During a visit to the National Archives of Norway near beautiful Sognsvann Lake, I was gifted six out of the seven volumes of the Norwegian correspondence edition “Fra Amerika til Norge – i Norske utvandrerbrev 1838-1914”, letters from America to Norway—Norwegian emigrants’ letters 1838-1914 edited by Orm Øverland and Steinar Kjærheim.
The emigrants’ letters are a print-only scholarly edition. However, I deem it worthwhile to include them in the ever-growing collection of letter metadata, CorrespSearch, and open this jewel to a broader audience. We will use the CMIF creator to add the letters manually. Finding authority files for most correspondents will be challenging. They are mostly ordinary people, and thus, they are unlikely to be found in the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) or Wikidata.
2025 is, in a way, the 200-year jubilee of the Norwegian emigration to Northern America. In 1825, the sailing ship “Restauration” left the harbour of Stavanger, heading toward New York with 52 souls on board. Between 1820 and 1920, around 800,000 Norwegians emigrated to America. Many sent letters back home, some of which have been kept and become part of the Amerika Letters edition.
For the summer, NorKorr is planning a collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Local History (NLI), the Sustainable Digital Scholarly Editions Network, and the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History at the University of Oslo for an anniversary metadata sprint to add all letters from the Amerikabrev collection to CorrespSearch.
Will we register all letters and connect Norwegian emigrants to the international correspondence network? Stay tuned!