Author Description

The chain of events that led a group of Danes and Norwegians to form a unique community in an unsettled part of Palo Alto County, Iowa, really started in the fourteenth century when Queen Margaret of Denmark dictated that Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, all of whom she ruled at the time, would have a common language. The migration to America from Denmark and Norway consisted mostly of "landless ones." The desire to own land led many of them to leave their homelands for the New World. By early in the twentieth century, the heavy migration to America had virtually eliminated the "Landless Ones" class in Norway and Denmark. The two Lutheran churches the original settlers founded, one Norwegian and one Danish, stand within five miles of each other and reflect the conviction of the first settlers that God indeed had saved this special place for them.