From America to Norway ― Norwegian-american Immigrant Letters 1838-1914: Indexes

The experience of early Norwegian-American immigrants, told in their letters home—now discoverable in an extensive index

Seeking economic improvement or a fresh start, following family or news of a land of opportunity, Norwegians left their homeland for America in great numbers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They settled in Pennsylvania and Illinois and moved on to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, finding in the preire or prærie a promising and hospitable landscape—and they wrote home about it, relating the successes, challenges, and sorrows of their new life to the communities they left behind. 

These letters have been collected in the first three volumes of the From America to Norway series, and now, this fourth volume contains indexes for the series, allowing letters to be discoverable by sender, recipient, place of origin, and destination. The volume also includes a thematic index and an extensive index of biographical names. An introduction by editor and translator Orm Øverland and a bibliography of immigrant letters that have appeared in publications of the Norwegian-American Historical Association round out the volume. 

Orm Øverland is professor emeritus of American literature at the University of Bergen in Norway. Among his books are The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America and Immigrant Minds, American Identities: Making the United States Home, 1870–1930.