"To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag," ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"]:
Rev. Karl Xavier's 1920 Condolence Poem:
By John E. Xavier
Esssay Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved
Translation, Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved
Rev. Karl Xavier's 1920 Condolence Poem:
By John E. Xavier
Esssay Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved
Translation, Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved
Preface
In 1920, Rev. Karl Xavier composed his condolence poem "To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag," ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"] on the occasion of great family loss for the Rolvaag family. That family loss was the death by drowning of Paul Gunnar Rolvaag, young son of Professor Ole. E. Rolvaag and Jennie (Berdahl) Rolvaag. Paul's drowning was the result of a fall into a cistern--a tragic accident, giving rise to the words of this poem, Rev. Karl Xavier's heartfelt message to the Rolvaag family.
An original manuscript of the poem is archived among the Rolvaag papers, at the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) in Northfield, Minnesota. If the poem was ever published prior to the 1980s, no evidence surfaced in any research I have conducted to date. A Xavier family manuscript copy of the poem came to light in 1980, written in the careful hand of Karl Xavier. That manuscript was translated from Dano-Norwegian (formal Norwegian) to American English in the early 1980s by Magdalene X. Visovatti. This work was part of her massive translation project which came to fruition in 1982 as Norwegian Poems.
Visovatti was the eldest daughter of Rev. Xavier and his first wife, Henriette Elisabeth Randine (Larsen) Xavier, and was a student of Prof. Rolvaag during her years at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The Xavier family manuscript had been preserved for nearly sixty years by Valborg Henrietta (Xavier) Houghtelin, eldest daughter of Xavier and his second wife, Bina (Kamrud) Xavier.
The poem was privately published by the Xavier family in 1982 as part of the bilingual collection, Norwegian Poems. The bulk of Rev. Xavier's poetry in Norwegian Poems had already been published in various periodicals. In contrast, the subject poem of this article, "To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag" / ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"] thus finally made its delayed debut in a public arena only in 1982. [1]
This essay is broken down to four main parts: dealing in the first case with background and the poem itself; and in the second, with supplemental information, including a brief epilogue. Those two parts are followed by reference notes, and then, finally, comes, a substantial appendix.
Minor technical remarks are in order about the actual text of Magdalene X. Visovatti's work and this article in general. The following two items of information should be helpful. First, in line 5, I have inserted the traditional spelling of "brought," over-riding Visovatti's use of the progressive spelling "brot." Second, in line 9, "children's friend" was among Norwegian-American Lutherans a common spoken and written reference to Jesus Christ.
In the written and spoken word of the Norwegian Americans, the Dano-Norwegian language, Jesus Christ was often referred to as "undommens ven" [young person's friend] or, in the case of this poem, as "barnenes ven" [children's friend]. Finally, references to the "Dano-Norwegian and "Norwegian" languages here are to be taken as synonymous.
The poem "To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag" / ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"] has sufficient literary value to stand of itself with minimal explanation. However, to pay due homage to the literary and historical roles of the family of Prof. O.E. Rolvaag, some supplemental material both in the body of this essay and as well in the Bibliography and Appendix.
Acknowledgements
Part One: Introduction and the Poem:
"To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag" ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"]
(1920)
(1920)
The Rolvaag family had already by 1920 achieved prominence in Norwegian circles, some years before the enormous fame attached to Ole E. Rolvaag's immigrant narrative, Giants in The Earth. Prof. Rolvaag's prominence was due to his many accomplishments in teaching, writing, publishing, and ethnic leadership from his base at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. There, Prof. Rolvaag's entire family was also involved in local and church activities. Then, in 1920, disaster struck the Rolvaag family, when ten-year-old son, Paul, drowned.
Prior to 1920. Prof. Rolvaag and Rev. Xavier had known each other for about fifteen years, through various connections. Like her father, Magdalene Xavier (later Visovatti) also had a direct connection to Prof. Rolvaag, as a student and colleague, graduating from St. Olaf in 1920.
Prof. Rolvaag and Rev Xavier shared a common background of many years work and study on the northern prairies and plains of the United States: Rolvaag as a farm worker, student and professor in South Dakota and Minnesota, Xavier as professor and pastor in Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska. Xavier was a Lutheran minister in the old Norwegian Lutheran Synod ("The Synod"), an ethnic immigrant church body founded in 1853. He also served in its successor, the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church (NELC), from 1917 until his death in 1924.
Among the more notable of the Rolvaag -Xavier connections were numerous shared efforts in providing articles and poetry for the quarterly periodical Nord-Norge, the publishing outlet of the Nordlandslaget, the Norwegian ethnic society for emigrants from the Arctic reaches of Norway, known as Nordland.
Xavier's eldest daughter, Magdalene Xavier (later Visovatti) was at the time of Paul Rolvaag's drowning enrolled at St. Olaf College and was among Prof. Rolvaag's brightest students. It is also worth noting that the Rolvaag's grief at the death of the five-year-old Paul Rolvaag was doubtlessly compounded by the dismaying fact that he died a mere five years on the heel of the loss in 1915 of another son, six-year-old, Olaf Arnjlot.
Karl Xavier's condolence poem to Ole and Jennie Rolvaag exemplifies his love of children, both his own and those of his circle of extended family and friends. The poem is heartfelt in its expression of sympathy, and draws the deep wells of his background which combined education, literary bent, and spirituality. In his pastoral calling, Xavier often encountered the brutal reality of early childhood death, as child life expectancy a century ago was far from what it is in our times.
The poem should therefore be seen in the context of the many years of acquaintanceship of Prof. Rolvaag and Rev. Xavier, to say nothing of their professional cooperation, most particularly in the periodical Nord-Norge. Nord-Norge, the publication of the Nordlandslaget (Northern Norwegian Ethnic Group) still publishes today, and was already well known in 1920. Nord-Norge attracted a number of active contributors ot time, money, and talent. Among those were Prof. Rolbaag, Rev. Xavier, and others, including Julius Baumann.
These men of letters shared time and effort for Nord-Norge is evident in the pages which give ample testimony to their common Arctic geographic origins. For Prof. Rolvaag, those origins included the profound experience of the sea-faring life of the Lofoton area, with its island-based fishing industry in which he had worked.
Before emigrating from Norway, Rolvaag worked for about six years at the risk-filled life of fishing boats there, where he would have been acquainted with the coastal Saami. As for the Saami-born Rev. Xavier, his own ancestral Arctic zone included Finmark and Troms areas of today's Sapmi (formerly known as Lappland). There, Xavier's extended family was quite well known in Sapmi under the name of Tornensis, and was largely devoted to teaching, church work, and reindeer herding, active in the areas of Guovdageaidno, Lyngen and others.
In the 1980s, Rev. Xavier's eldest daughter, Magdalene X. Visovatti (nee Karen Magdalena Xavier) translated the condolence poem from an original Dano-Norwegian manuscript found in family papers preserved by her half-sister, Valborg (Xavier) Houghtelin. Visovatti, known as "Mag," "Maggie," or "Mugda" in family circles, would accomplish the translation by drawing on her knowledge gained as a student of Norwegian language and culture under Prof. Rolvaag. Visovatti maintained correspondence with Prof. Rolvaag for some years after graduating from St. Olaf College, where she earned a BA degree in 1920.
