SOURCE: Glasrud, Clarence A. “Boyesen and the Norwegian Immigration.” Norwegian-American Studies and Records 19 (1956): 15-45.

In the following essay, Glasrud argues that his reputation notwithstanding, Boyesen was largely ignorant of the Norwegian immigrant's experience in America; rather, his significance was as a liaison between European and American literature.

The career of Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, “the first writer of Norwegian birth or blood to use the English language in the successful cultivation of literary art” has been subject to general misunderstanding for a number of reasons.¹ The most important misconception involves Boyesen's writings about Norwegian immigration to the United States. Many of his stories fall into this category, and since Boyesen himself was a Norwegian immigrant, critics have assumed that he was well qualified to write on the subject. But Boyesen was not a part of the main stream of Norwegian immigration to the western states, and a study of...