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Old Peninsula Days: Tales and Sketches of the Door County Peninsula
Reprint of 1925 history of Door County, Wisconsin.
245 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Hjalmar Rued Holand
43 books4 followersNorwegian-American author
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 24, 2022
I gave this book 5 stars because it is a history of my homeland. The writing is definitely archaic as it was written 100 years ago. The last sentence of the book is so true. "The Door County sailor looks back to his native home with its headlands and variously indented shores, its forests and green fields, and its glorious sunsets, as the fairest spot on earth."
August 1, 2024
Good, some amazing stories, definitely not a modern tone
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2025
Tales of Door County
There are some interesting stories and historical bits of information in this book If you’re familiar with Door County, you will probably enjoy this book.
There are some interesting stories and historical bits of information in this book If you’re familiar with Door County, you will probably enjoy this book.
June 21, 2026
Irresistible peninsula lore. Some unfortunate and outdated verbiage around natives but I absolutely ate up the history and tales of our beloved peninsula.
February 13, 2017
My parents have been vacationing in Door County, Wisconsin since the early 1970s, and throughout my childhood, my sister and I would accompany them to this quaint, picturesque peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan. Even as hordes of tourists descend upon the rural county, with its cherry orchards and fishing hamlets, high end boutiques and fancy restaurants, it retains vestiges of its historical, hardscrabble past. It was this that inspired me to read this book, a reprint of a 1959 edition, on a recent visit, having picked it up at a used book store sometime ago (it's original owner having purchased it at one of said boutiques twenty years earlier). However, I must admit I was a bit skeptical of its veracity from the start and I can’t say it really holds up as the definite historical account of the region.
Consisting of a series of vignettes in a vague chronology, Old Peninsula Days features interesting backgrounds for the history of the Peninsula and the surrounding Great Lakes region, from its original inhabitants, to its place in the conflict between various western powers, to the Belgian and Scandinavian immigrants who settled it to farm and fish. Much of it, based on oral history collected by Norwegian born Hjalmar Holand, appears entirely apocryphal, almost tall tale like- a Norwegian and Irish neighbor’s increasingly cruel and elaborate practical jokes played on each other, various tales of people surviving nights cast adrift on floating slabs of ice on the lake. However, these occasionally amusing or riveting stories could not balance the many issues Holand has as a historian.
I first encountered the author in his role as proselytizer and advocate of the Kensington Rune Stone, the intriguing little conundrum of Minnesota lore- see more here. Of course, his rather fervent defense he created a myth around the stone that has little bearing on reality. Here, he writes of his adopted homeland and the towns and landmarks found there with the same breathless authority to be found in his other, more outre writing. Not a professional historian, his account is full of convenient hyperbole and moralizing, bigotry and trite declarations.
The most obvious and troublesome issue in Old Peninsula Days was its persistent, awful racism. Few chapters went by without some disparaging remark or insult to one ethnic group or another, even where you might least expect it. Though one can expect differing cultural mores and attitudes from people writing through their own background and time period, Holand’s writing seemed extreme and bizarrely rampant even for its day. Even the academic mainstream of the late ‘50’s were rarely so openly racist as this. The indigenous peoples who inhabited the Great Lakes region before Europeans obviously came out the worst. Holand, though occasionally sympathetic to indigenous people being ill treated by settlers, consistently depicts them as "primitive" "savages," using that very word numerous times, and even proclaiming that an appreciation of the natural splendors of the peninsula was impossible to them. Rarely did he pass up any excuse to insult or belittle these groups, and it quickly became painful to read.
Finally, Holand’s writing is often stilted and affected, not exactly pleasant reading for a relaxing camping trip. There are other sources that offer accounts of the same tales and historical accounts in a much more pleasant manner, and I can’t recommend Old Peninsula Days. Check out more on my blog, Reading Rainstorm!
Consisting of a series of vignettes in a vague chronology, Old Peninsula Days features interesting backgrounds for the history of the Peninsula and the surrounding Great Lakes region, from its original inhabitants, to its place in the conflict between various western powers, to the Belgian and Scandinavian immigrants who settled it to farm and fish. Much of it, based on oral history collected by Norwegian born Hjalmar Holand, appears entirely apocryphal, almost tall tale like- a Norwegian and Irish neighbor’s increasingly cruel and elaborate practical jokes played on each other, various tales of people surviving nights cast adrift on floating slabs of ice on the lake. However, these occasionally amusing or riveting stories could not balance the many issues Holand has as a historian.
I first encountered the author in his role as proselytizer and advocate of the Kensington Rune Stone, the intriguing little conundrum of Minnesota lore- see more here. Of course, his rather fervent defense he created a myth around the stone that has little bearing on reality. Here, he writes of his adopted homeland and the towns and landmarks found there with the same breathless authority to be found in his other, more outre writing. Not a professional historian, his account is full of convenient hyperbole and moralizing, bigotry and trite declarations.
The most obvious and troublesome issue in Old Peninsula Days was its persistent, awful racism. Few chapters went by without some disparaging remark or insult to one ethnic group or another, even where you might least expect it. Though one can expect differing cultural mores and attitudes from people writing through their own background and time period, Holand’s writing seemed extreme and bizarrely rampant even for its day. Even the academic mainstream of the late ‘50’s were rarely so openly racist as this. The indigenous peoples who inhabited the Great Lakes region before Europeans obviously came out the worst. Holand, though occasionally sympathetic to indigenous people being ill treated by settlers, consistently depicts them as "primitive" "savages," using that very word numerous times, and even proclaiming that an appreciation of the natural splendors of the peninsula was impossible to them. Rarely did he pass up any excuse to insult or belittle these groups, and it quickly became painful to read.
Finally, Holand’s writing is often stilted and affected, not exactly pleasant reading for a relaxing camping trip. There are other sources that offer accounts of the same tales and historical accounts in a much more pleasant manner, and I can’t recommend Old Peninsula Days. Check out more on my blog, Reading Rainstorm!
November 14, 2010
If you have one book in your library on the history of the Door County Peninsula, it should be this one. Holand writes like he’s sitting on your front porch, remembering days gone by. I laughed at the situations the early settlers found themselves in and obsessively read the history of each of the settlements founded on the peninsula. Holand tells the stories of the Native Americans (which in 1925 he was able to describe as “Indians”), the early French explorers and missionaries, Washington Island, Ephraim, Fish Creek, Egg Harbor, Hedgehog Harbor, and Rowley’s Bay. He devotes a chapter to the lighthouse keepers along Death’s Doors that legends were made of.
May 29, 2014
Very good, turns out it was written in the old peninsula days, first published in 1925 it's not about touristy modern door county but pioneer door county. Has a nice section on the various pre-French wars between the tribes in the region that are usually glossed over.
September 10, 2014
Charming collection of essays about the earliest white settlers of Door County, Wisconsin, "the Cape Cod of the Midwest."
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews