Norwegian American - Use of Norwegian Language in The United States

Use of Norwegian Language in The United States

Use of the Norwegian language in the United States was at its peak between 1900 and World War I, then:

• Over one million Americans spoke Norwegian as their primary language.
• There were hundreds of Norwegian-language newspapers across the Upper Midwest.
  • Decorah Posten and Skandinaven were major Norwegian language newspapers.
  • The Northfield Independent was another notable newspaper. The Editor Was Andrew Roberg, who collected massive amounts of Norwegian births and deaths in U.S. The file he created is now known as The Rowberg File Maintained at St. Olaf College, and is commonly used in family research across the USA and Norway.
  • Over 600,000 homes received at least one Norwegian newspaper in 1910.
• More than 3,000 Lutheran churches in the Upper Midwest used Norwegian as their sole language.

Use of the Norwegian language declined in the 1920s and 1930s due in large part to the rise of nationalism among the American population during and after World War I. During this period, readership of Norwegian-language publications fell, Norwegian Lutheran churches began to hold their services in English, and the younger generation of Norwegian Americans was encouraged to speak English rather than Norwegian. When Norway itself was liberated from Nazi Germany in 1945, relatively few Norwegian Americans under the age of 40 still spoke Norwegian as their primary language (although many still understood the language). As such, they were not passing the language on to their children, the next generation of Norwegian Americans.

Some source stated that today there are 81,000 Americans who speak Norwegian as their primary language, however, according to the US Census, only 55,475 Americans spoke Norwegian at home as of 2000, and the American Community Survey in 2005 showed that only 39,524 people use the language at home.

Many Lutheran colleges that were established by immigrants and people of Norwegian background, such as Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, continue to offer Norwegian majors in their undergraduate programs. Many major American universities, such as the University of Washington, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Indiana University offer Norwegian as a language within their Germanic language studies programs.

Two Norwegian Lutheran churches in the United States continue to use Norwegian as a primary liturgical language, Mindekirken in Minneapolis and Minnekirken in Chicago.

Literary writing in Norwegian in North America includes the works of Ole Edvart Rølvaag, whose best-known work Giants in the Earth ("I de dage", literally In Those Days) was published in both English and Norwegian versions. Rølvaag was a professor from 1906 to 1931 at St. Olaf College, where he was also head of the Norwegian studies department beginning in 1916.

However, most of Norwegian Americans can speak a common Norwegian with easy words like hello, yes and no. Today, there are still 1,209 people who only understand Norwegian or who do not speak English well in the United States. In 2000 this figure was 215 for those under 17 years old, whereas it increased to 216 in 2005. For other age groups, the numbers went down. For those who are from 18 to 64 years old, went down from 915 in 2000 to 491 in 2005. For those who are older than 65 years it went drastically down from 890 to 502 in the same period. The Norwegian language is likely to never die out in the U.S. because there is still immigration, of course on a much smaller scale, but they emigrate often to other areas, like Texas, where the number of Norwegian speakers increase.