Dakota Datebook: Singing Settler Returns

The return of a Norwegian visitor to this state was reported on this day in 1907.

E. Onsum, of Christiania, Norway, had visited North Dakota two years earlier as a member of a student singing group. The group, sponsored by Norway’s University of Christiania, had delighted Devils Lake residents with traditional Norwegian song and dance. Onsum found the city much to his liking but returned to Christiania in order to finish medical school.

A year later, he returned to the United States and began practicing medicine in Iowa. After gaining a year of experience as a medical practitioner, Dr. Onsum returned as a settler to the city of Devils Lake. The doctor took up practice with Dr. Thor Moeller and began working in general medicine and surgery on the Jacobson block; Devils Lake residents were delighted to be treated by the Norwegian singer that they had remembered so fondly. Surely, Dr. Onsum was only one of many visitors to the state who have been lured back to North Dakota a second time.

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council.