In the years of 1820-1932 more than 300.000 danes emigrated to America. There can be a lot of reasons, why young people felt tempted to leave their country. But they had to make a tough decision. They were to say goodbye to their families, whom they might never see again. And they were to be prepared for a long journey across the sea, to New York and an insecure future in an unknown country, where they did not know the spoken language. Most of the danes settled as peasants on the prairie in the middlewest. From the year 1862 the state of America offered free soil to everyone who would cultivate the prairie, and 160 acres sounded like a dream to a poor danish boy from a little farm in Jylland. But they had to work very hard for a lot of years, before they began to see the results in their work. One can wonder, how so many people survived and did so well.
It had to be a very lonely life, far from other people, far from friends and family, and far from doctors, schools and cities. Many letters home talks about disappointments, sorrows and homesickness. Some danes - especially the artisans - settled in the big dark cities, but they had to get along with rough terms, crowded, unhealthy and dark apartments in small streets, where the heat in the sommer was unbearable and the cold in the winter was even worse.
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