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    1. [Oppland] September 25, 1852 / NY Times / Ole Bull / Norwegians in America
    2. Margit
    3. Norwegians in America If the misture of different bloods can be regarded as improving the race, and enriching the character, surely our own country must, ultimately, it it do not now, stand ahead of the world. None other has received infusion from so many sources. Such an amalgamation of all countries was never known before. Hither come the adventurous from every portion of the glove. The sons of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the Cavaliers, and the ancient Knickerbockers, aye, and of the Aborigines themselves, mingle with emigrants from every kingdom and inhabited nook. England send her stout farmers, and the Yorkshire dialect is heard on many a farm. Scotia is gull represented, and plaid and kilts add to the picturesqueness of our scenery. Erin takes possession of our canals and railroads. The brave Huguenot is here. Germany adds her broad-chested children. The Castilian also abides on Yankee ground, while the sunny Italian, the gallant Pole, the freedom-seeking Hungarian, the whishered Russ, the turbaned Turk, the South American and the Islander, unite their labors and destiny in one common country, with the unconquerable Northman, the Swede, the Dane, and the Norwegian. Within the last few months, the hitherto imsurmountable barrier which walled the millions of China has been demolished, and unnumbered Celestials now throng our Pacific border. Assuredly such a multitudinous combination--such a fusion of all the races of men, must work out some strange result; and when several generations shall have made the union complete, and merged the idiosyneracies and attributes of all, into one common character, the national portrait, mental, moral and physical, will exhibit the blendings of our common humanity over the globe. No unimportant feature in this consummation is the Norwegian Colony, which the distinguished Northman, Ole Bull, has for some time been intending to establish, and has now begun. In a former visit, some seven years since, he traversed the United States, sometimes according his instrument to the deep accompaniement of Niagara; sometimes, amid the silence of the Mammoth Cave, starting the reverberations in what has since been called "Ole Bull's Concert Room;" sometimes daring the tempest and night in solitary rides over our Western prairies; and explored the whole country, as well in its great solitudes, as in its peopled cities. At that time he formed an ardent attachment to the Republic, her institutions, and her people. He desired to see some of his hardy countrymen withdrawn from the cold and reluctant soil, from which they compelled a scanty subsistence, and planted in a home on the broad and fertile acres of America, with all the privileges of citizenship, and all the rights of freemen. The tendency of Norwegian emigration, hitherto, has been directed, mainly, to Wisconsin, where, already about forty thousand of these sons of the North, have taken the oath of allegiance. They are regarded as a most valuable accession to the population, and the most important of the State Documents are, by Legislative vote, printed in the Norwegian as well as in the English language. But the ravages of disease, the long distance from market, and the grasping of the surrounding lands by speculators, have made this section, in some important respects undesirable. Ole Bull has been industriously laboring to find a more advantageious postion and has, we think succeeded, in the large tract of land he has secured for this purpose, in the the southern part of Potter County, Pennsylvania. A look at Morse's Atlas, will show that no other body of land, of similar extent, in that State, remains open to such an enterprize. All the rest of the State is thickly studded with villages and inhabited towns. The territory selected is well adapted to the putpose. It is not a worn-out and cast-off tract, nor have its energies been at all exhausted in the support of a previous population. But it is a virgin and vigorous soil, innocent of how or plow, with the accumulated fertility of former years, sustaining original forests, and tenanted by those anti-aborigines, the prowling wolf, the antlered deer, and surly bear. It is a fine, rolling country, swelling up from a rich valley, with hills that have almost outgrown the name, and having, in one body, some twelve thousand acres of table land. It is salubrious, heavily timbered, well watered, and holds salt springs and deposits of coal and iron. A glance at an accurate map will show, as the truth is, that the head waters of three great outlets of the country, find their rise in this portion of the country, within about twelve miles of each other--good speaking distance for rivers. The Sinnemahoning, running south-easterly, reaches the tide through the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay; the Genesee, springing in Lake Rosalie, and flowing north, unites with the floods of the Ontario, and pours into the ocean through the river and gulf of St. LAwrence; and the Alleghany, starting here, pursues a south-westerly career, till, mingling with the Ohio and Mississippi, it is intorduced to the sea, in the Gulf of Mexico. In the formation, products, and animals of this region, the colonists will be continually reminded of their native Norway. The delicious mountain trout with which its streams abound, will recall to them many a pleasant