_Emigration from Norway._
Emigration from Norway has in large part been transatlantic. Norway
has lost by American emigration a comparatively larger portion of
her population than any other country in Europe, with the exception
of Ireland. The great majority of the emigrants have gone to the
northwestern states and found there their future homes. In Northern
Illinois, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in Northern and Western Iowa,
in North and South Dakota, they form a very large proportion of the
population. Emigration to European countries has been directed chiefly
to Sweden and Denmark, though not few have settled in England and
Germany and some in Holland. Between 1871 and 1875 about fifteen
hundred persons emigrated from Norway to Australia; the number that
have gone there since that has been much smaller. These have settled
chiefly in South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand. In recent
years some have settled in the Argentine Republic in South America.
Norwegians are found in considerable numbers in Western Canada, but the
majority of these have emigrated from the Norwegian communities in the
western states, especially Minnesota and North Dakota.
Norwegian emigration to the United States took systematic form with
the sailing of Norden and _Den Norske Klippe_ in 1836. In 1843 it began
to assume larger proportions; in that year sixteen hundred immigrants
from Norway settled in the United States. During 1866-1870, a period
of financial depression in Norway, there left, on an average, about
fifteen thousand a year. The rate fell in the seventies, rose again
in the eighties, the figure for 1882 being 29,101 persons, while it
averaged over eighteen thousand per annum also for the next decade.
In 1898 it was not quite five thousand, then again it rose steadily,
reaching 24,461 in 1903.
The Norwegian emigration has been mostly from rural districts,
day-laborers, artisans, farmers, seamen, but also those representing
other pursuits. Not a few with professional or technical education have
settled in America; we find them in the medical profession,[11] in the
ministry,[12] in journalism, in the faculties of our colleges. All the
age-classes are represented among immigrants from Norway, but by far
the largest number of both men and women have come during the ages of
twenty to thirty-five, and particularly the first half of these series
of years.
[11] Mostly in recent years.
[12] In the early period chiefly.
This great emigration of the Norwegian race during the nineteenth
century has, of course, very materially retarded the growth of the
population in Norway, especially in the period from 1865 to 1890. The
increase between 1815 and 1835 was as high as 1.34 per cent annually.
From 1835 to 1865 it was 1.18 per cent, but during 1865-1890 it fell
to 0.65 per cent. Since 1890 the increase has been considerable again.
But during 1866-1903 the total emigration from Norway to the United
States alone aggregated five hundred and twenty-four thousand. To this
number should be added the children of these if we are to have a proper
basis of estimation for the increase of the race in the last half
century. This increase thus has been 1.40 per cent annually, that is,
the race has doubled itself in fifty years. We may compare with France,
where the increase has been 0.23 per cent, Russia,[13] where it has
been 1.35, in Servia, where it has been 2.00 per cent, this being the
highest in Europe. The increase in Sweden and Denmark is about the same
as in Norway--reckoning the racial increase.
[13] The figures here are for the period closing with 1890 before
which year Russia had furnished very few emigrants to the
United States.
It will be of interest here to consider briefly the immigration from
the Scandinavian countries as a whole.
During the years 1820-1830 not more than 283 emigrated from the
Scandinavian countries to the United States. In the following decade
the number only slightly exceeded two thousand. Since 1850 our
statistics regarding the foreign born population are more complete. In
that year we find there were a little over eighteen thousand persons
in the country of Scandinavian birth. In 1880 this number had reached
440,262; while the unprecedented exodus of 1882 and the following
years had by 1890 brought the number up to 933,249. Thus the immigrant
population from these countries, which in 1850 was less than one per
cent, had in 1890 reached ten per cent of the whole foreign element.
The following table will show the proportion contributed by the
countries designated for each decade since 1850:
TABLE I
_1850_ _1860_ _1870_ _1880_ _1890_ _1900_
-------------PER CENT-------------
Ireland 42.8 38.9 33.3 27.8 20.2 15.6
Germany 26 30.8 30.4 29.4 30.1 25.8
England 12.4 10.5 10 9.9 9.8 8.1
Canada 6.6 6 8.9 10.7 10.6 11.4
Scotland and Wales 4.4 3.7 3.8 3.8 3.7 3.2
Scandinavia .9 1.7 4.3 6.6 10.1 10.3
Thus it will be seen that among European countries Scandinavia,
considered as one, stands third in the number of persons contributed
to the American foreign-born population, exceeding that of Scotland
and Wales in 1870 and that of England in 1890. Both the Irish and
the German immigration reached considerable numbers at least fifteen
years before that from the North, Ireland having contributed nearly
forty-three per cent of the total in 1850, and Germany twenty-six. By
1900 the Irish quota had fallen to fifteen per cent, while the German
is nearly twenty-six and that from Scandinavia ten per cent. In 1870
our Scandinavian-born immigrant population was twice as large as the
French and equalled the total from Holland, Switzerland, Austria,
Bohemia, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Russia.[14]
[14] The four last named countries have, as we know, in the last
decade entered very extensively into the emigration movement.
