Furnishing with a Scandinavian Accent: Ethnic Identity Meets Material Culture

This home mixes mid-twentieth-century seating furniture with an antique clock and framed print on the wall.

Photo courtesy of John and Birgitte Christianson.

Furnishing with a Scandinavian Accent:

Ethnic Identity Meets Material Culture

by Tova Brandt

Walk into a Scandinavian-American home. Look around at the walls, the furniture, the fireplace mantle. Can you detect clues about the ethnic identity of the residents? Can you “read” a specific heritage in how a family decorates their home? Does a “Scandihoovian” live here?

The intersection of history, culture, and the particular experiences of different immigrant groups has a part to play in this story. In other words, Norwegian history created certain expressions of Norwegian heritage, Danish history led to certain expressions of Danish heritage, and so on. The mixing of contemporary pieces with antiques is common in many homes, but there are differences between specific ethnic groups that continue to influence individuals and families, even many generations after their immigrant ancestors settled in the United States.

Scandinavian immigration was part of the massive movement of Europeans to America in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Norwegians and Swedes can point to specific dates that launch the wave of immigrants to America: For Norwegians, the sloop Restauration departed in 1825; for Swedes, a pioneering group founded New Uppsala, Wisconsin in 1841. Danish immigration began in the 1850s with new Mormon converts and built in the 1860s and 1870s. Even though these earliest immigrants were motivated by religion, the vast majority of immigrants from Scandinavia were driven by economic factors to seek their fortune in the United States. By the time the major wave of immigration slowed down in the early twentieth century, over 800,000 Norwegians had arrived, compared to 360,000 Danes and 1,300,000 Swedes. Following the settlement trends into second and third generations, three-quarters of Norwegians married other Norwegians, and nine-tenths married other Scandinavians. These patterns established a very straight-forward ethnic identity for a lot of people, especially in the Upper Midwest.

Now, well into the twenty-first century, visible symbols of heritage are still maintained in many ScandinavianAmerican homes. Making broad generalizations, Norwegian Americans tend to express their heritage through folk art. Danish Americans gravitate more to modern design and Danish porcelain. This article explores that contrast, and the reasons behind the differences. Swedes, who are included more implicitly in this discussion, would fall between Norwegians and Danes on the folk-art-versus-modern spectrum.

To explore the differences in material culture for these groups, we need to look deeper than the immigration period, to the reasons why we can distinguish between Norway, Denmark, and Sweden historically and today.

In this living room, Scandinavian antiques are blended with contemporary

examples of traditional folk art. Photo courtesy of David and Kirsten Heine.

Scandinavian History in Five Minutes or Less

One thousand years ago, the Viking Age was at its height throughout Scandinavia.

Christianity began to take hold around the year 1000, though one could point to many traditions that retain a strong pre-Christian character for many centuries. For example, Midsummer bonfires were a much earlier pre-Christian tradition that merged with a church festival.

Around the year 1350, the Black Death dealt a huge blow to the population, and destabilized the political balance of power. Because of deaths throughout the ruling families, the Danish ruler ultimately inherited the Norwegian crown and the two countries were jointly ruled from Copenhagen for four centuries. Sweden remained a rival power to Denmark, especially along the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula. When the Lutheran Reformation began in the sixteenth century, political leaders sided with the Reformation rather than retaining allegiance with Rome. This established the Lutheran Church as the state church throughout Scandinavia and northern Europe.

For most people in Scandinavia, daily life was difficult in the medieval and early modern periods. Most were subsistence farmers, living off the land. They contended with long winters, harsh climates, and sometimes brutally unforgiving landscapes—in Norway, only 5% of the land is tillable.

The year 1814 is a turning point in many ways, though some trends had already begun in the late eighteenth century. The year 1814 is most notable for the fallout from the Napoleonic Wars. Denmark had allied itself with Napoleon, which left it at the mercy of winning powers. As a result, Norway was taken away from Danish rule. Norwegians wrote their own constitution in a flurry of excitement over their new independence, only to find that they had been assigned to the Swedish king instead. Still, Norwegians maintained their constitution and their own parliament in parallel with Sweden. Meanwhile, reports of new opportunities in America were beginning to spread through northern Europe.

