Compiled by Laurie K. Sommers, Preserve Nordic Churches Project Manager, 2017-2019, based on emails by Asta Twedt and shared with her permission. There is a lovely land In Minnesota’s forests Where Danes have taken a stand: Have planted staff and taken root Defying winter’s coldness With hardy fortitude This is the opening verse of “The […]

Written by Laurie Kay Sommers, former project manager, Preserve Nordic Churches Project 1918. It was a time eerily like our own—overwhelmed hospitals, people wearing masks, churches, schools and businesses shuttered. A virus for which there was no cure sweeping across countries and continents. As we navigate the coronavirus pandemic of our time, there is comfort […]

Written by Laurie K. Sommers, Preserve Nordic Churches Project Manager, 2017-2019 It was pure serendipity. Elmer A. Forsberg—head of the Department of Drawing, Painting. and Illustration at Chicago’s Art Institute, and Consul of Finland for the Midwest—was teaching a summer art class at his cabin in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula. The cabin, it turns out, […]