title: Nordic Spirit: Portraits of Scandinavian-Americans
author: Gregor-Alexander Von Ehrenfels
description: While most people today pretend not to see the differences in people of different ethnic backgrounds, photographer Gregor-Alexander von Ehrenfels chooses to focus on those differencesand celebrate them! This interest in the beauty of the human face has motivated the author to create a series of books called theAmerican Spirit, that captures the spirit of our country's many, wonderful, ethnic groups in photographic portraits. While visiting Minnesota, he observed the high concentration of Scandinavian-Americans in the state's population. Immediately, he launched himself into this new project, photographing men, women, and children of Scandinavian ancestry. This book, the first in theAmerican Spiritseries, is titledNordic Spirit. It features 100 striking black-and-white portraits. Each photograph is accompanied by a Scandinavian proverb that expresses in words the feeling of each portrait. Gregor von Ehrenfels is an American photographer hailing from the Northeast. He has also worked in advertising and design and has been honored with numerous awards for his work.
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  # The Dead Valley
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Ralph Adams Cram
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  I have a friend, Olof Ehrensvärd, a Swede by birth, who yet, by
  
  
  reason of a strange and melancholy mischance of his early boyhood, has
  
  
  thrown his lot with that of the New World. It is a curious story of a
  
  
  headstrong boy and a proud and relentless family: the details do not
  
  
  matter here, but they are sufficient to weave a web of romance around
  
  
  the tall yellow-bearded man with the sad eyes and the voice that gives
  
  
  itself perfectly to plaintive little Swedish songs remembered out of
  
  
  childhood. In the winter evenings we play chess together, he and I, and
  
  
  after some close, fierce battle has been fought to a finish—usually
  
  
  with my own defeat—we fill our pipes again, and Ehrensvärd tells me
  
  
  stories of the far, half-remembered days in the fatherland, before he
  
  
  went to sea: stories that grow very strange and 