Are Norwegian Americans Born with Skis : Exploring the role of skiing in Norwegian American ethnic identity in the 1930s through the skiing adventures of Sigmund and Birger Ruud

One of the leading scholars on Norwegian American ethnic identity, Odd S. Lovoll, has argued that ski jumping was an "ethnic forte" for Norwegian immigrants in the U.S. This thesis tests and interprets Lovoll's statement by analyzing the experience of two Norwegian ski jumping brothers who toured the United States in the winter of 1937/1938. One of them, Birger Ruud, was the reigning world and Olympic champion at the time when they arrived in New York City. The other brother, Sigmund Ruud, traveled as the reigning U.S. champion. The thesis attempts to reconstruct the "Norwegian America" of the late 1930s, discusses the role of ski jumping as an ethnic activity for Norwegian Americans, and examines to what extent the Ruud brothers could be seen as ethnic heroes. It is organized as an argument which develops in two stages, in the two main chapters. At the first stage, theoretical approaches to ethnicity are applied to scholarly literature about Norwegian Americans, both primary and secondary, to discuss the role of ski jumping as an ethnic activity for the ethnic group. This chapter concludes that ski jumping should be mentioned along with, for example, The Sons of Norway fraternal order and the Lutheran Church when one deals with Norwegian American ethnicity in the late 1930s. Elaborating from the first of the two main chapters, the second argues that the Ruud brothers should be counted as ethnic heroes for Norwegian Americans. This hypothesis is grounded in a textual analysis of Sigmund Ruud's travel book "Skispor krysser verden" and a selection of Norwegian, Norwegian American and American newspaper articles which are concerned with the Ruud brothers' presence in the U.S. The analysis has looked at the rhetoric that was used by the various newspapers to describe the brothers, and presents the most frequent rhetorical categories that appeared in the articles. Based on these rhetorical presentations, the thesis argues that the brothers should be added to the list of ethnic heroes in Norwegian America because their ski jumping skills and "smiling behavior" seem to have been greatly valued by the Norwegian American press in the areas that have been investigated in this research. While the thesis departed from the assumption that Norwegian Americans generally had been accepted by the majority culture, the analysis has also produced evidence which reveals that Norwegian Americans still were preoccupied with their ethnic group's reputation in America. Ski jumping seems to have been good advertisement for Norwegian heritage in the U.S. because it was brought to the country and developed by Norwegian immigrants, and gradually it had caught the attention of Americans as well. The Ruud brothers should be seen as ethnic heroes because they were internationally acknowledged as the best ski jumpers in the world. As the thesis presents the situation, the Norwegian American press emphasized their skills and merits because of their symbolic value as champions of a Norwegian American ethnic activity