Gunnar Nerheim

The landscape they left, Byneset in Trøndelag in 2024, is still a green, rural landscape with privately owned small farms. There are no longer cotters' places on the farms, and there have been many mergers, creating more viable units.

Emigrants from Byneset, Trøndelag, ended up in Montana

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 […]

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A rushing river in the Absaroka-Beartooth WIlderness, Montana. Along the river grow red clover, bluebells and daisies, like the immigrants knew from Norway.

Time to tell the story of early Norwegian immigrants in Montana

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

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Sheep grazing along the Musselshell, 2019.

Early sheep industry in Montana. The big picture

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

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Map of southwestern counties in Montana, which shows county borders and rivers and towns in 1890. It is a cropped version of a larger map, that shows some sites mentioned in this article.

Gold discovery led to the establishment of Meagher County, Montana

Late in the fall of 1864 gold was discovered in a gulch on the west-facing slopes of the Big Belt Mountains. The small stream flowing through the gulch drained into Canyon Ferry Lake. The gold was discovered by four former Confederate soldiers who were traveling south from Fort Benton on the Missouri River. Their destination

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THe front page of the family history of the Voldseth family, who owns the original Grande ranch.

From the middle of Norway to Musselshell Valley, Montana

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

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The replica of the sloop Restauration visiting Ramsvig old Trading Post for seafarers in the calm waters of the Sjernarøyene islands.

1825 – the beginning of organized emigration from Norway

Quakers in the town of Stavanger gave Cleng Peerson an assignment to travel to New York in 1821. They wanted him to explore the conditions for Norwegian immigrants. The assignment was fulfilled in 1825 with the first organized group of emigrants from Norway to the Americas. Cleng Peerson was born in Tysvær, Rogaland county, western

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Melville was founded at the foot of the Crazy Mountains.

Step-by-step migration to Montana

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

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Construction of the mine with technology and facilitites for social and cultural life, a school and hospital, as well as housing, took place from 1865 at Vigsnes on the island of Karmøy, Rogaland County, western Norway.

From the Vigsnes Copper Mine to the copper mines in Montana

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

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Farmers arrived in southern Alberta in large numbers after 1900

A surprising number of Norwegian-American farmers participated in the settler boom in southern Alberta after 1900. Many among their children and children’s children still live and farm in the region today. Seen from a Norwegian perspective it is both fascinating and surprising that so many Norwegians, used to farming under very wet conditions, and where

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