Trip of the Tongue (28 page)

Even with the construction of the railroads and the late-nineteenth-century population boom, North Dakota continued to consist of widely scattered and largely isolated settlements. As a result, the state's Norwegian population was relatively insulated from the type of cultural and economic interactions that might speed up assimilation. This high level of cultural adhesion was particularly reinforced by the impressive size and scope of the Norwegian-language press in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America.

The first Norwegian-language paper was
Nordlyset
(The Northern Light), founded in 1847 by three Norwegians living near Muskego, Wisconsin. It survived only briefly, but it paved the way for the creation of dozens of other papers, including the Minneapolis
Tidende
, the Brooklyn
Nordisk Tidende
, and the Seattle
Washington-Posten
. According to Ingrid Semmingsen, a historian at the University of Oslo, from 1865 to 1914 at least 565 Norwegian-language newspapers and periodicals were founded. And although many failed soon after their debut, quite a few went on to develop a dedicated readership. The sixty-two newspapers that still existed in 1915 had a combined circulation of 490,000.

Although a secondary effect of the papers was surely an increase in Norwegian literacy rates, their primary purpose was political.
Normanden
(The Norseman), widely considered to be the most influential Norwegian paper in North Dakota, was published from 1887 to 1954, during which time the paper agitated against expansion of the railroads and for regulation of the wheat market.
Fram
(Forward), a major paper published out of Fargo, became known in the early 1900s as an avid supporter of the temperance movement. As Odd Lovoll points out, however,
Fram
's circulation soon declined. “Many readers tired,” he writes, “of
Fram
's endless preoccupation with people's drinking habits.”

Some papers, of course, served more practical purposes, providing a forum for the discussion of agricultural practices and relaying news from Norway. But for political parties, candidates, and interest groups, the allure of a direct link to large Norwegian immigrant populations was irresistible, particularly in North Dakota and Minnesota. And so it is not inconceivable that the Norwegian-language media—and, therefore, the Norwegian language itself—was buoyed if not outright subsidized on account of the political utility of Norwegian Americans.

Neither isolation nor insulation, however, could fully protect the Norwegian language from the pervasive influence of English. It began as it so often does, with the marginal appropriation of English words to describe items, activities, and conditions immigrants were encountering for the first time—words such as
prairie
, which describes a type of landscape unknown in Norway. Einar Haugen, who during his career served on the faculties of the University of Wisconsin and Harvard and is perhaps the most prominent linguist to have studied the Norwegian language in America, wrote extensively on the specifics of the English that wormed its way into Norwegian, identifying words and phrases that were coined by homesteaders coming into contact for the first time with American-style bureaucracy. As Haugen writes, “By filing a
kleim
[settlers] were entitled to a
homstedd
if they would
settla
on the land for a prescribed period and till it. The
settlar
then acquired a
did
‘deed' to the homestead, which became the
heimfarm
or
heimplass
‘home place' because it had been
dida
‘deeded' to the owner by
gåvvemente
‘the government.' ”

When English words were borrowed, however, they had to be adapted to work with Norwegian pronunciation. In his 1921 survey of the American language, H. L. Mencken lists a number of these words, including
bir
(beer),
inschurings
(insurance), and
kjokfuldt
(chock-f). He also references the work of one Dr. Nils Flaten of Northfield, Minnesota, who describes this borrowed vocabulary as being “mutilated beyond recognition.” Certainly such words would not have been understood in Norway.

The loan words also had to be adjusted to work with Norwegian inflection patterns. Although modern Norwegian has largely done away with noun case, many of the rural dialects that made their way to America were not so simplified. So an English borrowing first would be made to fit Norwegian pronunciation and then would be slotted into the usual grammatical paradigms. In another example cited by Mencken, Dr. Flaten provides a demonstration of this—as well as what I can only imagine is his subtle editorial on Norwegian American relations—in the Norwegian borrowing of the word
swindler
. The first changes are simple: there's no
w
in Norwegian, so
swindler
becomes
svindler
. Then, because the -
er
function in English is expressed with an -
ar
in Norwegian, the word becomes
svindlar
. Once these changes were made, any Norwegian speaker could infer a regular declension:

For some, these loan words were an ominous sign of things to come. Ingrid Semmingsen relates the frustration of a Norwegian reverend, as expressed in an 1850s letter: “We never heard words like
hvetemel
, but instead ‘flour'; never
gjerde
, but ‘fence'; never
lade
, but ‘barn'; never
stall
, but ‘stable'; if a horse is
gardsprungen
, they say that it ‘jomper fence.' ”

English soon began to influence naming practices as well. Patronyms were abandoned in favor of consistent surnames, and American first names became more and more popular. Children were less frequently named after their grandparents, their parents instead choosing American names that began with the same letter. Older immigrants and linguistic purists were horrified by these developments. Einar Haugen even lamented the Americanization of livestock names: “In early years the cows had their proper names, rich and melodious descriptions such as Lauvlin, SnøgÃ¥s, Dagros, Flekkrei, Storigo, Gullsi; but time passed, and names were forgotten as the herds grew larger and the urge to distinguish each cow as a personality was lost.”

Judging by the letters of Norwegian immigrants, young parents frequently took a more pragmatic view. Berta Serina, who emigrated from the island of Finnøy to Illinois in 1886, wrote to her sister of her new baby: “His name was Gunder, and we will call the baby Grant. You probably think that is a strange name, but it is much used in this country, and usually if we call them by Norwegian names, they just twist them around to English when they get big.”

