Hjalmar Rued Holand (October 20, 1872 – August 6, 1963) was a Norwegian-American historian and author. He was the author of a number of books and articles principally dealing with the history of

Door County, Wisconsin Door County is the easternmost county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census, the population was 30,066. Its county seat is Sturgeon Bay. It is named after the strait between the Door Peninsula and Washington Island. The dangero ...

, of the

Upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the Midwest. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed-upon, the region is defined as referring ...

and with

Norwegian-American Norwegian Americans ( nb, Norskamerikanere, nn, Norskamerikanarar) are Americans with ancestral roots in Norway. Norwegian immigrants went to the United States primarily in the latter half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the ...

immigration.

Background

Hjalmar Rued Holand was born in

Høland Høland is a former municipality in Akershus county, Norway. History Høland was created in 1837 as a formannskapsdistrikt, a Norwegian local self-government district. The district Setskog was separated from Høland to form a separate municipali ...

Akershus Akershus () is a traditional region and current electoral district in Norway, with Oslo as its main city and traditional capital. It is named after the Akershus Fortress in Oslo. From the middle ages to 1919, Akershus was a fief and main county ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. Holand, at age 13, along with his older sister, Helene, immigrated to America to stay with an older brother and his wife, living in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Unhappy with the living arrangements, Holand left Chicago to stay with another sister, Annette Johnson, living in

Wautoma, Wisconsin Wautoma is a city in Waushara County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 2,218 at the 2010 census. Wautoma is the county seat of Waushara County. The city consists of three noncontiguous areas: one is entirely within the Town of Wa ...

. He received his BA from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in 1898, earning his MA the following year. Holand was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in Anthropology & Cultural Studies during 1950.

Career

Holand lived most of his life on a farm near

Ephraim, Wisconsin Ephraim is a village in Door County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located across Eagle Harbor from Peninsula State Park. The population was 288 at the 2010 census. The village is known for its white buildings, its views of the bluffs across ...

. Holand was an early advocate of the now widely recognized realization that

Vikings Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

visited the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...

in voyages which pre-dated

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus * lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo * es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón * pt, Cristóvão Colombo * ca, Cristòfor (or ) * la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...

. Holand also made an effort to confirm the authenticity of the Kensington Stone together with other

rune stones A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones da ...

and Viking relics found throughout

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. Holland also wrote a two volume history of

, which was published in 1917. Holand founded and was the long-time president of the Door County Historical Society. Holand is most frequently associated with his two volume history of

immigration. Holand spent many years collecting the stories as he traveled to various Norwegian-American settlements in the

. The results were ''De Norske Settlements Historie'' released in 1908 and ''Den Siste Folkevandring Sagastubber Fra Nybyggerlivet I Amerika'' published in 1930. Both were written and published in

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

. These works have subsequently been translated and published in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

. The first was a partial translation released in 1978 and the second a complete translation released during 2006.''Norway Innovation''
/ref>

Selected bibliography

*''De Norske Settlements Historie'' (1908) - (published in English as ''Norwegians in America'' in 1978) *''Nils Otto Tank'' (1909) *''History of Door County, Wisconsin'' (1917) *''Old Peninsula Days'' (1925) *''Coon Prairie'' (1927) *''Coon Valley'' (1928) *''Den Siste Folkevandring Sagastubber Fra Nybyggerlivet I Amerika'' (1930) – (published in English under the title ''History of the Norwegian Settlements'' in 2006) *''Wisconsin’s Belgium Community'' (1931) *''The Kensington Stone'' (Wisconsin: Ephraim, 1932) *''Westward from Vinland'' (1940) *''My First Eighty Years'' (1957) *''Explorations in America before Columbus'' (1956) *''A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America'' (1962)

References

Other sources

* Burton, Paul and Frances ''Ephraim Stories'' (Ephraim: Stonehill Publishing, published in 1999. reprinted in 2003) *''H. Holand, Noted Author and Historian, Dead at 90'' ("Door County Advocate". August 8, 1963, pp. 1 and 3)

External links