Introduction

Used with permission - Shaw-Olson Center for College History, St. Olaf College
Bird's-eye view of Northfield in 1869.

The Research Project

When we were asked to do projects that involved a sense of place in the Cannon River valley region, the first thing I thought of is what does a sense of place mean to me?  Maybe in part because I am a history and environmental studies major the first thing I thought of is that it is tied to the past.  I think that to understand the present it is often helpful to understand where what we see today came from and how it has developed over time.  It also often helps us to understand ourselves, where the thoughts and values we have come from, and to understand our relation to things around us human and non human in context.  I have always been interested in where thing comes from or originate.  So I thought it would be interesting for a project to look at where the place Northfield originated and some of the people who helped build it.  Why did the early settlers and immigrants settle in the Northfield area?   I was also curious if these early settlers developed a sense of place and if they did what did it look like?  What foundations did they leave for those who came behind them to build their own sense of place?

In this project I also had to define what I think a sense of place means for me personally and I came up with four things that I think are important.  This criterion is used in my project to define a sense of place.

The first is an emotional connection to a place, just that feeling that this is home.  I care about this place. 

The second is a spiritual connection.  This for me is connected to the emotional element of a sense of place.  It is about finding your balance in relation to the things around you and the respect for life and being that is exchanged between people and the land and between people in that place. 

The third is an understanding of the place, the land itself.  The way it functions, its inner interactions, and its interconnections with other places.  Its history.  How it has developed and changed over time.  Involved in this is also how people have interacted with the land.  How the land has been shaped and how it has shaped the people who lived in it. Culture also plays a role in this understanding because the way that we understand things and interact with them often has connections to how our culture views things and what it values. 

The fourth is community.  Being part of both the human and biotic communities that make up a place.  Caring about others and having connections that bind you to both communities.