The Norwegian diaspora consists of Norwegian emigrants and their descendants, especially those that became Norwegian Americans. Emigrants also became Norwegian Canadians, Norwegian Australians, Norwegian New Zealanders, Norwegian Brazilians, Kola Norwegians and Norwegian South Africans.
Norsemen left the area that is now the modern state of Norway during the Viking Age expansion, with results including the settlement of Iceland and the conquest of Normandy. [1]
In the 1500s and 1600s there was a small scattering of Norwegian people and culture as Norwegian tradesmen moved along the routes of the timber trade. [2]
The 19th century wave of Norwegian emigration began in 1825. The Midwestern United States, especially the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, was the destination of most people who left Norway. [3] The first modern Norwegian-American settlement in Minnesota was at Norwegian Ridge, in what is now Spring Grove, Minnesota. [4]
Early emigrant communities in the United States were an enthusiastic market for books written in Norwegian principally from the 1890s to 1930s. Torbjørg Lie (1855-1924), a popular writer for the Decorah-Posten, imagined her readers "not so much adopting a new country as living in a diaspora."[ citation needed ] Meanwhile, newspapers in Norway were also eager to publish letters that recent emigrants had written home, telling of their experiences in foreign countries. [5]
According to scholar Daniel Judah Elazar, "It was the Norwegian diaspora in the United States which initiated the separation of Norway from Sweden, which led to Norwegian independence in 1905." [6] The Norwegian-American community overwhelmingly favored independence of Norway from Sweden, and collecting money for Norwegian rifle clubs in case the conflict should become violent. In 1884, the Minneapolis chapter of Den Norsk-Amerikanske Venstreforening sent 4,000 kroners to Norway's Liberal Party (the party that favored independence.) [7] Norwegian-Americans campaigned enthusiastically for the United States to recognize Norway's independence from Sweden, with petitions and letters arriving in Washington, D.C. from most major cities. One petition from Chicago's Norwegian-American community bore 20,000 signatures. President Theodore Roosevelt did not change his stance, however, and remained neutral until after Sweden accepted the change. [8]
As of 2006 there are over 5,000,000 Norwegian Americans. [9] In Canada in a 2006 survey, 432,515 Canadians reported Norwegian ancestry. [10] 55,475 Americans spoke Norwegian at home as of 2000, and the American Community Survey in 2005 showed that 39,524 people use the language at home. [11] [12]
While modern Norway has a wary relationship with immigrants from non-European cultures, Norwegian emigration to the United States from the 19th century has fostered a flourishing Norwegian culture of the diaspora. [13]
The Norwegian Emigrant Museum in Hamar, Norway is dedicated to "collecting, preserving and disseminating knowledge about Norwegian emigration, and to the preservation of cultural ties between Norway and those of Norwegian ancestry throughout the world," according to the museum's website, which states that a million Norwegians emigrated to other countries around the world between 1825 and 2000. [14]
The Sons of Norway, originally a small fraternal benefit organization, now has more than 60,000 members in America and almost 3,000 in Canada. It is dedicated to promoting Norwegian culture and traditions. [15]
The Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, is the oldest and most comprehensive museum in the United States devoted to a single immigrant ethnic group. It was founded in 1877 in association with nearby Luther College and re-dedicated in 1975 in a ceremony involving King Olav V of Norway. King Harald V of Norway was present in October 2012 for the celebration of Luther College's sequicentennial. [16]
Self-identified Norwegians, whether in Norway or elsewhere, celebrate "Syttende Mai" on May 17 as Norwegian Constitution Day. They may hold a children's parade, wear traditional clothing, or display ribbons of red, white, and blue. Norwegians in Sweden maintain their own Norwegian band "Det Norske Korps" for these celebrations. [17]
Members of the Norwegian emigrant community in the United States took a special pride in Norway hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. [18]
