ABOUT
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
The subject of THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS and this website is Danish migration to the United States, a particular period in Danish history where more than 350,000 Danes chose to pursue happiness on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
For that reason we have created THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, based on Ole Sønnichsen’s bestselling book, Rejsen til Amerika (The Journey to America). The idea was to create a digital project with a television series, short educational films, an interactive game, teaching materials, and a website to encompass all parts. It should inform both the broader, history- and culture-minded public, as well as instruction in primary and secondary schools.
We Danes often talk about the influences that flow from the United States to Denmark and the rest of Europe—both positive and negative in the form of money, culture, and power. But the truth is that we ourselves have helped to create the America that became an economic, military, and cultural superpower, having sent adventurers, fortune-seekers, and entrepreneurs to the land that became the world’s melting pot.
The idea behind the Pursuit of Happiness
Between 1850 and 1920 around 350,000 emigrants left Denmark to start a new life in America. Some dreamt of a new start, with freedom, fortune, and happiness. Others fled unfortunate circumstances or a criminal past, or hoped for a religious freedom they could not find in Denmark. Nevertheless, the greater, coherent story of emigration over 70 distinct years in Denmark’s history remains untold in many ways.
For that reason we have created THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, based on Ole Sønnichsen’s bestselling book, Rejsen til Amerika (The Journey to America). The idea was to create a digital project with a television series, short educational films, an interactive game, teaching materials, and a website to encompass all parts. It should inform both the broader, history- and culture-minded public, as well as instruction in primary and secondary schools.
Journey to America is thus the story of a fundamental yearning in all of us: to get the best out of the life that has been given to us, to dare to seize it and have the courage, will, and belief that it is possible to create a new and better life. At the same time, the project hopes to reinforce the tie that was created between Denmark and the United States during the peak period of emigration. Over time, some stories were buried. The Danes disappeared into America and out of Denmark’s history. Tales of their lives ended up in dusty boxes in small archives on the prairie—stacked high, packed away, anonymous, under lids. But when the boxes are opened today, the stories stream out, stuck on handwritten memories, caught on yellowed letterhead, crumbling at the edges, framed in photos of men with large mustaches and grave faces, or preserved in women’s carefully kept diaries of life lived far from the old country.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is based on Danish author Ole Sønnichsen’s bestselling book, Rejsen til Amerika (The Journey to America).
Order the book: ”Rejsen til Amerika”
Order the book: ”Rejsen til Amerika”
The partners behind
the project
The PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is produced and published with the support of the Ministry of Education's distribution funds.