THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Wayne Rohne
DATE : August 6, 1988
PLACE:
INTERVIEWER:
17th Annual Folk Life Festival , Institute
of Texan Cultures , San Antonio , Texas
James Patrick McGuire
M: Today we will be interviewing M. Wayne Rohne concerning
the Norwegian Booth at the Folkl ife Fest i val. Good
morning, Mr . Rohne .
R: Good morning , good morning .
M: Mr . Rohne , could you tell us something about the
Norwegian Booth at the Folklife Festival?
R: This is our fourth year , I believe , to have a food
booth at the festiva l. Our l ackering , or folk dance group,
has been here e i ther 12 or 13 years.
M: How do you spell l ackering?
R: L .•• and she will need proof of it ••. but I think it ' s
1 e ik ar r i n g , leikarring , meaning a dance in a circle
or ring , a ring dance. At our food booth , we have lapskaus,
or Norwegian stew, which is a commoner ' s food fare , and it
consists of potatoes and some chopped beef from rump roast
and then some salt pork for seasoning and some onions.
M: Sounds mighty tasty .
R: We think it is, and we have had a lot of favorable
ROHNE 2
R: comments from people who sampled it, and we have had
our food inspectors come by and sample some more so we are
kinder flattered by their attention to it. We also serve a
smobrod , again the o has a slash through it. And that is an
open-face sandwich, and it's on rye bread and sliced roast
beef and then a cucumber slice on top, just for
garnishment.
M: I think I'll have lunch with you.
R: We'd be pleased to have you. Pleased to have you come
with us.
M: How many years have these foods been offered?
R: Well, for all the years we have been here, which I
believe is our fourth year for a food booth. We also have
lefsa which is like a flour tortilla but it is made from
potatoes. And that's very tasty, and people eat that with
butter on it and also sprinkled with sugar and ci nnamon.
And that's very tasty.
M: How do you call everthing? Give me the full name of
the club.
R: The Norwegian Society of Texas.
M: Where are your headquarters?
R: Well, we don't have an office, as such . The registered
office , as far a s the Secretary of State is concerned, is at
my of fice address, 1323 W. Pioneer Parkway in Arlington,
Texas, 76013. And I am the registered agent f or
communications from the state through the Secretary of
State ' s of fice. Our president lives in Beaumont, and other
ROHNE 3
R: officers live in different parts of the state. But we
have no formal office as such, but the registered office is
in Arlington.
M: So your club members are scattered all over the state.
R: That's correct. We have some six hundred members now,
I believe, and we have chapters in Amarillo, El Paso , here
in San Antonio, in Houston, in Dallas and in Arlington and
Fort Worth.
M: Are you the only organization for Texas Norwegians in
existence today?
R: Yes, I think that is fair to say. There is a national
organization of Norwegians, called the Sons of Norway , which
has an office in Houston. But the Norwegian Society of
Texas would be the only organization which is devoted to
Texas Norwegians exclusively.
M: When did the Norwegians come to Texas? Can you give us
a little background?
R: The earliest that we have heard of, I believe , is about
1836 . There were Norwegian sailors who came to Texas.
Norwegians have been a sea-faring country for most of its
existence and sailors have gone all over the world, and, of
course , going back to Viking time , the Norwegians were the
Vikings ••• were seafaring people and spread themselves all
over the world through their conquest and seafaring skills.
But there was a sailor by the name of Buas, who is believed
to have been the first settler in Texas, and his settlement
was around Corpus Christi. His root in Texas was around
ROHNE 4
R: Corpus Christi.
There was a Nordboe ••• Johan Nordboe ••• who settled in
Dallas at about the same time, 1836, and had a settlement
about where the Oak Cliff section of Dallas is now. But he
didn't stay, or else didn ' t leave any descendant, so we
don't have much record of where he is but he is probably the
most prominent early settler. That would be Johan Nordboe
who would have settled in Dallas in about 1836.
M: When you are talking to club members and fellow
Norwegian-Texans, what is the consensus on the reasons for
leaving their homeland and coming to Texas?
R: Well, I think, basically, economic. Times were very
hard in Norway and there were mostly people who were unable
to make a living .•• just a famine. And s o I think this was
the basic reason there were people in the immigration move­ment
who helped to move that along and obtain interest.
There was dissatisfaction with the religious system, which
was a state religion , and the property system. The system of
property was one where the first born son would receive the
property and that relegated most of the other members of the
family to being tenants or workmen, or there was some dis­satisfaction
with the idea of just being in the status quo
all one's life.
