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Dansk Folkeblad, Nancy Ruth Bartlett

The Bridge

In the fall of 1895 an ambitious Danish-American businessman named George Johnson took over the editorship of a Danish language newspaper being published in the town of Greenville, Michigan . (It is not known how long the previous editor, C.N. Miller, had been running the paper) . George Johnson stated in his first editorial (26 September, 1895) that it was his intention to fulfill the need for a Danish paper in the state of Michigan. In his paper Danish language readers were to be supplied with local, national, and foreign news, advertisements, and a means for Danish-Americans to voice their …

The World Of Robert Storm Petersen, Allen E. Hye

The Bridge

Thirty years after his death in March, 1949, Robert Storm Petersen is still regarded as Denmark's greatest humorist; in fact, he is enjoying an astonishing revival in Scandinavian popular culture. T-shirts, advertising campaigns, key chains - all bear his likeness or that of his loveable cartoon characters. Even a museum has been established (Pile Alle 2, 2000 Copenhagen F) to promote his memory and humor. Since its founding in the fall of 1977, the museum, under the direction of Jens Bing, has been sorting and cataloging books, paintings, memorabilia, including the humorist's extensive pipe collection, and the some 60,000 drawings …

Notes On The Early Mormon Mission In Denmark, Donald K. Watkins

The Bridge

Jens Patrick Wilde's article in this issue of The Bridge vividly describes the hardships, grief and sometimes disaster that accompanied the Mormons during their famous trek across the Great Plains to Utah in the 1850s. Less well known is the role of the Northern European immigrant in this difficult passage to the Great Basin. Scandinavian immigrant participation in the growth of Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was especially great in the period 1850-1890, and in the decade before the Civil War Mormons made up the largest identifiable segment, 19%, of the some 10,000 Danes in …

Full Issue

The Bridge

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Table Of Contents

The Bridge

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Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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The Educational Philosophy Of N.F.S. Grundtvig A Century Of Influence: A Case Study Of A Lutheran Congregation, Omaha, Nebraska, Ruth Thorup Herman

The Bridge

When the editor of The Bridge asked if I would write my reaction to my dissertation, I did a great deal of thinking. How would I write about my feelings which covered the four years during which I did the research and writing of this paper? I concluded that a historical review would give me the best opportunity to present my reaction to my research. Then, when he asked me to review my own study since it related my experiences, I concluded that both could be incorporated in one effort if I were permitted to make personal references.

Jonas Bronck Most Famous Among The First Danes In New York, Ebba Tang Frandsen

The Bridge

Information for this article is excerpted from Carlo Christensen's book, De Forste Danske i New York, Nyt Nordisk Forlag - Arnold Busch - Kj!6benhavn, 1953. Carlo Christensen was for many years Cultural Attache with the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C., a position in which he served with great distinction. Carlo Christensen states in the Forward that the book is the result of research carried on for 20 years in his spare time, and that there is still much material to be researched.

Editorial Introduction, Gerald Rasmussen

The Bridge

Most Danish immigrants to the United States of America headed for the northern tier of the Middle Western states. The majority stayed there. The autobiographical pieces that follow present the accounts of three Danish immigrants to the Middle West. Each one is personal and subjective. Each of the writers came from different provinces in Denmark, and from different environments within those provinces. Readers will note that the three accounts represent three eras - the 1890's, the 1920's and late 1940's. Curious readers will perhaps explore whether the differences in chronological time of the uprooting, as well as the different backgrounds, …

Thirty Years Of Emigrating, Lis Jorgensen

The Bridge

Contemporary emigration is both like and unlike the earlier emigration of Scandinavia.

The emigrants came to North America in the nineteenth century largely because of overpopulation in their own countries creating famine or purely for economic reasons. In North America they could obtain free or cheap land and thus make a better living for their families. According to early accounts, however, they often suffered even greater hardships here than at home. One question that seemed to bother the Danish settlers was whether they had done the right thing in leaving the old country. They wondered if in their struggle for …

Full Issue

The Bridge

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The Bridge

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Carl Hansen, Prairie Iconoclast, Donald K. Watkins

The Bridge

In 1906 Ivar Kirkegaard, editor of the magazine Norden in Racine , Wisconsin, asked the writer Carl Hansen for personal information that might be included in a biographical sketch in the journal. Carl Hansen of Tyler, Minnesota, was forty-six at the time, and by his own count the author of some seventy sketches and short stories. In reply to Kirkegaard, Hansen revealed that in his student days in Copenhagen he has been caught up in the intellectual ferment of "the Modern Breakthrough," the assertive embrace by Scandinavian intellectuals of socially critical realism. "Det moderne gennembrud" had no single philosophical doctrine …

A Comparative Study Of Sophus Keith Winther And Carl Hansen, Rudolf J. Jensen

The Bridge

This short poem written by Carl Hansen expresses the essential conflicts of the Danish emigrant in the United States. In their relentless struggle to survive on the plains of the American midwest, two concerns dominated the consciousness of the emigrant. One was the continuous sense of doubt about the wisdom leaving the old country and the other was the necessarily unanswered question of whether the privations of their present life would be rewarded by the success of the following generations. The dreams and hopes of most Danish-American emigrants were in fact not fulfilled in accordance with their expectations. Neither the …

Front Cover

The Bridge

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Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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Table Of Contents

The Bridge

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Danes Worldwide Archives Contains Treasures Of Immigrant Life, Marion Marzolf

The Bridge

A typical four-room apartment in an average Danish neighborhood in Aalborg, Denmark, houses an extraordinary treasure for those interested in their Danish roots. It looks like an ordinary apartment from the outisde, but once the door is opened by Curator Inger Bladt, it is clear that housed here are the living memories of many of the 300,000 Danes who left their homeland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to seek work, land, fortune and fate in foreign countries, mainly the U.S.

