Unstoppable: Norwegian Pioneers Educate Their Daughters
A Presentation by Gracia Grindal
When: Sunday, April 6
Time: 12:30pm
Where: Giants of the Earth Heritage Center
Part of a weekend of celebrations for “Crossings 200”, the Bicentennial of Norwegian-American Immigration, Giants is honored to welcome Gracia Grindal back to Spring Grove to present on the topic of one of her many books, Unstoppable: Norwegian Pioneers Educate Their Daughters. Gracia is a theologian, historian, and retired professor from Luther Seminary.
Visitors are welcome to bring a dish to share for a potluck lunch prior to the talk.
About the Book:
When Lutheran church leaders came from Norway in the middle of the nineteenth century, educational plans for each gender were based on deeply held beliefs about what a man was and what a woman was. Teenage boys were to be educated at a school away from home–Luther College for those in the Norwegian Synod. Girls were to be educated in the parlors of an aunt or close friends of her parents. At the time they immigrated, how to educate their children had been central to the cultural debates of their day. Those arguments lived on in this country while the Norwegian Synod pastors were deciding how to build such institutions for their children. Now they lived not only in a new land and culture, but also in a new era when the role of women was changing.
About Gracia:
Gracia Grindal was born in Powers Lake, North Dakota and lived for three years in Tioga where her father was a pastor in the Lutheran Free Church parish there. Growing up in the parsonage she learned the hymnody of the Lutheran church, especially the Scandinavian tradition, and of the entire Christian church. The family moved to Rugby, North Dakota, then Salem, Oregon. She graduated from Augsburg College in Minneapolis with a BA in history and English. She then earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas. After which she became a teacher of English and Creative Writing at Luther College. In 1984 after earning an MA in History and Systematics at Luther Seminary, she was called to teach Rhetoric in the homiletics dept at Luther Seminary where she taught until 2013. Since her retirement she has continued writing biographies of Norwegian American immigrant women, hymns and poetry.
