Digital Commons Network^™

Soil And Salvation: Danes In Montana, 1906-10. Part I: Soil, Jakob Jakobsen

The Bridge

When I discovered that my great grandfather and his fiancée had participated in the founding of the Dagmar colony in Montana in 1906, I did not expect my initial interest in this to lead to a research grant from DAHS that would enable me to dive even deeper into their adventure, for which I am very grateful. My fascination with their story follows from its connection to the collective history of Danish America. In this sense, my ancestors acted as individuals, but their “navigation” took place in a “landscape” that changed due to larger developments. As a result, they can …

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Time Spiral, Finn Bille

The Bridge

In the fortress-church of Bjernede on Sjælland, Denmark

A Biographical Sketch Of S. D. Rodholm, Renee Showalter-Hanson

The Bridge

Miriam Showalter, S. D. Rodholm’s youngest daughter, once wrote that “in a visual memory to most of his friends, S. D. Rodholm stands elegantly clad in what his wife laughingly called his grasshopper suit: black cutaway morning coat with grey striped trousers, red tie, pince-nez spectacles fastened to his coat, his hair a halo of silver curls.” Søren Peter Damsgaard Rodholm was born in Morke [Mørke], Denmark in February 1877. He att ended a private school, in spite of his parent’s poverty, studied the classics, and was deeply infl uenced by the Grundtvigian movement. He remembered fondly the religious training …

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Finding Sanctuary: How Danish American Churches Helped Immigrants Navigate Life In Uncharted Waters, Krister Strandskov, Russell Lackey

The Bridge

The summer before graduating from Grand View University, I set out on a journey throughout the Midwest and California to photograph Danish American churches.1 My purpose in visiting these churches was to discover what stories their architecture told. I wondered what tied them together as well as what made each unique. I also hoped to learn more about my own Danish American heritage by visiting the very places many of my relatives worshiped and even pastored. Here is what I learned.

Katalin Nun. Women Of The Danish Golden Age: Literature, Theater, And The Emancipation Of Women., Nate Kramer

The Bridge

Katalin Nun begins her book Women of the Danish Golden Age: Literature, Theater and the Emancipation of Women with the obligatory remarks about the significance of the Danish Golden Age, but moves quickly to her main thesis: that the women who were also a part of that golden age have been overlooked, forgotten, or rendered important only because of the towering figures (men, of course!) of the period. Thus, Nun begins to carve out a space in which to address the authorships of Thomasine Gyllembourg and Mathilde Fibiger and the acting of Johanne Luise Heiberg, all three influential and important …

Barbara Sjoholm. Black Fox: A Life Of Emilie Demant Hatt , Artist And Ethnographer, Sandra Laursen

The Bridge

Two young women on vacation, an art student and a teacher, meet a mysterious local man dressed in animal skins who persuades them to climb into his boat. He rows them across a beautiful mountain lake where they begin a wilderness adventure in the land of the midnight sun. It sounds like the start of a fairy tale, but it is a true story from the opening chapters of Black Fox: A Life of Emilie Demant Hatt , Artist and Ethnographer.

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Appendix A: Long-Term Danish Culinary Establishments In San Francisco

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Ethnic Preservation Or Americanization: A Study Of Language And Ethnicity In The Danish Brotherhood In America, Nick Kofod Mogensen

The Bridge

Once European mass immigration to America began in the mid-nineteenth century, roughly 400,000-450,000 Danish immigrants made their way to the United States,2 with approximately 300,000 of them arriving between 1880-1920.3 Immigrant historians agree that Danish immigrants assimilated rather quickly into American core society, i.e., the white Protestant majority population of Anglo-Saxon descent.4 One of the main reasons for this ease of assimilation was the relative scarcity of concentrated settlements of Danish immigrants compared to other immigrant groups, as Danes oft en sett led in areas in America with few other Danish immigrants.

End Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Soil And Salvation: Danes In Montana, 1906-10. Part Ii: Salvation, Jakob Jakobsen

The Bridge

When I discovered that my great-grandfather and his wife had participated in the founding of the Dagmar settlement in Montana in 1906, I did not expect my initial interest in this to lead to a research grant from the DAHS, enabling me to dive even deeper into their adventure, for which I am very grateful. My fascination with their story derives from its connection to the collective history of Danish America. In this sense, my ancestors acted as individuals, but their identity navigation took place in a cultural landscape that changed due to larger developments. As a result, they can …

