tend the garden, catch fish, shoot game for the family table and drive the cows up to the high, glacier-fed meadows in the mountains. In winter they see that the winter wheat sheaf is kept hanging to the barn roof-pole for the birds and help father make useful things at the bench in the farm carpenter shop. But the Scandinavian peoples— boys and girls and all—play at their playtime as hard as they work in worktime. Christmas merrymaking lasts for three weeks and ends on Knut's Day, January 13. Santa Claus they call "Tomt."
It was one of the bold vikings of Scandinavia—Lief Ericson— who first discovered America, 400 years before Columbus, and the Scandinavians have been discovering it ever since. A fifth of all the Scandinavians in the world—including the Danes, who belong to the same race—are now in the States which have been carved out of the old Northwest Territory—Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and northern Illinois. In later years a great many have gone to Washington and Oregon. In these northern latitudes they can have farms of a size undreamed of in the narrow mountain valleys of Norway or even the plains of Sweden and a climate not unlike that of the old home across the stormy sea. The Norwegians are mainly to be found outside the cities on farms, although there are many Swedish farmers also; because Sweden, being much more thickly populated than Norway, sends more immigrants to this country. Both Norwegians and Swedes being great sailors are found on the vessels of the Great Lakes and both are workers in the lumber camps. Swedes are workers on railroads and thousands of them come to the cities. The better educated hold high positions as mechanical and electrical engineers, as teachers in public schools and professors in colleges.
