“Sons of old Norway owned the town”

Norwegians celebrated Cynthia Elyce Rubin The Norwegian American “Norwegians Celebrated” ran the bold headline in the evening edition of the Fargo Forum dated May 17, 1904. Thousands of visitors from all over the region and Norway assembled in Fargo, N.D., to assist in the celebration of Syttende Mai and to attend the unveiling of the Bauta Sten (Honor Stone), the granite obelisk in honor of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norway’s great poet and winner of the 1903 Nobel prize in Literature. The weather was splendid. The enthusiasm was palpable. A local journalist described the crowd as “the thrifty and sturdy emigrants from the land of the Vikings. Their enthu