The oral histories are the largest and most important part of the material that we have collected. In the principal project we interviewed a total of 210 people. And in addition to that, under the auspices of two other projects related to Polish immigrants, 33 Poles living in Norway and 23 research informants living in Poland were interviewed. Individuals in this latter group all have connections to Norway, either they have lived here and moved back to Poland or they have a spouse or other family in Norway. Polish people are without doubt present in this immigration research. Because of the communication issue, among others, we sought and received additional financing for the two separate projects referred to above. One is titled, “Polish Immigration to Norway over the Last 200 Years” in cooperation with the Polish State Archive in Krakow and “Political Refugees from Poland in the Period 1981-1989” in cooperation with the Kos Foundation and State Archive in Milanowek, Poland.

We have interviewed people from nearly 50 countries now living over the whole of Oppland County. Most interviews were conducted in the municipality where the immigrants live; all of the county’s 26 municipalities are represented.
Among the four groups of people interviewed, the largest group was the one with refugees (70-75). The number of people in the three other groups was almost even. As mentioned earlier, however, multiple reasons can exist for immigration and make it difficult to set a clear line between categories. Among informants most have come from the Netherlands, Poland, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Somalia, Afghanistan, Congo, Iran, Iraq, Chile and Viet Nam.
Approximately as many women as men were interviewed, with a slight overweighting of females.
Most interviews were conducted with use of a tape recorder. They varied in length from half an hour to an hour and a half; most, however, were 50-60 minutes long. Naturally the quality varied. All people were not equally verbal or fluent in Norwegian, there could be interruptions during the interview, and not everyone had the same amount of time available. With the exception of Poles being interviewed in Polish, most interviews were in Norwegian, supplemented with English and French.
We have in addition photographed the people interviewed; some few wished not to be portrayed. And with some of the interviews we have made video recordings.
Many of the informants have also delivered valuable materials to the Archives, particularly photographs.

Goals Accomplished:

It is important to emphasize that the material here does not completely represent the immigrant residents in Oppland. The choice of people to be interviewed within the different groups was in part by chance. Among other issues, however, we chose to give little attention to documenting immigrants from Denmark and Sweden although they comprise large groups in Oppland and nationwide. With that exception, our goal was to well represent the largest immigrant groups in Oppland. In addition, we sought to capture the distinctive character of immigration in Oppland (for example that many people from Chile at one time settled in Valdres, and that many municipalities have had their own projects to recruit people from the Netherlands). A third goal was to document immigrants dispersed throughout Oppland with informants from all the municipalities. These goals we have accomplished.
In choosing informants we also paid attention to the composition of immigrant populations in the various municipalities and have tried to reflect that here. Moreover we’ve also paid attention to experiences of people of different ages and to gender so that both sexes are fairly represented.