The Norwegian migration to America and psychological selection

Norwegian psychiatrist Ørnulf Ødegaard has studied personality types.  He has shown that relatively more Norwegian-born persons in Minnesota suffered from mental illness, especially schizophrenia,in the 1920s than did members of Norway’s population.  He maintained that the greater frequency of illness might be due in some degree to the greater strains the emigrants were exposed to in a foreign society, but he also held that people who were disposed to this illness were more restless and found it easier than other personality types to break out of their environment.

That is from Ingrid Semmingsen, Norway to America: A History of the Migration, and I believe the original reference is to ” Immigration and Insanity: A Study of Mental Disease Among the Norwegian-born Population of Minnesota,” Ø Ødegaard – Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica, Suppl, 1932.”  Here is a related post on gene-culture interaction.

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