Prairie Public NewsRoom
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Dr. Erik Luther Williamson

  • 3/5/2015: From the 1870s through the 1930s many Norwegian-American Lutheran congregations held summer schools for religious education. They were called RELIGIONSKOLER [reh-lih-ggeh-oon-skoh-ler], religion schools, parochial schools or Norse schools. One, two or three congregations would participate in running these schools from four to six weeks.
  • 3/3/2015: Beginning in the 1870s, many Norwegian immigrants established Lutheran congregations in North Dakota. Only the men voted and managed those congregations. The women were organized by the pastors into the women's society - in Norwegian called the KVINDEFORENING. [kvin-eh-for-eh-ning]. By the 1930s it was renamed the Ladies' Aid Society. In some places the women organized their societies before the men did. Then the women urged the men to start the congregations.
  • 3/2/2015: Once, the most prolific writer in the Norwegian language lived in North Dakota. He was Jon Norstog [norՙ-stogg], born in Telemark [tehՙ-leh-mark], Norway, in 1877. He disliked farm work, and would rather hunt, dream and write. At a church academy Jon deepened his faith and learned the common idiomatic language of Norway, while also mastering the official Standard Language, which was more Danish than Norwegian. Jon Norstog preferred to write in the idiomatic language, a practice that smothered his career in Norway.