M: Did the second and third and fourth son of the family
sometimes go to sea to make a living because they had no
land?
R: Yes, I think that is true, and that would have
ROHNE 5
R: happened with many of the people and would have
accounted for their going out to sea. And because of the
land of Norway not being arable or tillable. There are a
lot of rocks and a lot of fjords and not tillable land in
Norway and it ' s beautiful , but they were faced with the
reality of making a living.
M: Sounds to me like over population had something to do
with pushing the immigrants to America. In your
information, was Texas the prime destination of most
immigrants coming to American in the nineteenth century?
R: Well, it may have been one of the last choices really,
of the Norwegians . One who reall y is regarded as the
forerunner or the one who began to bring immigrants to the
United States is Kling Pearson. He traveled all over much
of Europe. He was a Quaker and he was also a free-thinker
and was out of step in not keeping with the traditional
authority figures in Norway . And so, he had been to Europe
and been to England and brought people to the United States.
The first group of people came on the Restaurashen in 1825.
M: Is that a ship?
R: Yes, that is a ship, the Restaurashen, and it sailed
from Norway and came to New York. It left on July 4, 1825 ,
and arrived in New York, I believe , on October 9, 1825. And
that group of people settled in New York . but then after a
while they moved on through the Erie Canal and finally wound
up, many of them, in Chicago • • • in that area in Illinois.
Chicago was not a developed place at the time and was
ROHNE 6
R: not a very desirable place because of the swamps, sort
of, and they had not drained them where you could build a
city or something, but that came later. And the people
moved to farming areas in Illinois, and from there they
spread out into Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas and so on.
But Cling Pearson was in New York City to meet the
boat. So he was the one who led them into these different
areas. And much of the travel he did was on foot. He
walked from New York to Illinois, and then somehow he got
word about Texas. He decided to move to Texas and had a
land grant from the State of Texas and I think, well, he was
in a four mile prairie area which is over in east Dallas
about 45 miles; it's on a line of Van Zant and Kaufman
counties. He visited there. There was an earlier colony in
Brownsboro in Henderson County, and one of my grandparents
was born in Brownsboro, Henderson County, of immigrant
parents . He was born in 1858 and his parents had come from
Norway. I believe from 1845 some of his uncles had, and
then his own parents had come in 1848 or 1850. But, I don't
know if I got to your question.
M: All r ight, le t ' s continue with a summary of the history
of Bosque County and the Norwegians.
R: All right. I wanted to follow up on your question of
"Was Texas the first choice", and I think that my comment
was it was probably among the last of the choices even
though there were earlier settlers going back to 1836, of
Norwegians. Most of the immigration went to the north ••• to
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R: New York and a large number of people were in Brooklyn
and then in the Dakotas and the midwest.
And Kling Pearson moved to Texas sometime in the 1850's
or 1860. Then he received a land grant , and then he
advertised for someone to share that land grant with him. A
resident of Illinois, John Kaldwick answered that ad, or
Odie Kawick answered that ad and then came to Texas, and
then provided home for Kling Pearson. And then Kling
Pearson died in Bosque County in 1865, and he is buried at
Norse, Texas.
And he walked all over the country and then he thought
Texas was the most beautiful sight that he had seen and had
few problems and there was an openness that he welcomed and
so this was a favorite of his, but he was also up in years
and perhaps not as willing or as able to move about from
place because he was up in years.
The people in Brownsboro , also at Four Mile in the
Kaufman area, moved generally to Bosque County, and I think
that took place in 1870 or so. There had been a number of
people who had moved to Bosque County in the early 1850's,
and there were about six families or couples who were
identified as the Norwegians present whenever the county was
formed in 1854 and these people had come in the early
l850 ' s ••• some directly from Norway but some from Four Mile
in Kaufman or Van Zant Counties. And there was immigration
by people who would bring them over •.. people who lived there
and went back to Norway and generally paid the passage for
ROHNE 8
R: the immigrant in exchange for a year's labor on the
farm.
So that is how many of the people came over and that's
how my three grandparents who were born in Norway came to
this country. Two of them ••• my grandpa Rohne worked in
Mexia and he, I think, was a baggage handler for the
railroad. And then my Grandma Rohne worked for a plantation
owner as a domestic housekeeper. And so the two of them got
married in Mexia. And the plantation owner gave her a big
reception , and then they rode the oxcart to Bosque County
and honeymooned on the way where my grandpa had bought a
farm. They settled near Cranfels Gap in Bosque County.
