By the age of 29 Knut Halverson was “fed up with time.” His life in the new world was not an easy one, and often he dreamed of returning home to the fjords of Norway.
In his journal, which he kept diligently, Halverson described the hardships and joys of the early days of Portage County. The unpredictable weather, hard work and deep religious convictions that filled his days are recorded in diaries, unearthed in 1953 in the home Nellie (Halverson) Peterson, Ironwood, Mich. The diaries were translated from the original Norwegian by Malcolm Rosholt and are on file at the Portage County Archives housed at UWSP.
“Today is my 29th birthday, dear friend who will read this,” Halverson wrote on May 13, 1879. “It may not seem like many years, but I am already fed up with time. I long to get home and be away from the hardships of life.”
Many entries took on this solemn and downcast tone, in the face of hard work in a new land. “Norway my Norway" is penned in the margin of one page. “This strong feeling for the home he left behind was widely shared by other immigrants in their first years,” said Rosholt in his book, “Our County Our Story.” “More so by the women than the men.”
However, the early Norwegian settlers were happy enough with their new home that they wrote back to their native land and encouraged many family and friends to follow, said Rosholt.
Halverson, who settled in the Town Sharon and later moved to the Town of Alban, began the diary in 1872 and continued writing through 1878. While pages are missing here and there, the journal shows the daily life of an early immigrant farmer.
With rare exceptions, Halverson recorded the weather each day. His accounts of the elements show how vital the weather was to the early farmers, says Rosholt, in his introduction to the journals. Farmers were at the mercy of the weather, so keeping track of conditions may have made it easier to predict what Mother Nature had on the way.
The work he tackled each day is also often mentioned. It took a great deal of work to clear the trees and rocks for farmland. Halverson wrote of his desire to improve his new farm and to see the new world mature. “The days go slowly for me, and O that this earth of ours could only improve,” he wrote on Aug. 18, 1875.
In February of 1876 he said, “There is so much in this world I would like to do but can not quite do.”
The descendents of Halverson, his wife Berthe, and their 13 children have moved throughout the country, but the lessons learned by the early Halversons remain in the journals they left behind.
“Sorrow and joy walk together,” Halverson scribbled in the margin of a page dated July 1875.
“Time flies and you can not stop it. But on the final day it will end.”