professor at the University of Bergen, the book has been published in English as The Rise of Jonas Olsen: A Norwegian Immigrant's Saga (University of Minnesota Press; 2005) [6]

Orm Harald Øverland is a Norwegian literary historian and Slavist with emphasis on Russian.

University of Bergen university in Norway

The University of Bergen is a public university located in Bergen, Norway. The university today serves approximately 17,000 students, and is one of eight universities in Norway.

Personal life

Wist was a Progressive Republican who held membership in the Norwegian Lutheran Synod. In 1885, Wist married Josephine Aasve (1859-1938) who was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. They were the parents of four children: Clara, Benjamin, Annie and Joseph. [7]

The Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, commonly called the Norwegian Synod, was founded in 1853. It included churches in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

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References

  1. ↑ Øyvind T. Gulliksen Johannes B Wist, Forfatter og Journalist (Norsk biografisk leksikon)
  2. ↑ 1865 Norwegian National Census (Norwegian Historical Data Centre)
  3. ↑ "Nord-Trøndelag. Inderøy herad. Sundes". Matrikkelutkastet av 1950. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  4. ↑ Norwegian-American author and newspaperman Johannes B. Wist (The Promise of America)
  5. ↑ Norsk-amerikanernes festskrift, 1914 (Decorah, Iowa : Symra Co)
  6. ↑ NAHA 2005 Publication (Norwegian-American Historical Association, Number 125, Summer 2005)
  7. ↑ "Wist, Johannes B. 1864-1923". Winneshiek Biographies. Retrieved March 20, 2016.

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