Questioning Our Danish Heritage: The Evolution Of An Ethnic Identity, Otto N. Larsen

The Bridge

Here we are over one-hundred persons ranging in age from 9 to 90 gathered for the first Pacific Northwest Danish Cultural Conference. Given the title of my remarks, I had better start with a question: why are we here?

The general answer must be that we are here to re-kindle the experience of our heritage, to learn more about it, and to enjoy our common bond. It is often said that whenever Danes get together they have a good time, even if they are melancholy about it.

The Fixed Frame And The Live Show, Johannes Knudsen

The Bridge

Television has developed a trick of ending a story or a sequence by showing a fixed picture of the final frame, giving a rather vivid expression to the immediate or concluding situation. Sometimes this picture is amusing, even ludicrous, evoking a smile; sometimes a tear lingers on.

One Of Many, Dagmar Potholm Petersen

The Bridge

On an early spring evening in the year of 1891 a young man stood leaning against the rai I of the steamship Tekla of the Danish Tingvalla Line, his dark hair blowing in the breeze and his blue eyes riveted on the scene before him. He was entirely oblivious to the commotion around him, even to the boisterous calls of his shipmates, "We're there - at last we're there - soon we'll be picking up gold from the streets and licking honey from the trees."

The Feilberg Letters: A Danish Family's Reflections On Canadian Prairie Life, Jorgen Dahlie

The Bridge

So wrote Aksel Sandemose, noted Danish-Norwegian writer and himself an immigrant to Canada in 1927. When he spoke of iron determination and perseverance, he might well have been describing the Ditlev and Julie Feilberg family, a small part of whose experiences in Canada are recounted in the excerpts which follow. Without making too extravagant a claim for the uniqueness of any one immigrant encounter with a new land, one is nonetheless forced to acknowledge that each individual or family brought with them their own special cultural and intellectual resources. A reading of the Feilberg letters reveals that this family had …

The Wayfarer, Enok Mortensen, Nanna Mortensen, Translator

The Bridge

He stood on the deck and shivered in the raw morning air. It was beginning to get light but the dawn was veiled in a heavy wet fog. There was no rain but the air itself seemed like one big mass of cold wetness. He couldn't see anything at all but he kept standing there, nevertheless.

Full Issue

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Full Issue

The Bridge

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Front Cover

The Bridge

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Danish American Political Behavior: The Case Of Iowa, 1887-1936, Stephen H. Rye

The Bridge

Although thousands of Danish immigrants settled in Iowa, often in communities which can readily be identified, there is some difficulty in isolating voting units which were composed largely of Danish Americans. For example, Fredsville, a settlement located west of Cedar Falls in Grundy County, became the home of a sizeable Danish community, but in the voting unit of Fairfield Township, census materials demonstrate that the non-Danish voters slightly outnumbered the Danes in the late nineteenth century. However, at least five Iowa townships can be identified as having a clear majority of voters who were Danish in background, and this study …

Thoughts At Sunrise, Olaf R. Juhl

The Bridge

Good Morning - and will the class please come to order.

Could it be that I choose this opening because I, as far back as I can remember, wanted to be a teacher? Somehow I never quite made it, although I believe that I could have if circumstances during a certain period of my youth had not had other designs for me. Let me add that any regrets I might have today are purely of a sentimental nature.

This morning we shall attempt to analyze the trials and tribulations, the mental problems and misgivings of an American, by adoption, in …

P.S. Vig And The Americanization Issue During World War I, Peter L. Petersen

The Bridge

World War I and the Americanization campaigns which accompanied it had a pr0found impact upon ethnic relations in the United States. Although German-Americans bore the brunt of rapidly emerging anti-foreign sentiments, no ethnic group was totally free of suspicion and public condemnation. In Iowa, Governor William Lloyd Harding defended his proclamation forbidding the public use of foreign languages by attacking the Danish element in the Hawkeye State's population. According to the Governor, who was speaking before a large crowd at Sac City on July 4, 1918, young Danes in Iowa were not getting a proper American upbringing. Pointing to the …

"Schools For Life", Harold Petersen

The Bridge

A man having read Schools For Life remarked, "It is a good book, but Enok still hasn't told us what a folk school is." I doubt that there is any living American today who knows better what a folk is than Enok Mortensen. If he has not defined what a folk school is through the pages of his book it is because- the folk school cannot be defined in such a way that it has- meaning to a person who does not know what the folk school is. It has to be experienced . It carries with it a spirit …