Norwegian immigration to the United States began in 1825 when the region was experiencing political problems regarding religion. The first ship of Norwegian immigrants to sail to the United States was called Restauration. It was a sloop, a low type of ship with only one mast. These ships would become the common vessel for Norwegian immigrants migrating across the Atlantic Ocean. Norwegians who settled in the United States carried their culture with them. This included a decorative technique known as rosemaling.
How Did Norwegian-American Folk Art Come to Exist?
Restauration sailed from Stavanger in July 1825 and spent three months at sea before arriving in New York in October of that same year. It held six families on the small vessel. The journey was hard, with cramped, wet, and dangerous conditions. It was common to lose family members during voyages like these. Restauration’s inhabitants settled in upstate New York and took on the nickname “sloopers,” named for the ships they brought while immigrating. This was the beginning of a mass-immigration. Besides Ireland in the 19th century, Norway lost the highest percentage of its population to emigration.
Norwegians who immigrated to the United States in the following decades dispersed to different areas across the country, with some of the most prominent areas being Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and later into the Dakotas. The Upper Midwest had fertile land with black, rich soil. With the vast majority of newly arrived Norwegians being farmers, this was an enticing region, especially compared to the rocky terrain of their previous homes. In the 1870s, Norwegian immigration was at an all-time high. A Norwegian-American man named Andreas Ueland, from Minnesota, returned to Norway in 1871, where he found his hometown to be infected with “America Fever,” in which there was no joy to be found, and everyone wanted to leave as if they were homesick for a country they’d never seen. Norwegian-Americans settling in the United States brought their cultural traditions with them, including a folk art technique called rosemaling.
Traditional Decorative Painting
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterRosemaling began in the mid-18th century in the Trondheim area before spreading to the regions south of Trondheim. It is sometimes translated to “rose painting” in English, but this is likely a mistranslation, for roses are rarely depicted within rosemaling. It is more likely that it means “decorative painting,” as some rural communities in Norway used the word rosa or rosut for “decorative” in their dialect. When rural communities were exposed to Baroque and Rococo art from continental Europe, they sought to mimic the intricate designs with materials they had available to them. However, in some ways, the style also mimics the carving techniques used before the invention of rosemaling.
Some of the first buildings to be painted in rosemaling were churches, though it would eventually spread to walls, doors, furniture, utensils, storage chests, and more. Traditional paints were made from local materials, such as red from red iron oxide or blue from woad dye. The painting tools were locally made as well, using wood and animal hair to create paintbrushes. These paintbrushes needed to be flexible to create the soft scrolls and twists of rosemaling.
Upon arriving in the United States, people naturally wished to be reminded of home. Norwegian Americans carried on the tradition of rosemaling in every way they could, even in the face of progressing modernization. Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, has a large collection of rosemaling examples, both from Norway and the United States. Examples from their collection of modern rosemaling for the Norwegian diaspora in the Upper Midwest include a mid-20th century refrigerator decorated with rosemaling and a Dawn Dish Soap bottle that has been painted with rosemaling as well. Since most Norwegian Americans worked as farmers, their winters caused them to seek supplementary work elsewhere. A common job for Norwegian-American farmers to work in the winter was painting rooms and furniture.
Hallingdal
There are many different styles of rosemaling, depending on what region in Norway the artist was from. Many Norwegian-Americans continued in the styles of their family’s regions, but after generations of being in the United States, new styles began to appear as well, such as the American Rogaland style. Styles developed naturally in Norway. People from isolated rural communities saw these art styles produced in cities and then brought them back to their communities to emulate. However, due to a lack of formal training, artists were able to take liberties and become expressive in their work. This caused styles to develop individually with populations separated by distance or natural landscape.
This Hallingdal chest was created by Anders Olsen Hoff in 1816. The Hallingdal style typically consists of thick black linework and bright colors, which form large flowers and scrolls throughout the design. Hallingdal style rosemaling usually foregoes shading, and if it uses shading within the design, it is typically kept to a minimum. The boldness of the linework and flowers are a hallmark of the Hallingdal region’s style of rosemaling. Circles with cross-hatching, especially in the center of the design or in the center of flowers, are also common in the Hallingdal style.