The Norwegians are the pioneers in the emigration movement from the
North in the nineteenth century; the Danes were the last to come in
considerable numbers. Statistics, however, show that one hundred
eighty-nine Danes had emigrated to this country before 1830, while
there were only ninety-four from Norway and Sweden. The Norwegian
foreign-born population had in 1850 reached 12,678; while that from
Sweden was 3,559; and Denmark had furnished a little over eighteen
hundred. The Danish immigration was not over five thousand a year until
1880 and has never reached twelve thousand. The Swedish immigration
received a new impulse in 1852; it was five thousand in 1868; it
reached its climax of 64,607 in 1882. According to Norwegian statistics
the emigration from Norway to the United States was six thousand and
fifty in 1853, but according to our census reports did not reach five
thousand before 1866; the highest figure, 29,101, was reached in 1882
(according to our census).[15]
[15] Or 28,000 according to Norwegian statistics.
The total emigration from the Scandinavian countries to America between
1820 and 1903 was 1,617,111. This remarkable figure becomes doubly
remarkable when we stop to consider that the population of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden is only two and one-half per cent of the total
population of Europe; yet they have contributed nearly ten per cent of
our immigrant population. There are in this country nearly one-third
as many Scandinavians (counting those of foreign birth and foreign
parentage both) as in the Scandinavian countries; for the German
element the ratio is one to thirteen.
At this point I may refer the reader to the table in Appendix I of
this volume, showing the growth and distribution of the Scandinavian
factor, especially in the northwestern states, since 1850. Table I
shows Wisconsin as having almost as large a Scandinavian population
in 1850 as all the rest of the country. Wisconsin was the destination
of the Norwegian immigrant from the time emigration began to assume
larger proportions, and it held the lead for twenty-five years. Iowa
and Southern Minnesota began entering into competition prominently
since 1852 and 1855 respectively. The growth of Swedish immigration in
the fifties and sixties gave the lead to Minnesota by 1870, Illinois
taking second place in 1890. Returning now to the Norwegian immigration
specifically, it may be observed that it was directed to the Northwest
down to recent years, almost to the exclusion of the rest of the
country. The reader may now be referred to Table II in the Appendix,
which shows the growth of the Norwegian population in each state since
1850.
This table tells its own story. In New England the Norwegian factor is
unimportant. There has been a high ratio of growth in New York and
New Jersey since 1880, but the total number is not large. In the rest
of the Atlantic seaboard states, as in the gulf states, the Norwegian
population has remained almost stationary at a very low figure. Such is
also the case with the inland states of the South, as in the Southwest.
The effort to direct Norwegian immigration to Texas, which goes back to
the forties, has been productive of only meagre results. Even Kansas
is too far south for the Norwegian. In the extreme West, however,
considerable numbers of Norwegians have established homes since about
1882, particularly in California, Oregon and Washington, since 1895
also in Montana, and in recent years even in the extreme North, in
Alaska.
What were the influences that directed the Norwegian immigrants so
largely to the Northwest in the early period and down to 1890?
The great majority came for the sake of bettering their material
condition. They came here to found a home and to make a living.
Moreover, as I have observed above, immigrants in their new home
generally enter the same pursuits and engage in the same occupations in
which they were engaged in their native country.
Three-fourths of the population of Norway live in the rural districts
and are mostly engaged in some form of farming.[16] Thus seventy-two
per cent of the Norwegian immigrants are found in the rural districts
and in towns with less than twenty-five thousand population. The fact
that the influx of the immigrants from Norway coincided with the
opening up of the middle western states resulted in the settlement of
those states by Norwegian immigrants. Land could be had for almost
nothing in the West. Land-seekers from New England, New York and
Pennsylvania were in those days flocking to the West.[17] About ninety
per cent of the Norwegian immigrants at that time were land-seekers. As
a rule long before he emigrated the Norseman had made up his mind to
settle in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, or Minnesota.
[16] This includes also fishermen and foresters.
[17] Outside of Chicago, Illinois had in 1840 a population of
142,210; Wisconsin was organized as a Territory in 1836, its
population in 1840 was 30,945; Iowa had a population of only
192,212 in 1850; and Minnesota, organized at a Territory in
1849, had in 1850, 1,056 inhabitants. To the square mile the
population of each was in 1850: Illinois, 15.37; Wisconsin,
5.66; Iowa, 3.77; Minnesota, .04.