Minnesota Historical Society

The Minnesota Historical Society is the institutional parent of Borealis Books, the imprint named in this edition’s publication information. In the accompanying account of Vilhelm Moberg’s research, the Society is also connected to the Swedish-American museum in Philadelphia, where he studied materials for the Emigrant Novels. Its place in the book is therefore both practical and historical: it stands behind the edition and within the documented network of research used to build the novels’ immigrant world.

Publishing Relationship

Borealis Books is an imprint of the Minnesota Historical Society Press. This publishing relationship situates the edition within the Society’s press and identifies the Society as the institution behind the imprint; the book’s publication information also gives the Borealis Books website.

Research and Historical Documentation

In preparing a historical framework for Karl Oskar Nilsson and Kristina Johansdotter’s lives in the New World, Moberg undertook a study trip through the United States in 1948. His research included work in the archives of the Swedish-American museum in Philadelphia, alongside study among Swedish Americans in Minnesota and consultation of Swedish-American newspapers. The museum thus appears as one resource within a broader inquiry into immigrant experience, rather than as the sole basis for the novels’ historical detail.

Moberg’s documentation extended to the daily conditions and events of Minnesota between the immigrants’ arrival in 1850 and Karl Oskar’s death in 1890. He sought answers to practical questions such as the cost of postage, summer daylight hours, distances within the state, and the appearance of unfamiliar animals. The Society’s museum is part of the institutional setting for this work, while the account emphasizes the range of archives, personal contacts, and other sources behind the fictional narrative.

Historical and Literary Significance

The book presents Moberg’s research as an effort to place his characters within the broader experience of frontier settlement. He supplemented documentary work with firsthand conversations with Swedish Americans in Chisago and Washington counties, whose knowledge of immigrant forebears informed his understanding of pioneer life. The Society’s archival connection therefore belongs to a larger method of combining institutional sources with community memory.

That method also clarifies the boundary between historical grounding and fictional construction. The account notes that Moberg took one major liberty with the migration pattern: his Swedish settlers travel directly from the East Coast to Minnesota, although mid-century migrants generally spent several years first in Illinois or Iowa. The Society’s place in the book is not as a participant in the story, but as part of the documentary infrastructure through which the novels’ historical world was researched and published.