"I'd rather live while I live ...."

"It is as if I have already lived two lives here on earth: the first was in Smeviken, and that lasted almost twenty-one years. The second one I lived through on the trip from Smeviken in Helgeland to Clarkfield, South Dakota. Now I am about to begin a third. Strangely enough, although the second life lasted only a little more than three weeks, it seemed much longer than the first. God alone knows how long the third will last or how long it will seem, and only He knows if I will ever experience a fourth life!"

First Impressions 1896 ....

"The Third Life of Per Smevik"

(One of two or three posts)

Some believe and would argue that everything begins at a tribal level, and that the first tier of tribalism is the family. I tend to agree with that position.

I recently completed reading, "The Third Life of Per Smevik," by Paal Mørck. It was the first book -- a novel -- published by Ole Edvart Rølvaag under the pseudonym of Mørck. For those unfamiliar with Rølvaag, he was a 20-year-old Norwegian fisherman who came to the United States in 1896. He arrived in New York -- friendless, alone, not able to understand a word of English -- using money loaned to him by an uncle who worked on a farm in Union County, South Dakota. A three-day train trip took him to Elk Point, the county seat of Union County. No one was there to meet him.

Of that event, Rølvaag wrote: "In that experience I learned the first lesson of the immigrant. The first and perhaps the greatest lesson: A feeling of utter helplessness, as if life had betrayed me. It comes from the sense of being lost in a vast alien land. In this case it was largely physical, but I soon met the spiritual phase of the same thing. The sense of being lost in an alien culture. The sense of being thrust somewhere outside the charmed circle of life. If you couldn't conquer that feeling, if you couldn't break through the magic hedge of thorns, you were lost indeed. Many couldn't, and didn't -- and many were lost thereby."

Rølvaag did survive the experience and flourished in America. 

A bit more about the novel: "The Third Life of Per Smevik," originally was written in the Norwegian language and appeared in 1912. Rølvaag confided that the subject matter of his first novel was so personal that he felt it was necessary to use a pseudonym, although he never explained why he selected that particular name. One of Rølvaag's two daughters, Ella Valborg Tweet, and a granddaughter, Solveig Tweet Zemple, translated it and an English language edition appeared in 1971.

Rolvaag also had two sons, one of whom died an accidental death at age five and the other, Karl, who became the 31st governor of Minnesota and later U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

A bit more about the author: Rølvaag stayed in Elk Point (Clarkfield in the book) three years working on the farm where his uncle lived and worked, then enrolled in Augustana Academy at Canton, South Dakota. He graduated with honors in 1901 and tried a few odds-and-ends jobs before enrolling at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His initial classes were Latin, Greek, German, English composition, church history and mathematics, as well as courses in Norwegian language and literature.

Beyond those things, Rølvaag participated in the literary societies of his days, was involved in the Norwegian club, "Normanna," and wrote for the student newspaper and yearbook, as well. He began writing a novel his junior year, "Nils og Astri," which never was published. During summers he taught parochial school in Lime Grove, Nebraska, and Bisbee, North Dakota. Next he spent a year studying at the University of Kristiania in Oslo before becoming a permanent teacher at Saint Olaf in 1906. There he remained until poor health forced his retirement in 1931.

During his years at Saint Olaf, Rølvaag continued to write novels. Two years after Smevik, he dropped his use of a pen name and a second novel, "Paa Glemte Veie" (On Forgotten Paths) was produced under his own name by a Minneapolis publisher. His magnum opus, "Giants in the Earth," was first published in Norway in two volumes, "I de dage" (In Those Days -- 1924), and "Riket grundlegges" (The Founding of the Kingdom -- 1925). An English edition appeared as a single volume in 1927. The video focuses on Rølvaag's Giants, but it provides background about him and tells a similar story about the life of Norwegian immigrants.

Rølvaag authored Norwegian language textbooks, a dozen novels, essays and poems about the Norwegian-American immigrant experience. In October 1931, Rølvaag suffered a severe heart attack and died on November 5 at his home in Northfield at the age of 55. The next segment will appear in a day or two or three ....