Visovatti soon entered the teaching field, ultimately earning an MS at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; she continued in teaching for over forty years. Visovatti had considerable background in Norwegian studies, personal experience in publishing and translating, which she brought to bear on the project leading to Norwegian Poems. Those technical factors, in concert with her endless enthusiasm for life itself, made her the ideal person to carry out the translation of this poem, as well as of the other manuscripts preserved by Valborg Houghtelin.
In the largest and most generous sense of the term "matriarchal," Visovatti was for about a seventy-year span a respected matriarchal force in her extended Xavier family, and an early promoter of the Saami (as well as Norwegian) origins of the extended Xavier family. In the translation of her father's poems we see the full force and lifelong extension of her creative skills.
This translated poem is a significant part of the literary legacy of the extended Xavier family; the poem is still speaking to the duality of anguish and spiritual hope for those who have suffered the death of a child. We turn now to the poem itself, in the English translation. [2]
"To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag" ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"]
By Rev. Karl Xavier / av Pr. Karl Xavier
Translation by Magdalene X. Visovatti / oversatt av Magdalene X. Visovatti
A short time ago a loving little lad,
With a twinkle in his eye and a wave of his hand,
Played happily there in your home. - But suddenly the play is ended,
And the twinkle in his eye extinguished.
It [brought] sorrow when he sank in death - It cut you to the heart
To see the little one so changed;
The pale cheek that once glowed rosily fresh,
Oh how your hearts must have ached!
Yet you remembered what the children's friend
So beautifully once had said:
"Let the little ones come unto me" -
They belong here at home in heaven,
Citizens of God's kingdom.
As a tiny angel with feathery winds
And raiment shimmering white
And with a sparkling crown of gold
On those baby locks you adored -
He has joined in the joys of heaven.
Ah see! from the firmament's light blue field
Are reaching out baby hands,
So chubby soft, so delightfully sweet.
They would, how gladly, reach you here
And turn your sorrow to joy.
Yes, see the delicate infant hands
That wave down from on high?
With strong loving bands
They wish to draw you from your grief
And light again the joy in your eyes.
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Part Two: Remarks on The Poem and Its Context
Rev. Karl Xavier forwarded his poem to Prof. and Mrs. Rolvaag, in an original hand-written manuscript in the Dano-Norwegian language. As mentioned in the Preface, that manuscript is now in the archives of the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) located on the campus of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.
The version published here is from another source, a hand-written manuscript by Rev. Xavier, identical in wording to the NAHA text, and is drawn from Rev. Karl Xavier, Norwegian Poems, Magdalene X. Visovatti, Translator. In the near future, when a typeface transcription is made of the original Dano-Norwegian poem manuscript, the typeface will be added, or the manuscript will be enhanced and scanned into this article.
To reiterate a bit on the Preface, in line 9 of the poem, "children's friend" was among Norwegian-American Lutherans a common spoken and written reference to Jesus. Jesus was often referred to in Dano-Norwegian language works as "undommens ven" [young person's friend] or, in the case of this poem, as "barnenes ven" [children's friend]. These commonly used references to Jesus and the words in Rev. Karl Xavier's text take on special meaning in the context of the times, given the child-friendly framework of all of the Norwegian American Lutheran churches. [3]
Even for a Synod Pastor, however, there was awareness of the earthly side of life, outside the scope of a spiritual or theological hereafter. There was in the early 1900s a general awareness of the often short span of human life, and a special awareness of the fragility of life for children. Rev. Xavier had known of this since his own childhood, where life as a pastor's son had given him many occasions to witness funerals for young children.
Then, with the loss of the Rolvaag family freshly in mind, Rev. Xavier put his fine pen to paper in a world that had only months before witnessed the grim sweep of the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919. During that epidemic, when death roamed free in America, Rev. Xavier in his pastoral role had conducted at least one funeral for a young victim of the Influenza.[4]
Furthermore, the nature of nature of rural communities led to closely shared experiencing of loss in the tightly- knit early 1900s. Those times gave the world of Norwegian-Americans and Americans in general constant reminders of the most raw realities. Due to the community closeness of towns, villages, countryside, and even urban neighborhoods (often built around ethnic or church affiliations), many people were often in what we would recognize today as an on-going grief cycle due to the loss of children. As a case in point, the death of his son, Paul Gunnar, "Rolvaag later said... 'I think it changed my entire view of life.'" [5]
Simply put, even if one's own family had healthy and living children, it was almost certain that other extended family, friends, and neighbors would have ill, injured, or deceased children to mourn. Indeed, appalling rates of severe illness (morbidity) and life expectancy (mortality) among children were the iron rule of the times, even at the relatively modern date of 1920.
The frequency of childhood death was high due to illness, epidemic, or other causes of death, including such cases as simple secondary infections from accidents. In fact, the death rate was such that a ten-year-old child was subject to a risk of death almost identical to that of the classical high-risk nineteen or twenty-year-old young adult., or today's 56-year-old male! [6]
In the face of such harsh realities, church and community groups in a grieving process were often brought together by singing as well as the written and spoken words of philosophy and religion. As is the case today, caregivers often turned to meditation, journaling, or writing of prose and poetry to express their own deep and strongly-held beliefs and feelings.
In that vein of beliefs and feeling, this and other poems of Rev. Karl Xavier deal with youthful death, including childbirth-related mortality. In the case of the Rolvaags, we do not have any direct documentation of further exchange by letter between Prof. Rolvaag and Rev. Xavier about the death of Paul Rolvaag, whether in historical archives or in Xavier family records. Any letters Xavier might have kept were probably lost or destroyed in the wake of his own death in 1924. [7]
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Epilogue: Ole E. Rolvaag's Place in Norwegian-American History and Literature
Finally, as to the stature of Rolvaag in Norwegian-American history and literature, I offer the following remarks. For some years now, any discussion of Rolvaag's historic place has come to remind me of a question I have read, at different times, about Irving Berlin's place in American popular music. I recall the answer as being, "He is American popular music."
To sum up Prof. O. E. Rolvaag's place in Norwegian-American history and Norwegian-American literature, I offer a well-measured response, not very original, but nonetheless worthy of the question: Rolvaag is, and he largely defines, Norwegian-American immigrant history and literature.
--------------To sum up Prof. O. E. Rolvaag's place in Norwegian-American history and Norwegian-American literature, I offer a well-measured response, not very original, but nonetheless worthy of the question: Rolvaag is, and he largely defines, Norwegian-American immigrant history and literature.
finis
Reference Notes
[1b] Archives, P584 Box 1, Norwegian American Historical Association (NAHA), St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN. See www.naha.stolaf.edu/archivesdata/leif/results.cfm. Various Xavier manuscripts, of the poem in question, other poems and of correspondence among Rolvaag, Rev. Karl Xavier, and Magdalena Xavier, are found in the NAHA Archives. Thanks to NAHA archivist Jeff Sauve for his assistance with these papers.
