Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

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Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century ******** ********* Expatriates

Saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964
Courtesy of Kirsten Malone

In November 1953,

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published an essay by ******** ********* singer

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, who wrote about her life in Norway after relocating from the ******* States. The change was first set in motion during the mid-1940s, when Brown made a stop in Oslo during a five-month ********* concert tour that also took her to Belgium, France, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy. She traveled back across the Atlantic Ocean for a brief interlude in the U.S. before deciding to return to the Nordic region. “I arrived without a concert booking,” she wrote. “I just wanted to be in Norway for a while.”

Brown had fallen deeply, blissfully in love. At first it was with the shade of green she discerned on the snow-covered trees; the sense of serene isolation surrounding the cabins she encountered in the woods; and the warmth of the Norwegian people, who had just emerged from the shadow of war yet showed her nothing but welcome and sincere admiration.

And then, eventually, there was a man. He was in the audience at one of the concerts she’d booked upon her return, making such intense, electrifying eye contact that Brown could scarcely focus on her performance. After the show, the stranger went backstage to introduce himself. His name was

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, and he was a philosopher, a trained lawyer and one of Norway’s most talented ski jumpers.

The exhibition features a copy of Anne Brown’s 1953 Ebony essay.

Courtesy of the National Nordic Museum

Not long after meeting, the pair began a correspondence that culminated in a letter sent by Schjelderup while Brown was on tour in Denmark. “Now, Anne,” it read, “we have to decide several things. Shall we live in Europe or America? Shall we have 10 children or 20? Shall we have a big house or a small one? … On a mountain or deep in the woods?” The couple married ten months later.

Today, an original copy of Brown’s Ebony essay, titled “I Gave Up My Country for Love,” sits beneath a glass case in “

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,” a multimedia exhibition at the

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in Seattle. Grounded in years of co-curator

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’s scholarly research, it focuses on ******** Americans who made their way to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between the 1930s and the 1980s. The group included visual and performing artists, filmmakers, diplomats, and activists, who arrived in the region for temporary visits, for extended stays or to permanently resettle.

The exhibition tells these individuals’ stories via a collection of testimonials, televised interviews, sound recordings and archival footage. The items are placed in conversation with artistic works from the museum’s permanent collection, as well as loans from the

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and other cultural institutions around the world. The exhibition is on view until July 21, after which it will travel to the

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in Madison, Wisconsin, and

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in New York City.

Installation vew of “Nordic Utopia?”

Courtesy of the National Nordic Museum

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In the popular imagination, the history of ******** ********* expatriates in Europe tends to begin and end in

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, focusing on prominent figures like entertainer Josephine Baker and writers

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and Richard Wright. “Nordic Utopia?” takes visitors beyond Paris to Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm and other Nordic cities, introducing them to a less familiar, though no less influential, group of travelers.

Many members of this loose cohort began their international ventures in Paris but were soon unable to resist the pull of the Nordic countries. As Whitmire, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, “******** Americans visited, performed, studied and lived in Scandinavia for a variety of reasons: a sense of adventure, love, the pursuit of educational and professional opportunities, and the freedom to explore their sexuality.”

South Carolina-born visual artist

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moved to the City of Light in 1926 to study Modernism and immerse himself in a dynamic creative community. While on an artistic sojourn to the French fishing village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he produced several

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of its landscape, Johnson met and fell in love with Danish textile artist

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. The couple married and eventually moved to southern Denmark, spending most of the 1930s in the southern coastal town of Kerteminde, whose houses, streets, windmills and harbor

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of much of Johnson’s work.

Boats in the Harbor, Kerteminde, William H. Johnson, circa 1930-1931

Courtesy of the Johnson Collection

Expressionist painter

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followed a similar route. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, Gentry served during World War II, then moved to Paris in 1946 with the help of the

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. An invitation to exhibit his work in Copenhagen in 1958 led to a five-year stay in the Danish capital, which was in turn followed by a move to Gothenburg, Sweden, with his Swedish wife and their son.

By the mid-20th century, the Nordic countries enjoyed a reputation as not only havens from the rampant racism of the U.S. but also centers of dynamic artistic production. They soon became destinations in and of themselves. Painter

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traveled to Denmark with the support of a fellowship, while artist

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accepted an invitation to travel from Philadelphia to Helsinki as part of a U.S.-sponsored cultural festival that quickly led to commissions for mixed-media creations. He regularly collaborated with Finnish textile and ceramics firms, producing a variety of floral prints, animal figurines and ceramics.

