Norwegian American Women Quotes

“Women’s Clubs. In The Long and Happy Life of Mrs. Peeleyant: An Autobiography, Elizabeth Ronning Solberg recounts her childhood growing up on a farm in central Minnesota in the early twentieth century. In her account, she described her mother (Johanna Johnson) as the “farm overseer” once her father became ill. While a hired man provided important farm labor, Solberg’s mother managed the farm and increasingly worked outside doing chores after her father died, including “cleaning the barn.”20 Although relatively few Norwegian American farm women managed farms, they routinely employed and supervised hired girls. In Texas, Elise Wærenskjold regularly hired girls to help on the family’s farm, doing both agricultural and domestic work. These hired girls were not always Norwegian or Scandinavian. In 1868, Wærenskjold lost a German girl who had worked for her for a number of years. For a few months of the year, when “milking was heaviest,” she hired African American women to assist her with her chores. Hired girls were often in short supply in farming communities, in large part because of other job opportunities in towns, cities, and urban areas. Thus, it could be difficult to hire a girl.21 Employment opportunities existed for young women on farms and in rural towns and small cities, largely as hired girls or domestics.”
― Betty A. Bergland, Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities, and Identities