Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/407

 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 339
 * 5<). Wanamingo, with damaging results to more pates than one.

As soon as tlic claim was secured, work commenced, preparing tlic ground for seed, grubbing out the brush and breaking the soil. The lodgings were inferior, and for a long time, confined to the primitive log hut,. which, however, was solid and warm. As the Norwegians care well for their domestic animals, the first improvements in the way of buildings are good and substantial stables and barns. They do not, for immediate use, build a smaller and cheaper structure, but they wait until able to build something large and solid, and then, economical as they are, they do not shun the expense. 'The best is the cheapest,' is their motto. As soon as the Norwegian has a comfortable home, and often before, he looks around for more land, and buys of his neighbor, if he can ; thus the price of land rises in Norwegian neighborhoods so that it often sells for one-fourth more than the same quality brings in other parts of the county. Those farmers who have been less successful in obtaining for them- selves land or property frequently sell out and remove to other parts of the country. The Norwegians prefer to build each at a distance from the other. Everyone likes to have his own for himself, and at a distance from his next neighbor, and to be in as large a degree as possible 'Monarch of all he surveys, whose rights there are none to dispute.' " Thus was it written thirty years ago. Today there are no more intensely loyal Americans than the descendants of these same Norwegians. Intelligent, educated, progressive, with un- swerving devotion to principle, foremost in the ranks of those who work for the good of the county, they are often more thor- oughly American than the descendants of the Puritans. With the ancient Norse ancestry of which to be proud, and a record of modern achievement which places them with the leaders of twentieth century movements, they have laid their stamp upon the county and country, and their sons and brothers are occupy- ing positions of trust and honor wherever the United States flag is floating at the present time.