This year’s annual wreath-laying at the gravesite of Norheim and his wife, Rannei Aamundsdatter Norheim, was held at the cemetery, south of Denbigh, Tuesday.

Rolf Haugen, former city manager for Minot’s Sister City, Skein, Norway, represented Skien at the event but said a larger delegation from Skien and additional representatives from Telemark County are planning to attend next year.

Norheim was raised in Morgedal in the municipality of Kviteseid in Telemark. Kviteseid commissioned Thor Gotaas, an acclaimed Norwegian cultural historian and author, to write a book about Norheim in honor of the 200th anniversary of his birth on June 10, 1825.

An accomplished and competitive skier, Norheim invented a ski binding that enabled him to develop new turning techniques. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 with his wife and five of their six children. After a brief stay in Oslo, Minnesota, he came to what is now McHenry County and filed on a homestead near Villard Post Office. He died in 1897 and went to his grave a virtual unknown.

His Norwegian hometown will hold a celebration and release a stamp featuring Norheim next year, Haugen said. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Norway are scheduled to attend.

“It’s going to be a special marking, of course, in Minot, too,” Haugen said. Skien regularly has sent representatives on behalf of Telemark to pay tribute at the gravesite wreath laying, but next year Kviteseid plans to send its own delegation to participate in honoring one of its own.

“The other ‘200’ is that in 1825, 52 people sailed out of Stavanger in Norway with a ship called the Restoration. They were Quakers and fled from persecution from the church and their religion. They sailed out of Stavanger and came to the United States,” Haugen said.

Norwegians plan to commemorate the event by commissioning a replica of the ship and sailing it from Stavanger to New York, Haugen said. The ship is scheduled to leave port on the Fourth of July next year and arrive in New York on Leif Erikson Day on Oct. 9. Erikson, a Norse explorer, is believed to have led the first Europeans to set foot on the North American mainland in about the year 1000. Statues of Norheim and Erikson stand in the Scandinavian Heritage Park in Minot.

Haugen said Skien already is planning its observance of the immigration, which is expected to include education in the schools, a film and a festival.

“There’s going to be many celebrations in New York,” Haugen said. “I know they’re preparing something in Minneapolis at the Norway House and the Consul General.”

While in Minot for Norsk Hostfest this week, Haugen said he is visiting with the Minot Area Chamber EDC and others about plans for a celebration in Minot. Minot’s Norsk Hostfest traces its roots to four Lutheran churches that organized a celebration nearly 50 years ago to observe the 150th anniversary of the immigration.

Next May, the Minot State University Concert Choir and the Minot Chamber Chorale will travel with MSU Director of Choral Activities Emerson Eads to Norway to perform and tour the Scandinavian capital cities and Skien. They will be present to help celebrate May 17 or Syttende Mai, Norway’s Constitution Day.