There are as many Norwegians in the US as there are in Norway
In 2009, the population of Norway was 4.8 million - https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2009/
That same year, the number of Norwegians living in the US was 4.6 million - https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/...prodType=table
The number of Norwegians in the United States is currently about 4.4 million, which is only about 17% less than the actual population of Norway.
One of my closest friends in school was from Norway. His father worked as a petrochemical engineer; I don't recall his mother's occupation. He piqued my interest in "football" (i.e. soccer).
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Norwegian Americans
There are more than 4.5 million Norwegian Americans (Bokmål: Norskamerikanere, Nynorsk: Norskamerikanarar), according to the most recent U.S. census; most live in the Upper Midwest. Norwegian Americans are currently the 10th-largest European ancestry group in the United States.
History
Earlier history
Viking-era exploration
Main article: Norwegian colonization of the Americas
Norsemen from Greenland and Iceland were the first Europeans to reach North America. Leif Ericson reached North America via Norse settlements in Greenland around the year 1000. Norse settlers from Greenland founded the settlement of L'Anse aux Meadows and Point Rosee in Vinland, in what is now Newfoundland, Canada. These settlers failed to establish a permanent settlement because of conflicts with indigenous people and within the Norse community.
Colonial settlement
A 1925 U.S. postage stamp featuring the ship Viking honoring the 100th anniversary of Norwegian immigration.
There was a Norwegian presence in New Amsterdam (New York after 1664) in the early part of the 17th century. Hans Hansen Bergen, a native of Bergen, Norway, was one of the earliest settlers of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam having immigrated in 1633.
Another of the first Norwegian settlers was Albert Andriessen Bradt who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1637. Pieter Van Brugh, Mayor of Albany, New York was the grandson of Norwegian immigrants. His mother's parents were Roelof Janse (1602–1637), born in Marstrandsön, a small island situated in Båhuslen province in Norway (it was ceded to Sweden in 1658) and Anneke Jans (1605–1663), born on Flekkerøy, an island situated outside the town of Kristiansand, Vest-Agder county, Norway.
Approximately 60 persons had settled in the Manhattan area before the British take-over in 1664. How many Norwegians that settled in New Netherland (the area up the Hudson River to Fort Oranje—now Albany) is not known. The Netherlands (and especially Amsterdam and Hoorn) had strong commercial ties with the coastal lumber trade of Norway during the 17th century and many Norwegians immigrated to Amsterdam. Some of them settled in Dutch colonies, although never in large numbers. (For further reading, see for example J.H. Innes, New Amsterdam and its people.) There were also Norwegian settlers in Pennsylvania in the first half of the 18th century, upstate New York in the latter half of the same century, and in New England during both halves.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e-American.jpg
Sloopers
The earliest immigrants from Norway to America emigrated mostly because of religious motives, as Religious Society of Friends and Haugeans. Organized Norwegian immigration to North America began in 1825, when several dozen Norwegians left Stavanger bound for North America on the sloop Restauration (often called the "Norwegian Mayflower) under the leadership of Cleng Peerson. To a great extent, this early emigration from Norway was borne out of religious persecution, especially for Quakers and a local religious group, the Haugianerne.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ng.peerson.jpg
Cleng Peerson
The ship landed in New York City, where it was at first impounded for exceeding its passenger limit. After intervention from President John Quincy Adams, the passengers moved on to settle in Kendall, New York with the help of Andreas Stangeland, witnessing the opening of the Erie Canal en route. Many of these immigrants moved on from the Kendall Settlement, settling in Illinois and Wisconsin. Cleng Peerson became a traveling emissary for Norwegian immigrants and died in a Norwegian Settlement near Cranfills Gap, Texas in 1865.
In 1825, during a period of particularly fierce religious strife in Norway. In July of that year, a group of six dissenting families, seeking a haven from the official Norwegian state church, set sail from Stavanger in an undersized sloop, the Restaurationen. When it arrived in New York harbor after an arduous 14-week journey, the Restaurationen caused a sensation, and the local press marveled at the bravery of these Norwegian pilgrims. Local Quakers helped the destitute emigrants, who eventually established a community in upstate New York. Today, their descendants are still known as 'sloopers'."
