You can read it on the welcome sign before you reach the first stoplight. Velkommen til Spring Grove. A United States flag flies on one side, the red, white and blue cross of Norway on the other, and the words underneath name this little town in the bluffs of Houston County as the first Norwegian settlement in Minnesota. The Norwegians in Spring Grove, Minnesota did not just pass through here. They built the town, named the streets, raised the churches, and stayed for more than 170 years.
In May the parade fills Main Street and somebody, every year, wins the national lutefisk eating contest. The smell of lefse comes off the griddles in the church basements. This is the kind of place where heritage is not a museum exhibit. It is the Tuesday afternoon you grew up with.
Spring Grove: The Place
Spring Grove sits in the far southeastern corner of Minnesota, in Houston County, a few miles north of the Iowa line and west of the Mississippi River. The town is part of the La Crosse metropolitan area, though it feels a world away from any city. State Highway 44 and county roads 4 and 16 are the main routes in.
The land is bluff country. Limestone ridges, hardwood groves, deep coulees and rolling dairy farms. The town itself takes its name from a freshwater spring set in a grove of trees on top of a limestone ridge, the feature that first drew settlers to the spot in the early 1850s.
It is a small place. The 2020 census counted 1,256 people, and recent estimates hold it close to 1,200. The streets are walkable, the storefronts brick, and Trinity Lutheran Church still dominates the skyline the way it has for well over a century.
How Spring Grove Became Norwegian
Before the Norwegians
The first settler in what became the village was not Norwegian at all. James Smith, a printer from Pennsylvania, arrived and opened the first post office, choosing the name Spring Grove for the spring and the grove of hardwoods nearby. The post office has operated under that name since 1855.
This was Minnesota Territory then, six years before statehood. The land had only recently been opened to settlement, and the Yankee newcomers were soon vastly outnumbered by the people who came next.
The Norwegians Arrive
The first Norwegian farmer to reach Spring Grove was Torger Tendeland, in 1852. Drawn by newspaper accounts of good land, he walked more than 30 miles north from his home in Iowa into Minnesota Territory. He chose a section near James Smith’s land because the bluffs and groves reminded him of his birthplace near Stavanger, Norway.
When Tendeland returned a month later with his family in an ox drawn covered wagon, he found three other Norwegian farmers already in residence: Hakkon Narveson, Knut Kieland and Fingal Flatin. By the end of that summer of 1852, six more men had arrived. The settlement was born.
What pulled the rest came down to one word that ran through every diaspora community of the era: chain migration. The first families wrote home, and the letters did the rest. Each arrival sponsored the next, until whole valley districts of Norway were emptying toward this one corner of Houston County.
Spring Grove at Its Peak
The growth was staggering. By 1870 roughly 1,135 of the town’s 1,200 residents were Norwegian. Spring Grove had become, in everything but its place on the map, a Norwegian town.
Faith anchored the community from the start. Trinity Lutheran Church was organized in 1855 by the Reverend U. V. Koren at the home of Knut Kieland, one of the original four settlers. Koren, the first ordained pastor of the Norwegian Synod to serve the area, rode a circuit that stretched across six counties, including the early congregation near Decorah, Iowa.
The first stone church was begun in 1860 and finished in 1868. The congregation grew to 700 members, then 1,200 by 1914. Services were held in Norwegian, and they stayed in Norwegian for decades, long after English had become the language of the schoolyard and the shop counter.
Daily life carried the homeland with it. Lefse on the griddle, lutefisk at Christmas, rosemaling painted on chests and walls, the old dialects spoken across kitchen tables. The Sons of Norway lodge gave the traditions an institution. Even the local soda traces to this era: Spring Grove Soda Pop has been bottled in town since 1895, making it one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in Minnesota.
The Change
The transition was gradual, not sudden. As the second and third generations came up, English crept into the church, the school and the newspaper. Norwegian language services thinned out across the 20th century, and the dialects survived mostly in the mouths of the elderly.
Like much of rural Minnesota, Spring Grove also faced the slow drift of young people toward cities and the steady shrinking of family farms. The population, once growing fast, settled and then slipped a little. But unlike many small towns that simply faded, Spring Grove made a deliberate choice to hold onto what it was.
The Landmarks of Norwegian Spring Grove
Trinity Lutheran Church, 203 East Main Street. Organized in 1855 in the home of an original settler, Trinity is the spiritual heart of Norwegian Spring Grove. The current building, dedicated in December 1893 just eight months after a fire destroyed its predecessor, still rises above the town. Generations were baptized, confirmed, married and buried here in Norwegian.
Giants of the Earth Heritage Center. Incorporated in 2009, this nonprofit is the genealogy and heritage hub of the Norwegian Ridge. The framers named it after Ole Edvart Rolvaag’s novel Giants in the Earth, which drew some of its material from this very area. Staff help descendants build family trees, trace genetic connections back to Norway, and preserve oral histories, photographs and artifacts. For anyone tracing roots to this corner of Minnesota, it is the first stop.
Spring Grove Soda Pop. The story starts in 1895, when town pharmacist G. G. Ristey ran a soda fountain in his drug store and customers began asking to take the drinks home. He and his brother in law, the town veterinarian, bought bottling equipment and went into business. The brand has never shut down since, and bottles of it now reach shops in the Twin Cities and beyond.
