Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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.

Bahram & Camila, Bahram, Camila, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Bahram tells the story of the Afghanistan's 1992 government collapse and subsequent civil wars that destroyed the city of Kabul. "There was war in every alley, every house, every area and every village. 60,000 people were killed." Their family emigrated to Pakistan and after living there for some time, some relatives of a friend from their village travelled to Pakistan and required lodging so they stayed with Bahram's family. In some developing and under-developed countries, the custom of arranged marriage to child and infant daughters is practiced. These house guests demanded their one-year-old daughter be given in marriage to a …

Christian Hansen, Eventyrmanden-The Fairy Tale Man, And The Jutland Storyteller Tradition, Erik S. Hansen

The Bridge

Christian Hansen is a name known to many who are familiar with the original Danish colony of Danebod, in Tyler, in southwest Minnesota. Founded in 1886, the congregation now in 2011 celebrates its 125th anniversary year. Eventyrmanden-the Fairy Tale Man, as he was known, was associated with Danebod during the first fifty years of the settlement. Initially as one of the early pioneers, then in a continuing presence as a kind of "storyteller in residence" at the Danebod Folk School and Children's School, Christian Hansen was often called on to entertain young and old alike with enchanting tales from lands …

From Samsø To California & Return 1952, Edvard Degn, Harald Degn

The Bridge

Two brothers, Edvard and Harald Degn, decided in 1952 to travel from their home on the island of Samsø, Denmark to the United States in order to visit their brother, Alfred Degn, who lived in Santa Maria, California, and who had emigrated from Denmark in 1926, 26 years earlier.

I'M Going To America: Jens Christian Andersen's Travel Diary And Letters From Racine, Wiscon Sin, 1894-96, Pia Viscor

The Bridge

Editor's Introduction. For several years, I have been working on a description and analysis of emigration from the extensive region that made up the large estate of Skjoldesncesholm in central Sjcelland during the second half of the nineteenth century. Of all the many pictures, letters, and accounts that have passed through my hands, one collection in particular stands out: a travel diary and twenty-four letters written by a young man named Jens Christian Andersen, who emigrated in the year 1894. Before he left home, the seventeen-year-oldC hristian, as he was called, promised to keep a travel diary and also to …

Re-Writing The Danish American Dream? An Inquiry Into Danish Enterprise Culture And Danish Attitudes Toward Entrepreneurship, Robert Smith, Helle Neergaard

The Bridge

This research story which to us reads like a fairytale is the secondpart of an exploration into Danish Enterprise Culture. It tells an oft forgotten tale, a Danish Success Story which we hope will one day be held even dearer by self-deprecating Danes everywhere. In telling this wondrous tale we are also serving a serious purpose in examining some socio-cultural and historical factors influencing the perceived low entrepreneurial drive of the Danish people, and perhaps also in the process helping to explain why traditionally Denmark does not have a vibrant Enterprise Culture. This work adopts a Verstehen based methodology because …

The Greater Challenge: Staying Home Or Emigrating?, Inger Wiehl

The Bridge

This presentation poses the challenge of emigrating versus that of staying home, exemplified by a Southern Jutlander who stayed home during the years of Prussian rule between 1864 and 1920 and one who left for America during those years. It begs the larger question of who endures more, those who leave or those who stay behind, a salient issue underlying all emigration and any significant parting. Put in classical terms: Who faces the greater challenge Odysseus or Penelope? He endures any number of dangers on his way back from Troy; she stays by her loom and keeps home intact for …

Nineteenth-Century Emigration From Sollerod, A Rural Township In North Zealand (Sjaelland), Niels Peter Stilling

The Bridge

In 1985, Erik Helmer Pedersen wrote that "the history of Danish emigration to America can be seen, in very broad terms, as the story of how a small part of the population tore itself away from the national community in order to build a new existence in foreign lands. Those who write the history of the emigrants must, on the one hand, see them as a minority in relation to the Danish whole, and, on the other hand, must reconstruct that little part of the history of American immigration which concerns the Danes."

