Profiles of Norwegian-American Athletes
by Rachel Barclay
Traditionally, Norwegian-American athletes have been successful in a wide range of athletic disciplines. While there have been no instances of a strong Norwegian-American athletic team of any sport in the United States, many individuals have garnered acclaim and acknowledged their heritage as part of their success. Readers may be familiar with names of more recent Norwegian-American athletes, such as Grete Waitz, the acclaimed marathon champion; Jan Stenerud, the professional football player; or Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, is considered one of the most accomplished athletes of the twentieth century because of her prowess in a number of sports.
These individuals and their more recent accomplishments are part of a long tradition of Norwegian-American excellence in a wide variety of athletics. Here we profile earlier athletes, perhaps lesser known (with the obvious exception of figure skater Sonja Henie), who were competitive during the first half of the twentieth century. While some of their names may not be as widely recognized today, these individuals were wellknown within their immediate communities as well as in the larger athletic community of which they were a part.
As many might suspect, a large number of NorwegianAmerican athletes were particularly skilled in skiing. Norwegian-American skiers were instrumental in developing the sport during the early days of skiing in America, and also played leadership roles in ensuring the continued presence of the sport in American culture. One well-known NorwegianAmerican skier from this time was Stein Eriksen, who won a gold medal at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo. However, there were two other skiers whose accomplishments are well represented in Vesterheim’s collection—Lars and Anders Haugen, brothers who became prominent ski jumpers following their immigration to the United States.
Lars Haugen (1891-1969) competed extensively in the United States after he left Norway at 18 and settled in Minnesota. As a ski jumper in America, he earned the title of National Class A Champion seven times (1912, 1915, 1918, 1922, 1924, 1927, and 1928), and performed the longest standing jump at the National Ski Association Nationals in 1918, 1927, and 1928. In 1919, he set a national record standing ski jump of 214 feet in Steamboat Springs,
Lars Haugen with skis, location unknown. Vesterheim Archives.
Lars Haugen’s 1924 pin from the Dillon Skiing Club. This award is from one of seven years that Haugen was the National Class A Champion. Vesterheim 1997.086.005.16—Gift of Clara Bungert.
Colorado. Lars was awarded trophies and medals for many of his victories throughout his career in the United States, a number of which are held in Vesterheim’s collection.
It appears that Lars Haugen’s career was put on hold by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929—after 1930, his role in skiing changed from that of an accomplished competitor to organizational leader.
He designed and helped construct a ski hill in Tahoe City, California, as part of the city’s bid to become an Olympic host city; however, the city lost the bid and the hill was not extensively used. Lars was also an impressive force in organizing the Lake Tahoe Ski Club in Northern California. This club has been credited with helping to encourage the ski boom in Northern California and would lead to the future establishment of the Squaw Valley Resort around 1960.
While in California, Lars married a woman named Cora and they made their home together in Lake Tahoe, where Lars organized the Western ski clubs. When Lars and Cora returned to Minneapolis in 1940, Lars’s involvement in skiing continued to guide his professional life. He was employed in Minneapolis as the Chief Inspector for the Northland Ski Company, a post he appears to have held until his retirement. Lars was elected to the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1963, and he passed away in Minneapolis in 1969.
Anders Haugen was also an accomplished NorwegianAmerican ski jumper. He was captain of the first United States Olympic Ski Team and won the first United States Olympic Ski medal. Along with Lars, Anders was an instrumental figure in spreading excitement about ski jumping in America through competitions and leadership, including coaching. Anders was born in Oslo, but emigrated from Telemark to Dillon, Colorado. Anders earned four United States National Championships in ski jumping (1910, 1920, 1923, and 1926).
He earned his Olympic bronze medal in Chamonix, France, in 1924; however, due to a scoring mistake, he did not receive his medal until 1974. He originally placed fourth, but the International Olympic Committee scheduled a special
ceremony on September 17, 1974, during which Haugen was given his bronze medal by the daughter of Thorleif Haug, the skier who had originally placed third. Anders worked alongside Lars to establish the Lake Tahoe Ski Club in California, and he also devoted much time to coaching the sport. He married Mina Amundson, and they had two sons, named Einar and Alf.