The Ballard House. Set in an 1889 hotel building, the Ballard House once served locals and travelers as a hotel and restaurant. Today it holds three stories of antiques along with displays on the town’s history, a place where the old commercial life of Main Street is still on view.
Syttende Mai. Held each year on the weekend nearest May 17, Norwegian Constitution Day, this is the community’s signature celebration. There are Norwegian foods and artisans, music and dance, a big parade on Saturday afternoon, and the national lutefisk eating contest on Sunday. The festival has long been one of the best known Norwegian celebrations in the American Midwest.
UffDa Fest. The fall counterpart to Syttende Mai, held the first weekend in October. A farmers market, Norwegian goodies, genealogy events, a hotdish contest and a barn dance fill the downtown. The name itself, uff da, is the Norwegian American expression of mild exasperation that everyone in town grew up hearing.
Where the Spring Grove Norwegians Came From
The settlers came from the inland valley districts of eastern and southern Norway, the places where the bluff country of Houston County must have felt familiar. The single largest source was Hallingdal, the valley northwest of Oslo, and visitors and settlers alike remarked on how much the region resembled eastern Norway.
Named arrivals trace the pattern. Engebret Hanson Melbraataen was born in upper Flaa, Hallingdal, in 1834. Ole K. Rauk was born on the farm Rauk in Nes in Hallingdal in 1843 and came straight to Spring Grove with his family in 1859. The first farmer of all, Torger Tendeland, came from near Stavanger on the southwest coast.
Later comers widened the map: Valdres, Telemark, Numedal, Eggedal, Hadeland, Ringerike and Gudbrandsdal all sent people to the Norwegian Ridge. It was the same valley to valley, farm to farm chain migration that built the great Norwegian American communities to the south and east, from the Norwegians in Decorah, Iowa to the Norwegians in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Spring Grove was the Minnesota beginning of that wider story, and many later settlers across the Upper Midwest, and as far west as the Norwegians of Ballard in Seattle, traced a line back through these ridges.
Spring Grove Today
Spring Grove is still a town of roughly 1,200 people, and it is still unmistakably Norwegian. The welcome sign greets you in two languages. Trinity Lutheran still anchors Main Street. The soda is still bottled in town.
The heritage is active, not preserved under glass. Syttende Mai and UffDa Fest fill the calendar. The Sons of Norway lodge runs craft demonstrations, and a summer language camp teaches children basic Norwegian alongside traditional baking, music and crafts. Every ten years the town holds a Homecoming Celebration, with the next one set for June 2027.
The Giants of the Earth Heritage Center keeps the family lines open, helping descendants scattered across the country find their way back to a specific farm in a specific Norwegian valley. The dialects may be quieter than they once were and the farms fewer, but the choice this town made, to stay who it was, has held. The same impulse to keep the homeland close shows up in other immigrant towns across the region, like the Danes in Elk Horn, Iowa. In Spring Grove, the story that began with one man walking 30 miles toward a familiar looking ridge is still being written.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Norwegians settle in Spring Grove, Minnesota?
The first Norwegian settler, Torger Tendeland, chose the area in 1852 because its bluffs and hardwood groves reminded him of home in Norway. Once the first families arrived, they wrote letters home and sponsored relatives and neighbours, and chain migration filled the town. By 1870 the Norwegians in Spring Grove, Minnesota made up roughly 1,135 of about 1,200 residents.
Is Spring Grove still Norwegian today?
Yes. Spring Grove remains a town of around 1,200 people with a deeply Norwegian identity, marked by a bilingual welcome sign, Trinity Lutheran Church, and active traditions. Festivals like Syttende Mai and UffDa Fest, the Sons of Norway lodge, and a children’s Norwegian language camp keep the heritage in daily life.
What are the most famous Norwegian landmarks in Spring Grove?
Trinity Lutheran Church at 203 East Main Street, organized in 1855, dominates the skyline. The Giants of the Earth Heritage Center, founded in 2009, is the genealogy and heritage hub, and Spring Grove Soda Pop has been bottled in town since 1895. The Ballard House, set in an 1889 hotel, displays the town’s history.
Where in Norway did the Spring Grove Norwegians come from?
The largest single source was Hallingdal, the valley northwest of Oslo, whose landscape closely resembled the bluff country of Houston County. Later settlers came from Valdres, Telemark, Numedal, Eggedal, Hadeland, Ringerike and Gudbrandsdal, while the first farmer of all, Torger Tendeland, came from near Stavanger.
When did Norwegians first arrive in Spring Grove?
The first Norwegian farmer, Torger Tendeland, reached Spring Grove in 1852, when it was still Minnesota Territory and six years before statehood. He was quickly joined by Hakkon Narveson, Knut Kieland and Fingal Flatin, and by the end of that summer the settlement had begun. This makes Spring Grove the first permanent Norwegian settlement in Minnesota.
If your family’s story passed through Spring Grove, or any of the Norwegian valleys and ridges that made the Upper Midwest home, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a farm in Hallingdal to a bluff in Houston County, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources include the Giants of the Earth Heritage Center, the City of Spring Grove, The Norwegian American, and Wikipedia. Featured image of Trinity Lutheran Church via Wikimedia Commons.