This article attempts to do just that …

Anton Kvist Danish-American Poet: His Life And His Works, Birgit Flemming Larsen

The Bridge

Anton Kvist was born in 1878 in a small village in the northern part of Jutland in Denmark. In his home at Valsted there was a large group of ten siblings, and already as a six year old boy Anton had to work as a shepherd boy at the same time as he started to go to school. His father was a bricklayer, and so were a few of his brothers. At the age of sixteen he followed the family tradition and became a bricklayer's apprentice. In 1898 he came to Copenhagen to work as a bricklayer. Here in 1900 …

Doc Christy, Borge M. Christensen

The Bridge

On February 17, 1892, a young man of twenty-five boarded the transatlantic steamer Hekla in the port of Copenhagen to emigrate to the United States of America as had many Danes before him. When he took the decision to emigrate we do not know; but that he was determined to leave is certain. His father died shortly before the departure date and the burial coincided with the sailing date. Why did he leave his home? What happened to him?

The Founding Of Danish America, J. R. Christianson

The Bridge

If I were to address an audience of Norwegian Americans and ask them when Norwegian emigration to America began, many would answer without hesitation, "in 1825." Some would even say, "the fourth of July 1825," which was the date when the sloop, Restaurationen, sailed out of Stavanger harbor with fifty-three emigrants bound for the New World. I know this is true because I have frequently addressed Norwegian-American audiences and have always received this same answer. The voyage of the Restaurationen is well established as the beginning of Norwegian mass emigration to America.

Why Did They Emigrate? An Examination Of Five Danish Farming Periodicals During The Period From 1860 To 1900 To Determine What Motivated Farm Laborers To Emigrate., Jette Mackintosh

The Bridge

One question in emigration research has always intrigued me: Why did Peter Jensen find conditions in Denmark so unbearable that he could stand them no longer or why was he so tempted by the prospects on the other side of the Atlantic that he emigrated, while his neighbor, Jens Petersen, who apparently had exactly the same conditions, stayed at home and put up with things? Unfortunately it can probably never be answered satisfactorily. It may be possible to find reasons for some of the emigrations in letters and diaries, but we have no basis for comparison in the form of …

Introduction: Emigration From Vejle Amt

The Bridge

Picture postcard regions of Denmark like Vejle Amt, "with idyllic little towns, without any new factories and workshops, usually produced a great number of emigrants," according to the Danish historian of emigration, Kristian Hvidt. Vejle Amt was a verdant land of deep fjords, rolling wooded hills, and ancient villages, giving way to wide stretches of heath and bog in the west. It remained an idyllic, old-fashioned area throughout the period of emigration. People streamed to America because the population of Vejle Amt was growing but few new jobs were being created. They also left out of discontent over life in …

Emigration From Jystrup And Valsolille, Pia Viscor

The Bridge

Traveling eastwards across the Danish island of Sjrelland, you turn off superhighway E66 at Ringsted and take highway Al towards Roskilde. Soon, you see a sign pointing to Jystrup and take the short side road to that village. The rolling countryside is idyllic, dotted with small lakes and ponds, tidy farmland alternating with forest. Jystrup lies on the eastern shore of a lake, with the church and village of Valselille on the opposite shore. On a peninsula at the northern end of the lake are ruins of Skjoldenres castle, beseiged and conquered by King Valdemar Atterdag in the mid-fourteenth century. …

Restless Fanatic:Mogens Abraham Sommer, 1829-1901, Thorvald Hansen

The Bridge

This account of the life and activities of a Danish religious fanatic who played a significant role in emigration has been prepared on the basis of materials available in this country. Further items are available in Denmark, but on the basis of what is known to be available, it is doubtful that this would make any appreciable difference. To my knowledge, this is the only English language story of his life.