Following her graduation in 1920, Magdalene X. Visovatti continued her connection with Prof. Rolvaag as an editorial colleague, and a sometime correspondent. Magdalene X. Visovatti also published poetry in Nord-Norge and Jul i vesterheimen, among other periodicals, under her self-modified birth name, as Magdalene Xavier. Her poetry from those two periodicals will be published at a later date in this blog, in both the origianal Dano-Norwegian and English translation.
[1c] Olaf M. Norlie, et al., Who's Who Among Pastors in the Norwegian Lutheran Churches of North America (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1928), various pp.
[1d] Olaf M. Norlie, School Calendar: Teachers and Educators in Norwegian Lutheran Schools and Colleges. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1924), pp. 601, 793-794.
[1e] Olaf M. Norlie, "St. Johannes lutherske menighet," [Rice County, Northfield, Minnesota], Norsk Lutherske Menigheter i Amerika. Forste Bind [Vol. I]. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1918), p.474. Prof. Rolvaag served on the church council as secretary.
[1f] Karen Larsen, Laur. Larsen: Pioneer College President (Northfield, MN: Norwegian American Historical Association, 1936), pp. 277, 284, 335.
[1g] Karen Larsen, "Karen Neuberg Larsen and Her Family," Unpublished typescript (Northfield, MN, 1957, 20 pp.. In this little-known essay, historian Larsen, half sister of Henriette Elisabeth Randine (Larsen) Xavier offers several important insights into the family of Karl and Henriette Xavier.
[1h] Einar Hauge, Ole Edvart Rolvaag in Twayne's United States Authors Series,TUSAS 455, Leif Sjoberg, Ed. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983), "Chronology," no page.
See the Appendix for more background on Prof. Ole E. Rolvaag (1876-1934); Rev. Karl Xavier (1869-1924); and Xavier's two marriages, first to Henriette Elisabeth Randine (Larsen) Xavier (1865-1904) and then to his second wife, Bina Christine (Kamrud) Xavier (1880-1931). Also in the appendix is information on the translator and editor of Norwegian Poems, Magdalene X. Visovatti, nee Karen Magdalena Xavier (1897-1988), the eldest daughter of Karl Xavier and Henrietta.
[1i] Rev. Karl Xavier, Norwegian Poems, pp 1; also, Suzanne Heiss, "Norwegian Poems Come to Life In English," Lake Country Living (No City, WI., September 23, 1982), no. page. In this news story about Magdalene X. Visovatti and her translation work, reporter Heiss recounts Visovatti's painstaking efforts. The fruit of those efforts, so necessary to give a worthy rendition of Karl Xavier's work, would appear in late 1982 as Norwegian Poems.
As is discussed in other articles in this family blog and elsewhere, "To Professor and Mrs. Rolvaag" ["Til Professor og fru Rolvaag"], the poem in question, was but one part of a vastly effort of translation and editing by Magdalene X. Visovatti. The project spanned more than two years. Visovatti relates some of the story in her introduction, as supplemented by the 1982 Heiss article. Visovatti was not only a former student of Prof. Rolvaag, but was by her own rights a published poet and translator, well at home in the Dano-Norwegian so beloved of the early 1900s. Visovatti spent from 1980 to 1982 translating and editing thirty-five of her father's manuscripts, a bonanza for family and literary history.
[2a] Einar Hauge, Ole Edvart Rolvaag in Twayne's United States Authors Series, TUSAS 455, Leif Sjoberg, Ed. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983), "Chronology," no page.
[2b] See Odd Sverre Lovell, A Folk Epic: The Bygdelag in America (Northfield, MN: NAHA in concert with Twayne, 1975), several pages.
Prof. Ole E. Rolvaag (1876-1931) was one of the driving forces behind the Nord-Norge quarterly, as he was in so many Norwegian-American projects. Nord-Norge was in the early 1900s, and it remains today, the major publication of an important Norwegian American ethnic identity group, Nordlandslaget [Nordland's Association]. Bibliography about Prof. Rolvaag's extensive role in the Norwegian-American communities appears in some depth in depth in the Appendix, Part One.
[2c] Nord-Norge was in more recent times, until 2011, edited by Christian Klebo Skjervold II, an American of Nordlands background, a long-time friend of the Saami-North American communities. Chris Skjervold often cooperated with Saami-American leaders Mel Olsen and Arden Johnson in publishing Nord-Norge projects involving the Arctic regions of Norway. Among those projects were articles treating Rolvaag's home islands of Lofoton, as well as Rev. Xavier's home area of Lyngseidet. Olsen was also co-editor with Johnson for about twelve years of the Saami North American newsletter Arran, in publishing projects involving Saami and Saami North American communities.
Skjervold's posthumous book Alt for Norway (Minneapolis, MN: Birchpoint Press, 2013), is an in-depth review of World War II Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation (1940-1945). The book makes several references to the northern reaches of Norway, including the Sami areas.
[2c] Rev. Karl Xavier "Nils Paul Xavier: En Skisse," ["Nils Paul Xavier: A Life Sketch"], Nord-Norge No. 12, Winter issue (December,1918), pp.14-17; 18.This skisse, or obituary essay, was accompanied on p. 18 by Rev. Xavier's unsigned poem, "Nils Paul Xavier In Memoriam."
Prof. Rolvaag and Rev. Karl Xavier were colleagues on a number of projects, notably Nord-Norge, where Xavier published letters, articles, and poetry. Most important of Karl Xavier's individual works, from the perspectives of history and literature, was the noteworthy obituary essay on his father, Nils Paul Xavier.
[2d] John [Edward] Xavier, "Karl Xavier (1869-1924)," Arran No. 54 & 55 (2009-2010), pp. 5-8. This article is essentially biographical, stressing Rev. Xavier's roles as pastor, church leader, family man, and author. Rev. Xavier's worked as a prominent pastor in the Norwegian Lutheran Synod ("The Synod") from 1895-1924. His prolific career spanned nearly thirty years, and included a wide-ranging body of written work--including translation from Swedish and German into Norwegian.
He published two major theological treatises, translated several works, authoring numerous essays and poems in several periodicals. Some of his earliest works arose from his twenties, appearing in print at the turn-of-the-century date of 1903, in a significant Norwegian-American anthology. See the Appendix for more detail.
Author's Note: Thanks to Arden Johnson, Editor emeritus of Arran (A Publication of the Sami Siida of North America ), and to Evelyn Ashford, current Editor, for their past encouragement, editorial assistance and current permission to use material previiously appearing in Arran.]
[2e] Ole E. Rolvaag, Concerning Our Heritage [Omkring Faedrearven], Solveig Zempel, Trans. and Ed. (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1998), p. 151. Despite Karl Xavier's theological training and pastoral reputation, and extensive body of work, he seems to have been regarded by his contemporaries as much as a poet or essayist as a theological writer. Indeed, Prof. Rolvaag referred to Rev. Xavier in his detailed review of Norwegian-American culture, as one of the "golden voices" of that culture.
[2f] Archives, P584 Box 1, Norwegian American Historical Association (NAHA).
