Mayor visits Norway

• Image

Photo courtesy / Clarice Liechty Jamestown Mayor Clarice Liechty presents Sarpsborg, Norway, Mayor Jan Engsmyr a piece of the piano from the Old Opera House in Jamestown. The gift was courtesy of Mary Young and the Sons of Norway in Jamestown. The Sons of Norway held some of its early meetings in the Old Opera House.

Talk about it

A tour of Norway gave Jamestown Mayor Clarice Liechty a chance to give a bit of Jamestown to the mayor of Sarpsborg. Liechty presented Jan Engsmyr with a piece of the piano from the Old Opera House in Jamestown that Mary Young had provided.

“Mostly we did the typical tourist things,” Liechty said. “But in Sarpsborg, it is a sister city of Grand Forks. We had a chance to give a gift to the mayor from the Sons of Norway here in Jamestown.”

Liechty said the Jamestown Sons of Norway chapter had been in existence since 1924 and many of its early meetings were held in the Old Opera House.

The North Dakotans to Norway group also participated in an Independence Day celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Frogner Park in Oslo. The group was commemorating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth and the 95th anniversary of the placing of the monument.

The tour, organized by the UND Nordic Initiative and promoted by the North Dakota Historical Society, was part of the North Dakota Lincoln Bicentennial celebration. It commemorated the ties between Norway and North Dakota that have existed since the 1860s when Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act offering free land to settlers including Norwegian immigrants.

The bust of Lincoln was presented to the people of Norway by North Dakota Gov. Louis Hanna in 1914 in honor of the centennial of the Norwegian constitution. The sculpture was done by Paul Fjelde, a student at Valley City State Normal School at the time. Liechty said two grandchildren of Fjelde were part of the tour. The keynote address of the ceremony was presented by Walter Mondale, former U.S. vice president.

The group also toured the American Ambassador’s Residence in Oslo, the country’s parliament building and several museums.

Liechty was impressed by the country and people of Norway.

“It is very clean and everything is fixed up,” she said. “They are taxed very high but seem to like their system of government health care and vacations.”

Sun reporter Keith Norman can be reached at (701) 952-8452 or by e-mail at knorman@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news, mayor, norway, liechty