M: That is a famous little town, isn't it?
R: Yes, it is. It always attracts attention when I tell
people where I am from. But many people know where it is;
it ' s a small town. I think the map, or the sign outside the
town, indicates 347 population which has been fairly
constant throughout the years. People move in and people
move out. But it ' s remained about the same over the years.
M: Could you estimate how many Norwegian-Texans there are
today in 1988 in Cranfels Gap?
R: Yes, we have a little flyer that has been printed by
our Society , and I think the number on that is 62,000 people
in Texas who in the 1980's census indicated Norway as their
home country or home of their ancestors .•. that they were
descended from Norwegian parents.
M: Tell me about the ways that you believe the club of
ROHNE 9
M: Norwegians in Texas maintains heritage of the Norwegian
people in language and custom and other ways.
R: Well, we have language classes generally in each of our
chapters, and in this way we hope to encourage interest in
the language by means whereby people can learn Norwegian.
It is a beautiful language and there are many resources in
Norway and authors and literature and music. Music, of
course, is pretty universal as far as the score, notes and
so on, but language itself is in Norwegian and much of it
has been translated. There are so many little sayings that
people can learn, a nd it is helpful if you know something
about the structure of the language and pronunciation. The
alphabet, for example, has a couple of additional letters
and so it is helpful to know that, and many people would
like t o travel in Norway. There has been interest in
awakening by people in their ancestry. Norway is one of the
most beautiful countries as far as scenery and
accommodation, and it is helpful in knowing the language
whenever you can go over there. Many of the people in
Norway ••. in fact , I suppose most of the people of
Norway •.• know some English, and my impression was that they
are better in English than I am in Norwegian. You can
travel comfortably but the signs along the road and in the
stores and everything are in Norwegian, so it is helpful to
be able to make your way and learn some of those things. I
think the Norwegians like to see people attempt to speak
their language.
ROHNE 10
M: Down here in San Antonio, we have heard about a big
festival in Bosque County where is served a special type of
fish food dishes. Can you tell us about it?
R: You no doubt are talking about the annual lutefisk
supper at Cranfels Gap. This happens on the first Saturday
in December of each year and is held in the school
facilities, the public school facilities, at Cranfels Gap.
And the basic fare, that from which the event gets its name,
is lutefisk.
This is really lye that is used in its preparation.
The fish itself is cod, and codfish is caught in Norway in
great abundance. When fish are caught they are just split
and the entrails are taken out, but the fish are stacked and
stored and dried in the sun. So they are s hipped to this
country in about three foot lengths and they have to be
dried and prepared to be edible. They are just like wood,
so to speak, so you soak it in water and then mix it with
lye. And then that process of changing the water every few
days and putting on fresh water enables you to come up with
the substance which is very palatable ••. and for some it is
palatable and for o thers it isn't.
fish odor.
It has a distinct strong
M: Would you recommend it for the average Texan?
R: I'd recommend it for everyone. There is an unusual
property that you derive from eating lutefisk, but not
everyone e njoys lutefisk, and they don't like the smell.
And the supper also features turkey and dressing and
ROHNE 11
R: vegetables and homemade pies and breads. And so it is
a very good meal and one that you can always find something
to eat ••• like fish or turkey and dressing or vegetables or
sweets such as pies, pecan pies, and all sorts of homemade
fixings.
M: Do you think this might serve as a big Norwegian-Texan
family reunion for gathering up at Cranfels Gap every year?
Or is there another occasion during the year where people
like to come back?
R: Well , it is an occasion where a lot of people come back
and visit together and you get to see each other. There is
a big event , and probably one that is more popular and has
received more attention in the press, and that is the
smorgasbord at Norse. This is during probably the first or
second week in November, and tickets are in great demand for
this supper. And there is a limited number of seats
available. Usually it occurs on two nights and there are
two servings each night, and bus loads of people come from
many different places for the smorgasbord. But you have to
make appl ication for your tickets and mail those in. It
can't be postmarked earlier than a certain time and date,
nor after the opening deadline. If you don 't have it
postmarked within a day or so it is virtually impossible to
get a ticket. But they conduct an honest drawing and if you
don't get your ticket , your money is refunded so that
just ••. you are not assured of getting to go there, but that
i s a very, very fine supper.
ROHNE 12
R: You meet in our Saviors Lutheran Church at Norse and
the pastor usually describes the supper and how it began
there at Norse as a means of making some improvements on the
church and also as a means of continuing our Norwegian
heritage and so that has continued and then there is
probably some music and some Norwegian songs. And go over
to the parish house where you are served Norwegian
delicacies as familiy style and there is more than enough to
eat.