Along with those athletes who excelled at skiing, Norwegian-American figure skaters also gained acclaim on both the national and international stages. Chris Christenson was born in Norway in 1875 and immigrated to Wisconsin with his family when he was eight years old. As he grew up, he participated in many other sports before beginning to skate seriously at the age of 39, after he had settled in Minneapolis. It may seem odd to fans of modern figure skating that Christenson would take up such a sport at nearly 40 years old. In this case, it is important to keep in mind that figure
Trophy won by Anders Haugen in 1928 at the National Ski Tournament in Red Wing, Minnesota. Height, 17 inches. Vesterheim 1997.086.003.2—Gift of Clara Bungert
Anders Haugen. Photo courtesy of St. Olaf College Archives.
skating in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a much different sport than today. Figure skating in his time placed much more emphasis on compulsory figures, which required a skater to perfect his or her skills in creating patterns on the ice with the edges on either side of the skate blade, rather than on impressive jumps and spins.
In 1926, at the age of 51, Christenson won the United States National Championships and holds the record for being the oldest man to win this competition. Remarkable as Christenson’s story is, his figure skating career has been overshadowed by another famous Norwegian-American figure skater.
There is perhaps no Norwegian-American figure skater— or athlete, for that matter—who is more widely recognized than Sonja Henie. Her career spanned beyond the ice rink to include feature films, but her success did not always endear her to her home country. Her figure skating accolades began when she was very young and she will forever have a place in history as the youngest competitor in the Olympic Games. She competed in the Chamonix Games before any age regulations had been passed—she was just 11 years and nine months old. She won the World Championships ten times in as many years and three Olympic titles before moving on to the movies, in order—as she said—to do with skates what Fred Astaire had done with dance. Her feature films were a smashing success in the United States and her ice shows drew thousands of spectators. While she did not become an American citizen until 1941, she was well-known to American audiences beginning with her first World Championship victory in 1927.
As a Norwegian competing in an American arena, Sonja Henie became acquainted with other athletes in similar situations.
Pete Sanstol, a Norwegian-American boxer who was competing around the same time as Sonja Henie, was one athlete Henie knew. Sanstol emigrated in the mid 1920s and the two athletes are believed to have met shortly thereafter. He had competed in Norway to some success before he and his family emigrated, and Sanstol quickly became a prominent figure in American boxing. He won the World Bantamweight Title in 1931, and was known for his energetic boxing style that thrilled crowds. His most famous match was in 1934, when he attempted to defend his title against Panama Al Brown, but was defeated. Nonetheless, Sanstol continued to compete sporadically before his retirement. He became a United States citizen in 1943 and was inducted into the National Boxing Hall of Fame in 2000.
Their accomplishments were in different disciplines, but Sanstol and Henie shared experiences as athletes who were really without a country. Both Henie and Sanstol considered themselves to be Americans first and Norwegians second, but Henie in particular felt that Norway expected too much from her, and that her responsibility as a citizen belonged to the United States, while Sanstol appears to have held a much more ambivalent view, splitting his loyalty between the United States and Norway.
Sonja Henie. Vesterheim Archives.
Pete Sanstol. Photo courtesy of Ric Kilmer, Edmonds, Washington.
Although a 1931 Norwegian magazine, Sportsmanden, named Henie and Sanstol the top two Norwegian athletes of the time, the two had complicated feelings about their status as athletes caught between two countries in an age in which nationalistic allegiance was emphasized.. This was especially apparent in the wake of two world wars. Pete Sanstol wrote an article for a later, undated edition of Sportsmanden that sheds light on the tensions between the expatriate athletes and their native countries.