In Norway

One of the factors affecting life in Norway was a population boom that was well underway by the early nineteenth century. This is attributed to peace (the end of the Napoleonic Wars), pox (the increasing use of the smallpox vaccine to prevent death), and potatoes (the availability of a nutritious food source that could thrive in terrible farming conditions.) Perfect for Norway!

This population boom coincided with some other factors, all leading to a century that is called the Golden Age of Folk Art. More people meant more economic growth and more specialization of skills. Increasingly prosperous landowners expressed their wealth through interior decoration—also aided by innovations in home architecture that funneled smoke through a chimney and introduced windows. Now that people could see their own homes better, they were more motivated to decorate!

Just as geography can separate communities—for example, the mountains dividing one fjord from the next— and lead to variations in spoken dialect, regional variations in folk art and dress developed. These variations arose partly through taste, partly through the influence of specific artists, and eventually as a way to associate your identity with your home community. For example, the Telemark region developed a visual style of asymmetrical acanthus motifs. In Vest-Agder, designs featured more teardrop details along the edges of forms and often a darker background color. These folk-art styles weren’t just in decorative painting—the Golden Age of Folk Art found expression in silver work, woodcarving, weaving, music, and musical instruments.

But the booming population eventually strained the natural resources of the country, and there wasn’t an industrial economy yet to employ people in cities. Emigration became increasingly attractive, and increasingly common. Norway would end up second only to Ireland in the percentage of its population who left for America. Sweden ranks third on that list.

The logistics of moving across the ocean involved some major decisions on what to take, what to leave behind, and how to transport necessary and treasured items. Many families looked to dowry trunks as convenient luggage options—this is why so many decorative trunks made it to the United States. These trunks had to accommodate three categories of belongings: • Items necessary for the voyage: food, bedding, clothing, and travel documents. • Items necessary to start a new life: tools of a craftsman, cooking utensils, extra clothes, and household textiles. • Items of deep sentimental value, if there was still room: heirlooms, silver jewelry, and objects that carried significance for life milestones (like a carved mangleboard, or an ale bowl).

Together, the trunks and their contents created a mass migration of folk art and material culture that paralleled the mass migration of people.

For Norway, now separated from Denmark, the nineteenth century saw a steady movement toward achieving

complete political independence from Sweden as well. But after centuries of looking to Copenhagen and Stockholm for cultural leadership, higher education, religious leadership, and political control, Norway had to figure out how to define what it meant to be Norwegian.

To help define national identity, Norwegian leaders looked to the Norwegian countryside—peasant farmers, centuries-old architecture, and the legacy of folk traditions. They found “Norwegian-ness” in the language, the folk dress, the woodworking, decorative painting, and the music. So rather than a grassroots movement to maintain folk-traditions, Norwegian leaders appropriated them to define Norwegian identity. They selected “the best” examples of regional expressions, and systematically encouraged people to learn and revive these crafts.

In addition, there was an added touch of Viking style to lend historicism to this movement. Norway had excavated Viking ship burial sites in the 1870s and 1880s, which literally brought Viking-Age craftsmanship into the light for the first time in hundreds of years. The fact that this occurred in the Olso fjord first gave Norway the excuse to claim the legacy of Vikings for their own.

These movements were not unknown to Norwegians living in the United States. In fact, some immigrants had actively participated in the folk-art revival before leaving Norway and carried those skills and interests with them to America. Norwegians in the United States also had several specific points in time that helped to reinforce their connection to their homeland and awareness of trends happening there. All of the following events were known in Norwegian-American communities, many of which responded with their own celebrations or activities: • Norway finally achieved independence in 1905. • Centennial of immigration celebrated in 1925. • The Crown Prince and Princess of Norway embarked a hugely successful tour of the United States in 1939, including many Norwegian-American communities in the Midwest. • During the Nazi occupation of Norway in World

War II, many American relief efforts aided

Norwegians.