Following her graduation in 1920, Magdalene X. Visovatti continued her connection with Prof. Rolvaag as an editorial colleague, and a sometime correspondent. Magdalene X. Visovatti also published poetry in Nord-Norge and Jul i vesterheimen, among other periodicals, under her self-modified birth name, as Magdalene Xavier. Her poetry will be published at a later date in this blog, in both Dano-Norwegian and English translation.
[3] An example of that child-friendly framework is found the long-standing publication of a Norwegian Lutheran children's magazine Undommens Ven. That periodical was headquartered in Minneapolis and published by N.N. Ronning, who knew Prof. Rolvaag and was Karl Xavier's friend. (Ungdommens Ven was yet another publication in which some of Xavier's poetry appeared.) See, N.N. Ronning, Fifty Years in America (Minneapolis, MN: Friend Publishing, 1938), pp. 151-156, 203-208. Ronning was acquainted with Prof. Rolvaag, and various members of the extended Xavier family, including Prof. Laur Larsen (Karl Xavier's first father-in-law), Prof. H. H. Elstad of the Red Wing Seminary, and more. See also, a brief paragraph in the Appendix to this article.
[4a] John E. Xavier Ed., "Honoring Oliver Berg, United States Navy, Deceased, 1918: A Funeral Sermon Manuscript by Rev. Karl Xavier," forthcoming in this blog. In the fall of 1918, Oliver Berg died of the influenza. A Newman Grove, Nebraska, U.S. Navy serviceman, or "Jackie," Berg, succumbed to influenza at the Great Lakes training station near Chicago. Oliver Berg was a member of the Immanuel Lutheran Church, of Newman Grove (Bradish) then served by Rev. Karl Xavier, and his family had multiple connections to the nearby community, as well as to the Xavier family
[4b] John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (New York: Viking/Penguin Group, 2004), p. 1. The influenza had reached international proportions, killing millions; more died worldwide from the epidemic than from World War I. Even high-ranking medical leaders in 1917-1918 despaired at the ferocity of the Influenza epidemic.
[4c] Pastor and poet Karl Xavier would have encountered childhood death from his own earliest days. The parsonage at the Fort Ridgely and Dale Church where he lived (1878-91) and grew up was next door to the church cemetery. That cemetery was thick with the gravestones on children. According to Julie Grender and Abner Grender, in The History of the Fort Ridgely Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Congregation (1958), the knowledge of one year alone, 1870, would have given Karl and his siblings much food for thought. (Furthermore, in 1887, Karl Xavier was at age 18 elected Secretary of the Fort Ridgely and Dale Church, where his duties would have included recording all deaths in the records of the parish. Grender & Grender, p. 13.) "Grim" realities would have been the norm in the world of Karl Xavier, and as a pastor's son he would have been a close observer and witness of many funerals for children. The Grender's account lays out the stark realities of life and death in 1870:
The records of the ages of the deceased of the...year, 1870, silently tell a grim story of the hardships of those pioneer years and the high infant mortality. Their ages were: 47, 11/2, 31, 5, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 40, 3 weeks, 3 years, 1 year. (p.5)[5a] Ole E. Rolvaag, quoted in Gerald Thorson, Ed. Ole Rolvaag: Artist and Cultural Leader (Northfield, MN: St. Olaf College Press, 1975), p. 72.
[5b] http://www.mnhs.org/people/governors/gov/gov_33.htm , site visited May 10, 2012.
[5c]Also, see http://www,nytimes.com1990/12/21obituaries , site visited November 6, 2013.
Karl Rolvaag was elected Lieutenant Governor in Minnesota on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket in 1960. At that time that office and the Governorship were voted on separately. Hence he served as Lieutenant Governor under Republican Governor Elmer L. Andersen, from 1961-1963, and went on to defeat Andersen for Governor in the famous 91-vote five-month recount victory of the 1962 election. See Appendix for further information on Karl Rolvaag.
[5d] Lois Pieper, "From the President of Vestlandet," Vestlandet, Vol. 30 (1986), pp. 1-2.
Prof. and Mrs. Rolvaag had two children who survived into adulthood and had long lives: (Ella) Valborg (Rolvaag) Tweet, and Karl F. Rolvaag. Valborg Tweet was highly educated; her studies included a BA from St. Olaf College, two separate enrollments at the University of Oslo, and an MA in Scandinavian studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A scholar in her own right, she taught at UW-Madison, Luther College, and the University of Minnesota, and had a lifelong role in preserving, translating and publishing her father's works.
The Rolvaag's second child surviving into adulthood, Karl F. Rolvaag, became a well-known public figure. He made a long career in Minnesota politics in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, culminating in elective office as Lt. Governor (1955-1963), Governor (1963-1967), and railroad and Warehouse Commissioner, (1970-1975). He held appointive service as Ambassador to Iceland, where he served under both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. See the Appendix for more information on Karl Rolvaag.
[6a] Frank Albert Fetter, Economics in Two Volumes: Volume II Modern Economic Problems, (New York: The Century Co., 1916), Chapter 13, "Scientific Life Insurance," Section 2, "The Mortality Table."
[6b] http://www.aldoi.gov/pdf/consumers/mortalitytable2001.pdf , site visited 03/20/12. See appendix for further information on the topic of improved life expectancy for children since the 1920s.
[7a] Rev. Karl Xavier, "The Dying Mother," [1914] , pp. 18-20b; and "Froides Aasen In Memorium 1920", ibid., 77-78b.
[7b] Johan Ulrik Xavier, List of Nils Paul and Amanda Xavier's Descendents (Parkland, WA: J.U. Xavier, 1960), pp. 1, 9-10.
The name of the woman in "The Dying Mother" remains unknown at this time. She died soon after giving birth to a son, who apparently survived . She was most surely a member of the Immanuel-Our Saviors Parish near Bradish (Newman Grove) in northeastern Nebraska, served by Rev. Xavier in the decade 1910-1919 in Boone and Madison Counties. Several fires have decimated records of the Immanuel Parish, but we will correspond further in the future with that parish and other sources in an attempt to discover the name of this most unfortunate young woman.
Childbirth presented a number of medical challenges even in the early 1900s, as this was before the introduction of penicillin and sulfa drugs to combat infections. By way of example, I recall references to childbirth in that era expressed as variations on entering "the valley of the shadow of death." Another important medical reality of the early 1900s was that childbirth-related blood transfusions did not come into civilian medical practice until the post-World War I era, and was particularly rare in the rural areas, well into the late 1930s.
Froides Aasen was a little niece, who died at age ten in 1920 of heart complications related to having been struck by whooping cough. Her mother was Marith (Xavier) Aasen, also known as Marit, a sister of Rev. Xavier. Marit was married to Rev. Anders Aasen in 1899, and together they served several parishes, living past the age of 100, into the 1970s.
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Appendix
Supplemental Historical and Bibliographical Information
Section A. Historical Information on the Prof. Rolvaag and Jennie (Berdahl) RolvaagSupplemental Historical and Bibliographical Information
Here is some basic information on the details of the O.E. Rolvaag's family life. See Paulson's article, listed in Section B. below, for an excellent overview. We offer here two selections from Einar Haugen's 1983 work, Ole Edvart Rolvaag.