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Norwegians of Sweden include people who are registered in Sweden and who originate in Norway. According to Statistics Sweden, in 2018 in Sweden there were a total of approximately 41,700 people born in Norway. In 2019, there were a total of 111,734 people living in Sweden who were either born in Norway themselves or had at least one parent who was. The population in Sweden is 45,250 of which 41,747 were born in Norway and 3,503 were born in Sweden but with both parents born in Norway. There are 5 municipalities with the largest number of people born in Norway. There have been Norwegians in Sweden for centuries, and the Norwegian-Swedish state border has historically been crossed in connection with marriages and work migrations. During World War II, about 60,000 Norwegians sought refuge in Sweden, many of them young men who then sought refuge in Britain to take part in the Norwegian resistance movement against Germany's occupation of Norway. Swedish citizens of Norwegian descent live in Bohuslän, Idre, Särna, Jämtland, Härjedalen, Värmland, Västergötland, Dalsland, Brömsebro, Värmland, and other provinces that border Norway.[ citation needed ]
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Norwegians of Denmark are Danish citizens of Norwegian descent. A few Danes are believed to have participated with the Norwegians who moved west into the Atlantic Ocean, settling in the Shetland Isles, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. The Greenland Norse persisted from about 1000 AD to about 1450 AD. Seasonal trading camps have been recently discovered on Baffin Island containing European cordage, metal traces, masonry, and rat remains. Brief Viking expeditions to North America around 1000 did not result in any lasting settlements. Other Viking raids into Germany and the Mediterranean were short-lived and had no lasting effect. Some Danish Norwegians moved back to Norway. But others moved to Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, United Kingdom, Iceland, Senegal, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and others in Northern Europe. Now, Norwegians in Denmark live in Hovedstaden, Mid Jutland, Northern Jutland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Mosquito Bay in Greenland, Kungsbacka, Varberg and Falkenberg.[ citation needed ]
The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived in Greenland around 2500 BCE. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Norsemen until the ninth century CE, when Norse Icelandic explorers settled on its southwestern coast. The ancestors of the Greenlandic Inuit who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around the year 1200, from northwestern Greenland.
Leif Erikson, also known as Leif the Lucky, was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus. According to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied approximately 1,000 years ago.
Danes are an ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural.
Norwegians are an ethnic group and nation native to Norway, where they form the vast majority of the population. They share a common culture and speak the Norwegian language. Norwegians are descended from the Norse of the Early Middle Ages who formed a unified Kingdom of Norway in the 9th century. During the Viking Age, Norwegians and other Norse peoples conquered, settled and ruled parts of the British Isles, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. Norwegians are closely related to other descendants of the Norsemen such as Danes, Swedes, Icelanders and the Faroe Islanders, as well as groups such as the Scots whose nation they significantly settled and left a lasting impact in, particularly the Northern Isles.
Icelanders are an ethnic group and nation who are native to the island country of Iceland. They speak Icelandic, a North Germanic language.
Norwegian Americans are Americans with ancestral roots in Norway. Norwegian immigrants went to the United States primarily in the latter half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century. There are more than 4.5 million Norwegian Americans, according to the 2021 U.S. census; most live in the Upper Midwest and on the West Coast of the United States.
Icelandic Canadians are Canadian citizens of Icelandic ancestry, or Iceland-born people who reside in Canada.
Nordic and Scandinavian Americans are Americans of Scandinavian and/or Nordic ancestry, including Danish Americans, Faroese Americans, Finnish Americans, Greenlandic Americans, Icelandic Americans, Norwegian Americans, and Swedish Americans. Also included are persons who reported 'Scandinavian' ancestry on their census. According to 2021 census estimates, there are approximately 9,365,489 people of Scandinavian ancestry in the United States.
Erik the Red's Land was the name given by Norwegians to an area on the coast of eastern Greenland occupied by Norway in the early 1930s. It was named after Erik the Red, the founder of the first Norse or Viking settlements in Greenland in the 10th century. The Permanent Court of International Justice ruled against Norway in 1933, and the country subsequently abandoned its claims.