In Denmark

While Norway was repositioning itself with a national identity, Denmark was undergoing an identity crisis of a different sort. A new constitution in 1848 opened the door to non-Lutheran churches and missionaries. In 1864, a disastrous war with Prussia resulted in the loss of significant territory, not to mention national pride. Copenhagen remained the cultural and political center, but of a shrinking country that once was an empire.

In dealing with these changes, Denmark also looked to its own culture to define itself, but had a different mix of ingredients to work with. Literature, music, dance, and songs were shared among the general population and celebrated in folk schools throughout the country. Golden-Age painters produced romantic works celebrating the Danish landscape and idealizing the life of the land. Hans Christian Andersen became a national hero, merging folklore themes with newer story elements and finding international success.

How do these contrasting histories explain the different material culture expressions in the United States? Why do Norwegian Americans gravitate to folk art, old or new, and Danish Americans gravitate to porcelain plates and modern design?

Norwegian Folk Art in America

One of the most notable expressions of Norway’s Golden Age of Folk Art is the development of rosemaling. Originally, this began by painters copying the baroque and rococo styles of continental Europe, but more home-grown painters began adapting those high-style techniques to regional applications. Norwegian rosemaling was applied to objects and spaces that were functional, but also deemed special: dowry trunks; ale bowls for festive occasions; walls and ceilings of guest rooms or large gathering spaces; corner cupboards and wall cupboards that stored the most valuable possessions of the homeowner.

Some of those items decorated with rosemaling might have made it to America with immigrants, but the trained rosemalers who immigrated themselves did not continue their craft. They were in a completely new arena with new demands on time, energy, and resources. A living tradition of rosemaling was nearly extinct.

The story of rosemaling picks up again in the 1930s, and hinges on a specific individual, immigrant Per Lysne. Lysne grew up in Os, Norway, in an area that was among the latest to develop a regional painting style —even as other regions were losing the tradition. But once he arrived in Stoughton, Wisconsin, he found work at the local wagon factory. It was only after the wagon factory closed during the Great Depression that he turned to rosemaling to make a living and made some key adaptations for American markets. His biggest success—and biggest innovation—was to begin painting flat

This trunk from the Vest-Agder region is exquisitely preserved, partly because it did not have to serve as luggage for nineteenth-century immigrants. A later generation inherited the trunk from Norway and Vesterheim acquired it in 2008.

Per Lysne introduced an innovation to the rosemaling tradition: flat wooden plates that were intended to be hung on a wall, rather than used for eating or serving food.

Vesterheim 1987.155.001— Museum Purchase.

wooden plates to hang on Norwegian-American walls. The painted style said “Norwegian” and the words were also key— Smørgaasbordet er nu dæket – Vær saa god! (The smorgasbord is now on the table – help yourself!) For customers who were Norwegian-American but no longer fluent in the language, those words tapped into the catch phrases like Vær saa god! that were likely to still linger. Though these plates were purely decorative, the form suggested a function that linked them to food service and culinary traditions—one of the most persistent aspects of an immigrant culture to survive from generation to generation.

With all of those elements converging, Lysne’s plates became a statement of ethnic identity—just by hanging one on the wall, the owners aligned themselves with Norwegian heritage. Lysne also inspired others to pick up their paint brushes and imitate the decorations on family heirlooms. This rosemaling revival began organically, spreading through the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1967, Vesterheim became an active participant in the rosemaling revival and introduced a structure that would shape both the instruction and the standards of rosemaling going forward. The museum, directed by Marion Nelson, an art history professor at the University of Minnesota, encouraged painters to study “old masters” in the museum collection. A new offering of folk-art classes, including some taught by instructors from Norway, provided a more formal instruction. By starting a national judged competition, Vesterheim established evaluation criteria. The Gold Medalist program effectively became the accreditation program for rosemalers in America. Today, rosemaling in America is marked by a high degree of adherence to eighteenth and nineteenth century styles, and a high level of technical skill. The forms tend to stick to traditional Norwegian woodenware—such as an ambar, tine, or three-legged chair—with the notable exception of wooden plates, thanks to the legacy of Per Lysne.

