Name/Title
Simon Johnson - Norwegian/American AuthorEntry/Object ID
2022.209.1Description
Simon Johnson - Norwegian/American AuthorPhotograph Details
Subject
Simon Johnson - Norwegian/American AuthorSubject Person or Organization
Simon JohnsonContext
Simon Johnson - Norwegian/American Author
The following are a few excerpts from the April 20, 1980 - The Sunday Forum article "Simon Jonson's writings reveal more of area Norwegian heritage" by Sylvia Paine.
Johnson, perhaps the most important Norwegian-American writer to come out of the Red River Valley, was born in Norway in 1874 and moved to a farm near Hillsboro, ND as a child.
For Johnson's fiction, more than historical facts and dates could ever do, reveals the emotional truth of Norwegian immigrant life in the late 1800's, a truth that has been silent for years because the language in which it was expressed has been vastly ignored by succeeding generations.
As a young man he farmed and published his writing in the popular Norwegian-American newspapers. Later, he edited one of those papers, "Normanden" in Grand Forks, ND and was associate editor of another, "Decorah Posten" in Decorah, Iowa, where he died in 1970. "Decorah Posten" died the same year.
His stories of pioneer life were published in Norwegian by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis were widely read by immigrants but lost to their English-speaking children with whom it was a point of pride to be thoroughly modern, and sometimes a little ashamed by reminders of their "foreign" parentage.
Johnson's view of his era, in short, is not rosy, but neither is it black. it is an honest look at real people.Cataloged By
LeAnn BeckAcquisition
Accession
2022.209Source or Donor
Tina SteensonAcquisition Method
GiftLocation
Location
* Untyped Location
LibraryBuilding
Plummer HouseCategory
Exhibit
