Women and families in the Nordic migration to Utah, second part of the 19th Century.
Icelandic Migration to Salt Lake City, Utah, in the 19th Century has become a topic of historic interest in Iceland. This paper presents the Nordic context. More than two and a half million people left Scandinavia to settle down in North America in the 19th Century. A minority, 30.000, migrated as members of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormons church. Mormon missionaries organized the journey. The Scandinavian Mormon Mission was planned in Utah in 1849, and the opened in Copenhagen in June 1851. Mormon missionaries’ main goal was to bring Scandinavian converts to „Zion“, „The New Jerusalem“ in America. The Mormon Church presented their doctrine of Polygamy in 1852, meaning it made it official that the Mormon Church permitted and even encouraged men to take more than one wife. It was a popular opinion that Mormon patriarchs ruled in Utah, and they always looked out for women to fill up their „harems“. Scandinavians, especially women and young families, were warned not to join the Mormons and never go with them to Utah.
But paradoxically the percentage of women migrants was higher in the Mormon migration transportations from Scandinavia than in the general migration from that region. For example: in 1869 females made up 43 percent of the Norwegian migration, while among the Mormons they accounted for 69 percent. From 1852 to 1914 57 percent of all Mormon migrants from Scandinavia were women. Families with children and elderly people to care for were very visible in Mormon emigrant groups.
This paper is concerned with factors that influenced Scandinavian women’s and families to emigrate with the Mormons and to settle down in the far west Utah-territory. It also comments on how women and families from Scandinavia managed as pioneers in the Mormon state. What strategies were chosen in order to survive and to become successful members of the Utah society? Did Scandinavian / Nordic Mormons practice polygamy?

Hanne Marie Johansen:
EDUCATION Dr.art. 1998, University of Bergen.
POSITION Associate Professor, Centre for Women’s and Gender Research University of Bergen (UiB) (50 % position)
Research librarian in History. The University Library in Bergen (50 % position)

MAIN TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS
Early Modern and Modern Norwegian History, History of the Family, Gender History, History of Religion and Urban History, Queer History

ONGOING RESEARCH
„Skeiv historie“ Queer history. Book project. Publisher: Det norske Samlaget [spring 2019).

Religious Migration. The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia to North America in the 19th Century; How the pioneers and pilgrims organised family life and work in The New World. Archival studies in connection to this project in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and USA/ Utah are for the most part finished.

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