Minnesota Historical Society Press
Colonel Hans Christian Heg and the Norwegian American Experience
Key Metrics
- Odd S Lovoll
- Minnesota Historical Society Press
- Paperback
- 9781681342504
- -
- -
- Biography & Autobiography > Military
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Hans Christian Heg (1829-1863) was a Norwegian American abolitionist, journalist, antislavery activist, prison reformer, politician, and soldier. Best known for leading the Fifteenth Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment on the Union side during the Civil War, Heg died of wounds received at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863.
While Heg's achievements earned him a statue on the Wisconsin state capitol grounds, behind his public persona was a life emblematic of his generation. Heg's family hailed from Lier, Norway; economic as well as religious challenges led them, like so many others, to leave their homeland for the promise of a better life. Heg himself trod multiple paths: joining in the California Gold Rush, pursuing a political career in support of the Free Soil Party and then the newly formed Republican Party, and taking up the role of Wisconsin state prison commissioner. Like his fellow immigrants, he made a living and nurtured a family at the same time that he was defining what it meant to be both Norwegian and American.
Heg's remarkable leadership of the Fifteenth Wisconsin, the Norwegian regiment, is the stuff of legends. But this book is more than a biography of one man: it is the story of a generation of immigrant citizens who contributed politically, economically, and socially to the American Midwest and beyond.
Author Bio
Odd S. Lovoll is Professor of History at the University of Oslo, Norway and Professor Emeritus at St. Olaf College. He earned his doctorate in U.S. History, specializing in immigration history, at the University of Minnesota. He has served on the faculty of St. Olaf College since 1971 and has been publications editor for the Norwegian-American Historical Association since 1980. In 1992 he was appointed to fill the King Olav V Chair in Scandinavian-American Studies.
Since 1995 he has held an appointment as Professor II in History at the University of Oslo and teaches there in the fall semester. His published works include A Folk Epic; The Bygdelag in America (1975); The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People (1984); A Century of Urban Life: The Norwegians in Chicago before 1930 (1988); and The Promise Fulfilled: A Portrait of Norwegian Americans Today (1998), in addition to a large number of articles dealing with Scandinavian-American topics.
In 1986 Lovoll was decorated by H.M. King Olav V with the Knight’s Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit and in 1989 he was invited to occupy a seat in the history section of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Source: University of Washington Department of Scandinavian Studies
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