- Hi, I'm Lisa Vedaa, the collections manager at the historical and cultural society of Clay County at the Hjemkomst center in Moorhead, Minnesota.

And this is my artifact spotlight Here at the museum, we have a small collection of Norwegian folk art artifacts that were brought over by immigrants from Norway in the 1870s and 1880s.

A lot of the people who came to Clay County from Norway were joining relatives in Clay County, or when they were some of the first ones to come, they were taking advantage of the homesteading offers that were available for land in Minnesota.

These artifacts are mostly household goods that were all handmade and decorated in a variety of manners from painting to different kinds of carving.

And also wood-burning.

Many people didn't have access to factory made goods.

So that's why a lot of the items in their homes were handmade from wood and other materials that were easily accessible to them.

And when they came to America, they also didn't have access to factory made luggage.

So they made wooden immigrant trunks and decorated them very elaborately in many cases.

And we have several immigrant trunks in our collection.

This trunk was made for Anne John's daughter Tweeten in 1879 for her trip to Clay County.

And it has some very beautiful painting decorating it, that's called rosemaling, which is specific to Norway and different regions of Norway have different styles of rosemaling.

It also has some very beautiful wrought iron work for the lock and the handles on the sides and that some of the fastenings on the corners.

It also uses some wood pegs for its construction and also some metal rivets and nails, as well.

People often packed a lot of these household goods into their immigrant trunks to bring with them to America so that they would have what they needed to start their new homes.

And there's different types of objects, such as salt cellars.

Salt was a very prized seasoning.

It wasn't as common in the 19th century and prior to that.

This was a wedding gift in 1851 to the couple that brought it over from Norway.

Boxes like these were called Tina and they were meant to hold different types of food or other household objects.

They were made by bending Birch wood and fastening the ends together with Birch rut.

And this box was decorated with burned wood designs.

And this Tina was decorated with painted design that is common to the Telemark region.

This is a butter tub that just held butter and it was made in 1807, but repainted in 1914.

And another common feature for decorating is putting the year that the object was created on the object.

This milk bowl is one of our oldest objects in the collection.

It was made in 1780 as carved in the bottom of the bowl with the initials of the maker.

Then has a little design at the bottom.

Folk art pieces like these have survived because they were durable and well-built, and people save them out of nostalgia for their heritage in Norway, and Minnesota and North Dakota had some of the largest numbers of Norwegian immigrants.

And so there's still deep connection felt by people of Norwegian background to their heritage.

As the County Historical Society we do focus our collecting on Clay County, Minnesota, but we are not just a Scandinavian museum.

We do want to collect objects for our collection, from people from all backgrounds who have had history in Clay County.

- Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.