Norwegian emigration to the United States took the sailing of Norden and Den Norske Klippe in 1836. In 1843 it began to assume larger proportions; in that year sixteen hundred immigrants from Norway settled in the United States. During 1866–1870, a period of financial depression in Norway, there left, on an average, about fifteen thousand a year. The rate fell in the seventies, rose again in the eighties, the figure for 1882 being 29,101 persons, while it averaged over eighteen thousand per annum also for the next decade. In 1898 it was not quite five thousand, then again it rose steadily, reaching 24,461 in 1903.
The Norwegian emigration has been mostly from rural districts, day-laborers, artisans, farmers, seamen, but also those representing other pursuits. Not a few with professional or technical education have settled in America; we find them in the medical profession,[11] in the ministry,[12] in journalism, in the faculties of our colleges. All the age-classes are represented among immigrants from Norway, but by far the largest number of both men and women have come during the ages of twenty to thirty-five, and particularly the first half of these series of years.
This great emigration of the Norwegian race during the nineteenth century has, of course, very materially retarded the growth of the population in Norway, especially in the period from 1865 to 1890. The increase between 1815 and 1835 was as high as 1.34 per cent annually. From 1835 to 1865 it was 1.18 per cent, but during 1865–1890 it fell to 0.65 per cent. Since 1890 the increase has been considerable again. But during 1866–1903 the total emigration from Norway to the United States alone aggregated five hundred and twenty-four thousand. To this number should be added the children of these if we are to have a proper basis of estimation for the increase of the race in the last half century. This increase thus has been 1.40 per cent annually, that is, the race has doubled itself in fifty years. We may compare with France, where the increase has been 0.23 per cent, Russia,[13] where it has been 1.35, in Servia, where it has been 2.00 per cent, this being the highest in Europe. The increase in Sweden and Denmark is about the same as in Norway—reckoning the racial increase.
It will be of interest here to consider briefly the immigration from the Scandinavian countries as a whole.
During the years 1820–1830 not more than 283 emigrated from the Scandinavian countries to the United States. In the following decade the number only slightly exceeded two thousand. Since 1850 our statistics regarding the foreign born population are more complete. In that year we find there were a little over eighteen thousand persons in the country of Scandinavian birth. In 1880 this number had reached 440,262; while the unprecedented exodus of 1882 and the following years had by 1890 brought the number up to 933,249. Thus the immigrant population from these countries, which in 1850 was less than one per cent, had in 1890 reached ten per cent of the whole foreign element. The following table will show the proportion contributed by the countries designated for each decade since 1850:
Table I
| 1850 | 1860 | 1870 | 1880 | 1890 | 1900 | |
| —————PER CENT————— | ||||||
| Ireland | 42.8 | 38.9 | 33.3 | 27.8 | 20.2 | 15.6 |
| Germany | 26 | 30.8 | 30.4 | 29.4 | 30.1 | 25.8 |
| England | 12.4 | 10.5 | 10 | 9.9 | 9.8 | 8.1 |
| Canada | 6.6 | 6 | 8.9 | 10.7 | 10.6 | 11.4 |
| Scotland and Wales | 4.4 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.2 |
| Scandinavia | .9 | 1.7 | 4.3 | 6.6 | 10.1 | 10.3 |
Thus it will be seen that among European countries Scandinavia, considered as one, stands third in the number of persons contributed to the American foreign-born population, exceeding that of Scotland and Wales in 1870 and that of England in 1890. Both the Irish and the German immigration reached considerable numbers at least fifteen years before that from the North, Ireland having contributed nearly forty-three per cent of the total in 1850, and Germany twenty-six. By 1900 the Irish quota had fallen to fifteen per cent, while the German is nearly twenty-six and that from Scandinavia ten per cent. In 1870 our Scandinavian-born immigrant population was twice as large as the French and equalled the total from Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Russia.[14]
The Norwegians are the pioneers in the emigration movement from the North in the nineteenth century; the Danes were the last to come in considerable numbers. Statistics, however, show that one hundred eighty-nine Danes had emigrated to this country before 1830, while there were only ninety-four from Norway and Sweden. The Norwegian foreign-born population had in 1850 reached 12,678; while that from Sweden was 3,559; and Denmark had furnished a little over eighteen hundred. The Danish immigration was not over five thousand a year until 1880 and has never reached twelve thousand. The Swedish immigration received a new impulse in 1852; it was five thousand in 1868; it reached its climax of 64,607 in 1882. According to Norwegian statistics the emigration from Norway to the United States was six thousand and fifty in 1853, but according to our census reports did not reach five thousand before 1866; the highest figure, 29,101, was reached in 1882 (according to our census).[15]
The total emigration from the Scandinavian countries to America between 1820 and 1903 was 1,617,111. This remarkable figure becomes doubly remarkable when we stop to consider that the population of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden is only two and one-half per cent of the total population of Europe; yet they have contributed nearly ten per cent of our immigrant population. There are in this country nearly one-third as many Scandinavians (counting those of foreign birth and foreign parentage both) as in the Scandinavian countries; for the German element the ratio is one to thirteen.