THE NORWEGIAN-DANISH METHODIST MISSION I N U T A H BY ARLOW WILLIAM ANDERSEN*
•DOLLOWING their removal to the Great Basin and stimulated by •*• a desire for statehood, as well as by genuine missionary motives, the Mormons engaged in strenuous efforts to win proselytes in Europe and America. It is at this point that they became important as a factor in American Methodism. Similarly, they played an important role in Norwegian and Danish immigrant affairs, for many of their converts were won, at the expense of Scandinavian Lutheranism, through the Christiania (now Oslo) and Copenhagen missions. The character and extent of Scandinavian Mormon immigration is the subject of a recent study.1 Mormon missionaries labored in Copenhagen and elsewhere after 1850. Their efforts in the Scandinavian lands proved fruitful. In the second half of the nineteenth century they made over forty-five thousand converts (members of record), of whom some thirty thousand (including children) emigrated in large parties under Mormon guidance to Utah. Of the total emigration, 57 per cent were Danish, 32 per cent Swedish, 10 per cent Norwegian, and a few Icelandic.2 Shepherded migration ceased in the 1890's, when social and economic conditions in the Scandinavian countries improved. As early as 1879 Editor Christian Treider of Den Christelige Talsmand, the Norwegian-Danish Christian Advocate, took cognizance of the Mormon influence among Scandinavian immigrants. He deplored the defection of so many Danes and Norwegians and wished that they could have been an asset, as he put it, rather than a disgrace to their newly adopted country.3 He joined with *Dr. Andersen is a newcomer to the pages of the Quarterly. At present he is professor of history at Jamestown College, Jamestown, North Dakota. The article here printed is a small chapter in the History of Norwegian-Danish Methodism 1in America, which he is currently preparing for publicaton. See Wlliam Mulder, "Mormons from Scandinavia, 1850-1900: A Shepherded Migration," Pacific Historical Review, XLV (August, 1954) 227-46. 2 Mulder derives his information from Skandinaviens Stjeme (The Star of Scandinavia), a Mormon journal published in Copenhagen, beginning in 1851. "Den Christelige Talsmand, August 19, 1879. This weekly paper, published in Chicago after 1876, was the official journal of the Norwegian-Danish Conference, which served the Middle West area.
