BIG CITY RESTLESSNESS

In 1941-a dark year for Norway--Nordisk Tidende marked its 50th anniversary. As part of its commemoration activities, it published a 32-page booklet, "Facts About the Norwegian-American Colony in Brooklyn, New York and Nordisk Tidende, 'America's leading Norwegian newspaper.'"

The material in the booklet was drawn from surveys about the Norwegian community conducted on the pages of the paper. Norwegians, many of them stranded in New York during the war years, were asked, among other things, what they liked most and least about life in America. Many registered complaints about the "noise and restlessness of the big cities" and some of the elements in American advertising, but there was overwhelming praise for the American way of life, with many saying they wanted to take several aspects of it back to Norway. The survey recorded details about the community, such as the fact that even in 1941, a predominance of Norwegian men in Brooklyn were still working in shipping, on harbor vessels, in shipyards or as sailors. That fact and other material from the survey is cited even today by historians and scholars seeking to paint a picture of Norwegian immigration, the Norwegian war years, and the Brooklyn community.

On the Internet, you can listen to Søyland discussing the survey, as recorded in a 1944 radio broadcast. The program was one of the "Spirit of the Vikings" series produced during the war years by the Norwegian Information Office in New York. The broadcast can be heard, in English, at a site run jointly by the Norwegian National Library and the Norwegian Emigration Museum site at http://www.nb.no/emigration.

The survey included a detailed profile of the Norwegian community in Brooklyn. In 1940, the largest urban population of Norwegian stock in America was in New York City, with the census figures showing 54,530, most of them concentrated in Brooklyn. The next largest was Minneapolis with 42,557.

The Brooklyn Norwegian immigrant community was at its largest in 1946-47, just as World War II ended victoriously. But as the community dispersed during the post-war decades, the paper changed, extending its coverage and its readers in all directions, from coast to coast. By the end of the 1960s, Nordisk Tidende-Norway Times-was becoming a national publication.

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