Emigration From Denmark To America: Diary Of Marius Larsen, Marius Larsen

The Bridge

The hour of departure falls on this day, a busy one for me. I have made good use of Christen Knudsen, my travel companion, in tieing up and transporting my baggage. "Cimbria" got under way at precisely eight o'clock, a large crowd on the dock waving farewell. Many of them were our friends and relatives. My parents came on board with us and there said their sad goodbyes. It hurts me to leave them; I hope for their sake, and for ours, that our future will develop in such a way as to make them happy that we left. We …

Weeping Water, A Typical Small Town Danish-American Community, 1880-1930, Edith Matteson, Jean Matteson

The Bridge

It is common knowledge that Danes established numerous small agricultural settlements across the United States during the period of mass emigration from Denmark that began in the 1860s and lasted through the 1920s. Yet scholars studying Danes in America have frequently devoted more attention to the institutions established in small towns in America than to the communities themselves. For example, if it had not been for Sophus K. Winther's trilogy that begins with the novel Take All to Nebraska (1936), the community established by Danes in and around Weeping Water in Cass County, Nebraska, would probably have passed unnoticed by …

Denmark: Through A Glass Darkly, John W. Larson

The Bridge

My Danish grandmother brought with her and retained an old country ambiance. It hung about her person in the formal way she dressed when visiting, in the erect way she sat and stood, and in her thick accent. When I think of her today, I do not visualize her in a specific residence, for she moved frequently, but I remember her distinctive atmosphere. An English visitor to the Danish island of Sj~lland wrote about 1860 that, "There is a refinement about the middle class of Danes in their household arrangements, seldom to be met with in other countries." During my …

A Mormon Melting Pot: Ethnicity Acculturation In Cedar City, Utah, 1880-1915, Vida Leigh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the ethnicity of the five ethnic groups found in Cedar City, Utah, during the 1880-to-1915 period. Those five groups were originally sent by Brigham Young to found the Iron Mission, as a two-fold project: (1) developing the iron mining industry, and (2) building a united community of Latter-day Saints.

The demographics, kinship, ties, marriage patterns, occupations, wealth, and elites in church government and society have been examined in detail through US censuses, Iron county assessment records, marriage records, Cedar City municipal records, LDS church records, diaries, histories, and personal histories. By comparing all the ethnic groups within …

A Journey With Obstacles, Jens Jensen

The Bridge

Jens Jensenwas born May 2, 1892 on a farm outside of Olgod, Denmark in central Jutland. When he was nine years old his mother died (of pregnancy toxemia), leaving five children. Jens Jensen then lived with his neighbors and relatives Kirstin and Hans Christiansen. He worked on the farm which required much labor since the Christianden family took on, in addition, the operation and management of a nearby creamery (Lindbjerg).

Recollections Of Two Immigrant Sisters, James D. Iversen

The Bridge

My father's family were among those thousands of Danes who made their decision to emigrate to America in the last decade of the nineteenth century. On March 28, 1893, Peter Iversen and wife Kirstine and children Christine, 12 years, Karen, 10, Katherine, 8, Marie, 6, Mikkel, 5 and Laura, not quite 3 years old, sailed from Copenhagen on the "Thingvalla." The came first to Sioux CIty, Iowa, where Kirstine's brother Graves Mikkelsen had settled earlier. Times were not prosperous in 1893 in Sioux City, however so the family soon moved to a homestead site in Buffalo County, South Dakota, about …

Karl Jensen's Diary

The Bridge

Karl Jensen wrote the following diary in Danish during his journey to America in 1903. He was born in Lynga in Jutland in 1873, and from 1903 until his death in 1948 he was a chicken-farmer in Enumclaw, Washington. In the diary he take considerable pride in the fact that during the entire voyage he did not suffer from seasickness. The reason for this is that as a young man he served as a seamannon merchant ships in the Mediterranean and Pacific. On one voyage his ship entered Puget Sound. This fact and the presence of a substantial Danish colony …

From Scandinavia To America: Proceedings From A Conference Held At Gi. Holtegaard, Peter L. Petersen, Reviewer

The Bridge

In early September 1983, scholars from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United States gathered at Gammel Holtegaard, north of Copenhagen, for a three-day conference on Scandinavian emigration to the United States. Because a majority of the papers presented at the conference deal with elements of the Danish experience, readers of The Bridge should welcome this belated publication of the proceedings made possible by a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities.

