News of Norway, September 2, 2002
It all began on September 10th, 1852, when the following statement appeared in a Potter County, PA, newspaper: "Ole Bull’s reputation, genius and wealth will enable him to [resettle] as many of his countrymen on his new [land] as he may desire; and we therefore look upon this movement as the most important that has ever occurred in the history of this county."
For Ole Bull, then 42 years of age and without a doubt the most famous Norwegian in the United States, the article’s upbeat mood echoed his own feelings about what he intended to do here exactly The famous violin virtuoso had just purchased 120,000 acres of land in the county, and he had plans to buy much more as soon as he had the money for it. The land would be known as "Oleana" or "New Norway", and it was to be a place where immigrant countrymen could settle and thrive, having left their Northern European homeland for the new world
On the 150th anniversary of Bull’s land purchase, a few hundred people gathered in what is now Pennsylvania’s Ole Bull State Park to commemorate the violinist’s attempt to form a Norwegian colony in the area. Surrounded by its game-filled, dense forest and crystal-clear rivers, and breathing its clean and crisp air, visitorssitting on wooden benches and camping chairs listened to tall tales, sad songs and serious lectures about Ole Bull and his broken dreams.
The gathered group of Ole Bull enthusiasts, whether campers or local inhabitants, was probably a far cry from what the violinist himself had imagined. His was in many ways a rebellion against the inferiority complex Norwegians had long had towards Sweden, to which Norway was united at the time. While the lectures, speeches and concerts presented during the commemoration paid due homage to the man and showed that his legacy is still alive , Ole Bull himself would probably have expected a more glorious celebration of "Oleana’s" sesquicentennial. His dream would have placed it in a great concert hall in a great capital of a great colony, not on a small, outdoor stage in a semi-wilderness.
But Ole Bull’s great project never became the success he had hoped for. In fact, the dream was more or less over a year after it started. The narrator Mari Lyssand put it beautifully during the concert which followed the commemoration lectures and the unveiling of a new Ole Bull monument in the park: "He was a great musician and had enormous charisma, but unfortunately Ole Bull was no farmer."
The land Bull had purchased , for a price of $10,000, was not in fact very well suited for agriculture. When the first group of settlers—all farmers--arrived in the fall of 1852, they were not at all prepared for the hardships the densely forested land would present Lumberjacks and miners could probably have developed the land, but none of the settlers had these skills or interests. After a devastating winter, most of the settlers moved on to the better , greener pastures available in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
Ole Bull was not a businessman, either. In making his purchase, he failed to realize that the areas of Oleana that were most suited for cultivation were in fact exempted from the purchase agreement. For the settlers, this meant that they would have to clear the land of trees first, which took a great deal of time and effort with the poor-quality tools they had brought. In addition, winter was approaching and there was no way for the settlers to grow a harvest before the cold set in.
The Ole Bull State Park now has little to remind the public of what Bull’s colony could have been or what it was. A few tombstones in a graveyard nearby show that some of the early settlers died and were buried here. There are also races of Ole Bull’s "castle", located on a hilltop overlooking "New Norway" and providing a hint of what the dreaming violinist had in mind. With the new Bull monument that was unveiled during the commemoration, visitors are now reminded in more direct ways of what the great showman had in mind and what actually happened back then, 150 years ago.
Few people present at the sesquicentennial celebration will ever forget the concert that marked the climax of it. Arve Tellefsen, undoubtedly Norway’s most renowned violinist of today, performed some of the songs and violin pieces Ole Bull wrote and that are still in existence. Accompanied by Tor Espen Aspaas on the piano and with a narrative by Mari Lyssand, the concert matched perfectly the troll-like atmosphere of the forested valley of Potter County. As Mary Hirst, Park Manager of theOle Bull State Park said: "We are extremely lucky to be able to experience this concert."
Arve Tellefsen knows the music he performed at the concert by heart. And as an avid Ole Bull fan, he was more than happy to provide encores after encores for the enthusiastic Potter County audience. Tellefsen, Norway’s most famous violinist for decades now, knows Ole Bull’s music--as one of the speakers during the commemoration put it –"better than almost anybody else." The violinist has played Bull’s songs on several of the late virtuoso’s own violins, including Bull’s Stradivarius now in the possession of the Smithsonian Institute. "It was a fantastic moment when I was able to hold that violin in my hands," Tellefson says, "and it felt even better when I was allowed to play it."
How was Ole Bull able to convince hundreds of his fellow countrymen to join him in the dream of a "New Norway"? Part of the answer lies in the nature of the man himself. He was born in Bergen in 1810, four years before Norway broke loose from the union with Denmark and wrote a new, modern democratic constitution based largely on the one the United States created a few decades earlier. At the age of eight he was admitted as an apprentice with the local orchestra in Bergen, and ten years later moved to Oslo to pursue a musical career. He traveled extensively in Europe and soon became known as one of its greatest talents . Says Dr. Irving Godt, music historian at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania: "Bull even outdid his great hero Paganini in many respects. On one occasion, he played a song meant as a duet all by himself."
Bull soon became known as much for his showmanship as for his ability to play the violin. "One time, he climbed to the top of the Cheops pyramid in Egypt and played from what was then the highest man-made structure in the world," Dr. Irving says. "He was a master at pleasing his audience in every way."
At 6ft 3in, Bull stood tall in any crowd. His good looks and amazing charisma guaranteed him a full house wherever he went. Once during a stay in Bergen after the Oleana failure, the landlady made a good bit of money selling the water Bull had used to wash in to the women of Bergen. "I have been told that if you want to understand the magnitude of Bull’s fame at the time, you would have to compare him to someone like Elvis Presley," Mari Lyssand says.
Regrettably, Ole Bull died before Edison invented the gramophone. He was never recorded. More unfortunate still is the fact that only 10 of his estimated 100 compositions have been preserved. This leaves much of his performance and musical legacy to the imagination. Yet the important role Bull played as a political and artistic catalyst among his contemporaries can never be ignored or destroyed. It was Bull who in his national-romantic efforts to promote a distinct Norwegian identity in a country then dominated by Sweden took the initiative to establish the first Norwegian-speaking theatre in the country, in Bergen, and who went out and recruited a brilliant but struggling playwright from Skien in East Norway to head the theatre. The young playwright’s name was Henrik Ibsen.
Another person who benefited from Bull’s musical influence and wisdom was Edvard Grieg. It was Bull who persuaded Grieg’s parents to send their son to Europe for his musical education, and soon Grieg came to consider Bull his mentor. At Bull’s funeral in 1880, Grieg gave the following oration:
"Because you were above all others an honor to your country; because you above all others have raised our people to the sunlit heights of art; because you were the first pioneer of our new, more national music, above all others faithful, warm-hearted and soul-conquering; because you have thus planted a seed that will bear rich fruit in the future and for which coming generations will bless you; with a thousand and again a thousand thanks for all of this, I place this laurel wreath on your grave in behalf of Norwegian music. May you rest in peace."
Among the speakers at the sesquicentennial celebrations at the Ole Bull State Park in Pennsylvania was Mr. Gisle Handeland, governor of Hordaland County , the region to which the city of Bergen belongs. Paying his compliments to the great violinist, he said: "Although Ole Bull’s "Oleana" was a failure, it does remind us all to dream of creating a better future."