Henning Sehmsdorf Ph D will be speaking at the Daughters of Norway on March 19th at 1:00 pm at the Fred Lewis Scout Cabin at 3075 Discovery Road in Port Townsend. He will be speaking about his extensive fieldwork and his book, "Continuity of Norwegian Traditions in the Pacific Northwest", which explores the celebration of Norwegian American heritage in the Pacific Northwest to provide a sense of community and cultural home missing in much of contemporary urban life. The book shows that the language, food, crafts, clothing, dance and music traditions practiced by self-identified Norwegian Americans today give a picture of life in rural communities in the past, and even more so of the hundred-year-old history of tradition programs of performance groups, museum exhibits, ethnic organizations, educational institutions, and marketing. Henning Sehmsdorf is a teacher, writer, and biodynamic farmer living on Lopez Island, Washington. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1968, at which time he took a position at the University of Washington to teach comparative literature, folklore studies, and Scandinavian languages and literature. His published research often focused on how pre-industrial tradition informed world view, social life, and literature in Scandinavia, and especially in Norway, and to some extent still does today.
