Fieldwork in the Midwest

NorDiaSyn’s daughter project NorAmDiaSyn is established to collect data from descendants of Norwegian immigrants to The United States. A number of researchers from several Norwegian universities are currently assisting project leader Professor Janne Bondi Johannessen, University of Oslo, in these efforts. This particular NorAmDiaSyn field work to the Midwest consists in two major sections, each with a little different inventory of researchers partaking. The first section of the field work started on Friday September 10th in the small town of Blair, Wisconsin. The researchers participating here are Arnstein Hjelde (Associate Professor, University College of Østfold), Professor Marit Westergaard (leader of CASTL, Tromsø University), Beate Taranrød (Student, University of Oslo), Signe Laake (research assistant, Oslo University), project leader Janne Bondi Johannessen, Kristin Melum Eide (Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim), and Luke Annear (student, University of Wisconsin, Madison).

Our contact in Blair, Salome Hjelsand, had arranged for a surprisingly big turn-up, so upon our arrival in First Lutheran Church in Blair, the venue was already crowded with people eager to reveal their inner Norwegian to an exited team of researchers. There could be no shred of doubt that we were expected and very welcome, the tables were packed with all kinds of delicious dishes, and Norwegian specialities, kransekake and lefse, pickled herring and meat balls, and they had even brought in a fantastic cake specially designed for this particular event.

– Alle er skilt i Blair

Many of the informants spoke Norwegian on a surprisingly high level of proficiency, and some even quite fluently. Already their first utterances readily revealed a Norwegian source dialect area. As we started asking them about their relatives and relations to each other, several informants stated what to the untrained ear sounded like “alle er skilt i Blair”, i.e. ‘everyone is divorced in Blair’. A more thorough questioning reveled of course that what the utterance was “alle er skyldt i Blair”, i.e. everyone is related in Blair. But this significant piece of language also reveals that many of the inhabitants in Blair descend from people who acquired their Norwegian mother tongue in the area around Solør and Våler (close to the Swedish border). One famous feature of these dialects is that the sound which in most other Norwegian dialects is pronounced [y], comes out as [i].

Many of the informants told a similar story, that Norwegian used to be the only

language spoken in their home, since their grandparents, living in the same house, spoke very little English. This may sound as a nice and homely situation, but to an immigrant child not mastering English was a huge disadvantage when they started school, and made the Norwegian children lag behind. As one informant put it, “Je trur itte je lærte noen tingen, jeg, I fysste graden, nei.” (I don’t think I learned anything in the first grade). For others, English was definitely their first language, but they had learned Norwegian from their grandparents. 70-80 years later, the words and grammar of their grandparents are still imprinted and very much alive in their minds.