Assimilering og etnisitet i norskamerikansk migrasjonshistoriografi

How did the Norwegian-American adapt to their new home in America, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? This question has been subject to several historical depictions and reveals a diversity of interpretations and understandings considering ethnicity, assimilation, and the event of the Norwegian-American migration. This study aims to present a variety of different understandings of ethnicity and assimilation, as represented in the Norwegian-American migration historiography 1900-2000. It identifies the essential changes within the general historiography and connects it with the variety of perspectives on ethnicity and assimilation. Further, it presents the general evolution of assimilation theory and perspectives on ethnicity and sketches the development within the Norwegian-American migration historiography, from the filiopietistic tradition, thru the professionalization of historical writing, the establishing of the new social history’s perspectives and the influence of the cultural turn. The study considers the essential publications related to the Norwegian-American migration and assimilation, based on findings from a Delphi Survey. The argument is that Norwegian-American Historiography has tended to follow the new perspectives offered by the general development within the Historical research, but that it has demonstrated a surprisingly continuity in portraying Norwegian-American ethnicity as assimilated by the end of 1920s due to an emphasis on social variables as, e.g., Social mobility and the decline of ethnic institutions. Further, the field demonstrates a limited ability to present or reflect around new and existing theoretical formulation of ethnicity and assimilation, in addition to a general lack of pursuing what assimilation entails. The study reveals thus a lack of consideration within the selected literature, regarding what ethnicity or the ethnic group assimilated into, and what waited beyond assimilation