RESCUING TREASURE

In 1996, when the Norwegian investment company that owned it then wanted to sell, a group of Norway Times employees stepped in and purchased it. "We recognized it as a cultural treasure," says Marianne Onsrud Jawanda. "The paper was at a point where it might not have survived unless something was done to rescue it. We had a lot of ideas about how to make it thrive again, and we are happy today that the paper is making new inroads across the continent, reaching the Norwegian community of the 21st Century in a way that is relevant and enriching to their lives."

Today, with offices in Midtown Manhattan, close to other Norwegian centers such as the Consulate General and the Norwegian Seamen's Church, it serves as a link to Norwegians and Norwegian Americans throughout the United States and Canada, playing a key role in connecting and energizing the global Norwegian community.

Now published primarily in English, with at least one page in Norwegian, Norway Times has reflected the changing needs of its readership over the years. While the use of the Norwegian tongue gradually fell into disfavor among the younger generations, for the immigrants, the language had been vital, expressing the way they thought, and evoking thousands of unexpressed memories.

An article in Nordisk Tidende on June 17, 1946 quoted an immigrant who recalled the use of the language in the churches: "There the sermon was in Norwegian, and the hymns were the ancestral expressions of a mystic power, a comfort and consolation in distress, a continuum from childhood in Norway, filled with sentimental and warm memories." But the use of the Norwegian language in America, from the pulpit and the press, would ultimately come to an end. But that didn't mean that the need for a publication dedicated to news and features about all things Norwegian and Norwegian American.
The history of Norwegian newspapers in America paralleled the waves of immigration. For one thing, there were so many of them! There was something about the United States that found its expression in the press. Early Norwegian immigrants found America to be a virtual "land of newspapers," as one pioneer editor described it. The first strictly Norwegian newspaper in America was Nordlyset (The Northern Light), initially printed in a cabin near Muskego, Wisconsin. Founded in 1847, it only lasted three years. At least 400 Norwegian immigrant newspapers have been published from the first days, but one-third of those lasted less than a year. It wasn't easy to get enough subscribers and advertisers to make a go of it.
By 1914, almost 600 periodicals in the Norwegian language had been started, most having a short life, with many mergers and absorptions. More than 300 papers made their debut in the last quarter of the 19th century alone, with a total of 243 Norwegian-American newspapers beginning between 1877 and 1896, the period of the greatest expansion in the number of immigrant journals. About one-third survived a year or less.

In 1946, only 40 were still in circulation, and by the 1980s, only three Norwegian-languages were being published-including Nordisk Tidende-with much of the material now in English. Norway Times-Nordisk Tidende--is the only publication still coming out under the name on its original masthead
Old copies of the paper are hard to find. A fire destroyed one archive in the old Brooklyn plant decades ago. Another collection was wiped out by damage from humidity. But a set representing several decades has been preserved. The Norwegian American Historical Association, based in Northfield, Minnesota, has issues from Sept. 3, 1914 to June 8, 1939 on microfilm, and a copy of the incomplete set is in the archives at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. NAHA also has them from 1983 to present, except for all 1942 issues. The New York Public Library has copies on microfilm dating from 1923.
Norway Times-Nordisk Tidende-is a living legacy of the Norwegian people in America, moving steadily into the ever-changing future, a weekly outpouring of printer's ink produced by, and read by, those who still carry "Norway in their hearts."

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