The constitution of Norway is liberal and the government highly democratic. In these respects the people of Norway are now perhaps as favorably circumstanced as we in America. The Norwegian readily enters into the spirit of American laws and institutions, for their laws are not essentially different from his own. Being accustomed to a high degree of freedom, he has been trained to a high conception of the responsibilities that that freedom entails. He has long been accustomed to representation and sharing in the rights of franchise, and he exercises that right as a privilege and a solemn duty. It may be said, I believe, that no people has a higher sense of right and wrong and a stronger moral incentive to right. Frauds in elections and graft in official life are yet unheard-of among our Norwegian-American citizens.
Norway is, next to Finland, the most temperate of European countries. The sale of liquor is permitted only in incorporated cities and towns, and only by an association that is organized under government supervision. It is the so-called Gothenburg system that is in use. Of the earnings of such organization the government takes five per cent, the county ten per cent and the municipality fifteen per cent, while the net profit of the association must not exceed five per cent on the investment in any one year. The hours of sale are very much restricted. Not only is there no sale of liquor on Sundays, but places of such business must close at one o’clock on Saturday and on days preceding holidays. Norway is essentially a temperate country. Statistics show that out of every thousand deaths, only one is due to drink. The Norwegian people have educated themselves to abstinence, and the temperance movement found wide support earlier in Norway than anywhere else. Det norske Totalafholds Selskab[7] was organized in 1859; ten years ago it had ten hundred and twenty branches and a hundred and thirty thousand members, while other temperance associations also have a considerable membership. Here in America, the Norwegian immigrant has taken a prominent part in legislation looking toward the restriction of the sale of intoxicating liquors,[8] and the Prohibition party finds its strongest support among the Norwegians, as it finds a relatively large number of its candidates for state and county offices from among them.
Crime conditions in Norway are similarly significant. Comparative statistics are difficult of access, but Norway’s proportion of serious offences is very low. In the whole period from 1891–1895 the total number was only two hundred and sixty-one. Norway has its poor as every country has, but it has its excellent system of taking care of the poor. Thus every municipality has a Board of Guardians (fattigkommission), which consists of the parish minister, a police officer, and several men chosen by a local board. Norway keeps her criminals and takes care of her poor; she does not send them to America, as has only too often been the case in some other countries.
Norway has a highly developed school system crowned by the Royal Frederik University at Christiania. It has compulsory education, its boards of inspection and its great Department of Public Instruction. It has its People’s High School, its Workingmen’s Colleges, and a system of secondary schools, whose curricula are still on a conservative basis. Its one University ranks with the foremost in Europe, and with it are connected various laboratories and scientific institutions, and it has a library of three hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Here too are located its Botanical Gardens, the Historical Museum, the Astronomical and Magnetic Observatory, the Meteriological Institute and the Biological Marine Station.[9] The salaries of its teachers in Middelskole Gymnasium, and of instructors and professors in the University, reckoned by the purchasing power of money, is approximately thirty per cent greater than that of our middle western universities. I shall also mention The Royal Norwegian Scientific Society at Trondhjem, founded 1760, a similar society in Christiania, founded 1857, the Bergen Museum, founded 1825, with its literary and scientific collections illustrative of the life and cultural history of Western Norway, The Norwegian National Museum in Christiania, founded 1894, similar, but more general in character, The Industrial Arts. Museum,[10] and the various archives of the Kingdom.
As to the Norwegian language I shall merely speak of its highly analytic character, in which respect it has for a long time been developing in the same direction as English, though of course, absolutely independently. Being closely cognate with English, a large part of the vocabulary of the two is of the same stock. Further, its sound system is fundamentally similar. These three considerations, especially perhaps the first, will make clear to us the reason why the Norwegian so readily learns to use the English language, and if he learns it in youth, even to the point of mastery. This is of the greatest importance, for language is in modern times the real badge of nationality. A correct use of the English language is the first and chief stamp of American nationality, the key without which the foreigner cannot enter into the spirit of American life and institutions.
Norwegian literature I cannot either discuss here. The great movements it represents in recent times are fairly well known; its significance and its broad influence are beginning to be understood. The genius of Norwegian literature is morality and truth. It expresses herein the high ethical sense of the nation, which is pagan-racial, but which is also Christian-Lutheran, a church which in its preëminent spirituality is the typical Teutonic church.
CHAPTER II
Emigration from Norway.
Emigration from Norway has in large part been transatlantic. Norway has lost by American emigration a comparatively larger portion of her population than any other country in Europe, with the exception of Ireland. The great majority of the emigrants have gone to the northwestern states and found there their future homes. In Northern Illinois, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in Northern and Western Iowa, in North and South Dakota, they form a very large proportion of the population. Emigration to European countries has been directed chiefly to Sweden and Denmark, though not few have settled in England and Germany and some in Holland. Between 1871 and 1875 about fifteen hundred persons emigrated from Norway to Australia; the number that have gone there since that has been much smaller. These have settled chiefly in South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand. In recent years some have settled in the Argentine Republic in South America. Norwegians are found in considerable numbers in Western Canada, but the majority of these have emigrated from the Norwegian communities in the western states, especially Minnesota and North Dakota.