Grantee Spotlight: Somali and Scandinavian Heritage Events in Barron County

Sallie Anna Pisera spent time in the Barron area visiting family when she was growing up. In fact, it was her aunt Theresa who connected her with a place called Pioneer Village. Run by the Barron County Historical Society, the village museum has been preserving and interpreting the history of Northwestern Wisconsin for over sixty years. In her career as a folklorist, Sallie Anna had worked with tradition-bearers from Nordic and Somali backgrounds, both in the United States and also in Norway. She knew about the Barron area’s Scandinavian heritage and about the Somali community that has grown up around Barron since the late 1990s.

Sallie Anna says, “I’ve always found the transnational connection between these two communities very interesting. Somali people make up one of the largest African immigrant groups in the Nordic countries, and also some of the largest Somali diaspora communities are found in the midwest and places that were home to large numbers of immigrants from Norway and Sweden in the previous century.”

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