Before the Civil War, emigrants from Norway usually crossed the Atlantic on board a Norwegian sailing ship from a Norwegian harbor to New York or Quebec. This mode of transportation changed radically in the 1870s. Trans-Atlantic steamship companies from British ports offered faster journeys. A steamship crossed the Atlantic in less than half the time […]
Emigrants from Byneset, Trøndelag, ended up in Montana Read more...
It is high time to tell the story of early Norwegian immigration to Montana. In his excellent book from 1958, Kenneth Bjork, West of the Great Divide. Norwegian Migration to the Pacific Coast, 1847-1893, wrote that important research themes such as the “movement of immigrants from region to region in the New World have been
Time to tell the story of early Norwegian immigrants in Montana Read more...
Many people have written about the history of the Montana cattle industry. In comparison, historical research and writing on the sheep industry in Montana is scant. The stories of “the great sheep trails from California and Oregon have lain in deep obscurity,” wrote Edward N. Wentworth in 1941, while the trails from Texas “with its
Early sheep industry in Montana. The big picture Read more...
Two Grande brothers from Trondheim, the middle of Norway, in 1866 set out on a long and winding journey to the United States. They crossed fjords and oceans, followed rivers, roads and trails over plains, valleys and mountain ranges before they ended up in the grassy Musselshell Valley, Montana, in 1878. The journey was not
From the middle of Norway to Musselshell Valley, Montana Read more...
In July 2025 it will be 200 years since the first organized group of Norwegian immigrants left the city of Stavanger, Norway. Cleng Peerson was their pathfinder in western New York in 1825, and in Fox River, Illinois, in 1833. His last 15 years in Texas have been a mystery. Most Norwegian immigrants settled in
From 2023: First priority Texas, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan Read more...
Some of the early Norwegian settlers in Montana came from the Rushford area in Fillmore County, Minnesota. Several people in Rushford organized a society with the aim of exploring for better land in Montana. Because of several years with crop failures caused by hail, bugs, and rust in Minnesota they began to dream about better
Step-by-step migration to Montana Read more...
In the 1870s and into the 1880s the copper and pyrite mine at Vigsnæs in Avaldsnes on the west coast island of Karmøy was the largest mine in Norway. For more than a decade the newcomer, now known as Visnes or Vigsnes, on the North Sea surpassed the 300-year-old Royal silver mining establishment at Kongsberg
From the Vigsnes Copper Mine to the copper mines in Montana Read more...