visit Spring Grove, Minnesota

Nestled in the southeastern corner of Minnesota's beautiful bluff country is the historic city of Spring Grove. In a setting of unparalleled beauty, it is the first Norwegian settlement in Minnesota, a place where scandinavian heritage runs deep. When the rolling hills, winding small rivers and bluff lands of southeastern Minnesota beckon, make plans to visit us!

visit our friends

& neighbors


Spring Grove Cinema
www.sgmovietheater.com

Doc's Blue Moose Restaurant
www.docsbluemoose.com

City of Spring Grove, MN  www.springgrovemn.com

Ye Olde Opera House
www.yeoldeoperahouse.org

Lanesboro Area
Chamber of Commerce
www.lanesboro.com

Lanesboro Local
www.lanesborolocal.org

Houston County Minnesota
www.houstoncountymn.org

Historic Bluff Country
www.bluffcountry.com

Winneshiek Convention
and Visitors Bureau
www.decoraharea.com

MNArtists.Org
www.mnartists.org

Explore Minnesota
www.exploreminnesota.com

Northeast Iowa Artists'
Studio Art Tour
www.iowaarttour.com

National Art-Collecting.Com
www.art-collecting.com

Twin Cities TOSCA
(Theater Opera
Shakespeare Culture & Art)
www.tctosca.com

Midwest Weekends Magazine
midwestweekends.com

Walker Art Center
http://www.walkerart.org/

Southeastern Minnesota
Arts Council
http://www.semac.org

The Inspired Media
http://theinspiredmedia.com/

in the land of Norwegians

Beth Gauper, Midwest Weekends


At first, the southeast Minnesota town of Spring Grove looks like any other town.

There’s a café, an antiques store and a park full of statues. But Spring Grove isn’t ordinary. It’s full of Norwegians.

Spend a few hours in Spring Grove, Minnesota’s first Norwegian settlement, and you’ll learn that, while Norwegians are proud of their heritage, they like to poke fun at it, too. A plaque at the Ballard House antiques shop sums up the approach:

“O Lutefisk, how fragrant your aroma. O Lutefisk, you put me in a coma. You smell so strong, you look like glue, you taste yust like an overshoe. But Lutefisk, come Saturday, I tink I’ll eat you anyway.’’

When we were in Spring Grove one May, we stopped into the Bluff Country Artists Gallery. All those long winter nights made Norwegians good with chisels, paintbrushes and knitting needles, and the gallery features works from dozens of artists who work in the area.

Woodcarver Harvey Langseth was demonstrating on a mangle board. The iron-shaped mangle board, he said, is decorative but also has a practical use: It’s made by a young man and handed to the woman he wants to marry in lieu of a proposal.

“It’s an easy way for her to reject him, because it’s not me, but the board,’’ Langseth said. “She can say, ‘No, I don’t think I want that board.’ So we save face all around.’’

He added, “Beware of a man who has a lot of these lying around his shed.’’

We were in Spring Grove on Syttende Mai, or May 17, the day in 1814 when Norway declared independence from Denmark and adopted a democratic constitution.

To celebrate, the gallery had put out a spread of rosette cookies, heart-shaped waffles with lingonberry spread and rye crackers with salmon, so we sampled and then went outside to watch the big parade.

On Main Street, the locals rolled by in a Viking boat with a red-and-white striped sail. Polka dancers from La Crosse’s Oktoberfest marched by, hoisting steins and blowing horns, and princesses from La Crescent rode an apple float.

The emcee stood in the balcony of the log Syttende Mai Hus, commenting on the entries. Everyone waved Norwegian flags.

In Viking Memorial Park, two men, one wearing overalls and one in a black derby hat and long coattails, were posing for pictures with two bronze figures dressed the same way.

Between 1918 and 1935, Spring Grove resident Peter Rosendahl wrote the comic strip “Ola and Per’’ for the Norwegian-language Decorah-Posten, and the strips also ran in Seattle and Minneapolis.

“Ola looks for the easy way out of things, and I work hard,’’ said James Wilhelmson of Spring Grove, who plays Per opposite Norris Storlie of Harmony. “I’m supposed to be the smart one.’’

Apparently, those long winter nights honed the Norwegian sense of humor, along with painstaking artistry and a love for stories.

Their food may be the blandest in the world. But the Norwegians themselves? Definitely not.


Last updated on July 31, 2010

To read full article, please visit Midwest Weekends online

worth the drive

The trip to Spring Grove is by way of some of Southeastern Minnesota’s most scenic roadways. We are just one hour from Rochester, MN, thirty minutes from La Crosse, WI and twenty minutes from Decorah, IA.