Stjernen (St. Paul, Howard County, Nebraska)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
418 issues from 1885 to 1893, published in Saint Paul, Nebraska, digitised for Chronicling America.
Stjernan or “The Star” was a weekly Danish-American paper published from 1885-1896—briefly in St. Paul, Nebraska, and soon thereafter in nearby Dannebrog, Nebraska. The annual subscription was $1.50. At its height, there were 2,600 subscribers, 600 from Dannebrog and 2,000 from other locales. From 1886-1896, the publisher and editor was Peter Ebbesen, who had emigrated from Denmark to the U.S. as a child. In a pioneer history of his life, he wrote that when he began as an editor, he could barely read or write Danish at all. In time, he noted that he gradually gained enough Danish to “pass” among the Danish community of Dannebrog. Despite this self-deprecating assessment, the paper itself is described in a 2003 article by author Karsten Kjer Christensen as remarkably well-organized, with interesting articles. The newspaper’s letterpress lead type appears to have been taken from a mix of Scandinavian languages, although predominantly Danish fraktur.
Christensen wrote that the first issue stated, “Readers and friends. Today we add a paper to the journalistic accumulation among Scandinavians in America. A beacon that with the cooperation of our compatriots we hope will be worthy of its name.” After a few issues with church-related columns that were fraught with narrow doctrinal arguments, the paper carefully refrained from focusing on theological issues. Instead, it reported heavily on farming issues and commodities prices. At one point, Ebbesen encouraged farmers to submit…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Saint Paul, Nebraska, United States
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress