Rasmus Anderson (1846-1936), the American author, scholar, editor, businessman and diplomat, intertwines his life story with the cultural and institutional history of the Norwegian-American community as a whole. There are eyewitness accounts of tension within American factions and branches of the Lutheran church over such issues as slavery and public education as well as anecdotes about Ole Bull, Knut Hamsun, Björnstjerne Björnson, Robert La Follette, James G. Blaine and various European monarchs and heads of state. Anderson began his life on a farm in Albion, Dane County, Wisconsin. After many efforts to finance and obtain the kind of education he wanted, he pioneered the study and teaching of Scandinavian languages at the University of Wisconsin (1869-1883). Between 1885 and 1889, he served as U.S. minister to Denmark. He eventually prospered as president of the Wisconsin Life Insurance Co., from 1895-1922. In 1874, Anderson attracted widespread attention with his America Not Discovered By Columbus. He is remembered for his studies, translations, and retellings of Norse mythology. The more active and public aspects of his life are emphasized in this work.

This book examines the legends of who ‘really’ discovered America. It argues that histories of America's origins were always based less on empirical evidence and more on social, political, and cultural wish fulfillment. Influenced by a complex interplay of Nativist hatred of immigrants and Aboriginal people, as well as distrust of academic scholarship, these legends ebbed and flowed with changing conditions in wider American society. The book focuses on the actions of a collection of quirky, obsessed amateur investigators who spent their lives trying to prove their various theories by promoting Welsh princes, Vikings, Chinese admirals, Neo-lithic Europeans, African explorers, and others who they say arrived centuries before Columbus. These myths acted as mitigating agencies for those who embraced them. Along with recent scholarship, this book makes extensive use of archival materials—some of which have never been employed before. It covers the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It brings together separate historiographic ideas to create a unified history rather than focusing on one particular legend as most books on the subject do. It shows how questions of who discovered America helped create the field of historical scholarship in this country. This book does not attempt to prove who discovered America, rather it tells the story of those who think they did.

Excerpt from Life Story of Rasmus B. Anderson After long and repeated urging on the part of many friends, Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson has undertaken the writing of his autobiography which he has also consented to give to the readers of this paper in installments, beginning with the opening of the new year. Prof. Anderson's career has been interesting from many points of view. His parents were among the earliest Norwegian settlers in this country, so that his story reaches back and practically covers the whole period of Norwegian settlement. He was a member of the first class to graduate from Luther College at Decorah, Iowa, was the first man to hold a chair in Scandinavian languages and literature in an American university, and was the first of Scandinavian parentage to represent our country abroad, serving as United States minister to Denmark from 1885 to 1889. He has also written and translated numerous books dealing with Scandinavian history and literature. In the American supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica he is called the father of Norwegian literature in America. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

From early modern times rulers and politicians have sought to ground their legitimacy in ancient tradition - which they have often invented or rewritten for their own purposes. This issue of Studies in Medievalism presents a number of such cases.

This volume investigates the reception of a small historical fact with wide-ranging social, cultural and imaginative consequences. Inspired by Leif Eiriksson’s visit to Vinland in about the year 1000, novels, poetry, history, politics, arts and crafts, comics, films and video games have all come to reflect rising interest in the medieval Norse and their North American presence. Uniquely in reception studies, From Iceland to the Americas approaches this dynamic between Nordic history and its reception by bringing together international authorities on mythology, language, film and cultural studies, as well as on the literature that has dominated critical reception. Collectively, the chapters not only explore the connections among medieval Iceland and the modern Americas, but also probe why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone.

Includes articles and reviews covering all aspects of American history. Formerly the Mississippi Valley Historical Review,

Thure Kumlien was one of Wisconsin’s earliest Swedish settlers and an accomplished ornithologist, botanist, and naturalist in the mid-1800s, though his name is not well known today. He settled on the shore of Lake Koshkonong in 1843 and soon began sending bird specimens to museums and collectors in Europe and the eastern United States, including the Smithsonian. Later, he prepared natural history exhibits for the newly established University of Wisconsin and became the first curator and third employee of the new Milwaukee Public Museum. For all of his achievements, Kumlien never gained the widespread notoriety of Wisconsin naturalists John Muir, Increase Lapham, or Aldo Leopold. Kumlien did his work behind the scenes, content to spend his days in the marshes and swamps rather than in the public eye. He once wrote that he was not “cut out for pretensions and show in the world.” Yet, his detailed observations of Wisconsin’s natural world—including the impact of early agriculture on the environment—were hugely important to the fields of ornithology and botany. As this carefully researched and lovingly rendered biography proves, Thure Kumlien deserves to be remembered as one of Wisconsin’s most influential naturalists.

A study of thirty selected Norwegian-American newspapers, with special reference to their editorial positions on public affairs from 1875 to 1925. The political views of congress-people of Norwegian descent are also discussed.

"Covering the United States and Canada [with their possessions and neighbors] and containing the biographical and literary data of living authors whose birth or activities connect them with the continent of North America, with a press section devoted to journalists and magazine writers" (varies slightly).