My family emigrated to America from Selbu, Norway in 1922. They came to the small Washington State town of LaCrosse where they joined other Selbu immigrants as wheat farmers. Here's a photo of the family shot in 1928, just six years after they've arrived. It's pretty clear from their dress that they've worked hard on assimilation. It doesn't look like they've hung on to a single vestige of their old-country clothes.
My father Bjarne Slind is the smallest boy in the front row. He was nine years old at the time. From the looks of everyone, they were probably all dressed up for Sunday services at the Selbu Lutheran Church outside LaCrosse. My grandmother Ingeborg Klegseth--who is in the back row--died the following year, so this is probably her very last photo. Dad said she never learned to speak English and was always dreadfully homesick for Norway. Because he was the youngest, he spent the most time with her, and learned many little folk sayings and rhymes that he can remember to this day.
The thing I find most amusing about this photo is that all the men and boys are wearing hats. I have never seen my father wear a hat at all except with his navy uniform and his red felt hunting hat. But here the older boys--my Uncles Gilbert and Ole-- are wearing very snappy-looking summer straw hats, and suits that wouldn't look too out of place today. Grandpa, who is in the middle of the back row, has a heavier hat, probably to keep the sun off his already balding head.
Many Norwegian immigrants Americanized their first names, but not my family. Dad said the school teacher persuaded his parents to change the spelling of my Aunt Christine's name from Kristin, but that's the only change that was made, as far as I know. Dad has gone through life as an unapologetic Bjarne even though few people can spell his name, much less pronounce it properly. And whenever I mention my Uncle Ole, everyone laughs because of the thousands of Ole and Lena jokes. But I really do have an Uncle Ole, and a grandfather Ole besides. (They were not very imaginative in my grandfather's family. There were two sons named Ole and a daughter named Oline, which is the feminine form of the same name).
My Aunt Johanna--on the left in the front row--seems very stylishly dressed, with her dropped-waist frock and her bobbed hair. I think that in this photo, she's the one whose face reveals that we have some Saami ancestors. Aunt Christine, who had to drop out of school and take care of the family after my grandmother died, is at the right in the front row, wearing a flowered dress. Uncle John, who was Aunt Christine's twin is standing between Dad and Aunt Johanna.
I note that of the six people in the photo, only my father and my Uncle Ole are still alive. But the others have not been forgotten. As we sing at Samhain, what is remembered lives!
immigrant emigrate immigration assimilation Norway Norwegian Washington+state family genealogy fashion