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SUNBURG, Minn. (AP) - The temperature hung below zero on the first day of the Norwegian II class at Kultur Hus, just the kind of weather that would have made the students' Scandinavian ancestors feel at home when they settled here a century and a half ago.
The half-dozen students, mostly retired teachers and farmers, gathered in a chilly, spartan one-room building sandwiched between the old Farmers State Bank and Skindelien Hardware in this tiny town just off the Glacial Ridge Trail Scenic Byway. They were there to study a language that many had been discouraged from learning.
"My mother didn't want us to speak Norwegian, because we were in America and we were Americans," said Jane Norman, who along with her sister Ann Black opened Kultur Hus about a year ago to revive interest in the Norwegian language, arts and customs among the many descendants still living around here. The name means simply Culture House in Norwegian.
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