The course of the journey has been incidentally indicated above. During the first years it was usually by way of Gothenburg, sometimes via Hamburg, not infrequently by way of Havre. The starting point was Stavanger, Bergen, Skien, Drammen, Porsgrund and Christiania, later other ports. New York was most often the place of landing, but not infrequently Boston, in isolated instances, Fall River, Philadelphia and New Orleans. After 1850 sail-ships plied extensively between Scandinavian ports and Quebec.[211] The inland journey from New York went by steamboat to Albany, thence by canal boat to Buffalo, a distance of three hundred and fifty miles, which usually took twelve days but often over two weeks.[212] From Buffalo the journey went by steamboat over the Great Lakes to Milwaukee and Chicago, after 1842 usually to Milwaukee. Those who took the Quebec route after 1850 were then brought to St. Levi by the railroad company’s steamboats, whence they went by rail to Chicago or Milwaukee,[213] a journey which generally took four or five days,[214] over a distance of 1020 miles. Milwaukee-bound passengers were often shipped from Port Huron by way of Lakes Huron and Michigan or were taken by rail from Detroit across Michigan to Grand Haven, thence by steamboat across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee.[215] The latter was of course the shorter and the favored route for immigrants whose destination was Wisconsin, Northern Iowa, or Minnesota. Immigrants who landed in Boston usually went by steamboat thence to New York and from the regular inland route as given above.
The duration of the journey was always a matter of great uncertainty. Intending emigrants who came from the interior of Norway often had to wait as long as two weeks at Bergen or Skien, as the case might be, before the ships on which they were to go sailed. The overhauling and putting in repair of the storm-battered ships often took weeks.[216] The duration of the voyage across the Atlantic depended of course largely upon the state of the weather. With this favorable a sail-boat would usually cross the ocean in six or seven weeks,[217] but in a voyage of such a distance it was practically certain that there would be stormy weather sometime before the other side was reached. In his answer to this question in Billed-Magazin I, page 123, John A. Johnson wrote that the average length was seven weeks, but he adds that those who crossed in that time had no reason to complain. And he speaks of the fact that emigrant ships have in rare cases taken twelve to thirteen weeks.
The Nattestad party made, in 1837, an especially short voyage of thirty-two days from Gothenburg to Fall River. I have no record of any other ship in those early years which sailed so well as did Enigheden. Juno, the most rapid sailer on the Atlantic in the forties, crossed in five weeks and three days in May-June, 1844, which Kristi Melaas of Stoughton, Wisconsin, who was a passenger, says broke the record for speed at that time. Ansten Nattestad and party took nine weeks in 1839 with the ship Emelia from Drammen. Nine weeks is the number which many report as the duration of the voyage in the forties. The party that came with the Luraas brothers from Tin and Gitle Danielson from Stavanger also in 1839 took nine weeks and three days from Gothenburg to Boston. And Aegir took nine weeks on its journey from Bergen to New York in 1837. The sloop Restaurationen we recall crossed in ten weeks. The so-called Brook-ship Albion usually required from eight to nine weeks for the voyage.
In stormy weather the voyage sometimes lasted as much as fourteen weeks. The sail-ship Tricolor took that long in April–July, 1845, the route being from Porsgrund to New York. Ingebrigt Johnson Helle, from Kragerö, who was a passenger, writes of the terrors of this journey (see appendix 2). On a voyage made in 1848 Tricolor took fourteen weeks and four days, according to interview with Kari Gulliksdatter Mogen (from Flesberg, Numedal), who was a passenger on the ship (see Billed-Magazin I, page 388). The little sail-ship in which Nils Hansen Fjeld and family came in 1847 took fourteen weeks from Christiania to New York.[218]
In this connection I shall cite from an article by Dr. K. M. Teigen of Minneapolis, Minnesota, entitled “Pionerliv” (Pioneer Life).[219] He says:
In the days of the sail-ship a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was more of an undertaking than a journey around the world now. Most of the summer might be required for it if the weather was unfavorable. My mother’s party from Flesberg and Lyngdal parishes in Numedal, took seven weeks and four days in 1843 with the brig Hercules, Captain Overvind, between Drammen and New York; my father’s company from Sogndal in Inner Sogn, three years later, lay for fourteen weeks heaving and lunging in contrary winds between Bergen and the promised land. And then came the journey by steamer up the Hudson to Troy, thence through the “canal” and the sluices at Oswego by canal boats, which were drawn with a snail’s pace by horses, lazily moving along the banks; then by way of the lakes by steamer again westward to Milwaukee. For this journey of about a thousand miles another month went by, without counting the walk from Milwaukee to Koshkonong, lying seventy miles distant in the wilderness, whither so many of the earliest Norwegian immigrants were destined.
At the place of landing the immigrants were frequently obliged to wait for several days before the westward journey was begun. To Rock Prairie, Koshkonong or Norway Grove, as the case might be, required another week, and correspondingly more for those bound for more westerly settlements. In all the duration of the journey from Norway to the settlement which was the immigrant’s ultimate destination was rarely made in less than nine weeks; often it consumed as much as five months.