Sanstol wrote the article after attending one of Henie’s ice shows in the United States following the end of World War II. It was during this meeting of old friends that Sonja Henie fully described the disconnect she felt with Norway. Henie had become a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1941 and used her wealth to support American causes rather than Norwegian resistance during the war, much to the dismay of Norwegian citizens. She visited Norway soon after the war, and described what she felt was a cold reception. This visit damaged her relationship with Norway, but she continued to visit for the remainder of her life. Despite the costs of her accomplishments, Sonja Henie was an instrumental figure in creating a legacy both for Norwegian-American athletes and female athletes in general.
A lesser known but no less accomplished female Norwegian-American athlete is Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, a giant in early twentieth-century women’s tennis. Mallory was born Anna Margarethe Bjurstedt in Norway on March 6, 1884. Although she may have lived elsewhere in Norway as a
child, she lived in Kristiana (Oslo) at the time she emigrated in 1914. As a tennis player in Norway, Molla earned a bronze medal in women’s singles tennis at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden.
Inscription: "Third Annual United North and South tennis tournament Womens Singles Pinehurst, N. C. April 11-16:21 won by Molla Burstedt." Vesterheim 1985.116.004—Gift of Olea Aanrud.
Despite her talent, this was to be her only Olympic medal. Although she petitioned the International Olympic Committee to allow her to compete as an American in the 1924 Games, the committee declared that she could not compete for the United States after having competed for Norway and could “lend to the American team only her sideline support.” Likewise, the Norwegian committee declared her ineligible to compete as a Norwegian, citing her marriage to Franklin I. Mallory—an American—as the reason. The 1924 Olympics were the first Games in which athletes from five continents were represented in the competition. Despite being barred from the Olympics, Mallory still became a dominant figure in women’s tennis on both the national and international stages.
After she arrived in the United States, Molla settled in New York City and wasted no time in establishing herself as an elite tennis player by winning her first United States National Outdoor Tennis Championship in 1915. She would go on to
Molla Mallory. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-USZ62-115952].
One of Molla Mallory’s tennis awards. Her awards were often engraved objects rather than traditional trophies. Clock with enameled decoration. Height, 3 inches.
win that competition a total of eight times (1915-1918, 1920-1922, and 1926) in the next 11 years. Molla was a member of the elite Wightman Cup team in 1923, 1925, 1927, and 1928. The Wightman Cup was a tournament played between teams representing the United States and Great Britain. The tournament began in 1923 and took place in Great Britain on even-numbered years and the United States in odd-numbered years.
Shortly before her death in 1959, Molla Mallory was inducted to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. As a player, she is remembered as the “Norse Girl,” or “the girl from Norway,” who utilized her powerful forehand swing against many opponents. After she one the world championship in 1921, the Evening Public Ledger out of Philadelphia noted that “the champion deserves every bit of praise handed her and more. Never has a playing-through champion met and defeated such a field, and never has any girl more clearly demonstrated her prowess and the right to be called a champion.” Molla Mallory was part of what Billie Jean King has called the “lncomparable years” of women’s tennis.
Vesterheim’s collection contains objects that help to illustrate Mallory’s notable tennis career, as well as objects that help to shed light on the life she created in New York City after leaving Oslo. Pertaining to her tennis achievements, Vesterheim holds a few of the prizes she was awarded for her various tennis victories. These objects are very different from the grandiose trophies given for sports victories today, but their meaning was the same. The trophies Mallory received for her tennis victories are much more akin to common objects. For example, she was awarded a clock which is now in Vesterheim’s collection.
Aside from her tennis career, Molla Mallory apparently was an art aficionado as well. Her personal belongings contained a large number of engravings by Norwegian artist Fritz Thaulow. Vesterheim holds 13 of these engravings. Mallory had originally given them to a New York aquaintance by the name of Olea Aanrud. Aanrud gifted the engravings to Harry and Josefa Anderson of Chicago, who later donated the engravings to Vesterheim. Molla Mallory was one of the first Norwegian Americans to compete fully as an American on the national and international level, and she considered herself an American by the time of her death in 1959.
Baseball is widely considered to be the “all-American” sport and four Norwegian Americans have been members of major league baseball teams. While John Anderson, Ole Olsen, and Arndt and Orville Jorgens represent the only Norwegian presence in the major leagues, their contributions are nonetheless notable.