Recollections Of S. D. Rodholm, Peter D. Thomsen

The Bridge

In both pulpit and classroom, S. D. Rodholm was a great teacher and a true servant of the church. His capacity for learning and discernment was enormous, yet he never used big words nor in any way intimidated anyone. To me, he was always the wise, old seer. He made it very clear that his purpose in teaching was not to make cut and dried theologians out of us. His purpose, rather, was to help us, his students, become servants of THE WORD. He said many times, “Simple Christianity has been my life’s goal.” He hoped it would also be …

A Little About My Father, Peter D. Thomsen, Kathy Thomsen

The Bridge

Peter D. Thomsen (1922 - 2015) was one of eighty-two students at Grand View College (GVC) in 1940. The students came from Danish immigrant communities all over the United States, including Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Kimballton, Iowa; Tyler, and Askov, Minnesota; Racine, Wisconsin; and in my father’s case, Marinette, Michigan and Menominee, Wisconsin. He was a first generation American; his parents had immigrated to the United States from Langeland, Denmark shortly before he was born. His experiences in Danish Lutheran church communities around the country reflect many of the changes that came about as Danish Americans integrated …

Bunch, Mads. Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard: On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, And Repetition., Troy Wellington Smith

The Bridge

In the inter-and post-war periods, the Danish baroness Karen Blixen published, in English, several story collections and the autobiographical novel Out of Africa in the United States under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen. These same works appeared soon aft er under her legal name in her own Danish translations in Denmark. During the same period, works by Dinesen’s deceased countryman Søren Kierkegaard were being translated into English and published in the United States by Princeton University Press. No longer merely “world-famous in Denmark” (as the saying goes), Kierkegaard became a shibboleth for anxious intellectuals on both sides of the …

Jennifer Eastman Att Ebery. Pole Raising And Speech Making: Modalities Of Swedish American Summer Celebration., Christopher Oscarson

The Bridge

In a conversation with a colleague several years ago, I was surprised to find out that we were both exactly one quarter Swedish—I through my paternal grandfather and he through his maternal grandfather. This was unexpected because based on his appearance, family traditions, and last name, I had never anticipated that we might share this common ancestral heritage. Whereas my family has tended to emphasize its connections to Swedish culture, his has focused on links to Japan. There are good reasons that account for the differences in our families’ respective cultural identification, but the variability of how we each see …

Back Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

My Grandfather: Soren Lorentz Lassen, Karen Lassen

The Bridge

Fifty-five years aft er my grandfather’s death in 1934, my two brothers and I gathered at his gravesite in Sault Ste. Marie near the Great Lakes. For the fi rst time, Soren Lassen was being honored by a family that he never knew. Although he had died long ago, his gravestone had only recently been put in place. I pulled the scissors I had brought out of my purse and carefully cut back the crabgrass that was already creeping across the new stone. Stepping back, I read it aloud:

Svend Lawrence

(Soren Lassen)

1864-1934

My Father, The Christmas Doctor, And The Danish Nurse Who Saved His Life, Tom Weber

The Bridge

My father, Dr. John Peter Weber, was born to German immigrants in Creston, Iowa in 1888. At the age of eleven he realized he wanted to become a doctor. After finishing the eighth grade in 1904, sixteen-year-old John rode the rails to Montana to help lay railroad tracks, intending to save his wages in order to continue his education. Treated brutally by his foreman, he left the railroad construction job and traveled to Portland, Oregon, searching for work in the lumber industry. The young man from Iowa fell victim to a pickpocket on the streets of Portland. All his savings …

Danish Midsummer: My Bodtker Grant From Dahs, Kelsi Vanada

The Bridge

Though many Americans can trace their family history back to their European ancestors, I have met very few people outside of my own family who have maintained relationships with the branches of their families still living in Europe. I have always been proud of the fact that I know many of my family members living in Denmark today. These ties between the Danish and American sides of my family are strengthened every time one of us travels to visit relatives in the other country, so I am extremely grateful that the Danish American Heritage Society (DAHS) awarded me an Edith …

A Danish Lad In America, Fred Delcomyn

The Bridge

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So said L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between (1953). Looking back on myself as a young immigrant child in Detroit at mid-century, the phrase seems especially apt. In my past I was quite literally in a foreign country.

Inside Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Prohibition Among Danish American Lutherans, Nick Kofod Mogensen

The Bridge

On January 17, 1920, a major change took place in American society. The Eighteenth Amendment went into effect and started the Prohibition Era, banning the sale of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was not a uniquely American idea. Under pressure from temperance movements, most Nordic countries banned or severely restricted the sale of alcohol around the same time as the United States did. The Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Finland all banned alcohol during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Although a narrow majority of the Swedish people refused an outright ban in …