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long periods and home only briefly. He was servingmany small congregationsin
a radius of over fortymiles,but was oftenasked to go furtherafield,and he would
sleep in the homes of his parishioners,not always comfortably.
In the late summerof 1854 the Krens went for a month'svisit to Wisconsin,
theirmain object the meetingof Norwegianministersfromfourstates. Koren was
here an active participantin formingThe Norwegian Synod (though she does not
use those words) of which he subsequentlybecame president. The followingyear
Koren made another trip to Wisconsinwhere the Synod met again and returned
with the announcementthat the next year the meetingwould be held in their own
home and that would involve fourteenministers.
One cannot read this book withoutwishingto know more- to compare it with
other descriptionsof the times. Since no more of her lettershave been printed,
we have to go to othersimilarsources for furtherdescriptionof this period. There
are at least two other books by pastors' wives: Caroline Preus, Linkets Diary on
Land and Sea, 1845-1864,tr. and ed. by J. C. K. Preus and DiderikkePreus, Min-
neapolis, 1952; and Caja Munch's lettersfrom Wiota, Wisconsin,1855-1859 pub-
lished in a volume entitledThe Strange AmericanWay, tr. by Helene Munch and
Peter A. Munch, Carbondale, 1970. These women,as did the otherministers'wives,
helped to create a settingwhere their husbands could functionefficiently.Their
effortswithin the home and in the congregationformed a special milieu which
helped to cementthe fellowshipwhich the Norwegianscould enjoy in theirchurch.
Our book containsnot only the diary, which actually comprisesonly the part
of Elisabeth's life up to the birth of her firstchild, December 12, 1854, but also
lettersto her fatherafter that date. It is ably translatedand edited by the late
ProfessorDavid T. Nelson. The picturesare reproducedsomewhat better in this
reprint,and the cover pictureof the WashingtonPrairie Church of 1879 is a new
photographby Darrell Henning. It has a hauntingquality which suggeststhe far-
off timesdescribedin the book.
This book could well be on any readinglist for our high schools, as it gives a
factual account of experiencesfromthose early days of the conquest of the prairie.
The horizonbeforethe younggirlof today seems limitless.Still she is surelycurious
about the role her greatgrandmother played. This storygives details of two groups
of women of a bygoneday- the farmer'swife and that of the minister'swife.
not surprisingthat a good deal of interestwould revolve about the validity of the
theorythat the firstRussian state was foundedby Scandinavians,i.e. the so-called
Norman theory. V. T. Pasuko notes in his Editor's Foreword, "It is paradoxical
that Russian historiography( 18th-beginningof the 20th century), as well as, by
the way, internationalhistoriography, engagedin the controversyover the Norman
theoryfor two hundredyears,passed these sources by. Could it be because they,
though meagerly,neverthelessconvincinglytestifyagainst the Norman concept of
the formationof the Old Russian state?" (p. 5). As Mel'nikova states in her
discussion of this question, the runic inscriptionsare mostly from the eleventh
century,describecontemporary events,and cannotbe used to draw conclusionsabout
earliertimes: "Accordingly,as a resultof theirrelativelylate appearance,the runic
inscriptionscannot be used as an argumentfor the Norman theoryof the formation
of the Russian state" (p. 23). One mightadd that they also cannot be used against
it, since they simplymake no mentionof political events of this nature.
Althoughmost of the materialand views expressedin this book are well known
to Western runic scholars, Mel'nikova has made an important contributionby
assemblingand synthesizingthe data from widely disparate sources into a single
referencework which is of interestto all studentsof the historyof Northernand
Eastern Europe, as well as to runologists.
Elmer H. Antonsen
Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign