Traveling Traditions: Nordic Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest

Welcome to Traveling Traditions: Nordic Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest, a traveling panel exhibition with online components! This exhibition features a cross-section of traditions Nordic Americans practice in the region. From 2017–2019, graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, trained in folklore fieldwork practices and working in cooperation with the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Wisconsin Arts Board, spent their summers traveling to communities throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. There they met with and documented many of the artists who are sustaining Scandinavian traditions, sharing them with their communities, and passing them along to others.

Featuring seven artists from Minnesota and Wisconsin, this exhibition offers a look at the ways in which Nordic folk arts are practiced and sustained in the Upper Midwest. These traditions are just one small part of the cultural heritage that makes the Upper Midwest home to people from all over the world.

Our seven artists are featured on six separate webpages where you can read their stories, hear short audio clips from their interviews, view more pictures of their work, and, in some cases, see short video demonstrations. We hope you enjoy exploring different facets of Nordic American folk art in the Upper Midwest through this online exhibition.

If you enjoyed this online exhibition, please consider bringing Traveling Traditions: Nordic Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest to your organization. Below you can look through the nine exhibition panels that accompany Traveling Traditions. Simply click a panel image to enlarge it. For more information, please email us at folklife@letsci.wisc.edu. We look forward to sharing Traveling Traditions with you and your community!

Exhibition Panels

An image of the exhibition panel for Solveig Nielsen.

An image of the exhibition panel for Lowell Torkelson.

An image of the exhibition panel for Alana Maijala.

An image of the exhibition panel for Jewel Peterson Ouradnik.

An image of the exhibition panel for Nancy Ellison.

An image of the exhibition panel for Rod Maki and June Johnson.

Credits

Thank you to Thor Rothering for the panel design work and Mirva Johnson for writing the artist panel texts and creating the online content for this exhibition. Thank you, of course, to all the participating artists and to the incredible fieldworkers. Thanks also to Rina Rossi at the Minnesota State Arts Board, Kaitlyn Berle at the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the many others from the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic, and the Mills Music Library who played such an important role in the creation of this exhibition.