Customer Reviews

Diary of Elizabeth Koren: 1853-1855 (Scandinavians in America)

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This is the diary of a Norwegian immigrant pastor's wife in the 1800's, traveling from Norway to the United States, eventually settling in NE Iowa. The chronicle successfully evokes what it is like to travel the Atlantic via ship (during storms the passengers sit on the floor, slop food on themselves, stay in bed alot, etc.) and travel via wagon, canoe, etc. across the country to the "frontier" of the central US, staying with various families along the way.

Mrs. Koren gives us a glimpse of daily life in an immigrant farmer's household, recording the events that she witnesses as the Korens await the construction of their own home (where local farmers contribute to the enterprise by hewing trees to provide their allotment of logs to the building site.) Mrs. Koren can be quite an opinionated observer of the people she meets, but it is interesting to see this depiction of people from "upper middle class" Norway coping with the rustic conditions among the frontier settlers.

The diary contains numerous references to particular individuals she met along the way, with footnotes providing additional identification that is an invaluable resource for people searching for information on their forebears. While reading the diary, I was thrilled to read the account of several visits and conversations with one of my own great-great-grandfathers (John Andreas Axdal, aka "the man from Turkey River"), a precious glimpse through this window into the past giving me a brief encounter with the personality of my ancestor.