Haugen in the first selection, makes note of the significance for Ole Rolvaag of a pair of 1905 decisions:
One was to become engaged to Jennie Berdahl, whose background and interests were similar to his own and whose well-balanced common sense could offset his own temperamental ups and downs. The other was to plan for a career of teaching rather than preaching (though he never quite gave up the latter role), and specifically to become a professor of Norwegian language and literature. The college made him a loan for graduate study at the University of Oslo for 1905-06. On his return, he was appointed instructor at the college, which became his forum for the next quarter of a century. (pp.8-9)Again, I draw on Haugen for yet another insight about influence on him by his wife, Jennie. In a substantial sequence of pages commenting on Giants in the Earth, Haugen declares that Rolvaag had in his South Dakota in-laws a ready source of ideas, dialogue and landscape.
In the Berdahl home, Rolvaag could literally tap a living source of pioneer history and thereby extend his perspective a generation back beyond the years he had himself lived, studied, and taught in the state....
Rolvaag acknowledged his sources in an article in the Editor, stating that "some of the incidents--many of them, in fact--have actually happened; they are taken from stories told me."...Once he had started his writing, he felt the need to deepen his writing and went out to see some of the old-timers. [Haugen quotes Rolvaag from O.E. Rolvaag, "The Genesis of Giants in the Earth," Editor 78 (August 6, 1927), pp. 81-85], p. 83 in Ole Edvart Rolvaag)
Section B. Selected Annotated Bibliography on Ole E. Rolvaag
Note: The Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) publishes from time to time collections in the journal, Norwegian American Studies, which was in early volumes titled Studies and Records.
Ronald Barron, A Guide to Minnesota Writers: Revised and Expanded (Edina, MN: Burgess International Group, 1993), pp. 135-136. This valuable work includes bibliography and critical sources.
Kenneth Bjork, "The Unknown Rolvaag: Secretary in the Norwegian-American Historical Association," Studies and Records, XI (1940), pp. 114-149. Comprehensive narrative of early years of the largest Norwegian historical group, and Rolvaags many contributins to NAHA.
Theodore C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America: The American Transition, Vol. 2. (Northfield, MN: NAHA, 1940), pp. 594-596. Blegen writes of Rolvaag's monumental Giants in the Earth: "Its truth was not merely that of a realistic portrayal of scenes and events, but ... that of a wise understanding of the psychological realities underlying the immigrant frontier experience." (p. 595)
Lincoln Colcord, "Introduction," Giants in the Earth (New York: Harper's, 1927), pp. xi-xxii. Colcord discusses various aspects of the translation process as well as implications of the narrative.
Henry Steel Commager, "Human Cost of the West," Senior Scholastic, LVIII (February 1951), 10-11. One of the iconic historians of the U.S.A., Commager devoted much of his work to interpetation of economic trends and history of ideas. This brief mention of Rolvaag is compact and powerful in its understanding of the challenges of the American frontier.
Einar Haugen, Ole Edvart Rolvaag, in Twayne's United States Authors Series, TUSAS 455, Leif Sjoberg, Ed. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983).
__________, "O.E. Rolvaag: Norwegian-American," Studies and Records, VII (1933), pp. 53-73. Note: Studies and Records was the early name of the journal of the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA), now known as Norwegian-American Studies. Haugen's article and others in this volume of Studies and Records were dedicated to the memory and honor of the then recently-deceased Rolvaag, recognizing both personal and literary accomplishments.
___________, "O.E. Rolvaag: The Man in His Work," in Ole Rolvaag: Artist and Cultural Leader, Gerald Thorson, Ed. (Northfield, MN: St. Olaf College Press, 1975), pp.15-24. This publication of proceedings of a 1974 conference contains a number of worthy essays by modern scholars. Prof. Haugen, formerly of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was by 1974 associated with Harvard University. Haugen served as the lead specialist in the 1974 conference. He drew on both personal acquaintance with Rolvaag and his own lifetime of scholarship related to the Norwegian American experience. This valuable compendium has a three-page bibliographical section.
Raychel A. Haugrud (aka Raychel Haugrud Reiff), "Rolvaag's Search for Soria Moria," Norwegian American Studies, XXVI (1974), pp. 103-117. Prof. Haugrud efficiently summarizes and interprets major themes across the spectrum of Rolvaag's work, along the lines of her doctoral thesis on Rolvaag.
Theodore Jorgenson, "The Main Factors in Rolvaag's Authorship," Studies and Records, X (1938), pp. 135-151. Literary and personal aspects of Rolvaag's writings.
Hanna Astrup Larsen, "Ole Edvart Rolvaag," American-Scandinavian Review XX (January 1932), pp. 7-9. Hanna Larsen was for over twenty years editor of the Review, and a sister of Rolvaag's faculty colleague, Karen Larsen. Both Hanna and Karen were half-sisters to Rev. Xavier's first wife, Henrietta.
Odd Sverre Lovell, A Folk Epic: The Bygdelag in America (Northfield, MN: NAHA in concert with Twayne, 1975), several pages. Lovell's views on the bygdelag organizations of the various regional Norwegian immigrant groups. This is a most valuable source on Norwegian Americans and their ethnic affinity groups, drawn from Lovell's PhD thesis.
_______________, "The Bygdelag Movement," Norwegian American Studies, V. 25 (1972), pp. 3-26. See previous reference for Lovell.
Olaf M. Norlie, et al., Who's Who Among Pastors in the Norwegian Lutheran Churches of North America (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1928), various pp.
Olaf M. Norlie, School Calendar: Teachers and Educators in Norwegian Lutheran Schools and Colleges. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1924), pp. 601, 793-794.
Orm Overland, The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America (Northfield, MN: NAHA 1996). Overland's massive and detailed review gives considerable space to Rolvaag.
Kristoffer F. Paulson, "Berdahl Family History and Rolvaag's Imigrant Trilogy," Norwegian-American Studies 27 (1977), pp. 55-76. This useful article in NAS can be viewed online at the site of the Norwegian American Historical Association (NAHA). Site: www.naha.stolaf.edu/
Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, III. (New York: 1930). Parrington gives an at-length evaluation of Giants in the Earth.
Lois Pieper, "From the President of Vestlandet," Vestlandet, Vol. 30 (1986), pp 1-2. This is a newsletter rather typical of the bygdalag communications. Pieper's brief article introduces the readership to Valborg (Rolvaag) Tweet's upcoming appearance at a Vestland gathering.
Paul Reigstad, Rolvaag: His Life and Art (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. This is a respected work with six pages of bibliographical material.
N.N. Ronning, Fifty Years in America (Minneapolis, MN: Friend Publishing, 1938), pp. 203-208. N.N. Ronning recounts personal meetings with Rolvaag in addition to appraising his work. Ronning (1870-1962) was yet another contemporary of the Rolvaag era and like Rolvaag, a friend of Karl Xavier. Ronning saw Rolvaag as one of the great voices of immigrant literature. Ronning, owner and editor of Friend Publishing, mellowed on his original objections to the rough-hewn characters of Giants in the Earth. Ronning interpreted Rolvaag's place as being at the very forefront of Norwegian-American history and culture.
