This drawing by Bernhard Berntsen depicts Norwegian immigrants arriving in New York. Vesterheim 1983.024.013—Museum Purchase.
Urban Life
among Norwegian Americans
N
by David C. Mauk
orwegians living in American cities were long a minority among their ethnic compatriots. In 1880 only 15 percent of Norwegian Americans resided in urban areas (locations with 2,500 people or more). By 1930, nearly two-fifths (39.9 percent) of all Norwegian Americans lived in metropolitan areas of at least 50,000 inhabitants. Despite the group’s continuing urbanization, however, the 2007 American Community Survey revealed that more members of the group still lived in rural areas than was typical for Americans in general at that time. Nonetheless, the movement of Norwegians to metropolitan areas over the last 130 years is impressive. In 1980, seven out of ten, and in 2010 almost three-quarters (74.9%) of Norwegian Americans lived in large metropolitan areas.1 In their urbanization, Norwegian Americans have become more and more like Americans as a whole. They live mostly in central cities of varying sizes or their suburbs. 4
Two Urban Communities: An Overview of Origins and Development Especially in the nineteenth century, most of the settlements in cities originated because people either had specialized jobs that placed them in urban areas, or they changed their plans and decided to stay in town until they could earn the wherewithal to pursue goals in the countryside. Of course, residence in a city often became more permanent. And as time passed, increasing numbers joined the stream of urbanizing Americans. Thus Norwegian immigrants and their descendants established urban sub-cultures in cities large and small across the nation. As Norway’s towns and cities grew in the late 1800s and 1900s, an increasing number of the immigrants left one of Norway’s cities for one of America’s. In the limited space of this essay two of the largest Norwegian-American city enclaves, those in New York City and Minneapolis, receive attention. Vesterheim Vesterheim