reminiscence. And, by a singular coindidence, the future residents may look over some portions of their boundaries, into the town of Sweden. This region has hitherto remained sequestered and inaccessible. It was beyone the ken of civilization. The descendants of its first occupants still roamed the wilderness, or plied their fins within its cool waters. But now the track of that great railroad--the New York and Erie--which unites the waves of Lake Erie with the Atlantic billows--winds within thirty miles of its northern bounds; and on the southern within fifteen miles, the unearthly scream of the steam-whistle, on the Pennsylvania road, affrights the air. It has thus been suddenly brough out from its concealment and remoteness, made accessible, and placed within a convenient distance of markets. Within the last fortnight, Ole Bull, accompanied by a few friends, took some thirty of the first founders of this Colony, to their future home, consisting of those whose mechanical skill would soon rear, under the vaving arms of the forest, comfortable abodes. He selelcted a site for the embryo City. A lady from New York, who, with her husband, John Hopper, Esq., accompanied him, cut down the first tree with her own hands, and after the active Colonists had converted it into a flag-staff, and planted it, she run up the Norwegian banner with the stripes and stars, and names the place over which they floated, Oleona; thus typifying the Norwegian graft upon the American Aboriginal stock. Curious enough, Olean had already become a familiar name in that vicinity. It was also ordained, in her proposal, that the sign which should beckon the traveler to the first Inn, should proclaim the motto, "In union there is strength" and exhibit the device of an American and Norwegian Bear, in fond embrace--a Bear's hug, which, we hope, may never lack cordiality. The axe immediately began to awake the distant echoes, the hammer to ring upon the anvil, the adze to glance through the bark, and all was preparation and activity. In the evening, munerous bonfires illuminated this new home, and blazed in the woods, and the gifted founder having addressed his countrymen in their native language, and the Americans, in an eloquent English harangue, seized his favorite instrument, and in the concert-room of the forest and under the star-lights, drew his wizard bow with an energy, gladness and inspiration which no audience, regal or republican, had ever enjoyed before. Ole Bull returned to the City, resued a ship-load of an hundred Norwegians, just arrived, from the grasp of the runners, despatched them to New Norway, and with a Norwegian clergyman flew back to his Nordland, to concecrate it, last Sabbath, with the first sermon probably to which its hills had ever listened! What an element in the wealth, strenth and resources of our country, will be these Scandenavian brains and muscles, when two or three hundred thousand people shall fill those now tenantless fields. Such a population--stout and vigorous, accustomed to economy, endurance and toil, and glowing with aspiriations for freedom, --is indeed to be coveted, to raise the note of civilization amidst the silece of the woods. We doubt not, they will bring with them the glorious motto, which, in pride of their barren summits, they stamp upon their rix dollars. "Truth, Honor and Loyalty are found among the mountains of Norway." And if it be true, as is narrated in Icelandic Chronicles, that, centuries before the birth of Colubus, expeditions were thence fitted out for the American Continent. --that Biarn and Leif, eight hundred years ago, visited our shores, and that Thorfin with his bride and bridesmaids, and sixty picked Norwegians, sailed into Narragansett Bay, and took possession of what is now a portion of Rhode ISland by them called Vinland, leaving their traces in monuments on the rocks, to the puzzle of antiquarians; then, surely, the Norwegians have a right to come and claim a home on the continent they discovered. We are glad to see this child of genious identify himself and his interests with the Western world. To a lady, who, in reference to his tall and muscular figure, remarked that he was a Norwegian pine, he replied. "Yes, but I am about to become an American pine: will you give me room to grow and cultivate me?" We think this will be cheerfully accorded to him. Certainly, no artist has ever visited us whom we would more earnestly greet. Gull of generous and ardent impulses, of pleasant companionship, wielding the highest powers of music, and with his heart in his hand, we rejoice that he has undertaken the great task of transplanting a colony of Northmen (himself included) into American soil. Our great Statesman, so recently departed, when on that bed of suffering from which he never arose, requested that he might "hear once more on this earth the divine strain of his marvellous instrument." Jenny Lind, who sang at his concerts in the commencement of her public career, remarked after the first of his recent series in this city, that his was the only violin that made her weep. Let him brin his Cremona from its case again, and tender to the pople, over the country, a succession of concerts in aid of his enterprise, and to afford facilities to the humbler classes of his countrymen to leave their sterile acres for this new Norway, and we should suppose that the benevolence of his undertaking, the genius of his bow, and the real benefit to our country, would crown his efforts with distinguished success.

    11/12/2003 12:57:18