Nora Solum, "The Sources of the Rolvaag Biography," Studies and Records, XI (1940), pp. 150-159. Thorough essay on sources and materials for compiling biography of Rolvaag.
Ella Valborg Tweet, "Recollections of My Father, O.E. Rolvaag," Minnesota English Journal, VIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 4-16. Personal and literary insights.
Note: The Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) publishes from time to time collections in the journal, Norwegian American Studies, which was in early volumes titled Studies and Records.
Ronald Barron, A Guide to Minnesota Writers: Revised and Expanded (Edina, MN: Burgess International Group, 1993), pp. 135-136. This valuable work includes bibliography and critical sources.
Kenneth Bjork, "The Unknown Rolvaag: Secretary in the Norwegian-American Historical Association," Studies and Records, XI (1940), pp. 114-149. Comprehensive narrative of early years of the largest Norwegian historical group, and Rolvaags many contributins to NAHA.
Theodore C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America: The American Transition, Vol. 2. (Northfield, MN: NAHA, 1940), pp. 594-596. Blegen writes of Rolvaag's monumental Giants in the Earth: "Its truth was not merely that of a realistic portrayal of scenes and events, but ... that of a wise understanding of the psychological realities underlying the immigrant frontier experience." (p. 595)
Lincoln Colcord, "Introduction," Giants in the Earth (New York: Harper's, 1927), pp. xi-xxii. Colcord discusses various aspects of the translation process as well as implications of the narrative.
Henry Steel Commager, "Human Cost of the West," Senior Scholastic, LVIII (February 1951), 10-11. One of the iconic historians of the U.S.A., Commager devoted much of his work to interpetation of economic trends and history of ideas. This brief mention of Rolvaag is compact and powerful in its understanding of the challenges of the American frontier.
Einar Haugen, Ole Edvart Rolvaag, in Twayne's United States Authors Series, TUSAS 455, Leif Sjoberg, Ed. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983).
__________, "O.E. Rolvaag: Norwegian-American," Studies and Records, VII (1933), pp. 53-73. Note: Studies and Records was the early name of the journal of the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA), now known as Norwegian-American Studies. Haugen's article and others in this volume of Studies and Records were dedicated to the memory and honor of the then recently-deceased Rolvaag, recognizing both personal and literary accomplishments.
___________, "O.E. Rolvaag: The Man in His Work," in Ole Rolvaag: Artist and Cultural Leader, Gerald Thorson, Ed. (Northfield, MN: St. Olaf College Press, 1975), pp.15-24. This publication of proceedings of a 1974 conference contains a number of worthy essays by modern scholars. Prof. Haugen, formerly of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was by 1974 associated with Harvard University. Haugen served as the lead specialist in the 1974 conference. He drew on both personal acquaintance with Rolvaag and his own lifetime of scholarship related to the Norwegian American experience. This valuable compendium has a three-page bibliographical section.
Raychel A. Haugrud (aka Raychel Haugrud Reiff), "Rolvaag's Search for Soria Moria," Norwegian American Studies, XXVI (1974), pp. 103-117. Prof. Haugrud efficiently summarizes and interprets major themes across the spectrum of Rolvaag's work, along the lines of her doctoral thesis on Rolvaag.
Theodore Jorgenson, "The Main Factors in Rolvaag's Authorship," Studies and Records, X (1938), pp. 135-151. Literary and personal aspects of Rolvaag's writings.
Hanna Astrup Larsen, "Ole Edvart Rolvaag," American-Scandinavian Review XX (January 1932), pp. 7-9. Hanna Larsen was for over twenty years editor of the Review, and a sister of Rolvaag's faculty colleague, Karen Larsen. Both Hanna and Karen were half-sisters to Rev. Xavier's first wife, Henrietta.
Odd Sverre Lovell, A Folk Epic: The Bygdelag in America (Northfield, MN: NAHA in concert with Twayne, 1975), several pages. Lovell's views on the bygdelag organizations of the various regional Norwegian immigrant groups. This is a most valuable source on Norwegian Americans and their ethnic affinity groups, drawn from Lovell's PhD thesis.
_______________, "The Bygdelag Movement," Norwegian American Studies, V. 25 (1972), pp. 3-26. See previous reference for Lovell.
Olaf M. Norlie, et al., Who's Who Among Pastors in the Norwegian Lutheran Churches of North America (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1928), various pp.
Olaf M. Norlie, School Calendar: Teachers and Educators in Norwegian Lutheran Schools and Colleges. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1924), pp. 601, 793-794.
Orm Overland, The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America (Northfield, MN: NAHA 1996). Overland's massive and detailed review gives considerable space to Rolvaag.
Kristoffer F. Paulson, "Berdahl Family History and Rolvaag's Imigrant Trilogy," Norwegian-American Studies 27 (1977), pp. 55-76. This useful article in NAS can be viewed online at the site of the Norwegian American Historical Association (NAHA). Site: www.naha.stolaf.edu/
Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, III. (New York: 1930). Parrington gives an at-length evaluation of Giants in the Earth.
Lois Pieper, "From the President of Vestlandet," Vestlandet, Vol. 30 (1986), pp 1-2. This is a newsletter rather typical of the bygdalag communications. Pieper's brief article introduces the readership to Valborg (Rolvaag) Tweet's upcoming appearance at a Vestland gathering.
Paul Reigstad, Rolvaag: His Life and Art (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. This is a respected work with six pages of bibliographical material.
N.N. Ronning, Fifty Years in America (Minneapolis, MN: Friend Publishing, 1938), pp. 203-208. N.N. Ronning recounts personal meetings with Rolvaag in addition to appraising his work. Ronning (1870-1962) was yet another contemporary of the Rolvaag era and like Rolvaag, a friend of Karl Xavier. Ronning saw Rolvaag as one of the great voices of immigrant literature. Ronning, owner and editor of Friend Publishing, mellowed on his original objections to the rough-hewn characters of Giants in the Earth. Ronning interpreted Rolvaag's place as being at the very forefront of Norwegian-American history and culture.
Nora Solum, "The Sources of the Rolvaag Biography," Studies and Records, XI (1940), pp. 150-159. Thorough essay on sources and materials for compiling biography of Rolvaag.
Ella Valborg Tweet, "Recollections of My Father, O.E. Rolvaag," Minnesota English Journal, VIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 4-16. Personal and literary insights.
Section C. Material on Author Rev. Karl Xavier and Translator Magdalene X. Visovatti
Rev. Karl Xavier (1869-1924), posthumous author of Norwegian Poems:
Rev. Karl Xavier had two marriages, with the good fortune that both were love matches. The first marriage was to Henriette Elisabeth Randine (Larsen) Xavier (1865-1904), who died young, having been in frail health for some time The second marriage was to Bina Christine (Kamrud) Xavier (1880-1931).
