Giants of the Earth Heritage Center

10/30/2025

Welcome all visitors to Saturday's Spring Grove Recognition Day and Dear Land Film Premiere! If you're catching an earlier showing of Dear Land, be sure to check out Ye Olde Opera House 7:30 premiere of their new show, and all are welcome to join us for a little 5:30 social hour at RockFilter Distillery.

10/30/2025

We're excited to be a stop on tomorrow's Business Trick or Treat, 10am-2pm. The candy dish is ready in the gift shop. When it's not Halloween, we do "trick AND treat" with our weekly Treasure Hunt Tuesdays posts. Kids from 1 to 101: stop in to solve the week's mystery, and grab a candy.

Do you have your treat bucket ready to go? Tomorrow is our Business Trick-or-Treat day! A way for the littlest ones to have some fun during daylight hours. THANK YOU to all of these businesses for opening their doors and sharing treats with these little ones! We appreciate your generosity and participation!

10/30/2025

For today's post, we go back to the day we received the "Minnesota's First Norwegian Settlement, Spring Grove" t-shirt and we put the shirt onto "Gladys."

This Saturday, November 1st, you can join us we celebrate our state recognition as Minnesota’s First Norwegian Settlement!

For more information visit: https://giantsoftheearth.org/event/spring-grove-recognition-day/

10/30/2025

Great fun today to have News 8 Now here today to catch Floyd and Stella on their 100th birthdays! "A 1 in 375,000,000 chance" that fraternal twins both live to 100. Once more reason Spring Grove is a special place! We were honored to gift a Milestones binder of their family genealogy for the occasion (see comments for details).

SPRING GROVE, MN (WKBT) -- Stella Strinmoen Egland and Floyd Strinmoen, a pair of fraternal twins, celebrated their 100th birthday on Wednesday, October 29th.

10/28/2025

Sigmund Årseth's angular figures in this painting were inspired by flat plane wood carving, a traditional Scandinavian style that was brought over by immigrants and which is still practiced by area woodcarvers and whittlers today. This week's is one of my personal favorite "carvings" in the murals: a little kitty cat patiently waiting by the dinner table, hoping someone will drop some scraps. If you can tell us where this cat is crouched, you can claim a treat in our gift shop 🍬🍭🎃

10/28/2025

Nice piece about our Spring Grove Recognition Day and Dear Land Film Premiere on Saturday. Thanks for visiting us, WXOW !

Spring Grove has been officially recognized as Minnesota’s first Norwegian settlement. The community will celebrate the honor Saturday, Nov. 1, at Giants of ...

10/25/2025

Feeling the bite of the chill in the air? We've got warm clothes to keep you cozy from head to toe! You can find hand-knitted hats, super plush fuzzy socks, scarves, sweaters, and more to help you stave off the chilly weather in style right here in our gift shop.
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10/24/2025

Next Saturday (Nov 1) we're celebrating Spring Grove's stories with Spring Grove Recognition Day and Dear Land Film Premiere. Hope to see you there!

10/23/2025

For today's we're shining a spotlight on, well, our light! The beautiful, sparkling chandelier that hangs in our Immigrant Hall once hung by the altar of Trinity Lutheran, and many years ago, an oil lamp hung down from it. Today, it's been refitted for electricity and it's now beautifully framed by Sallie DeReus's stencil work on our ceiling.

You can find these historic photos of the chandelier's former home at Trinity (and more!) on the third floor of Giants in our exhibit on the history of local area churches.

10/21/2025

Can you find this old spinning wheel somewhere at Giants? Stop on down this week to find the spinning wheel and receive a treat.

10/19/2025

The story that inspired our name continues to find new life.

This spring, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra presented Douglas Moore’s Pulitzer Prize–winning opera Giants in the Earth, based on O. E. Rølvaag’s powerful novel about immigrant life on the prairie.

Giants of the Earth Heritage Center was honored to be acknowledged in the program among supporting organizations, and we’re pleased that this remarkable production will now reach even wider audiences through its upcoming South Dakota broadcast.

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Why We Named Ourselves Giants of the Earth
The framers of Giants of the Earth Heritage Center were inspired by Rølvaag and his beautiful description of the early pioneers’ trials and tribulations. Some of the material for his novel Giants in the Earth came from experiences within Spring Grove and our surrounding Norwegian Ridge area.

On Thursday, Oct. 23, SDPB will broadcast the recording of the “Giants in the Earth” opera at 7 pm CT / 6 pm MT on SDPB Television! Audiences can also stream the performance live or on-demand at SDPB.org.

In April 2025, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra performed Douglas Moore's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “Giants in the Earth,” which was inspired by Ole Edvart Rølvaag’s celebrated novel about Norwegian immigrants homesteading in Dakota Territory. Now, this landmark performance is being broadcast for the first time!

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the book's publication, SDHS Press released a new edition with an introduction and annotations by Allan C. Carlson last year. To learn more about this edition, and to purchase it in paperback or limited-release hardcover formats, visit https://www.sdhspress.com/books/giants-in-the-earth-a-saga-of-the-prairie.

And be sure to catch the opera performance this Thursday! More information can be found at https://www.sdpb.org/sdpb-press/2025-10-06/sdpb-presents-the-south-dakota-symphony-orchestras-performance-of-giants-in-the-earth.