Cedar Rapids magazine helped immigrant women adjust to life in the U.S.

Sometimes, history is hidden away. Not metaphorically, but actually, physically hidden away.

Take, for example, an artifact recently acquired by The History Center.

A copy of a publication called Qvinnan Och Hemmet was found in the wall of a home in Minnesota, where the magazine apparently was serving as insulation. The Kandiyohi County Historical Society in New London, Minn., transferred the magazine to The History Center because Qvinnan Och Hemmet was published in Cedar Rapids.

Woman and Home, as the title translates, was published from 1888 to 1947 in Norwegian and Danish (the two languages are nigh unto identical, in terms of vocabulary though not in terms of pronunciation) under the title Kvinden og Hjemmet.

The Swedish edition of the magazine, Qvinnan Och Hemmet, was first published in 1893. (There was briefly an English language edition beginning in 1896, but it was discontinued the next year.)

Immigrant women

The publication’s name gives a good sense of its intended audience and content.

As Nancy L. Coleman recounted in an article, “Three Families from Ringsaker in the Fight for Women's Suffrage in the United States,” the magazine’s editor, Ida Hansen, was committed to helping immigrant women find their way in America:

For Hansen, it was important to give Scandinavian women the information they needed to settle into their new homeland, in their own language, so that they could develop into good citizens.

The content was diverse. It had typical women's magazine material such as stories, recipes, interior design and fashion, articles on cooking and gardening, children, health, American sewing, e.g. patchwork technique (quilting). Separate needlework and literary booklets were available with a subscription.

But there was much else, both women's issues and politics.

The editor

Hansen had immigrated to the United States from Norway in 1870. She was well aware of how difficult it could be to adjust to new way of life in a new country.

She hoped to aid other Scandinavian women by sharing techniques for creating clothing and household textiles in the American style.

Immigrant women no doubt knew some of the handwork techniques found in the magazine, including crochet, tatting, crewel embroidery and hardanger embroidery. But they would have been far less familiar with doilies and pen wipes (used to remove excess ink from the nib of a pen) and lambrequins (a short piece of decorative drapery).

The magazine’s readers also would not have been familiar with quilts.

Kvinden og Hjemmet and Qvinnan Och Hemmet “provided patterns for New World textiles in the language of the Old Country” for a significant number of women, as reported in “Piecing Together a New Home: Needlework in Kvinden og Hjemmet Magazine” by Laurann Gilbertson and Karen Olsen.

It is quite clear that was demand for Hansen’s magazine. In early 1896, the publication had a circulation of 20,500. Readership peaked in 1907 with more than 80,000 copies sold in North America and abroad.

‘Young, strong girls’

As Coleman noted in her article, the publication kept track of — and in some cases promoted — advances and changes for women in society.

“A theme in the magazine is the work for women’s suffrage and the right for women to stand for election and take office,” Coleman wrote.

In a 1908 edition, Coleman found this quote:

“All signs indicate that the time has passed when it was only fashionable for The Richman's Daughters to learn to babble (in a rudimentary way) in some foreign language and play the piano.

“... With the young, it appears to be a living desire to learn useful skills. Sports of all kinds have now taken the place that the ballroom used to occupy in the young girl's dreams of pleasure. The flimsy girl with the cinched waist is now as if blown away, and young, strong girls with roses on their cheeks are now as common as they are a pleasant sight.”

(Coleman’s article — including the quote from the 1908 Woman and Home — was originally written in Norwegian, then translated via Google Translate, and then edited by Coleman for clarity.)

We are grateful the people who found a copy of Qvinnan Och Hemmet hidden in a wall thought to donate it to the Kandiyohi County Historical Society so that it could eventually find its way back to its hometown and The History Center’s collection.

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We would like to thank Tara Templeman of The History Center for her assistance with this column.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com