Oslo, Minnesota, Norway on the Prairie

Oslo, Minnesota sits in the flat Red River Valley of Marshall County, a few miles from the North Dakota border, and it wears its heritage plainly in its name. The post office opened in nineteen oh five and the community named itself after Oslo, the capital of Norway, honoring the Scandinavian immigrants who had been pouring into this corner of Minnesota since the eighteen seventies.

The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad had reached the Red River Valley in the early eighteen seventies, and Norwegian families followed the tracks north and west, settling the rich black-soil prairies of Clay, Marshall, Norman, and Polk counties. Oslo became one of dozens of Norwegian-named towns scattered across the region. Today the city has fewer than three hundred residents and remains a quiet farming community, but the name alone tells the story of where this corner of Minnesota came from.