Dansk immigration til Amerika, 1820-1932

In the years 1820-1932 more than 300.000 Danish people immigrated to America. There could be numerous reasons why young people felt tempted to leave their country. But they had to make a difficult decision. They had to say goodbye to their families, whom they perhaps would never gander upon again, and they should be prepared for a long journey at sea to New York and an insecure future in an unknown country, where they did not knew the language. Most of the Danes settled as farmers on the prairie in the Mid West. From 1852 the American government offered free land to everybody, whom would cultivate the prairie, and 160 acres sounded like a dream for a pour Danish boy from a little farm in Jutland. But they had to work very hard in many years, before they started to see the fruits of their hard labor. One can ponder about the fact that so many survived and did so well. It must have been a secluded life in solitude, far from other humans, far away from friends and family and a long distance from doctors, schools and towns. Many letters home tell about disappointments, sorrows and homesickness. Some Danes – especially workmen’s – installed themselves in the big towns, but they also had to put up with hardships, overpopulated, unhealthy, and dark housing in small streets, where the warm in the summer was intolerable and the cold in the winter was even worse.