A Demographic Examination Of Household Heads In Salt Lake City, Utah, 1850-1870, Larry W. Draper

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the demographic characteristics of household heads in Salt Lake City, Utah at three points in its history: 1850, 1860, and 1870. Data was compiled on population growth, nativity, sex, age, occupation, wealth, and persistence from the United States Census for those years.

The data shows that between 1850 and 1870 the makeup of Salt Lake City household heads changed dramatically from predominately American-born to predominately foreign-born. This change in the nativity of household heads over time significantly influenced several demographic characteristics including the location of immigrant settlement, occupational tendencies, and a high level of stratification of real …

The Danish Immigrant Experience In The Fiction Of Enok Mortensen, Rudolf J. Jensen

The Bridge

Here are several short quotations from Enok Mortensen 's fiction for the purpose of showing its primary themes: " . .. for you emigrants, nothing is ever as good as it was in Denmark . .. you always have to compare . .. Over here one always possesses a peculiar unrest-only another hundred dollars, a thousand, or a million dollars more. In the old country everything was ordered and secure . .. Sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers, but as a rule they didn't get any farther either . .. Here in America it was the Golden Chance …

Enok Mortensen And The History Of Danish Immigration To America, Eric Helmer Pedersen

The Bridge

Enok Mortensen is probably best known in Denmark through his activity as a guest lecturer at Askov Folk High School in the 1960s and 1970s. Within the confines of a small group of Danes with friends and family in America he also had a name as a writer of fiction. It is true that his first work Mit Folk (1932), a collection of short stories, was published in Askov, Minnesota, but his next, the novel Saledes blev jeg hjeml0s (1934) was published in Holb

Reflections On Denmark As It Was, And Emigration To America, Arlow W. Andersen

The Bridge

In the late medieval and modern periods the histories of Denmark and Norway paralleled each other. During much of that interval the Union of Kalmar (1397-1523), which included also a dynastic tie with Sweden, practically insured common political, economic, and religious development. On the threshold of the modern age Sweden broke away from the Union (1523), but Norway was obliged to remain under Danish rule until 1814.

Chapter I: Emigration And Immigration

The Bridge

The description of an immigrant group begins in the place of origin, where thousands of individuals chose to abandon their old homes and build new lives in America. In the mid-nineteenth century, this decision required agonizing deliberation by people who knew little about America. Few had traveled abroad. Few had American relatives to provide first-hand accounts of life in the New World.

Kierkegaard Who Actually Emigrated To America, Carl Woltzer

The Bridge

Niels Andreas Kierkegaard, born April 13, 1809, was apparently destined by his father, a merchant in Copenhagen, to take over the family business. His two brothers were top students in the University-bound curriculum, but Niels was steered into business. Dissatisfaction with the course his life was taking and frustration with parental pressure led him in 1832 to seek advance payment on his inheritance and to emigrate to America, where he by no means lived the life of a prodigal son . In letters to his family, the first one from Providence, Rhode Island, and dated January 8, 1833, he told …

The Emigration Of Soren Kierkegaard, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong

The Bridge

John and Jane Doe, USA, are pretty well aware that Denmark exports the best butter, bacon, and cheese in the world to the world. But perhaps not even Jens and Tina Jensen, second and third generation Danish-Americans, realize the extent to which the second-to-none thoughts of a nineteenth century Dane have emigrated and are emigrating to the whole wide world . Indeed, they are valued more by the world than by Danes in Denmark, who can hardly conceal their surprise that the world now pays more attention to Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1865) than to Hans Christian Andersen . The Danes …