Project organization

CROSSINGS 200 is the hallmark of the national program that includes the emigrant bicentennial and the migration celebrations of 2025. 200 years after the sloop "Restoration" sailed from Stavanger to New York with 52 emigrants on board, there is reason to both celebrate and mark the great changes the first organized emigration from Norway brought with it, both in Norway and in North America.​

Many emigrants followed. Over the last 200 years almost a million Norwegians have emigrated, most of them to North America. Today, there is extensive experience, stories, and knowledge about the driving forces for, and consequences of, emigration and immigration. Today's migrations join this and provide new knowledge and learning for everyone.

The stories of Norwegian emigration must be told and interpreted in our time in order to give new generations of children and young people across the country and from all cultures knowledge and a basis for new perspectives, not least related to immigration in Norway.

The aim of the national program CROSSINGS 200 is therefore to provide new perspectives on migration, both emigration and immigration, to convey the connection between old and new knowledge through dialogue with children and young people, and to build closer ties between different cultures through cultural meetings.

A number of public and private organisations, institutions and resource persons have built up an extensive national network, which now numbers almost 100, and who are ready to unleash their resources. Actors in North America are included in this. Some are well into the planning of events. There will be 200-year commemorations with migration as the main theme throughout the year 2025, both in Norway and in North America.

– February 2024, Tora Aasland, chairperson of the Norwegian executive committee for CROSSINGS 200