A Short History of the Troms Quakers And their Emigration to America

3 A Short History of the Troms Quakers And their Emigration to America* by Hans Eirik Aarek Norwegian Quakers are connected to the first Norwegian emigration to the United States of America through the Sloopers on the Restauration in 1825. About a third of the Quakers in Norway emigrated to America during the nineteenth century.1 From the 1850s onward many Quakers emigrated from Strand and other places in Ryfylke.2 Almost the whole Quaker group in Roldal emigrated to Iowa in 1869.3 The Quakers in the northern part of Norway are nearly unknown to Quaker historians and so is their emigration to America. Generally both the significance and the volume of the emigration from northern Norway have been underestimated.4 This emigration was a catastrophe for the small young Quaker groups in Tromso and Mâlselv, where most of the Quakers in northern Norway lived, and, as in Roldal, only individual Friends were left after the main body emigrated. Quakerism goes back to the 1650s in England and appears only a few years later in America. Norwegian Quaker history dates from 181 4. 5 Quakerism was brought to Norway by Norwegian seamen who were in British captivity during the Napoleonic Wars of 1807-1814. When they returned home to Norway, they started to practice Quaker worship in Christiania and Stavanger. In 1818 91 92 Hans Eirik Aarek the Norwegian Quaker Society or The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was formally organized with the help of visiting Friends, the French-Canadian Stephen Grellet and the British William Allen. Conflict with the Norwegian authorities was one of the main motivations for emigrating to America. Quakers were not allowed to live everywhere in Norway. They were restricted to certain areas, and they were not allowed to pro telyze. They were punished for not baptizing their children and not marrying in the state church, and for not burying their dead in consecrated earth. This led to the first organized emigration in 1825. In 1845 the Norwegian Storting passed the Dissenter Law, which allowed dissenters to organize themselves into churches, but the law did not go far enough for the Quakers. It did not allow them to refuse military service, and dissenters were fined for not paying school tax and church obligations. This led to an even greater emigration of members of the Quaker Society in Norway in the years after the Dissenter Law was passed. In spite of the emigration the Society of Friends grew in these years. It was a society full of life and strength. It had good leaders and was supported by British and American Friends. It had a school that was educationally progressive, and members of the Quaker society were instrumental in founding the Teetotalist and Peace movements as well as the Labor movement in Norway. Toward the end of the century, the Quaker society experienced a dechne. Emigration made an impact, there were other competing denominations, and there was internal strife within the Stavanger Quaker group. But the society survived and is still part of the religious landscape in Norway today. When the Dissenter Law was passed, British and American Friends started to come to Norway on mission journeys. After Thomas Stillitoes visit in 1822, there had been no foreign visitors until 1846.6 The Quakerism of the nineteenth century was characterized by evangelical eagerness. It was centered around a personal experience of God and rejected any rituals and outward ceremonies such as baptism and the Lord s Supper. The meeting for worship was a A Short History of the Troms Quakers 93 silent meeting, although the spoken word was often heard, especially from the foreign ministers. In the fifty years between 1846 and 1898 there were forty mission visits of more than sixty persons . Thirteen of these persons visited Norway two or more times. A conservative estimate is that about 100,000 persons attended the meetings in this period and listened to the foreign Quaker missionaries , and that more than 300,000 copies of tracts and other publications were handed out.7 Most of the missionaries traveled in the south of Norway, especially in the Stavanger area, but also along the coast to Oslo or up...

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