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St. Olaf to celebrate Founders' Day Thursday

By Becca Heistad '09
November 5, 2008

Thursday marks the 134th anniversary of the founding of St. Olaf College by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in 1874. The college will celebrate Founders' Day with a number of events, beginning with a special chapel service and concluding with the revival of a long-held St. Olaf tradition.

OldMain1886
Old Main in 1886
Todd Nichol '74, King Olav V professor of Scandinavian-American studies at St. Olaf, will pay tribute to the founders during chapel Nov. 6. Nichol's speech, titled "In the Beginning," will commence at 11 a.m. in Boe Memorial Chapel. The event is open to the public.

Immediately following the service, the St. Olaf community is invited to join President David R. Anderson '74 for birthday cake and coffee in the Buntrock Commons Crossroads.

Also in honor of Founders' Day, a 45-minute documentary on the history of science education at St. Olaf titled Science Scenes will be shown at 1 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. The staff of the Shaw-Olson Center for College History created the film as a tribute to the college's academic theme for the year, "Science and the Liberal Arts." A discussion and dessert reception will follow the screening.

To bring festivities to a close, all are welcome to participate in the illumination of Old Main, which will begin at 8 p.m. in the Crossroads. Lighting the windows of Old Main with candles was a tradition on "The Sixth" from 1878 to 1923, but was abandoned because of the fire hazard involved. This year the tradition will be revived with a celebration sponsored by the Student Alumni Association featuring cookies, cider and musical guest the Limestones. The Limestones is a seven-voice male a cappella group founded at St. Olaf in 1989.

Chapel speaker
Nichol's attraction to Scandinavian-American studies stems from the story of his maternal grandparents, Scandinavian immigrants who settled in Evanston, Ill., shortly after World War I. He pursued this interest throughout his years at St. Olaf, and his subsequent study for the ministry at Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul and his doctoral work at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

Nichol currently serves as editor for the Norwegian-American Historical Association, which is housed at St. Olaf and has been supported by the College since the association's founding in 1925. He has published several books and papers on Norwegian-American church history and the various Lutheran church branches. In 2006 he was awarded the rank of Officer of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his dedication to Norwegian-American relations.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.