Today, Norwegian Americans are just as likely to collect and display new examples of rosemaling as they are antique examples—after all, the quality of the painting is often better than older examples, and painters keep making more of them! As renowned woodcarver Harley Refsal has articulated, folk art today offers a non-language-dependent window into a culture. In other words, for Norwegian Americans who no longer can participate in the language, stories, and songs of their ancestors, the practice and appreciation of folk art becomes a visible, tangible connection to their heritage.

The revival of rosemaling is the most well-known and obvious of Norwegian folk arts in America, but the story can be repeated for woodcarving, knifemaking, weaving, and other textile arts. The celebration and appreciation of handwork as an expression of Norwegian heritage is a common thread through many Norwegian-American families and communities.

Why Don’t the Danes “Do” Folk Art?

Most of the factors that led to the close association of folk art with Norwegian identity simply don’t apply to Denmark and Danish immigrants. When Danes were defining Danish culture in the nineteenth century, they did not look to material

culture. Copenhagen remained a cosmopolitan city and a center of style, and there was no crisis in political leadership that would have favored grass-roots peasant traditions over aristocratic tastes. Danes were also never as isolated as Norwegians were from international markets or industrial developments. The mass emigration of Danes started over 30 years after Norwegians began emigrating in considerable numbers—and overall had a much smaller footprint in establishing Danish-American towns and communities.

Another factor is the relative visibility of post-war immigrants from Denmark. Many Danes have come to the United States and been very active in Danish-American organizations. Because the original immigrant group was relatively small, recent immigrants have quite a lot of influence in shaping Danish-American expression and identity today. Contrast that with the Norwegians—about 50,000 Norwegians have come to the United States since World War II, but the descendants of the earlier migration wave far outnumber them and keep Norwegian-American identity seen largely through the lens of nineteenth-century culture.

A bowl turned by Roger Abrahamson, with contemporary rosemaling by Eldrid Skjold Arntzen is a highlighted piece in this living room

arrangement. Photo courtesy of Jon and Mary Hart.

Hans Wegner poses with his best-known design, the “Round Chair,” more commonly referred to simply as “The Chair” due to its wide

popularity. Photo from the collection of the Museum of Danish America [2005.050.045], gift of the Royal Danish Embassy. Another famous Wegner work, the “Chinese Chair,” was first designed in 1943 with inspiration from seventeenth-century Chinese furniture.

Collection of the Museum of Danish America [2011.040.001], acquired from Dana College. The “Ant Chair” by Arne Jacobsen, designed in 1952. Private collection, photo courtesy of Museum of Danish America. Arne Jacobsen was the architect for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, 1956-1960. His designs for the interior furnishings included the

“Egg” and “Swan” chairs, seen here in the hotel lobby. Photo courtesy of the Republic of Fritz Hansen, http://www.fritzhansen.com/en/fritz-hansen.

So How Do Danish Americans Express Their Identity at Home?

Many Danish Americans—especially post-war immigrants —followed the development of Danish Modern furniture and household goods that started attracting international attention in the 1950s and 1960s. In Denmark at the time, designers had the celebrity status of pop stars and ordinary people were as likely to recognize Hans Wegner as they were his best known designs—like the “Round Chair,” which became so popular it was simply known as “The Chair.” (It didn’t hurt that this was the chair used during the first televised presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960.) Arne Jacobsen was another design star. He always described himself as an architect, but many of his best-known works are chairs with names like “The Ant,” “The Swan,” and “The Egg.” Jacobsen’s greatest project was the complete design, inside and out, for the SAS Royal Hotel (1956-60) in Copenhagen, which became a showcase for modern design in Denmark.

