The Emigrants

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A group of young Norwegians, faced with a rigid class structure, political oppression, and dismal agricultural opportunities, wrench themselves away from the Old World to make a better life in the New World.

Ola Vatne wants to be free of any other man’s dictates. Morten Kvidal dreams of owning his own land. Else, the colonel’s daughter, is determined to defy her prosperous father and marry the landless peasant she loves. Jo Berg, the schoolmaster, seeks a land where he can speak freely about political conditions without fear of losing his job.

Anne Ramsey needs to find a father for the baby she is expecting. Kal and Karen Skaret want their children to have a richer life than one made from scratching the rocky soil of the Norwegian coast.

Their trek takes them to homesteads in North Dakota in the 1880s and 1890s where they find that breaking the sod, surviving blizzards and prairie fires, and raising wheat is easier to accomplish than feeling at home in this new land.