Ole Olson and Orville Jorgens had the shortest professional careers out of the four. Olson was a Norwegian American from Connecticut who played two seasons with the Detroit Tigers (1922-1923) as a pitcher. Orville Jorgen’s career in the majors lasted only two seasons as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. He and Arndt Jorgens were brothers, but Orville was born in Rockford, Illinois, after the family emigrated from Norway. Arndt Jorgens was born in Norway, and his major league career consisted of a nearly ten-year stint as a catcher for the New York Yankees.
The Norwegian American with the most prolific baseball career was John “Honest John” Anderson. Anderson was born on December 14, 1873, in Sarpsborg, Norway. He came to the United States when he was eight years old, and his family settled in Massachusetts. Over the course of his 14 year career in the major leagues, Anderson played with six different teams, beginning with the Brooklyn Grooms. As a player with the Grooms, Anderson began to cultivate a reputation as a strong hitter, albeit a weak outfielder.
The next team for which Anderson played was the Washington Senators beginning in 1898, but he was soon sold back to the Grooms. Never staying in one place for too long, Anderson was playing for the Milwaukee Brewers by 1900, and remained with the team as it relocated to St. Louis and began to operate as the Browns. As a member of the Browns, Anderson became a leader on the team, due more to his engaging personality and generosity than his athletic prowess. He was later traded to the New York Highlanders, and eventually sold back to the Senators. After a period in which he semi-retired from baseball, Anderson played two final seasons for the Chicago White Sox before officially retiring. Outside of baseball, John pursued a career as a police officer.
Arndt Jorgens, Image Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.
As Norwegian-American baseball players, John Anderson, Ole Olsen, and Arndt and Orville Jorgens rose to prominence in the “All-American” sport.
Even though the athletes discussed here achieved great success, their stories are only a few in the long history of Norwegian-American athletes. Lars and Anders Haugen represent the long tradition of skiers who were accomplished both as Norwegians and as Norwegian Americans. Sonja Henie remains to this day one of figure skating’s most enduring personalities; her interactions with Pete Sanstol help to shed light on how expatriate athletes were still connected to their home countries, no matter how complicated those relations were. Pete Sanstol, an incredibly talented athlete in his own right, further illustrates the extent to which Norwegian-American athletes were represented in American athletics. Molla Mallory was one of the first NorwegianAmerican athletes to be widely celebrated as an American, and Norwegian-American athletes also found success in baseball, considered to be the all-American game. These athletes' stories show that Norwegian Americans were active, vital participants in the athletic culture of the United States.
Sources
“Anders Haugen,” The American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame website, accessed January 5, 2011, http://www.intergarten.com/asj/hof/ haugenanders.pdf.
Asp Olson, Sarah. “10 Athletes Who Shaped a Nation,” Viking, November, 2010.
Fox, Margalit. “Old Isn’t as Old as It Used to Be.” The New York Times, March 17, 1996.
“Lars Haugen,” American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame, accessed January 5, 2011, http://www.intergarten.com/asj/hof/haugenlars.
“Mrs. Mallory First in Women’s Tennis,” The New York Times, October 23, 1921.
“Mrs. Mallory Makes Brilliant Record; Earns World Title,” Evening Public Ledger, August 22, 1921, 14.
“Mrs. Mallory Tops Women in Tennis,” The New York Times, October 3, 1920.
“Sport: Without A Country?” Time, January 28, 1924.
Stahl, John. “John Anderson,” The Baseball Biography Projects, accessed March 8, 2011, http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj. cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1811&pid=262.
“The Official Pete Sanstol Website,” accessed February 2, 2011, http://www.reocities.com/boxofdaylight/Home.htm.
About the Author
Rachel Barclay graduated from Luther College in 2011 with a B.A. in history. While at Luther, she worked at Vesterheim for three years, and is currently working as the museum’s Nordic Fest intern. Her museum experience also includes internships at the National Postal Museum and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
John “Honest John” Anderson’s 1909 Providence Grays Baseball Card.
Photo courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.