The first small group of Norwegian immigrants arrived in 1825. During the 1830s the first large wave of immigrants had arrived and settled mostly in Wisconsin. Serious publishing for and by the immigrants did not begin until 1847 with the establishment of the "Skandinaviske presseforening" (Scandinavian Press Association). This event marked the beginning of a remarkable publishing effort that was to last until about 1925 after the Norwegian Lutheran Church discontinued the use of Norwegian as their official language, fearing that they might lose their young members.

The Norwegian language press business originated in Muskego, Wisconsin, with the establishment of the first Norwegian language newspaper Nord Lyset and was to spread across primarily Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and, to a lesser degree, to Washington, Oregon, and Texas. It included important and widely-read newspapers and periodicals, annuals, and pamphlets and bound books in the three major areas of religion (Bibles, devotional literature, sermons, papers of the various factions of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, controversial essays and tracts, etc.); non-fiction covering a wide array of political, historical and social materials, as well as practical guides for recent immigrants, farmers and laborers, such as guidebooks to American government and law, to letter writing, to the art of running a dairy farm ; and poetry and fiction, including poems, stories, novels-at first printed and serialized in the newspapers, then published in book form, including translations of well-known Norwegian, European and American writers, and later also fiction and poetry written by the Norwegian-Americans writers and poets themselves.

Some of the best known publishing houses included: Augsburg Publishing House (still exists today as Augsburg Fortress); B. Anundsen (Decorah, Iowa--still exists); C. Rasmussen (Minneapolis, Minn.); Fremad (Eau Claire, Wis.); Fuhr Publishing and Printing (Duluth, Minn.); John Anderson Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.); K.C. Holter (Minneapolis, Minn.); Lutheran Publishing House (Decorah, Iowa); and Pacific Press (Mountain View, Calif.). [For an exhaustive discussion of the history of Norwegian-American literature and publishing see: Orm Øverland, The Western Home: a Literary History of Norwegian America (Northfield, Minn.: Norwegian American Historical Association, 1996)].

Norwegian-American imprints have been collected, preserved and cataloged in the United States by several institutions affiliated either with the Norwegian or the Norwegian Lutheran tradition, for example, Luther College and Vesterheimen Museum in Decorah, Iowa; the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, N.D.; Pacific Lutheran College in Washington State; the Minnesota Historical Association in St. Paul, Minn; and here at St. Olaf College which--due to its close affiliation with the Norwegian American Historical Association's Archives [http://www.naha.stolaf.edu/]-- has the largest collection of NAIs. Outside the United States, another substantial collection has been assembled over the past years by the Library of the University of Oslo, Norway:[http://www.nb.no/html/norwegianamerican_collection.html]

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