News Release

From Danish Blood to American Spirit

News Release Date: October 13, 2018

Contact: Andrew Zaganelli Giacalone, [phone]

Contact: Jerry Willis, [phone]

New Temporary Exhibition about the Danish Immigrants, Ellis Island, New York 

Since 1820, more than 450,000 Danes have emigrated to the USA. By far the majority of these arrived between 1880 and 1915 where numbers, for a few years, exceeded 10,000 a year. The emigration from Denmark was substantial when seen in relation to a population numbering 2.4 million in 1900. Emigrants, mostly artisans or farmworkers, risked the long Atlantic crossing in the hope of improving their own and, especially their children’s, chances in life. 

October 13th isthe opening, on Ellis Island in New York, of an exhibition about Danish emigrants and their descendants up to the present times, spanning four or five generations. The exhibition From Danish Blood to American Spirit. The Danish Immigration to America seeks to trace the golden thread in the overall historical events as well as through personal accounts from selected emigrants about their reasons for leaving and about their lives as immigrant settlers. Each person has been selected as a typical example from a body of extensive research and their anecdotes add human countenance to the various data and statistics. 

Ellis Island – hope and tears 

Ellis Island is a powerful symbol for the millions of Europeans destined for America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1892, the American government set up an immigration station on Ellis Island just south of Manhattan close to the Statue of Liberty. Here, huge numbers of immigrants were received and registered and steps were taken to determine whether they were eligible to enter the Promised Land. Ellis Island, therefore, was dreaded by many immigrants. 

Today, Ellis Island has been refurbished and has achieved status as a national historical monument under the US National Park Service. The Ellis Island buildings have been appointed as a national immigration museum with annual visitor numbers reaching 4.5 million. An immensely popular tourist destination for Americans as well as foreigners visiting New York. The extensive collection of original photos, personal belongings, and personal narratives housed at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration provides a fascinating glimpse of the people who had left a familiar world behind to embark on a risky pursuit of a better life along with their spouse and, more often than not, quite young children. The outcomes were not always happy as documented by the Danish photographer Jacob A. Riis in his photos from the New York slums.
 
Several years of research in the Danish emigration 
Two years ago, Odense City Museums was invited to show a temporary exhibition at Ellis Island about Danish immigrants. This was sparked off by the contribution made by Torben Grøngaard Jeppesen, museum director, to a migration conference held in Seattle where he presented his extensive and year-long research into the path to become an integral part of American society taken by countless Danes and other Scandinavians. The findings of his research were presented in Torben Grøngaard Jeppesen’s doctoral thesis defended at the University of Southern Denmark, June 2017. 

The exhibition at Ellis Island will show from 13 October 2018 until 6 January 2019, arranged in six gallery spaces each with its own theme and linked by a red ribbon – Danish blood – springing from the Danish Dannebrog flag to the American Stars and Stripes. Among the subjects covered are: who emigrated and when? Where did they live? The geographical mobility from the prairies of the mid-West towards California in the west where most Danish descendants now live; the social mobility from the first-generation farmworkers to today’s highly educated Danish descendants doing well in American society; the process of assimilation – and the question of whether there is any Danish national feeling left in the fourth- and fifth-generation Danes? Without revealing too much, it is safe to say that the Danish emigrants and their descendants were quickly assimilated into their new society compared to Norwegian or Swedish emigrants, for example, but it is nevertheless still possible to come across values and attitudes deriving from the Danish ethnic origins.
 
The composer Carl Nielsen’s family and Hans Christian Andersen’s dream 
Among the people singled out for the exhibition are the parents, brothers, and sisters of the composer Carl Nielsen, who all went to Chicago. Their background and history were typical: they came from a small farmworker’s cottage in the village of Nr. Lyndelse, Funen, where they eked out a living as farmworkers or artisans without any real prospects of ever owning their own farm or getting a solid job. When the parents grew old, they, too, emigrated, since the children who were to look after them lived in the USA. However, their stay was not a success and they returned to Denmark after a few years. Mrs Nielsen died shortly after this and her husband was barely able to keep body and soul together for the rest of his life. H.C. Andersen also dreamed about emigrating to America, but abandoned his plans when his friend Henriette Wulff died during the shipwreck of the steamer Austria. In return, he was often reminded of the vast country, especially when rumours travelled to the USA that the elderly poet lay sick and impoverished in Denmark. American children now began to send him one-dollar bills. This failed to please Andersen, however, who was far from poor, and he did not want this image of him to take root. 

Solavang and other tracks of Danes in the American society 
The exhibition at Ellis Island is a unique chance to relate the Danish contribution to the ethnic patchwork quilt that makes up the USA. Danes were never very conspicuous, but nonetheless certain elements and individuals have left their marks. For example, the numerous Danish bakers brought Danish pastry with them. In the USA, this became known as Danish, a term now permanently embedded in the American language. Danish yeast cakes (kringler) and pancakes, too, are common. Beside solid farming experience, the Danish farmers introduced the concept of cooperative dairies. Many of these emerged in the northern part of the mid-West where the yellow cheese now is a distinctive mark of the state of Wisconsin. Likewise, Solvang, California, founded as a Danish colony, is now a popular tourist destination offering a Danish church, the Round Tower, old half-timbered houses, a stork on the roof, a H.C. Andersen museum, Danish bakeries, and much else besides. 

The opening of the exhibition will be celebrated on October 15th with a special press event hosted by the Consulate General of Denmark in New York, Visit Denmark’s New York office, and Odense City Museums with the US National Park Service on Ellis Island. 
Further information about the exhibition is available from Torben Grøngaard Jeppesen, museum director, [e-mail], tel. [phone], or Karsten Kjer Michaelsen, curator, 
[e-mail], tel. [phone]. You can also contact the chief press officer at the Consulate General of Denmark in New York, Andrew Zaganelli Giacalone, [e-mail], tel. [phone] / mobile [phone], or the US National Park Service Public Affairs Officer, Jerry Willis, [e-mail].