Vesterheim Museum and Spring Valley Church Museum

Going to historical museums gives me a chance to reflect on the degree to which the present is shaped by the past, often in ways that escape our awareness.  For pioneers, the big decisions relate to where they are going to settle and what elements of their past lives they are going to preserve.  These decisions affect the descendants of these pioneers forever.

We visited the Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, MN.  This museum is dedicated to Norwegian pioneers.  This museum showed the way things looked in the old country and the reasons for emigration from it.  They show Norway as a beautiful place, but one that is running out of land and that is trapped in a largely feudalistic economy.  Since land ownership was restricted largely to the aristocracy and there were strict rules for passing on property to descendants, Norwegians did not see any way to get ahead.  There was also persecution of Norwegian Quakers and follower of pietist preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge, and overpopulation brought about by - among other things - the introduction of calorie-rich potatoes.

The most striking thing about this museum was that it showed the way certain folkways and arts from the old country were preserved to this day.  The second floor has breathtaking displays of woodcarving and rosemaling.  I did take some pictures, but since we could not use a flash I think you should check out the museum's website.  The chip carving is particularly detailed, and the pieces have an elaborate symmetry that is stunning.  I think that only a people who lived in an exceptionally. cold climate could have the dedication to create such a detailed art form.    The third floor holds a display of modern pieces based on the traditional forms.  The art of Americans of Norwegian heritage is not something that I knew much about, but since we visited this museum we have seen tropes in various aspects of Minnesota design and architecture.  

Not only does history shape us, but we shape history.  I don't mean to say that history is a blank canvas for us to invent a past, but there are elements of the past that we preserve and some that we don't.  In the Vesterheim, it is clear that they want the story to be of escape from oppression and triumph in a new country.  While there is some mention of early hardships, the emphasis is on success in the New World.   

This museum definitely put me in touch with an aspect of American history that I was only vaguely familiar with.  In My Antonia, Lena Lingard is portrayed as a skilled dressmaker, but I did not have a sense of the long tradition of fine craftsmanship that Norwegians are known for.

We also visited the Spring Valley Church Museum in Spring Valley, MN.  This church was built, in part, by a donation from Almanzo's parents, and Almanzo and Laura attended services here for about a year.  Although this museum has a tenuous connection to Laura Ingalls Wilder, they do an exceptional job of capitalizing on that connection.   We almost did not stop here, but decided it was best to escape a storm.  It was a good thing, because the rain hit hard.

This a large church, and the admission gives you a guided tour of two floors.  The top floor is a museum with pictures from Laura's family and some historical religious implements, which don't have anything to do with the Little House books, but which are well preserved.  Even though the Little House things are mostly pictures that we have already seen, our guide had good descriptions of the other sites.  The bottom floor is dedicated to Spring Valley history.  Richard Sears, of Sears and Roebuck, was from here.  This collection was rather random, but much better organized than the museum in Pepin.  I can understand that it is a hard task to organize hundreds of items that are donated or are on loan.