As should surprise no one, I forgot to mention Leif Eriksson Day yesterday.
However, for Norwegian Americans, the day offered an added celebration. Precisely 200 years after the original sloop Restauration docked in New York City, loaded with 52 Norwegians (the first organized Norwegian immigrant group to the US), the replica sloop sailed in yesterday. They were greeted by cheering crowds, plus the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway. I looked for video of this event to share, and could find none. I suppose nobody cares but us. The promotional clip above will have to do.
(The coincidence of dates is not a coincidence. Since nobody knows what date Leif Eriksson arrived in America, the people who organized the holiday just chose the day of Restauration’s arrival. Good enough.)
The original sloop was not met by jubilant crowds. In fact, they were met by government officials who promptly confiscated their boat, on the grounds that it was illegally overloaded. It took an appeal to Pres. John Quincy Adams to reverse that action.
The passengers on the original Restauration came mostly from the Stavanger area. The majority of them were Quakers (converted as prisoners during the Napoleonic wars), fleeing Norway because their religion was illegal at the time. But a few Haugeans (my people) were along tooo. I had ancestors who were leaders in the Haugean community in Stavanger, so they certainly knew some of the Sloopers.
The group did not prosper at first. They bought land in Kendall County, New York, but were undercapitalized and barely survived. Eventually they found their way to Illinois, where they founded a permanent Norwegian colony.
You may recall my posting this picture back in 2022, during my last trip to Norway. This is the replica Restauration herself, sitting at the dock, as the owners were trying to figure out a way to finance this voyage. I’m glad they succeeded.
URGENT REMINDER: I’ll be selling books at Viking Fest Minnesota, at the Dakota County fairgrounds in Farmington, tomorrow and Sunday. I’ve rented a car for this weekend, so in theory I should make it there and back without trouble.
Thanks for this fascinating post – and best wishes for this weekend!
I’ve enjoyed the fact the Erling Monsen Heimskringla includes the Vinland ‘bits’.
Whereabouts in Illinois did the Norwegians settle? Locally (Rockford) I know there was a lot of Scandinavian immigration.
(When I was young a good fraction of the obits in the paper were immigrants born in Norway, Sweden or Denmark.)
I believe the first Norwegian settlement in Illinois was in the Fox River area.
It’s not quite Norwegian history, but when I still had a couple of kiddos at home, during an east coast vacation, we got to sail on the Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of the ship that brought the first Swedish settlers to Delaware in 1638.
https://www.kalmarnyckel.org/
Of course it’s a replica primarily in appearance, since the Coast Guard rules require certain things in order to carry passengers. For instance, there is an engine and propeller buried in the bottom of the ship to power the ship in and out of port. The sails are only set once out of the harbor in open water and even then the engine is kept running at idle in case of emergency.
That’s where I learned that the phrase, “Learning the Ropes” comes from old sailing ships. There are several dozen lines that each has a specific function. Sailors needed to know which rope performed which task to be able to carry out the Captain’s orders.