The pastor’s wife
scandal that was hushed up

Oline Pind Muus and Bernt Julius Muus were two of 900,000 Norwegians who emigrated to the United States to start a new life there.

They stood out in several ways.

Many emigrants came from poor backgrounds and sold everything they owned to pay for the ticket to America. Oline and Bernt came from families with education and money, and did not have to pay for travel expenses.

Bernt was a pastor, a sought-after occupation in the Norwegian communities in the United States. He was recruited for a job in Minnesota by the Holden congregation. They paid for the trip and arranged housing for the couple.

Oline was 21 and Bernt was 27 when they arrived in a small settlement in Goodhue County in 1859, south of Minneapolis, in the middle of the United States.

“It can’t have been easy. Oline had a very comfortable lifestyle in Norway, and then she ends up in this godforsaken place which was still a wilderness,” says Sandra Bestland from Minneapolis.

She writes and gives lectures about Norwegian immigrant women in the United States.

God in Norwegian

The Norwegian immigrants had their own congregations, built their own churches, and imported pastors from their homeland. God was to be worshipped in Norwegian among Norwegians.

Bernt was the only pastor in an area the size of Denmark, according to Kari Lie Dorer, a professor of Norwegian at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.

Eventually, Bernt was responsible for 28 congregations.

The couple lived very different lives.

“Bernt travelled around with oxen and cart on bad roads in all kinds of weather. At home he had a wife and children who were neglected,” Bestland says.

Oline did not travel anywhere. She took care of the household, duties in the congregation, and the six children they eventually had. At the same time she sewed for pay, gave piano lessons, and sold herbs.

Sceptical of America

Bernt Muus and other Norwegian pastors were concerned with preserving Norwegian culture and language. They were sceptical of Norwegian immigrants becoming integrated and Americanised.

Norwegian immigrant children attended public schools. Bernt believed these schools were too secular and that they undermined Norwegian spiritual values. They therefore started Norwegian religious schools with money collected from the immigrants. Bernt established Holden Academy, which later became St. Olaf College.

The years passed in the Muus family. Then came the inheritance that started the conflict.

When Oline's father died back home in Norway, she inherited the equivalent of 3,700 dollars. It was sent to the United States, and the money went straight to Bernt, who managed the family finances with a heavy hand.

Sued her own husband

The couple had been married for 20 years when the unthinkable happened. Oline did something a woman absolutely was not supposed to do in the very religious and male-dominated Norwegian America. She took her own husband to court to get her father’s inheritance.

It came down to which law should apply. Under American law, women received and managed inheritances themselves. But Oline did not, and so she demanded the money.

The opposing party, Bernt's lawyer, pointed out that the Muuses were still Norwegian citizens and that under Norwegian law it was the husband who had control over his wife's inheritance.

The lawsuit hit the Holden congregation and the Norwegian immigrant community like a bomb. The case was reported in Norwegian newspapers both in the US and in Norway.

Treated badly for 20 years

Oline explained that she needed the money for the children. They were living on very little, and the house was in terrible condition. She had to beg her husband for clothes and household necessities. She described Bernt as extremely stingy and that he would not heat the house.

Oline said that she had been treated badly by a heartless and tyrannical man for more than 20 years.

The court ruled in Oline's favour. The couple had lived in Minnesota for more than 20 years, so American law applied. Parts of the claim were time-barred, so Bernt was ordered to pay Oline about 1,000 dollars. Both parties appealed the verdict.

But Oline had to fight on two fronts.

A silent woman among men

Bernt asked the Holden congregation to discipline Oline for her disobedience.

He believed Oline had violated both the church's and God's will that a woman should obey her husband.

In a series of church meetings, Oline had to defend herself. As a woman she had no right to speak in church, but she wrote statements that were read out by a man. Hundreds of listeners were present. All of them were men.

In her defence, Oline wrote that she did not accept the doctrine that a wife should be blindly and unconditionally obedient to her husband. 'If God had created woman to be her husband's slave in every manner, He would not have given her the ability to act and think for herself,' Oline wrote.

She lost in the church meetings, which she later called torture, and left the congregation. But she won the appeal in court. She was also granted a divorce from Bernt.

Divided sympathies

People in Holden and Minnesota were divided over which of the spouses was in the right. So was the press. Some supported Bernt and the church's view of women's roles.

Bernt was a strict and traditional pastor. His anti-American attitudes and uncompromising faith had earned him opponents. Several people wanted to remove him from his pastoral position. Bernt won that battle, but his standing in the local community was weakened.

Oline also received a lot of support from neighbours, the press, and from those who wanted to strengthen the women's position in society.

“She was a suffragist. There weren't many of those in the small towns of Minnesota,” says Bestland.

“The primary struggle for Oline Muus was to raise her voice and ensure that it was heard. Her story serves as a critical illustration of the consequences when certain voices, specifically women's, are excluded or deprioritised,” says Kari Lie Dorer.

Won, but lost

Oline was granted the right to move away from Bernt, but she lost the children. According to American law, the father retained custody.

During the three years the conflict lasted, one of the six children died. Two sons were placed with a family in the congregation. Two others grew up with Bernt. They never saw their mother again.

The trial, the church meetings, and all the attention had consequences.

“You can imagine the shame imposed on the children when their mom files a suit against their dad,” says Bestland.

It didn't help that their daughter Birgitte had a child out of wedlock. That in itself was a scandal, and she moved to Norway with the child.

Ran a hotel

Oline went to Minneapolis, where she had supporters. When she finally received her inheritance, she moved on to Alabama, where she bought and ran a hotel.

After many years in Norway, Birgitte moved back to the United States and took care of her now elderly mother. Oline died in 1922, at the age of 84.

Bernt had already passed away by then. He had been allowed to continue as a pastor, but eventually lost his position and influence within the Norwegian church organisation. He died in 1899 during a visit to Norway.

Although the conflict between the Muuses received enormous attention while it was ongoing, the matter was later hushed up.

“Oline writes about the silencing that took place after the trial,” says Dorer.

Bernt is also affected

There are memorial plaques and statues of Bernt Muus for the efforts he made for the church and for St. Olaf College, where he was the first president.

At St. Olaf, the buildings are named after former presidents. But there's no building named Muus.

Kari Lie Dorer believes this is no coincidence.

“I have strong indications that there has been a deliberate effort to suppress the matter,” she says.

Dorer has researched the Muus case in American archives. The results were included in the American version of the book about Oline Muus, written by the Norwegian historian Bodil Stenseth.

Dorer believes Norwegian-American readers will probably be divided in their view of Bernt Muus.

“Some people will dismiss him as a patriarch. At the same time, many will appreciate his significant contributions to the establishment of the Norwegian Lutheran Church in the Midwest and to the founding of St. Olaf College," she says.

She sees similarities between Bernt and Oline.

“The Muus couple are both central figures who worked to help others, even though there's a marked difference in their values and how they went about doing so,” says Dorer.

References:

Shaw, J.M. Bernt Julius Muus. Founder of St. Olaf College, Norwegian American Historical Association, 1999. 

Stenseth, B. Muus vs. Muus: The Scandal That Shook Norwegian America, Edited by Kari Lie Dorer. Translated by Dorer and Torild Homstad, Norwegian American Historical Association, 2024.

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Translated by Ingrid P. Nuse

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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