Many immigrants who left Denmark during this period purchased their furniture in Copenhagen and shipped it to their new homes in the United States. Danish Americans who traveled to Denmark at the time, thanks to easier transAtlantic transportation and post-war affluence, encountered Danish Modern design on their travels and brought back awareness and appreciation for the new styles. Danishdesigned furniture and housewares found receptive markets in post-war America and many Danish immigrants and Danish Americans sought out examples as both contemporary style and as an expression of their heritage.

Other Danish Americans, often those who trace their roots to an earlier immigration period, consciously chose imported Danish porcelain for their “best china.” The wellknown expense of purchasing a set of imported porcelain dishes was one sign of achieving success in the new country and also expressed a connection to the homeland, especially in the very popular Blue Fluted dinnerware patterns by Royal Copenhagen (first introduced in 1775) and the Seagull pattern by Bing & Grøndahl (introduced in 1895). Both of these patterns are still in production today. Again, the connection with food traditions is no accident, as these porcelain sets would most likely be used at the same occasions that would feature traditional recipes. In other words, these plates

Blue and white porcelain plates are iconic for Danish craftsmanship and hospitality. The Blue Fluted patterns by Royal Copenhagen are still in production and have inspired many modern interpretations that honor the original design. Examples from the collection of the Museum of Danish

America.

probably have served more Danish pastry than peanut-butterand-jelly sandwiches.

Both porcelain companies also started producing annual Christmas plates, which became a wildly popular collectible for Danish Americans. These are mounted on the wall more often than they are used for serving, and they are not just a seasonal decoration. They become a permanent part of interior decoration and are very visible to guests. Both Royal Copenhagen and Bing & Grøndahl continue to release annual Christmas plates, even though the companies now have merged. They have also experimented with other occasions for annual collectibles, such as Mother’s Day, though none have reached the success of the Christmas plates.

Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this article: How can you tell that a “Scandihoovian” lives here? The choices in how a family furnishes their home can offer insight into their ethnic identity. In the kitchen of Dr. David and Kirsten Heine (top right) there are several clues that tell us this is a Norwegian-American family. They express their Norwegian heritage through folk art, and we can see here the mix of old and new examples. An antique Norwegian cupboard stands against the wall with a contemporary plate with rosemaling on the mantle.

Some Danish-American interiors, like the livingroom of John and Birgitte Christianson (page 12), might be called “Danish American Version 1,” which celebrates the Danish Modern style mixed with a couple of antique pieces. Another example is the dining room of Dawn and John Mark Nielsen (middle photo) in which the table, chairs, and lamp are all good examples of Danish Modern.

Annette Andersen’s kitchen (bottom photo, this page) illustrates “Danish American Version 2,”in which plates and other decorative food-related pieces are clearly in view to celebrate the heritage of the homeowner. On the opposite wall, not seen in this photo, an æbleskiver pan hangs on the wall along with other tools for traditional food preparation. (In a Norwegian-American home, a lefse turning stick or rosette irons might be hung as decoration.)

Many people like to surround themselves with objects of meaning, especially in their private homes. These could be family heirlooms, souvenirs from an adventure abroad, works by a favorite artist, items that show affiliation with a school or profession, or many other choices that reflect various aspects of the owner’s identity. In some cases, ethnic identity has a role to play in furnishing a home. What does your home reveal about you?

About the Author Tova Brandt is the Albert Ravenholt Curator of DanishAmerican Culture at the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa. From 2001 to 2009 she was a curator at Vesterheim. Her experience with both Norwegian and Danish immigrant cultures led to the observations made in this article. Most recently, Brandt curated the exhibition Danish Modern: Design for Living, which opened at the Museum of Danish America in 2013. In 2014, Danish Modern will travel to the Goldstein Museum of Design in St. Paul, Minnesota, from February 1 through April 27, and to the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, from May 16 through August 31. Visit www. danishmuseum.org for more details.

In this kitchen, antique and contemporary Norwegian folk art live side by side.

Photo courtesy of David and Kirsten Heine.

An example of “Danish American Version 1,” which celebrates Danish Modern style.

Photo courtesy of Dawn and John Mark Nielsen.