Valdres
The Valdres style was typically created with red, blue, or black backgrounds. Older examples are more likely to be painted with red backgrounds, though this is not always the case. The Valdres style has the most realistic flowers of all the rosemaling styles, almost always presented in naturally occurring ways, like growing from the ground or a pot. The flowers can be painted as if they are bunched like bouquets, potted in decorative pots, or rooted in the ground landscape style. They can often be identified as actual species of flowers, and are almost always bunched together in a natural way rather than simply aesthetic. In the United States, some instances of the Valdres style include monochromatic landscapes called chinoiserie, which would be painted alongside the rosemaling on a different area of the object. An example would be a hat box with rosemaling on the lid and chinoiserie around the sides.
East & West Agder
East and West Agder are separated by a mountain range, which caused their rosemaling styles to develop separately, despite their being so close geographically. However, they do have some similarities, such as the symmetrical nature of the designs. East Agder typically has very bold, geometric flowers and shapes. The flowers often grow out of vases or are bunched into bouquets. West Agder has bold colors and intricately painted scrolls. In the center of the design is a cartouche. It is common for West Agder to sport a red or matching “crown of flames” above the cartouche, which is visible in the 1881 chest above.
Telemark
The Telemark style of rosemaling is one of the best known, and one of the most common as the region became known for its rosemaling talents. It has a free-moving design that is reminiscent of dancing, emphasized by the strong use of color. Colors are often complementary, creating a striking dance of color as the scrolls twist around the object. The Telemark style places great importance on scrollwork and is often made up entirely out of scrolls. It is one of the most recognizable styles of rosemaling for the “C” shape in the center of the designs, which is present across nearly all examples and is a hallmark of the region’s folk art. This shape often has a “knot” near the center of the design, with the focal point often being that knot or the negative space it creates as the scrolls move away from it.
On the doors of the cupboard in the photograph, the “C” is visible as a dark green and red swirl in the center of the door’s design. If there are flowers present in Telemark rosemaling design, it is usually a made-up species of flower to fit the design as needed. The only exception would be what is referred to as a “Telemark Rose,” which is a simple rose that uses brushwork to create shading with transparency. However, fantastical flowers are the most common form of flowers in this style. The Telemark style is very rarely symmetrical in design, as the scrolls all flow in the same direction as the “C” in the center.
Gudbrandsdal
Similarly to the Telemark style, the Gudbrandsdal style also heavily values scrollwork within its designs. However, the scrollwork in Gudbrandsdal utilizes less color and becomes more intricate in the scrollwork itself. The scrolls are usually the most developed of all of the rosemaling styles when it comes to scrollwork, as it is meant to mimic its predecessor of wood carving. Gudbrandsdal is directly inspired by acanthus carvings from the region before rosemaling had become the norm. Some sections of the scrolls can often appear to be turned over, giving an almost 3-dimensional effect. The flowers that are usually present in the Gudbrandsdal style are in direct contrast to the flowing movement of the scrolls. They often sit on top of the design, heavy and still compared to the movement around them in the baroque-like scrollwork.
Modern Use
In the United States, Norwegian-Americans were proud to continue their folk art traditions and sought to keep them from fading into the past. Due to a large number of Norwegian Americans living roughly within the same region of the United States, the interest in the community’s heritage was easier to keep alive as a shared community trait. Some ways to keep the interest alive and offer some form of cultural connection to the Norwegian-Americans of the area were to open attractions that got people excited and interested in their heritage. Such attractions are the more obvious choices, like museums, while others are creative choices, like a Holiday Inn in Washington Island, Wisconsin.
A photograph from the 1950s shows one of the hotel’s rooms painted with rosemaling. Norwegian Americans were not shy about incorporating their folk art into their daily lives. Some followed their ancestors’ traditions of rosemaling everything, from refrigerators to dish soap! Today, many Norwegian-American homes continue to have artwork that includes rosemaling. Many recent examples of rosemaling are mainly done by family members, local artists such as Andrea Herkert, or Norwegian artists who frequent the Upper Midwest to teach rosemaling courses to Norwegian Americans such as Sigmund Årseth.
Norwegian-American Folk Art and American Rogaland
As the generations continued, Norwegian Americans began to develop different styles independent of the styles their ancestors were familiar with. A style called the Rogaland style began to take on a more symmetrical design around the 1970s, earning itself the new distinction of becoming the American Rogaland style. This style often looks like looking into a kaleidoscope, with its rigidly symmetrical design full of flowers, usually in a circular format.
Rosemaling was born from a rural desire for Baroque and Rococo art, but with a local and affordable twist that created its own genre of folk art which varied across regions due to the isolation of communities amidst the mountainous landscape of Norway. This tradition was carried from Norway to the United States via the Atlantic Ocean, and it continues to live on in the Norwegian diaspora of the American Midwest and elsewhere.
