Case Study Continued

​Mikal was a brick-layer mason and Fredrik had his electrical certification.  Their plan was to work construction in the rapidly expanding cities of the Midwest and Canada while also dealing in real estate.  The lure of land ownership drove Fredrik, the son who was unable to inherit.  Single men, they were able to roam the Upper Midwest and Western Canada to wherever work was available.  Mikal’s contacts in existing Norwegian American communities helped find those jobs.  
 By this time, chain migration was well established in the Midwest.  Chainm migration is the phenomenon of existing settlers encouraging others, relatives or neighbors, to migrate to the same area where they had established a foothold.  Whole towns spoke specific Norwegian dialects.  The men learned English to conduct business outside the community but often women lived their entire lives in rural Midwest and never learned to speak English.  It is not unlike ethnic enclaves now in our cities and suburbs.  Immigrants naturally seek out those who are like them, speak the same language, eat the same foods and celebrate in similar ways.
  Mikal was well known in the area around Hixton and Whitehall Wisconsin where others from Sunnfjord were farming.  From that base, Mikal and Fredrik hired out, initially as farm workers and in the winter joined the logging crews in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.  Day laborers, they quickly learned of construction projects both in the communities near them but also in bigger towns like St. Paul, Minnesota or Chicago, Illinois.  As they moved around, they stayed in rooming houses where they met even more men like themselves seeking opportunities for advancement.  It was this itinerant lifestyle that helped them learn English and gain a wider view of American life.  Fredrik was soon traveling on his own to install electricity in commercial buildings.  Letters began to arrive back in Norway from places like Glasgow Montana and Pierre South Dakota.  
“As you will see from this letter, I am still in Montana in a small town called Glasgow.  Mikal is here, too, and we have good work both of us, he as a bricklayer and I as an electrician.  We will stay here until Christmas.  Then I may go and see the land I own.  I’m happy as long as Mikal is here….It’s in Canada we bought some lots, and it is quite impossible to sell them again because times are hard due to this terrible war.  But hopefully, it will soon be over and Canada will become just as good as before.”
Letter from Fredrik to his sister Anna in Norway.
Glasgow, Montana
October 11, 1914
 
By 1914, Fredrik pursued his belief that the best investment was in land, by staking a claim to 160 acres under the Canadian Dominion Land Act of 1872.   By then, the Dominion Land Act in Canada and the Homesteading Act in the United States had encouraged thousands of people to settle and farm in the Great Plains of North America and displace the indigenous people who had called this vast area home.                                       
 Because he was claiming land late in the homesteading era, Fredrik found that the best available land was near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, just north of Glasgow, Montana, where he had been working.  Fredrik did not seem to be concerned that there were few Norwegians among his neighbors.  His belief that wealth lay in land ownership superseded those considerations. However, he was able to commit to homesteading and hardship because he had no wife or family to provide for.  For him, at that time, it was a business decision, an investment in the future.  In order to earn title to the land, he needed to build a habitable structure, occupy it at least 6 months of every year, and clear and farm the land.   

After Fredrik built a shanty and planted his first crop of wheat, he  sought out construction jobs.  To meet the requirements to make the land his, he lived on the claim for three months during the spring planting season for wheat and three months of harvest.  During the intervals between those times, he was close enough to growing towns to take on electrification jobs in Canada, Montana and the Dakotas.  If needed, he could do masonry and even carpentry.   Though there were defined borders, there were no actual border checkpoints established between Canada and the U.S.  until the 1920’s.  Fredrik moved freely between his land and northern Montana.  When he had completed all the homesteading requirements, not only did he own the land outright, he also became a Canadian citizen.
During the years 1914-1919, Fredrik had become independent of Mikal’s mentorship.  He sent letters to Mikal in Chicago or Whitehall, WI from  Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan or Minot, North Dakota.   Most of the available land for settlers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas had been claimed and developed.  The railroads were established and there was less demand for workers.  The burgeoning West drew Fredrik for the opportunities of homesteading but unlike the first settlers, he also invested in land others had cleared and built on.  He improved his properties by electrifying  the structures. His letters detailed his daily life.  He wrote of women he was seeing, poker games during the winter months, the difficulty of supplies getting to his homestead claim, construction jobs he had or hoped to get.  His letters were dominated by reports of land deals that he did on behalf of himself and Mikal.  His entrepreneurial spirit was evident in these letters that included so much more than clearing land and growing wheat.

“I have one thing on my mind that I would like to ask you, and that is, if you would mind very much if I were to join the [Canadian] [ks2] army?  You see, I’ve got another nine months to put into the land and I don’t need to be there any more if I enlist.”  
Letter from Fredrik to Mikal,
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
July 12, 1916   
​
World War I kept both Fredrik and Mikal in America.  Norway was officially neutral but it’s large naval fleet, strategic position for sea battles, and supply of fish to feed troops was of strategic importance to the Germans and the United Kingdom.  The brothers continued to work and invest their earnings in America, but Norway was never far from their thoughts.  They worried about the farm, the well-being of their father and sisters. Fredrik, the younger brother even considered going to fight for Canada.  His letter seems to say it is to get title to his land more quicklyer but he also may have wanted to defend Norway’s newly won sovereignty.