Kristofer Janson was a Norwegian poet, author, and Unitarian. He spent many years in America working primarily in Minnesota. He wrote many stories about the immigrant experience, most of which have never been translated into English to my knowledge. One of these works is Saga of the Prairie (Præriens saga) which contains several short stories.
I have attempted to translate "A Horse-and-Buggy Priest" from this book because it shows some of the hardships that my great-grandfather went through as a priest for the Norwegian Synod. I do not know Norwegian, so I rely on Google Translate alongside Einar Haugen's Norwegian English Dictionary, and take some liberties to clarify phrases. I would love for someone more equipped than I am to do this, but so far no one has done so.
I will post the story in parts:
I.
"Horse-and-Buggy" Priest? What is a "Horse-and-Buggy" Priest? Yes, there is one who, partly for a living and partly in zeal for his calling, goes out far west between the settlers to bring them the food of the Spirit that he can offer; goes out where there are no railways, no roads, where you have to wade through bogs and rivers to get from hut to hut. A "Horse-and-Buggy" priest is one who, for this reason, has to spend half his life on the country road in his buggy, he roams there in rain and snow as well as in scorching sunshine, and when he has sown the health of his youth down there in the steaming, feverish swamps, he leaves there as poor as he came, for it is rare that he can get his wretched salary paid. One year there are grasshoppers there, another year a drought, the third year floods are there, there is always something that has been there which intervenes in the priest's coffers. One can say what one wants about the Norwegian Lutheran Priests; one may have many objections to their letter-worship,[i]spiritlessness, and dog-like loyalty to hundreds of dogmas --- one thing must also be admitted, however: they count among themselves many good, brave men who have neglected all considerations of the comfort of a civilized life and have gone into want and troubles without number to serve their Lord and Master according to the precepts of their society.
The Priest we are talking about here did not know what awaited him. He had just finished his exams at home, had been engaged for a long time, wanted to get married, and for that reason he then accepted one of the letters of call that an elderly American priest who had come to Norway to fish for graduates brought with him from various Norwegian Settlements. The summons told of many glories: there was a complete settlement, even a small town, one had its own post office, the incoming priest was to have so many acres of land and a rectory in addition to 600 dollars a year. His elder brother in the Lord could not adequately praise the place, though he himself had certainly not been there; he also depicted the great clergyman who was among the settlers with poignant colors, and then his younger brother's heart was touched. He married and traveled over.
His young wife was a Christian maiden who had read many novels. She knew America mostly from Cooper's Indian stories, and she expected to find Unkasser and Chingackgooker wandering between dreamy lakes. She had taken her current husband mostly because her parents thought they would make a good team and because he was a theologian. She admired him. She thought he was very learned and superior to her when he laid out for her the different dogmatic doctrines and about the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation.
Along the way, the young newlyweds built castles in the air around their future home. They wondered what the rectory looked like and the garden, how many cows and chickens they could keep. She was to drink so and so many pots of milk a day and become really thick and fat; for now she was of very weak health. They were to drive around together to their parishioners and be received everywhere with smiles and open arms. He had been told that the settlers there were mostly housewives from home, and he thought of them as humble and submissive as at home. He was to go among them as a father and give them comfort and counsel. However, these patriarchal dreams were uncomfortably interrupted when they got there. There was no gathering of curious faces at any rectory where the settlers thought themselves all prepared for their coming; because first there was no rectory and second, no one knew when the priest arrived.
The people had been greatly astonished when they heard that they should have a priest; they did not expect their call to succeed, and it is true to say that it was the board of the Synod more than the people themselves who had run this arrangement. The congregation had promised to build a rectory in case they got a priest—it was true—but they thought it would be soon enough when they got the priest, and so— the grasshoppers had been there this summer and ruined it for them, so that it was possible to build now in the autumn. The poor young man felt considerably cooled. He stared in despair from his emigrant carriage, with strained oxen; for the last part the railway was left open, and horses were another rarity there. He saw beyond a cold, damp landscape, sad in its monotony, a wild prairie where the coarse grass still half-withered, with some black spots here and there with a little hut on them, and then some yellow stumps of corn-leaves, which remained. Out on the horizon a black forest closed like an iron lattice for his prison, and here and there on the plain flashed some puddles, half small lake, half bog. A gray, unhealthy steam rose from them now towards evening. His wife lay ill under the sun canopy on the carriage, the journey had been too strenuous for her; she was too tired to see.
"Are we not coming to the house soon now, Christian?" She called out to him.
"But dear good people! You must get me a house!" shouted the pastor to the few of his church members who had happened to surround the carriage. They scratched their heads and whispered together. "It's best you drive to the Post Office, so long, you'll probably stay there tonight?" was finally the result of the consultation. "We have to follow up."
They stopped outside a small house, painted white, built in the manner of the common American store, with a sign almost as big as half the wall of the house. The sign read: “M.R. Wilkens. Grocery-store and Post office. “Outside the door came a suffocating odor of spoiled fish and half-rotten vegetables, a corner of the shop next to the green soap barrel was divided into the post office. Two outbuildings and three other small houses adjoined this municipal building and made up the town mentioned in the Letter of Call.
After a long negotiation, during which the young lady lay shivering under her blankets while the priest sat on the wagon pole and waited, it was finally decided that they should be allowed to stay there for the time being. Mr. Wilkens turned out to be a tall and thin American with a goatee, he greeted them politely and spoke a whole lot which they did not understand. Then he shouted at his shop assistant, and the two of them began to haul out and carry their luggage. But when the newcomers finally stood in the deserted, cold room with three chairs and a sofa bench to be beaten out into a bed, with not a female being to take care of them, just a bachelor downstairs whose language they did not understand, a smell of rancid herring from the shop, and a desolate landscape outside wrapped in damp fog—yes—yes, then they looked at each other and burst into tears. Paradise was near.
[i]“…petty adherence to the wording of a text without regard to its spirit and meaning.” https://ordnet.dk/ods/ordbog?entry_id=60170095&query=Ulk
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