A Novel Sight: The Restauration sails to America

"A Novel Sight" is the title of perhaps the most famous newspaper article ever written about Norwegian immigration into the United States. Published in New York City in October 1825, it was devoted to the 53 men, women and children who that summer had sailed from Norway to America in the little sloop Restauration.

Since then, this voyage has come to be regarded as the beginning of Norwegian emigration to the United States. The story of these emigrants and their vessel has become an epic drama of migration. It has taken on aspects of a legendary Norse saga; a heroic tale of a group of peasants who brave the ocean's perils to escape religious persecution and settle in a new land. Indeed, the emigrants who sailed on the Restauration have been given a defining name derived from their vessel, a name b which they are known to all later history. They - and only they - are called The Sloopers.

For more than 150 years, there has been a plethora of articles, pamphlets, academic monographs and works of popular literature about this group and their settlement in America. Unlike most of them, however, this book does not discuss the Sloopers in the greater context of the Norwegian emigration to, and settlement in other countries. Rather, it examines the voyage itself, within the context of a vessel sailing from Europe to America in the 18290's. Insofar as it is possible, it is based on contemporary documentation from the early 1800's. In short, if the story of the voyage has become an epic drama that defines the beginning of Norwegian emigration to America, then this book may be seen as an attempt to discover some of the facts that gave birth to the epic. 

Boken er til salgs fra Anno Norsk utvandrermuseum.