HCSCC Celebrates Voyage’s 40th Anniversary
The Hjemkomst ship’s new gallery is a collaboration of (from left) collections manager Lisa Vedaa, director Maureen Kelly Jonason, designer Jeff Brown of Brown Knows Design, and senior archivist Mark Peihl. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)
Forty years ago, an open wooden ship built in the style of the ancient Vikings set sail from the New World for the Old Country … and ultimately changed the image of the city of Moorhead forever.
The voyage of the Hjemkomst – “homecoming” in Norwegian – is not only near-legendary, challenging a crew of 13 modern Scandinavian-Americans to cross the stormy North Atlantic in a ship like those their Norse ancestors had sailed a millennium before. It has become the icon that identifies the city where it’s now in dry dock, inspiration for Moorhead’s logo and, perhaps, the launch pad for countless dreamers who, like shipbuilder Robert Asp, dare to dream great and unlikely dreams.
This summer the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, now the caretaker of Asp’s 77-foot-long, 63-foot-tall masterwork, is unveiling an all-new interpretive experience in the Ship Gallery at the heart of the Hjemkomst Center. The extensive display arrived in Moorhead on July 7 from Duluth, where the exhibit fabricator, Brown Knows Design, completely redesigned what had become a patched-together display of four iterations of the epic tale into what executive director Maureen Kelly Jonason calls a “more unified and cohesive aesthetic experience.”
Members of the community are invited to get their first official look at the freshened, revitalized Ship Gallery at its grand opening from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 23. The ribbon-cutting takes place at 1 p.m. At 3, members of the crew that sailed to Norway will share their memories. Planning to attend at presstime are Jeff Solum, Bjørn Holtet, Deb Asp Seitz, Myron Anderson, Paul Hesse, Lynn Halmrast, and Mark Hilde.
The Hjemkomst was the dream of Moorhead junior high counselor Robert Asp, who became intrigued with Viking shipbuilding while recovering from a broken leg in 1971. After reading more on the subject, he set out to build his own ship in the ancient seafarers’ style in a potato warehouse in Hawley. He got to sail on its maiden voyage on Lake Superior in 1980 but died of leukemia later that year. Family and friends kept his dream alive. Ultimately a crew including four of his children set sail in May 1982 from Duluth through the Great Lakes to New York, then across the Atlantic. They reached port in Bergen, Norway, on July 19, 1982. It arrived at its ultimate destination, Oslo, on Aug. 9.
“It made news literally around the world,” Jonason says. She notes that, while the voyage focused on the Vikings, it was carried out in a more challenging way than they employed: “The Vikings island-hopped across the ocean, stopping in the Faeroe Islands to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland,” she explains. “It was very bold of them to sail straight across the North Atlantic.” The feat had been accomplished once before, in 1893, in connection with the Chicago Exposition that marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s journey to the New World. “That was part of Bob Asp’s inspiration,” she adds.
The Asp family donated the ship to the city of Moorhead with an agreement that it be displayed and maintained here. A community-wide campaign was launched to build what’s now known as the Hjemkomst Center to house it, topped with architect Royce Yeater’s unique double-tented roof mimicking the ship’s sails. But though that dream did become a reality, it fell short of the the overestimated impact that accompanied the plan.
“They projected 200,000 to 250,000 visitors a year,” Jonason reports. Reality fell far, far short of that goal. From its most successful visitor count right after the opening in 1986, it had fallen to just 13,000 in 2013, four years after the merger of the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center (formed to manage it) and the Clay County Historical Society.
Attendance has rebounded over the past decade. The peak of 32,000 was reached in 2019, shortly before the pandemic shut the museum down for months and canceled festivals and other events. Since reopening in 2021, it has come close to that record level, with 30,000 admissions in that year despite continued COVID precautions for several months.
Jonason points to the successful fund-raising campaign to renew the Ship Gallery as tangible proof that the Hjemkomst is beloved among Moorhead and Fargo residents. Beginning a year ago, the champion grant-writer has secured financial support far exceeding the society’s initial bare-bones goal of $100,000. Among the corporate and philanthropic donors: Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Minnesota Historical Society, F-M Convention & Visitors Bureau, Sanford Health, Offutt Family Foundation, F-M Area Foundation, Alex Stern Family Foundation and the Sons of Norway, both Fargo’s Kringen Lodge and the national organization.
But just as impressive as that stellar list, she says, is the list of 126 individuals and families who made made personal gifts ranging from $25 to $10,000 toward the refurbished Ship Gallery. “Moorhead and Fargo really love the Hjemkomst and what it stands for,” she reflects. “We’re gratified that so many want to be part of the retelling of its story in this new and interesting way.”