Henrietta, who died just under age 40, was a daughter of Luther College founding President, Prof. Laur Larsen and his first wife, Karen Randine (Neuberg) Larsen. While Norlie's works offer substantial details, including education, publications, parishes served, and more, nonetheless, Henrietta ("Hennie") Xavier does not figure in the Norlie works. Henrietta Xavier does receive mention in the the work of her younger half-sister, historian Karen Larsen, as listed below. She was remembered by Karen Larsen as a talented, world-travelled, and yet frail-of-health woman. Henrietta ("Hennie") and Karl had three children, Magdalene, Paul, and Peter.
Bina, Xavier's second wife, was a daughter of Ivar and Marit (Hippe) Kamrud, of Pope County, Minnesota, near Starbuck and Glenwood. Bina was highly educated with teacher training from Mayville (ND) Normal School and Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls,, South dakotaand a leader in the field of choral music, where she and Rev. Xavier collaborated for years in the Omaha Choral Union. Her biographical information is included in Norlie's School Calendar. Together, this active and talented couple had seven children: Valborg, Anna, Bjarne, Karl Astrup, Valdemar, Mabel, and Borghild.
Karl Xavier began publishing poetry early in life. So it was not only in middle age that Rev. Xavier was receiving notice for his activity in the poetry field. Some of Rev. Xavier's earliest work--translated and edited by Visovatti for Norwegian Poems--appeared in 1903 as part of a prominent anthology. See Dr. Ludvig Lima, Editor, Norsk-amerikanske digte i udvalg [Collected Norwegian-American Poetry] (Minneapolis, MN: Ungdommens Ven Publishing Co., 1903), pp.335-340, 347. Inclusion in this anthology was selective, counting as it did among the contributors such luminaries as Wm. Ager, and Johannes Wist.
Magdalene X. Visovatti, nee Karen Magdalena Xavier (1897-1988), translator and editor of Norwegian Poems:
Magdalene X. Visovatti (also known as "Mag," "Maguie," or "Mugda") was the eldest daughter of Karl Xavier and Henriette. In 1927 she and Toffil Visovatti were married and raised three sons, Laurence, Raymond, and Dirk. She went by Magdalene X. Visovatti following her marriage, having even by elementary grades school-age abandoned her birth name of Karen.
Visovatti was for over forty years an educator with several degrees and certificates: studies at the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; a BA from St. Olaf College, with teaching credentials; and, an MS (with thesis) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She had studied Norwegian under Prof. Rolvaag at St. Olaf, and in her early post-college years she published poetry in Norwegian. In the 1970s she translated from Norwegian to English a major article by Steen, on her grandfather, Rev. Nils Paul Xavier. She was active in many roles as a parochial school teacher and music educator in the Norwegian Lutheran communities, but her biography nonetheless does not appear in Norlie's comprehensive work, School Calendar.
Visovatti was a lively, creative, and wittily outspoken woman, gifted with intelligence and a great awareness of her extended family. As a literary free-spirit, editor, and translator, she was enamored for decades of the efficiency-driven language reform movement, known as the progressive spelling movement. The progressive spelling movement enjoyed a certain cachet, by such usage as "thru" for "through" and so on. That now-expired attempt at language reform has not endured to any great extent in American usage, although it seems to be taking on a new form with electronic texting. In this blog progressive spelling is replaced wherever it appears by traditional spelling.
Visovatti was for about nearly seventy years a positive matriarchal force in her extended Xavier family, and an early promoter of knowledge of the Saami origins of the extended Xavier family. In translating Norwegian Poems and thus facilitating the collection of Karl Xavier's poetry, Visovatti probably assembled the single largest collection of Saami American verse, as written in Norwegian.
The manuscripts for Norwegian Poems had been lovingly and secretly preserved preserved for nearly sixty years by Visovatti's half-sister, Valborg Henrietta (Xavier) Houghtelin (1907-1992). Valborg had feared for the loss of her father's poems, due to the chaotic conditions that ensued when Rev. Xavier died suddenly in 1924. Valborg's action in saving her father's manuscripts was the key factor that ultimately culminated in Visovatti's translation project, Norwegian Poems.
Valborg's concerns and preservation efforts were vindicated in the 1980s by the cooperation of several extended family members, notably two brothers and their wives: Rev. Karl Astrup and Edith (Bethke) Xavier; and Valdemar Ulrik and Elna (Johnson) Xavier. These two couples coordinated a major two-year effort to privately publish Mag's translations of Rev. Xavier's poems. Rev. Xavier's manuscripts are now in the possession of his grandson, the Rev. Dr. Joel V. Xavier.
Section D. Information on Selected Persons or Topics from This Article
Life Expectancy for Children in the Early 1900s
Frank Albert Fetter, in his Economics in Two Volumes wrote, as could be anticipated for an economist, in an unadorned and matter-of-fact style about life expectancy for children. After all, he was publishing for the larger scope of economics and economists, not to compile history or the human interest stories of the harsh realities and sorrows obtaining for families who lost children to death at an early age. Here is a reasonable summary of Fetter's work in the area of child life expectancy (child mortality).
Fetter's remarks are drawn from Sheppard Homans, The American Experience Table of Mortality (1868). His remarks and tables point to an annual mortality (death) rate per 1,000 of 7.49 for a ten-year-old and a very similar mortality rate of 7.81 for a twenty-year-old. According to the Homans study, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a ten-year-old had a life expectancy of barely 61 whereas the twenty-year-old had a life expectancy of 62, no worse off than a child ten years the younger!
The American Experience Table of Mortality, almost exclusively based on male statistics, was considered the valid benchmark for U.S. life insurance industry use for more than a half-century. Well past the 1920s, insurance and actuarial firms relied on the work of Sheppard Homans.
By way of comparison, with the bleak numbers just referred to, vast advances in child mortality have been made to our times. According to the Commissioners 2001 Standard Ordinary Mortality Table, [known as the 2001 C.S.O. Table] a ten-year-old male in the year 2001 has a mortality rate of .24 per 1,000 and a life expectancy of 75.9 years and a twenty-year-old male has a mortality rate of 1.00 with a life expectancy of 76.26 years. A truly shocking statistic, putting the 1920s life expectancy into perspective, is that one must be a 56-year-old male in 2001 to have the same mortality rate as a ten-year-old of the 1920s, and such a 56-year-old today still has a life expectancy of just under 80 years.
Earlier remarks have covered the specific experience gained by Karl Xavier in his youthful days in the world of the parsonage at the Fort Ridgely and Dale Church where he lived (1878-91) and grew up. Further experiences would arise later from family events, of which I choose only a couple of examples.
Beyond the case of little Froides Aasen, the daughter of Rev. Anders O. and Marith (Xavier) Aasen, childhood heart conditions were more common than one might think, even as late as the World War II era. Another such case nearly twenty years later was that of the Franklin, Minnesota family of Anton J. ("Tony") Brown Jr. and Lena (Roeber) Brown in the very late 1930s. Their newborn daughter, Ruth, suffered severe cardiac problems. Ruth Brown was a cousin of Edith Bonita (Bethke) Xavier, wife of Rev. Karl Astrup Xavier; Ruth lived only a year.