“One surely interesting thing made possible by my being in Finland,” Smith

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, “was the cooperation of industry, whereas in America we know that the ****** artist has little, if any, possibility to work in a creative way with any industry. There, I was able to accomplish a good deal.”

Untitled, Herbert Gentry, 1961

Courtesy of the estate of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, New York

Other types of artists found opportunity in the Nordic countries, too. In the 1960s, saxophonist

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moved to Copenhagen, where he tapped into a deep pool of collaborators in the city’s burgeoning jazz scene and found regular opportunities to record a steady stream of hits. A decade later, pianist

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encountered a similarly welcoming scene when he arrived in the city, where he joined forces with ******** ********* drummer Ed Thigpen and Danish bassist Mads Vinding to record

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, an album produced by the Danish label SteepleChase Records.

Both Gordon and Jordan were frequent headliners at

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. Founded in 1959, the Copenhagen club communicated its twin ambitions via its name, which paid homage to the ******** Americans who had made the

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a legendary center of jazz music and cultural production in the 1920s, and—more importantly—invited a new generation of ****** performers to make their mark on a new part of the world.

Bebop singer Babs Gonzales in Copenhagen in 1968

Courtesy of Kirsten Malone

Indeed, ******** Americans wielded profound influence in the region. As “Nordic Utopia?” co-curator

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says, “From musicians who performed on tour to visual artists who established their lives and careers in the Nordic countries, this exhibition celebrates the roles that ******** ********* creatives played in a mid-century cultural efflorescence.” Jazz musicians like Gordon and Jordan, for example, fostered a deep appreciation for the genre, which is evident today in the long-running

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. And Smith’s collaborations with design companies

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and

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informed the Finnish domestic interior and objects of everyday life.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore the question mark looming over the exhibition. As Whitmire says, the show’s title “was selected, at least in my mind, to acknowledge that the Nordics are not utopias for non-********* ****** people … in the 21st century.” Literary and cultural historian

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has made

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in her work on Sweden, which has cultivated an image of itself as a social democracy and center of equity and inclusion despite its long history and enduring legacy of

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toward migrants from ******* and the ***** world.

A video of the opening of the Nordic Utopia? ******** Americans in the 20th Century that I co-curated

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— Ethelene Whitmire (@Ethelene_Whit)

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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the same ******* the country was welcoming ********* expatriates, its scientists embraced

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, while its white artists—predecessors and peers to Johnson and others—embraced *******, colonialist tropes in their work. According to Miller, “As Sweden took the steps to create its ********, progressive, generous ******** state, it did so based on notions of inclusion, worth and community that necessarily relied on notions of exclusion and hierarchy.”

Even for ******** Americans, the day-to-day reality of living in the Nordic countries presented its share of complications. In her Ebony essay, Brown (whose story provides important gender balance in the exhibition, since most of her featured contemporaries are ******** ********* men) wrote of the “little stupidities” she encountered in Oslo, like a maid who was reportedly asked, “What’s it like working for Anne Brown? Does she smell different from anybody else?” Another woman raised a ******* question to a friend of Brown’s husband: “How does it work out, that marriage between a primitive and such a high-bred person?” The friend responded, “Oh, it works out fine, but what makes you think that Thorleif is primitive?

Sunset, Denmark, William H. Johnson, circa 1935-1938

Smithsonian ********* Art Museum / Gift of the Harmon Foundation

While none of these experiences steered Brown away from her devotion to Norway, where she continued living until her

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, they served as a reminder that for ******** Americans, there was no complete escape from racism. In Another Man’s Country, a two-part documentary that aired on the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 1970 and appears in the exhibition, ******** ********* expatriate Bernie Moore (who, according to a wall label, once co-owned a restaurant in Copenhagen called Soul Kitchen) put it plainly: “I am a ****** man in Denmark, and I have the same problems here. There isn’t that great a change. I can’t get an apartment readily.”

Referencing yet another reason why the Nordic countries could never truly be a utopia for ******** Americans, Smith once said, “I got lonesome there [in Finland]. … I need the spiritual input, I guess, of being around ****** people. … This life that we all need is the ***** that comes more abundantly from ******* to me than from others.”

“

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” is on view at the

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in Seattle through July 21.

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#Nordic #Countries #Emerged #Haven #20thCentury #******** #********* #Expatriates

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