Norwegian diaspora
Norwegian diaspora
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Norwegian diaspora

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Norwegian diaspora

The Norwegian diaspora consists of Norwegian emigrants and their descendants, especially those that became Norwegian Americans. Emigrants also became Norwegian Canadians, Norwegian Australians, Norwegian New Zealanders, Norwegian Brazilians, Kola Norwegians and Norwegian South Africans.[citation needed]

Norsemen left the area that is now the modern state of Norway during the Viking Age expansion, with results including the settlement of Iceland and the conquest of Normandy.

In the 1500s and 1600s there was a small scattering of Norwegian people and culture as Norwegian tradesmen moved along the routes of the timber trade.

The 19th century wave of Norwegian emigration began in 1825. The Midwestern United States, especially the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, was the destination of most people who left Norway. The first modern Norwegian-American settlement in Minnesota was at Norwegian Ridge, in what is now Spring Grove, Minnesota.

Early emigrant communities in the United States were an enthusiastic market for books written in Norwegian principally from the 1890s to 1930s. Torbjørg Lie (1855-1924), a popular writer for the Decorah-Posten, imagined her readers "not so much adopting a new country as living in a diaspora."[citation needed] Meanwhile, newspapers in Norway were also eager to publish letters that recent emigrants had written home, telling of their experiences in foreign countries.

According to scholar Daniel Judah Elazar, "It was the Norwegian diaspora in the United States which initiated the separation of Norway from Sweden, which led to Norwegian independence in 1905." The Norwegian-American community overwhelmingly favored independence of Norway from Sweden, and collecting money for Norwegian rifle clubs in case the conflict should become violent. In 1884, the Minneapolis chapter of Den Norsk-Amerikanske Venstreforening sent 4,000 kroners to Norway's Liberal Party (the party that favored independence.) Norwegian-Americans campaigned enthusiastically for the United States to recognize Norway's independence from Sweden, with petitions and letters arriving in Washington, D.C. from most major cities. One petition from Chicago's Norwegian-American community bore 20,000 signatures. President Theodore Roosevelt did not change his stance, however, and remained neutral until after Sweden accepted the change.

As of 2006 there are over 5,000,000 Norwegian Americans. In Canada in a 2006 survey, 432,515 Canadians reported Norwegian ancestry. 55,475 Americans spoke Norwegian at home as of 2000, and the American Community Survey in 2005 showed that 39,524 people use the language at home.

While modern Norway has a wary relationship with immigrants from non-European cultures, Norwegian emigration to the United States from the 19th century has fostered a flourishing Norwegian culture of the diaspora.

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