Author Description

This collection of essays is published in memory of Jon Gjerde (see photo below, courtesy of Ruth Gjerde), who was professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley until his premature death on October 26, 2008. He was 55 years old. For years Jon Gjerde worked incessantly within the field of Norwegian-American history. His research, publications, and teaching had taken him from Balestrand to Berkeley, from a study of emigration from a small community on the western coast of Norway to an important chair in American history at Berkeley. Like few others, Gjerde had the capacity to focus on details of immigration history and culture and, in the same way, to generate an interest in the overall picture of immigration. As he admitted in the preface to From Peasants to Farmers (1985), this historical inquiry was also in part a personal search. Norwegian-American studies has always been a cross-disciplinary field of research embracing history and cultural studies, art and literature, as well as music and religion. Norwegian-American documents and records have been studied and continue to be read and analyzed in the context of both Norwegian and American history, and in the light of contemporary international migration studies. Six of the essays included are based on papers delivered at the NAHA-Norway conference held at the Norwegian Emigrant Museum in June, 2009. The remaining essays were all solicited especially for this volume.