Emigration Propagation in the Nineteenth Century: The Letters of Elise Tvede Waerenskjold

Abstract

During her lifetime, Elise Tvede Waerenskjold achieved fame as a “father” of Norwegian emigration for her editing of the pro-emigration journal Norway and America and her publishing, both in Norway and the U.S., of many letters encouraging her compatriots to make the long voyage from Norway to settle in Texas. Waerenskjold’s letters represent a body of persuasive documents that I refer to as emigration propagation. Emigration propagation, generally, and Waerenskjold’s letters, in particular, reveals the persuasive strategies that entreated many millions to cross the Atlantic and begin new lives in a new place so far from home.

Notes

¹ I am grateful to RR reviewers of this manuscript, Vicki Tolar Burton and Lisa Shaver, for their time and thoughtful, smart comments and suggestions.

² Even today, Norway’s population is small, about five million; thus, as an emigration proponent, Waerenskjold took on a controversial topic.

³ The Morganbladet (Morning Newspaper) is still published in Norway.

⁴ The collection News from the Land of Freedom contains many letters from German immigrants in the U.S. to family back in Germany; Blegen’s Land of the Choice presents letters from Scandinavian immigrants; and Gerber’s Authors of their Lives presents letters from British immigrants.

⁵ Anderson’s book, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 1821–1840, was first published in 1895, the year Elise Waereskjold, a month short of her eightieth birthday, died.

⁶ Two scholars to address these issues in relation to house museums are Kim Christensen and Jennifer Pustz (see Works Cited).

⁷ See, for example, Mary Knarr’s dissertation, “Faith, Frauen, and the Formation of an Ethnic Identity.”

⁸ My thanks to Dale Hovland, volunteer at the Norwegian-American Historical Association at St. Olaf College, for drawing my attention to the work of the Daughter of Verdandi.

⁹ The Russells published Light on the Prairie a half century after Clausen’s Lady with the Pen because some additional Waerenskjold letters had become available. Much like the work of the Verdandi Study Club, the translations for Light on the Prairie were completed as a team effort with Inger Megaard Russell overseeing and approving the translations provided by members of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church, Houston. Contributing translators were Astrid Mosvald, Anne Saglokken, Sidsel Roemer, Randi Jahnsen, and Ingeling Saethre.

¹⁰ See, for example, Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s Global Crossings, especially Part One.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian Fehler

Brian Fehler holds a Ph.D. in English from Texas Christian University. An associate professor in the department of English and affiliate faculty member in the department of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies department at Texas Woman’s University, he teaches graduate courses in the history of rhetoric and feminist rhetorics, and undergraduate courses in writing studies. His articles have appeared in Rhetoric Review and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. He is co-editor (with Elizabeth Weiser and Angela Gonzalez) of Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies (NCTE: 2009). Readers may contact him at [email protected].