Such was the brutal medical reality on the cusp of World War II, even as the top cardiologists in Minneapolis informed Tony and Lena that their Ruth had been born a generation too early. The cardiologists predicted they could help such babies a generation hence, and indeed that has proven to be the case. But during the lifetimes of Froides Aasen, and Ruth Brown, pediatric heart surgery in children had not yet attained the advanced state for which Minnesota has been renowned for well over thirty years.Beyond the case of little Froides Aasen, the daughter of Rev. Anders O. and Marith (Xavier) Aasen, childhood heart conditions were more common than one might think, even as late as the World War II era. Another such case nearly twenty years later was that of the Franklin, Minnesota family of Anton J. ("Tony") Brown Jr. and Lena (Roeber) Brown in the very late 1930s. Their newborn daughter, Ruth, suffered severe cardiac problems. Ruth Brown was a cousin of Edith Bonita (Bethke) Xavier, wife of Rev. Karl Astrup Xavier; Ruth lived only a year.
Froides Aasen (1910-1920)
Froides was a niece of Rev. Karl Xavier through his sister Marith (Xavier) Aasen and her husband Anders O. Aasen. Froides had suffered heart damage from whooping cough and died at age ten in 1920, the same year that Prof. and Mrs. Rolvaag lost their son Paul, who was murdered. On the literary side of Rev. Xavier's poetry, much of the imagery of the Froides poem evokes that of the poem written in honor of Paul Rolvaag. An educated guess is that today Froides would have lived long, for whooping cough would have been wiped out as a disease.
N.N. Ronning (1870-1962)
To expand on an earlier mention, it is worthy of note that Ronning, in whose periodicals Prof. Rolvaag's work found favor, published several of Rev. Xavier's poems. Ronning, a publishing and public speaking whirlwind in the Norwegian-American Lutheran communities, was acquainted with Prof. Rolvaag and several members of the extended Xavier family. Ronning was widely known as respected, and was of the more intellectual side of the Hauge Synod, which was for the most part known for its austere and pietistic approach to Lutheran spirituality.
Among Ronning's acquaintances were Karl's daughter, Magdalene, both of Karl's wives, Henriette (Larsen) and Bina (Kamrud); Prof. Laur. Larsen, Rev. Xavier's first father-in-law; and various members of the Elstad family, prominent in the Hauge [Lutheran Church] Synod. The Hagen Elstad extended familes were also a major presence near Franklin, in Renville County, Minnesota. The Hagen Elstads were situated about two miles down Renville County rural roads from the Ft. Ridgely and Dale Church where N.P. and Amanda Xavier served from 1876-1891, and about the same distance from the home of Herman and Louisa Bethke, grandparents of Edith Bonita Bethke, future wife of Karl Astrup Xavier.
The old Hauge Synod was yet another of the half-dozen major Norwegian Lutheran church groups. Anna (Norum) Elstad, a sister of N.P. Xavier's wife, Amanda Magdalena (Norum) Xavier, and therefore an aunt of Karl Xavier, was married to Prof. H. H. Elstad. He was a Hauge Synod layman but also a respected professor at the Red Wing (Minnesota) Seminary of the Hauge Synond. (Ronning, 151-156).
Karl F. Rolvaag (1914-1990)
Karl Rolvaag was the sole son of Prof. Rolvaag and Jennie Rolvaag to survive to adulthood. He had a long public service career, beginning soon after World War II, during which he served in a tank outfit as an officer (Lieutenant). He left military service after the war, spent time in Norway studying the political system there, and entered elective politics in Minnesota. He rose rapidly in the newly-formed fusion party known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party.
The DFL had been forged largely due to the efforts of Hubert H. Humphrey and his backers, including Eugene McCarthy, Orville Freeman, and many more. Karl Rolvaag's political career culminated in high elective office, including Lieutenant Governor (1955-63) and Governor (1963-67). He earned the office of Governor only in the wake of the historic Minnesota five-month vote recount, when he prevailed by 91 votes over incumbent Gov. Elmer L. Andersen.
Due to his personal knowledge of Norse history and culture, as well as his prominence in DFL politics, Karl was appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson as United States Ambassador to Iceland. He continued in that role under the early years of the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, serving until 1973. Following that time as Ambassador to Iceland, Karl was elected in Minnesota as board member of the state Public Utilities Commission, or PUC, serving from 1973-1975. The PUC was at that time a major regulatory body for such utilities as gas, electric, water, or other infrastructure corporations.
Bibliography for Appendix Sections C and D:
Frank Albert Fetter, Economics in Two Volumes: Volume II Modern Economic Problems, (New York: The Century Co., 1916), Chapter 13, "Scientific Life Insurance," Section 2, "The Mortality Table."
Julie Grender and Abner Grender, in The History of the Fort Ridgely Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Congregation (1958).
Suzanne Heiss, "Norwegian Poems Come to Life In English," Lake Country Living (No City, WI., September 23, 1982), no. page. Local weekly newspaper interview and news story about Magdalene X. Visovatti and her translation work for Norwegian Poems.
Karen Larsen, Laur. Larsen: Pioneer College President (Northfield, MN: Norwegian American Historical Association, 1936), pp. 277, 284, 335.
Dr. Ludvig Lima, Editor, Norsk-amerikanske digte i udvalg [Collected Norwegian-American Poetry] (Minneapolis, MN: Ungdommens Ven Publishing Co., 1903), pp.335-340, 347. This work is found in the NAHA archives in Northfield.
N.N. Ronning, Fifty Years in America (Minneapolis, MN: Friend Publishing, 1938), pp. 151-156, 203-208.
Edith Bonita (Bethke) Xavier, Personal discussions with John E. Xavier about her deceased baby cousin Ruth Brown's congenital heart condition. Notes in possession of the author. Ruth is buried next to her parents, Anton J. and Lena (Roeber) Brown, in the Franklin Cemetery, just over two miles west of Franklin, Minnesota (Renville County).
Rev. Karl Xavier, Norwegian Poems (Albert Lea, MN: V.U.A.H. Xavier, 1982), pp 1, 43a-43b.
Johan U. Xavier, List of Descendants of Nils Paul and Amanda Xavier (Tacoma, WA: 1960), pp. 1, 6-8.
John [Edward] Xavier, "Karl Xavier (1869-1924)," Arran No. 54 & 55 (2009-2010), pp. 5-8.
Digital references:
http://www.aldoi.gov/pdf/consumers/mortalitytable2001.pdf Site visited 03/2/12.
www.naha.stolaf.edu/archivesdata/leif/results.cfm.Site visited 03/30/13.
http://www.mnhs.org/people/governors/gov/gov_33.htm Site visited 05/10/12.
Johan U. Xavier, List of Descendants of Nils Paul and Amanda Xavier (Tacoma, WA: 1960), pp. 1, 6-8.
John [Edward] Xavier, "Karl Xavier (1869-1924)," Arran No. 54 & 55 (2009-2010), pp. 5-8.
Digital references:
http://www.aldoi.gov/pdf/consumers/mortalitytable2001.pdf Site visited 03/2/12.
www.naha.stolaf.edu/archivesdata/leif/results.cfm.Site visited 03/30/13.
http://www.mnhs.org/people/governors/gov/gov_33.htm Site visited 05/10/12.
