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Paper short abstract

Archives from 19th-century Nordic settlers in Texas reveal an ongoing exchange between settlers, academics, and audiences across the Atlantic regarding settler colonial nation-building and the potential influence of Nordic imaginaries through literature.

Paper long abstract

In 1961, The Lady With the Pen: Elise Wærenskjold in Texas, a translation of letters by the Norwegian journalist and newspaper editor Elise Wærenskjold, was published by the Norwegian American Historical Association. Elise Wærenskjold moved from southern Norway to Four Mile Prairie, Texas, in 1847 and lived there until she died in 1891. An integral part in documenting the Norwegian settlements in the US, Wærenskjold assisted scholars who promoted the Nordic Sagas for American audiences. From her settlement, she wrote frequently to Norwegian newspapers describing her life in Texas and the importance of literature for Nordic settler communities in Texas. In her letters, she criticises the institution of slavery while simultaneously promoting an image of the US South, and Texas specifically, as a place of freedom and equality.

This paper analyses Wærenskjold’s description of her migration and the building of the Norwegian settlement within the analytic of settler colonialism while also attending to her constant negotiation with the nation and her position in it. I focus specifically on Wærenskjold’s choice of words as I argue that her vocabulary, specifically her use of the words immigrant and settler, and moreover the transition from migrant to settler, as years pass, provides insight into the ongoing process of conceptualising her position in the United States. By analysing this transition alongside recent scholarship on the impact of Nordic imaginaries on the US nation-building, I examine how Wærenskjold interacts with the position of the settler while distancing herself from the ongoing process of colonialism.