Many parents were equally no-nonsense about language instruction. Gunnar Høst, living in Grand Forks, wrote to his sisters Agnes and Malla in 1899 about his views on Norwegian:

Pastor H. thinks I am taking a great responsibility upon myself by sending my children to the American Sunday School instead of the Norwegian, but since my children don't understand a word of Norwegian and there is never a word of Norwegian spoken in my home, then I certainly don't understand why they should have their religious instruction in Norwegian. Of course my children will learn Norwegian, but first and foremost they are Americans and shall be brought up as American citizens. And as far as religion is concerned, I am quite certain that Our Lord understands English as well as Norwegian, even though one of our honorable pastors up here assures me to the contrary!

Like many other languages, Norwegian was also subject to occasional legal challenges. The status of Norwegian was most seriously threatened with the onset of World War I and the rampant anti-German and anti-foreign sentiment that attended it. In Iowa, a state with a sizable Norwegian population, Governor William Harding issued a “Babel Proclamation,” banning the use of all languages other than English. This was a measure largely aimed at curbing the use of German—among those arrested under the proclamation were five farmwives in LeClaire who were caught speaking German on a party line—but Harding considered all foreign-language use to be a security risk. Iowa was home to a wide range of immigrant communities, nearly all of which took umbrage at Harding's proclamation, and so even though German interest groups were at this time certainly not flush with political capital, the combined might of the state's immigrant groups meant they were able to organize efforts against the ban. The Babel Proclamation was repealed in December 1918, not even seven months after it had been put into effect.

But the decline of Norwegian largely originated in the Norwegian community itself, as historically Norwegians have been subject to little of the discrimination and threatening legislation faced by speakers of other languages such as African-influenced creoles or indigenous languages. And it is no doubt not unrelated that the use of Norwegian in the United States tapered off relatively slowly, with the language being taught not only to the second but also to the third generations of immigrants. Linguist Joshua Fishman estimates that between 1940 and 1960, nearly half of second-generation Norwegian Americans were still using the language, as were as many as 40,000 from the third generation.

Nevertheless, this slow decline has been a steady one. Though in the 1910 U.S. Census 402,587 residents reported Norwegian as their mother tongue, by 1970 that number had fallen to 94,365. The latest estimates, from 2000, indicate a Norwegian-speaking population of just 55,311. More than 20,000 of these speakers are sixty-five or older.

I eventually ended up on the east side of the state, in a little town called Northwood, about thirty miles southwest of Grand Forks. With more than half of its population reporting Norwegian ancestry, Northwood is one of the most heavily Norwegian cities in the country. Fewer than a thousand people live here, in the houses and on the farms that radiate out from the massive grain elevator that dominates the horizon. In 2007, Northwood made the national news when it was hit by a tornado that killed one man and destroyed large parts of the town. If you missed this story, though, it's likely that you've never heard of Northwood. The only reason I've heard of it is because that's where my family is from.

In March 1884, Edvard Nikolai Olsen Knain, his wife, Mina, and his son Emil left their hometown of Hurdal and traveled forty or so miles south to Oslo, where they booked passage on a ship first to England and then on to New York. From there, they took the Great Northern Railroad to its terminus in Portland, North Dakota. Then they made their way to Northwood, twenty miles away, finally arriving on July 12, four months after their journey started.

For the first few years, the Knains lived on a farm owned by a man named Ole Hagen. In Norway, Edvard had been a member of the militia and had served as the assistant to the sheriff in Hurdal, but he came to America to work as a farmhand. He cut hay with a hand scythe, tied up and stacked bundles of wheat, and used a horse-powered threshing machine. Mina, meanwhile, raised Emil and gave birth to three more children.

In 1891 Edvard bought 160 acres of land seven miles west of Northwood and established his own farm, breaking sod, clearing the land, moving existing buildings, and building new ones. He started out with just his two hands and his two oxen, but he later added a quartet of horses—Jim, Nellie, Dick, and Gray Dick—to his team. He and Mina had another four children and worked the farm until they died.

Emil eventually married a second-generation Norwegian American named Annie Onsager, and they settled down in Northwood proper. Their youngest son, Wendell, was my grandfather.

By the time I was born, my grandfather had already passed away, and my mother had fallen out of touch with our relatives in North Dakota. We never visited Northwood when I was a child, and certainly no one from Northwood ever came to visit us. There is still a scattering of Knains in and around Northwood and Grand Forks, and the surname is rare enough that I can be almost certain we're reasonably closely related, but I'm too shy to call up unannounced.

This is why, when I finally found myself exploring Northwood at the tail end of my time in North Dakota, it wasn't to visit the living.

I knew my destination by three words: Bethania Lutheran Church. I didn't have an address or a map or directions. I just had the name of the village where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and a general idea that the church had to be somewhere near Northwood.

Bethania Lutheran Church was originally founded because the families who lived on Northwood's outskirts found it too difficult to drive the five to eight miles into town, particularly in North Dakota's brutal winters. At first they asked the pastor from the Northwood church to come once a week to one of their homes, where they would all gather for services. But eventually the group decided to raise money for the construction of their own church. It was completed in 1900.