Icelandic Americans are Americans of Icelandic descent or Iceland-born people who reside in the United States. Icelandic immigrants came to the United States primarily in the period 1873–1905 and after World War II. There are more than 40,000 Icelandic Americans according to the 2000 U.S. census, and most live in the Upper Midwest. The United States is home to the second largest Icelandic diaspora community in the world after Canada.
Norwegian Canadians refer to Canadian citizens who identify themselves as being of full or partial Norwegian ancestry, or people who emigrated from Norway and reside in Canada.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States of America. While the land of the American frontier was a magnet for the rural poor all over Europe, some factors encouraged Swedish emigration in particular. Religious repression and idiosyncrasy practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church was widely resented, as was social conservatism and snobbery influenced by the Swedish monarchy. Population growth and crop failures made conditions in the Swedish countryside increasingly bleak. By contrast, reports from early Swedish emigrants painted the American Midwest as an earthly paradise.
The Swedish diaspora consists of emigrants and their descendants, especially those that maintain some of the customs of their Swedish culture. Notable Swedish communities exist in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and the United Kingdom as well as others.
The Finnish diaspora consists of Finnish emigrants and their descendants, especially those that maintain some of the customs of their Finnish culture. Finns emigrated to the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Germany, Israel and Brazil.
The Nordic diaspora may refer to:
Greenlandic independence is a political ambition of some political parties, advocacy groups, and individuals of Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, to become an independent sovereign state.
This page is a historical timeline of the island known as Greenland or Kalaallit Nunaat.
The Kashubian diaspora resulted from the emigration of Kashubians mainly in two waves occurring in the second half of the 19th century. The majority of Kashubian emigrants settled in the United States; others emigrated to Canada and Brazil. An online genealogical project, "The Great Kashubian Migration," is devoted to tracking their settlement patterns. Their reasons for emigration varied. Until the Franco-Prussian War, Kashubians emigrated primarily for economic reasons. After the Franco-Prussian War and especially due to the Kulturkampf, Kashubian emigration accelerated as socio-political factors came into play. In his 1899 book, Statystyka ludnosci kaszubskiej, the Kashubophile linguist and sociologist Stefan Ramult estimated that 130,700 Kashubians were living in the Americas.
Nordic immigration to North America encompasses the movement of people from the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland to the North America, mainly the United States and Canada, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. These immigrants were drawn to the New World by factors ranging from economic opportunities to religious freedom and challenges in their native lands. Their legacy has significantly shaped the cultural, social, and economic landscape of the Americas.
So, in this context, Iceland was just one of many, the last settled colony of the Norwegian diaspora. Early reports appear to have suggested that people could make a good living in a place where land and resources were as yet unclaimed ...
By the time of the emigration from Norway to America in the nineteenth century, the memories of this earlier diaspora were already fading, according to professor Ludvig Daae, the first historian to have approached this theme seriously ...
The Rim of the Norwegian Diaspora: From the inception of organized Norwegian emigration in 1825, remained the destination of most people who for one reason or another left Norway. Canada attracted tens of thousands, ...
Spring Grove: Minnesota's First Norwegian Settlement is a tribute to the state's earliest Norwegian emigrants, and to generations of Norwegian Americans who have made this small farming community amongst deep valleys, fjord-like bluffs, and ...
Writing for the Diaspora: The Case of Torbjorg and John Lie. ... What they read of poetry, fiction, and religious literature was often written and published by authors in Norway, ...
It was the Norwegian diaspora in the United States which initiated the separation of Norway from Sweden, which led to Norwegian independence in 1905, and the Czech diaspora which initiated the establishment of Czechoslovakia after World War I.
While modern Norway has a wary relationship with immigrants from non-European cultures, Norwegian emigration to the USA from the 19th century has fostered a flourishing Norwegian culture of the diaspora
Sidesel and Kari in the American sample also show that the Norwegian disapora in the States took a special pride in the Games.
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See also: Nordic diaspora and Norwegians | ||