Organized Immigration
While about 65 Norwegians emigrated via Sweden and elsewhere in the intervening years, no emigrant ships left Norway for the New World until the 1836 departures of the Den Norske Klippe and Norden. In 1837, a group of immigrants from Tinn emigrated via Gothenburg to the Fox River Settlement, near present-day Sheridan, Illinois. But it was the writings of Ole Rynning (1809–1838), who traveled to the U.S. on the Ægir in 1837 that energized Norwegian immigration.
Throughout much of the latter part of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century, a vast majority of Norwegian emigration to both the United States and Canada followed a route commonly shared by most Swedish, Danish and Finnish emigrants of the period, being via England by means of the monopoly established by the leading shipping lines of Great Britain, primarily the White Star Line and the Cunard Line, both of which operated chiefly out of Liverpool, England.These lines negotiated with smaller 'feeder lines', primarily the Wilson Line, which was based out of the port city of Hull on England's east coast, to provide emigrants with passage from port cities such as Christiania (Present-Day Oslo), Bergen and Trondheim to England via Hull. Steamship companies such as Cunard and White Star included fares for passage on these feeder ship in their overall ticket prices, along with railway fares for passage between Hull and Liverpool and temporary accommodations in numerous hotels owned by the shipping lines in port cities such as Liverpool. Most Norwegian emigrants bound for the United States entered the country through New York City, with smaller numbers coming through other eastern ports such as Boston and Philadelphia. Other shipping lines such as the Canadian Pacific Line, which also operated chiefly out of Liverpool, and the Glasgow-based Anchor Line operated routes to ports in eastern Canada, primarily Quebec City, Montreal and Halifax. Because Canadian-bound routes were slightly shorter, lines which disembarked at Canadian ports often provided quicker passages and cheaper fares.
The Canadian route offered many advantages to the emigrant over traveling to the USA directly. "They moved on from Quebec both by rail and by steamer for another thousand or more miles (1,600 km) for a steerage fare of slightly less than $9.00. Steamers from Quebec, Canada brought them to Toronto, Canada then the immigrants often traveled by rail for 93 miles to Collingwood, Ontario, Canada on Lake Huron, from where steamers transported them across Lake Michigan to Chicago, Milwaukee and Green Bay. Not until the start of the 20th century did Norwegians accept Canada as a land of the second chance. This was also true of the many American-Norwegians who moved to Canada seeking homesteads and new economic opportunities. By 1921 one-third of all Norwegians in Canada had been born in the U.S.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ltstrand61.jpg
Norwegian settlers in front of their sod house in North Dakota in 1898.
Norwegian immigration through the years was predominantly motivated by economic concerns. Compounded by crop failures, Norwegian agricultural resources were unable to keep up with population growth, and the Homestead Act promised fertile, flat land. As a result, settlement trended westward with each passing year.
Early Norwegian settlements were in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois, but moved westward into Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Later waves of Norwegian immigration went to the Western states such as Washington and Oregon, and Utah through missionary efforts of gaining Norwegian and Swedish converts by the Mormons. Additionally, craftsmen also immigrated to a larger, more diverse market. Until recently, there was a Norwegian area in Sunset Park, Brooklyn originally populated by Norwegian craftsmen.
Data from the U. S. Office of Immigration statistics showing trends in Norwegian immigration to the U.S. from 1870 to 2016
Between 1825 and 1925, more than 800,000 Norwegians immigrated to North America—about one-third of Norway's population with the majority immigrating to the USA, and lesser numbers immigrating to the Dominion of Canada. With the exception of Ireland, no single country contributed a larger percentage of its population to the United States than Norway. Data from the U. S. Office of Immigration statistics of the number of Norwegians obtaining lawful permanent resident status in the USA from 1870 to 2016 highlights two peaks in the migration flow, the first one in the 1880s, and the second one in the first decade of the 20th Century. It also shows an abrupt decrease after 1929, during the economic crisis of the 1930s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Americans
