William's Immigrant Story

  I was mesmerized by an immigrant story tonight. The storyteller is William, who is also my roommate. It started around 1850s, when William's great grandparents were living in Norway. Stories about how wonderful America is spread through the Scandinavian countries. Norway was indeed a nice place to live but it was overpopulated. They were attracted by the individual freedom and abundant resources in the vast land of America. Therefore they decided to immigrate to America, and settled in a place that has the same climate and environment they used to have back home, Minneapolis. Their children were then married to other ethnic groups from Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Germany that also immigrated to the twin cities. Some of them moved to Wisconsin and this is where William was born. I am surprised that he said he is less than one-eight Norwegian, which is considered his country of origin heritage. Neither him nor his family can speak Norwegian, because their great grandparents want to adapt to the American cultures and were apt to speak English. They even altered their last name to a more English-friendly name to fit themselves into the Americans. However, they still keep some of their customs, like traditional food. Every Christmas, they will have the family gather for dinner with traditional food like lutefisk (made from fish), Swedish meatball(ground beef) ,lefse(a Norwegian flat bread) and rice pudding. These dishes are made uniquely and served only on special occasions. Unfortunately, they do not maintain contacts with any relatives in Norway. Some of the family members did genealogy research but nothing was found. William has never visited his home country but he said, ''I will definitely go to Norway before I die.'' I believe he will and I would want to hear from him when that day comes.