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The Transformation Of Chris Madsen In 1875-76: From Troubled Young Man In Denmark To Mature Wild West Hero In America, Frans 0rsted Andersen

The Bridge

In October 2018, I pub- lished a book about Chris Madsen with the title Et liv pa kanten. En biografisk fortcel- ling om Chris Madsen's utrolige liv (A life on the edge. A bi- ography about the incredible life of Chris Madsen). The second edition, which I cite in this article, was published in 2019. This book grew out of two separate projects: one aimed at publishing texts that can encourage boys and men to read more books (again), and another focused on Dan- ish emigration to the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Danish Doughboys: Danish American Soldiers In The Us Army And Navy In World War I, Bjarne S. Bendtsen

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In the park justbelow Marselisborg Castle in Aarhus-the Queen's preferred summer residence-stands the official Danish monument for Danes killed in World War I. It is a beautiful and solemn monument, placed in a scenic setting in the park that stretches from the small castle down to the Bay of Aarhus, with a view of Mols and Helgenaes in the distance. But wasn't Denmark neutral in that war, you may ask? Why, then, a monument for the fallen in a war that the country did not participate in? It is a rather complicated story, which this article outlines by showing the …

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Language Shift And Maintenance Among Danish Immigrants In The Us, Karoline Kühl

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The destination of most participants in the mass emigration from Denmark around the turn of the twentieth century was North America. In total about 400,000 to 450,000 Danes immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 2000, the majority between 1880 and 1920 (Grøngaard Jeppesen 2005, 265ff., 323). Danish immigration to the United States was, generally speaking, a story of socioeconomic success due to rapid assimilation based on both sociodemographic factors and attitudes. Between 1870 and 1940, when most Danish immigrants settled in the United States, the group included, to a larger degree than most other European groups, young, unmarried …

From The Eider River To The Great Plains: The Danish American Community And The 1920 Slesvig Plebiscites, Ryan J. Gesme

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On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on the German Empire, officially entering the three-year-long conflict now known as the First World War. At the time the US entered the conflict many American-born citizens felt uneasy about the recent immigration of thousands of Europeans and the possibility of those new residents having divided loyalties between their homelands and adopted country. These fears proved to be largely unfounded, as millions of naturalized Americans took up the call to arms issued by the United States, even in the face of increasingly xenophobic laws and policies. This included the Danish American …

Eighty Years Since Ashland: The Untold Story Of The Transition From The Ashland Folk School To Circle Pines Center, 1928-1951, Christyl Burnett

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This is a brief record of my journey to research the transition from the Ashland Folk School in Grant, Michigan to the Circle Pines Center in Delton, Michigan. This journey began as I became increasingly involved with the programming at Circle Pines, and more specifically the folk school portion of Circle Pines’ annual music festival, the Buttermilk Jamboree. I have been a neighbor to Circle Pines since 2001, so close that I can ride my bike there. Proximity has afforded me the opportunity to be involved with many aspects of life at Circle Pines. In 2018 Circle Pines celebrated eighty …

My Life As A Danish American Archive And Library (Daal) Intern, Chantal Powell

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Scouring through archives provides a person with a glimpse into the details of the past not provided by just reading a history book. Homemade Christmas cards and PanAm airplane tickets, award ribbons and family pictures, newspaper clippings and handwritten letters are just a few of the details of people’s lives I got to go through and experience for myself at the Danish American Archive and Library (DAAL) in Blair, Nebraska.

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Editorial Statement

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Tycho Brahe: Science And Life In The Danish Renaissance, John Robert Christianson

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Today, we are constantly using data; some even say that we live in an Age of Data. Most of us hardly realize that a Danish astronomer set the whole process in motion more than four hundred years ago. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) changed the world with his innovative approach to astronomy and observational data. My interest in him started with a college term paper and eventually led to writing and editing books and articles about his life and work in Renaissance Denmark. This research led me to develop new interpretations of his revolutionary approach to understanding the heavens and the natural …

Remembering Our Unsung Pioneer Ancestors, Jim Lewis

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My great-grandparents, Niels Jensen Norgaard (1848-1920) and Karen Sorensen Norgaard (1852-1949) immigrated to America in 1869 and 1871, respectively. They had both been raised in the Aalborg area of northern Jutland. Niels left his family and a comfortable home at the age of twenty to travel alone to a new, yet unknown, destination. His immediate objective was Harlan, Iowa, where relatives had a farm. It was twelve hundred miles across unfamiliar land between New York City and Harlan, Iowa. Niels was alone in a strange land, didn't know the language, and had little money to sustain himself. He traveled on …

Jacob A. Riis: The Ideal American Citizen, Flemming Just

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At his death in 1914, Jacob A. Riis was one of the US's best-known and most admired citizens, who had been able to effect more social change than most of his peers. President Theodore Roosevelt had earlier declared Riis to be "the most useful citizen of New York," and now called him "the ideal American citizen." In one of many obituaries of Riis we read:

Denmark gave him to us, and if we gave Denmark millions in return, we could not pay her for what Riis did for us and for what Riis inspired us to do. He landed in …