Pictured is a poster for Nikolina. (Image is courtesy of the Swedish American Institute, Minneapolis Minn., via the Marquette Regional History Center)

Entertainer and entrepreneur Carl Hjalmar Peterson only lived in Marquette for about 10 years, but those were 10 remarkable years out of an amazing and varied life.

Born in Sweden in 1886, he immigrated to Minneapolis at age 21 where he began as a bricklayer but quickly developed a reputation and a career as an entertainer.

On a return visit to Sweden in 1909 with the Chicago-based Swedish-American Quartet he adopted the stage name “Olle i Skratthult” which translates to “Olle in Laughtersville.” On the same trip he collected folk plays, songs, and stories that would later be incorporated into his acts.

Starting as a solo act in Minneapolis, but quickly adding actors and musicians, the Olle i Skratthult Company toured first in Minnesota and then, from 1920 to 1931, nationally. It was a variety show of slapstick humor, short plays, songs, and folk dances, all performed exclusively in Swedish, and followed by a dance that continued till midnight. Tours in cities such as Chicago could pull in 1,000 people for a single performance.

In 1917, he married one of his singers, Olga Lindgren, and together they recorded a record, Nikolina, for Victor Records. Although the record sold more than 100,000 copies, Olle had agreed to record it for $75 a side, and thus never received any royalties from the first printing.

That was just the first of the 46 songs he recorded (he also published several small songbooks), and it’s fair to assume he negotiated better terms for the subsequent recordings. You can still find recordings of the song on-line, which has been described as “by far the best known Scandinavian-American tune” including one of Olle singing it himself, at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PwMVXbMF3MU

In an article, he wrote for the May 1998 issue of the Marquette Monthly, Robert Buchkoe relates one of the many amusing anecdotes about the touring company. “On one occasion, Olle decided not to advertise in the local paper….Instead he wrote personal invitations to all the Swedes listed in the phone book. He claimed he ran out of invitations halfway through the ‘Andersons.’ The night of the performance, as Olle greeted his patrons at the door, each one would say ‘Hello, I’m Mr. Anderson.'”

Although the company headquarters remained in Minneapolis, the group stayed five years in Los Angeles, and spent every summer at Olle and Olga’s cabin on in Hovland, Minnesota, on the north shore of Lake Superior, where they rehearsed for the next touring season.

The touring company first came to the U.P. in January 1920, playing both at Liberty Hall in Marquette and at the Swedish Home Hall in Ishpeming. The tour was so popular that they returned just a few months later, in May, and then regularly as long as the band continued.

Inevitably, however, the demand for Swedish language entertainment declined as the younger generation assimilated and was no longer speaking Swedish as a first language, if at all. The Depression also hit the company hard. The last performance of the touring company was in 1931.

By 1933, Olle had lost his wife to divorce and his Lake Superior cabin to the Depression. But though the demand for ethnic humor had waned, the demand for dance bands was growing, and of course dances had always been a big part of the Olle I Skratthult shows. He formed a new band, “Olle I Skratthult and his Scandinavia Dance Orchestra.” The band, which limited its touring to the Upper Midwest, performed first in Marquette in October 1935 and a month later at the Blue Moon in Eben. By the end of the decade, Olle and his new wife, Mora Engebretson, had settled in Marquette.

In 1941 Olle took over both a tavern on Grove Street and an unused dairy barn across the street. Renamed as Olle’s Place and Olle’s Barn, the barn in particular became immensely popular. No liquor was served at the barn (and in fact Olle was a teetotaler) so that people of all ages could attend. A shuttle bus brought patrons from the downtown post office out to the barn and WDMJ did a live broadcast from the barn every Saturday night.

Olle and Mora had two children born in Marquette, but at the end of 1944, they returned to Minneapolis for an extended engagement and after that were not often in Marquette. The bands’ final show in Marquette was held at the Palestra on July 3, 1946. Although most of the band moved back to the Minneapolis area, at least one member, violinist Eddie Anderson, stayed in the area and continued to play for local dances, billing himself at as former member of Olle’s orchestra.

After Mora’s death in 1949, Olle had a religious conversion and became an active member of the Salvation Army, which sent him on tours, mostly to the East Coast. Many fans who remembered him from his vaudeville days came to see him. But by the time he died of a stroke in 1960 he was poor and mostly forgotten.

Although when he was first performing, Olle’s brand of crude slapstick was looked down on by the more middle-class Swedes who were striving to be seen as respectable Americans, in the years since his death he has been embraced as a successful and beloved entertainer.

A number of musicians have re-recorded his songs and more than thirty years after Olle’s death, a theater group in St. Paul, Minnesota, put on a play about “Olle in Laughtersville.” The American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis now houses “The Olle i Skratthult Project” and there is an exhibit remembering him in his Swedish home town of Munkfors.