Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
*Dakota
Spring Creek. Town in South Dakota, situated near the state’s border with Minnesota. As Giants in the Earth ended, a railroad neared Spring Creek on its way to Sioux Falls; O. E. Rölvaag never states whether the railroad builds a station at his fictional settlement; however, Spring Creek clearly shares the prosperity and population growth of the 1880’s. Frame houses replace sod huts, farmers build elaborate barns, and newcomers settle all the available land. The entire action of Peder Victorious takes place in Spring Creek, especially in its churches and schools.
The town’s two major ethnic groups are Norwegians, living mostly on the east side of the creek, and the Irish, dominating the west side. Each group has its own churches, and the two public schools of the village reflect the population of the area they serve.
Churches. Spring Creek has several Christian denominations. Its original Lutheran congregation, St. Luke’s Norwegian Evangelical Church, meets in the Tallaksen schoolhouse while its members gradually raise money for their own building. A dissident group of Norwegians, more literal in their reading of the Bible, founds the Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Beret shifts from one Norwegian church to the other, hoping that membership in one of these churches will slow her son Peder’s abandonment of Norwegian language and customs. However, she finds neither church satisfactory because both use English to attract the younger generation.
Where the town’s Roman Catholics meet–or whether they even have their own meetinghouse–is never mentioned in the novel. That a parish church has existed there, however, is clear, as the novel mentions a priest who strongly denounces interfaith marriages.
Schools. Two public schools serve as political and cultural centers for the village. Tallaksen School, on the east side of Spring Creek, teaches a standard English language curriculum to its predominantly Norwegian students. The Irish children in Murphy School, on the west side, already speak English, but the schoolteacher who runs the school is determined to Americanize her charges further by teaching them to revere the heroes of American history. She also presides over a community meeting to debate the future of Dakota Territory. Her pupils open the session by reading the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address to the largely immigrant audience. Dissenters from the decision of the first meeting later assemble at the Tallaksen schoolhouse.
Beret regrets the fact that district lines put her home within Murphy School territory. She distrusts the school-mistress’s policy of rigorous Americanization and objects to Peder’s being forced to associate with Irish children. Beret has Peder transferred to Tallaksen School, where Norwegian children will surround him, but that school’s English-language curriculum also reinforces the process of cultural assimilation. Peder continues to participate in extracurricular activities at Murphy School that are open to the entire settlement and at the novel’s conclusion becomes engaged to an Irish American girl.