M: That sounds delicious. Talking about music and song,
we know about the Norwegian dancers who come to the Folk
Life Festival. Would you like to describe some of the
dances, and also let's comment a little bit about choral
music amongst Norwegian people in Texas.
R: All right. I have seen and observed the dancers and
some of the dances I can describe but they ••• as far as the
names for them, they don't come to me right away •• • but they
are folk dances and reels. And a schottische, polkas, and
waltzes. And then there is the weaver ' s dance which has
been ••• it depicts the sheep ••• the farmer going out looking
for sheep and then bringing the sheep back into the fold and
shearing the sheep and preparing the wool and then weaving
it into cloth. The weaver's dance. That ' s a popular dance.
And there is a dance the men and women appear to be fighting
each other. That's a cute little dance and there are
several others like that, and someone from the leikarring,
their director, could describe those in detail and , I hope,
ROHNE 13
R: will provide for you.
You asked about choral music and af cappella choirs. And
there are a number of Norwegian artists who come to mind -
Grieg, for exampl e, pianist, and composer, and opera singers
and they have always been interested i n mus i c. And the
church colleges of Luther, St. Ol af , Concordia , they have
emphasized ac~appella singing and just excellence in vocal
performance , and those have been a part o f our tradition as
well.
M: How about heri tage preservation in the future with
Norwegians in Texas?
R: Well, we hope to continue that. We see some i nterest
among younger people , and I think you ••• to a point where you
see the older people pass ing on. For exampl e, Karl
Sorensen , he was very instrumental, in fact probably the
singl e factor in organizing the Norwegian Society of Texas
and then keeping it going . He was not from Texas but this is
his adopted state . He had lived in South Dakota a nd had
been here in the earlier mid-fifties and then went t o Africa
on an agricultural assignment and then came back, and so
spent many years i n Texas. But he saw the need for
preserving our traditions and customs, and so that was .•• and
our formation as a society came about during the American
Revolution Bicentennial in 1975-76 . We organized in 1975
and I was active; I was the mayor of the small town of
Pantego in Tarrant County. And we had a b icentennial city
and one of the emphases of the bicentennial was his torical .
ROHNE 14
R: So that fit right in.
About that time, Haley had his book on Roots, so not
only for the black community but for many other interested
groups , an awareness carne about that we needed to be
concerned about our history. And that was such an amazing
thing because their tradition had been strictly oral and
very little written documentation, and we had a lot of
documentation but nothing really put down as far as Texas
was concerned.
Well, that's not true either. There had been some
theses prepared by people in Bosque County. Dr. Pool, for
example , of San Marcos had written about Bosque County, and
Ors Pearson and Alden Bronston, two people, prominent
citizens of Bosque County, had written masters theses about
Bosque County. And so that was helpful to look to, although
so many things that you know about and have as part of your
memory were not written down , and need to be, because people
forget and people pass on and that resource is no longer
available for you.
M: Thank you, Mr. Rohne. I would suggest a good oral
history program like this to record the memor ies of the
older members of the community. We are delighted to have
this interview today for the Folklife Festival and
appreciate you taking the time to come in and all of your
group for coming and helping make the festival what it is
today .
R: Well, I appreciate this very much, and I have, of
ROHNE 15
R: c ourse, lived in Texas all of my life except for a
period of time when I was at Luther College for two years.
I graduated there and then I was in ser vice for two years,
but I hadn't really attended Folklife Festival until four or
five years a go when I began thinking about having a booth
here . And so I was very much impressed with the Folklife
Festival and the Institute of Texan Cultures.
I had seen t he display in 1968 in connection with
Hemisfair and saw many of the things that I had grown up
with, and my wife's great grandmother's loom was on display
at that time, Mrs. Henry Dahl: and there Hendrick and
Christina Dahl, my wife's great grand parents, we r e on the
front cover of the Norwegians in Texas book. But this
Folklife Festival just brings everybody together, and I
think it is truly a family reunion of people in Texas and we
realize how much we have in common. But I've noticed some
of the dance rs, you know, some of those look at the same
things as far as rekatuibs between a man and woman, you
know, they're courting and attention given to each other and
so it's very interesting but I'm glad this is promoting this
heritage.
M: Once again, thank you very much, and we hope you will
have a very successful year.
R: Thank you very much.
END OF TAPE I, Side 1, about 25 minutes