By Andrew Fefer, for the Chippewa Valley Post
A museum honoring the legacy of Waldemar Ager, a newspaper editor and civic leader who settled in Eau Claire about 120 years ago, is bringing Norwegian language and culture to the Chippewa Valley starting this month.
Classes on speaking the Norwegian language and on rosemaling (a kind of decorative painting that is common in Norway) are scheduled for the Waldemar Ager Museum: Center for Nordic Culture, 514 W. Madison Ave. in Eau Claire.
The Waldemar Ager Association, originally formed in 1993 to save Ager’s Eau Claire home, has held classes on many languages and crafting techniques at the museum over the years. Recently, its classes have been mostly on Norwegian language and rosemaling.
“We really depend on having instructors who can do these classes, and that, over time, has changed,” said Douglas Pearson, program committee chair and past president of the Waldemar Ager Association.
“People stop wanting to do it (teach the classes). Some moved away. A lot of different things,” he said.
Pearson described the language courses as “a cultural and linguistic introduction.” Typically, there are between four and eight sessions, each lasting about an hour. The goal is to introduce people to the language, get them acquainted with the culture and, for those planning to travel to Norway or Sweden, give them a way to learn some simple communication with people living there.
“They’re not going to go away from any of our classes fluent,” he said.
Waldemar Ager
Ager was born in 1869. He was 16 years old when he arrived in Chicago, joining his father who had come to the city several years earlier.
“(He was) a Norwegian immigrant who absolutely believed in the necessity in the new country to preserve the ‘mother tongue,’” Pearson said.
“Ager got involved in publishing almost right away. He got a job in a print shop, printing a Norwegian periodical, and that was really kind of on the job training and learning.”
Ager used those skills to land a job at Reform, a weekly prohibitionist newspaper, in Eau Claire in 1892. He wrote articles and editorial pieces and eventually became editor and publisher. Like the agenda of the newspaper itself, Pearson said Ager believed that alcohol created a litany of societal problems.
“Even though he was an advocate, he understood that people who had trouble with alcohol were not necessarily bad people,” Pearson added.
About ten years later, Ager married Gurolle Blestren and the couple had nine children. Pearson said after working days at the newspaper, Ager would come home and write novels, essays and short stories. He also went on lecture tours.
Pearson said Ager helped organize the public library in downtown Eau Claire, and was involved in creating Luther Hospital, which is now Mayo Clinic Health System-Eau Claire.
The Ager House
Around the same time that Ager arrived in America, a builder named Brady Anderson constructed the house on Chestnut Street where Ager would live for several decades. Ager moved into the Queen Anne-style house in 1903.
In that location, it had a view of Half Moon Lake from the dining room window, Pearson said.
Ager died in 1941. About 20 years later, Luther Hospital took ownership of the house and used it for a gift shop called the Red Carpet. In the early 1990s, the hospital planned to tear down the house ahead of building projects in the area. The association negotiated with the hospital and the city, and that led to an arrangement to move the house to its current location on W. Madison Street.
Crews moved the structure there in 1994 and it was renovated top to bottom during the next several years. According to a sign on the front of the house, the Eau Claire Landmark Commission designated it as a historic building in 2000.
Memories of the Ager House
Ager’s granddaughter, Borgny Ager, 81, said that it is nice that the association is preserving her grandfather’s legacy. She currently lives in Chippewa Falls.
“I think he probably was thinking he was losing his cause…with the people. There were getting to be less people speaking Norwegian. He didn’t want people to forget,” she said.
Borgny Ager said she was not yet five-years-old when her grandfather died. She said she knew that he “had a newspaper” and wrote books.
“I didn’t know who my grandfather was until they started the Ager Association,” she said with a laugh.
“He was a humanitarian. He was very concerned about the people. And not just the Norwegians, but all immigrants,” she said.
“He was very concerned about the children. They were going to school. They were learning to speak English, and they couldn’t communicate with their parents, the grandparents and so forth,” she added. She compared their struggles to the challenges the Hmong population in the Eau Claire area face today.
Borgny Ager remembers staying at the Ager house with her grandmother for a few months in the mid-1950s. Her parents were considering a move to Milwaukee, and staying at the house allowed Borgny and her siblings to stay in school. She remembers spending time in “Grandpa’s room,” which contained lots of books, and having cookies and soda or coffee at a round table in the kitchen.
She also remembers watching Independence Day fireworks from outside the home, and the view of fishing, skating and other sporting events nearby.
She said only a few of Ager’s nine children were still alive when the association was formed, but her father and at least one of the other children had held on to many of Waldemar Ager’s possessions.
“I think he would be pleased. And I’m sure some of the children (of Waldemar Ager) would have been happy.”
Waldemar Ager Museum: Center for Nordic Culture
Two years ago, the Ager association started regular open houses at the building. That is also when it changed its name to Waldemar Ager Museum: Center for Nordic Culture.
Currently, a group of nearly 140 association members help to run the museum. It houses copies of Reform, along with a fully-catalogued research library consisting of nearly 1,500 volumes.
While Ager’s life and accomplishments are a large part of the association and museum, there have also been programs with Hmong and Latvian immigrants.
“He (Ager) was always looking at bigger pictures, as well as the local scene, and I think he’d be happy to know that an organization still exists with probably a broader mission than just paying attention to his work,” Pearson said.
The association holds three open houses per month: on the second and fourth Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and on the third Wednesday of the month from 4 to 7 p.m. Pearson estimated that the museum has 300-400 visitors every year.
“One of the things we learn from their visits is they’re really overwhelmed. They can’t believe it exists. And they’re surprised that it’s as well-taken care of as it is.”
Norwegian language and rosemaling classes start this week at the museum. To see a schedule and a list of prices, click here.
Note: Andrew Fefer took the home page photo of the Waldemar Ager Museum: Center for Nordic Culture.