Moving Luther Values Forward
Whether a student majors in Nordic studies or not, they carry into the world the values of a college founded by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants. Here, we share two stories of what that can look like.
Building Cultural Bridges
“Norwegian culture has always been a part of my life,” says Isaac (van Bruggen) Warner ’13. “The foods, the holidays, the sweaters, the emphasis on collective well-being and care. When I went to college at Luther, a lot of those cultural touchpoints remained.” Isaac sang in Norskkor (then Norsemen), Cathedral Choir, and Collegiate Chorale, which further connected him to the Norwegian Lutheran choral tradition he’d grown up with.
In addition to its Syttende Mai celebration, the House of Norway is famous for its waffles, which volunteer Isaac (van Bruggen) Warner ‘13 gets to share with lucky visitors.
Isaac majored in political science and earned a master’s degree in public administration. He now works as a property manager in San Diego, where he and his husband, Nate, moved during the pandemic.
It didn’t take long after moving for Isaac to search out House of Norway, part of the consortium of International Cottages in San Diego’s Balboa Park. Founded as part of an international exposition in 1935, these houses were designed to promote peace among different ethnic groups in the lead-up to World War II. Today, 35 cultures are represented by 35 houses, several of which maintain cottages that people can visit.
Isaac remembers stepping into House of Norway for the first time: “It felt like my grandparents’ living room. Having moved away, I was feeling a little unmoored, and it was like a homecoming.”
As a regular volunteer who staffs House of Norway about once a month, inviting visitors in and sharing a bit about Norwegian culture, Isaac has loved staying connected with the familiar. He loves talking with people who are new to Norwegian culture and also to immigrants from Norway, old and new. “Some Norwegian American cultural traditions reflect a snapshot of what Norwegian culture was like some time ago, sometimes romanticized. And of course Norwegian culture has grown and changed, as culture does. So it’s been really interesting to have conversations with people who are recent immigrants from Norway and can speak to that,” he says.
At the heart of Isaac’s volunteer work is cultural exchange, and he sees this as a throughline that started with his grandparents, Fred and Marty (Hovde) Paulson Bergsrud ’64, and continued at Luther: “When you have a huge study-abroad program and international student body at a smaller school like Luther, then it’s clear that an intentional choice is being made—those things are not just byproducts of its size. Luther doesn’t shy away at all from its heritage and its Norwegian-ness, but I think it uses that to really highlight other cultures. And I think that’s inherently Norwegian—a focus on community and civic pride and building relationships and caring for one another despite differences you might perceive. It’s something that I’ve tried to carry on.”
The Never-Ending Learning Loop
Lianna (Stewart) Torres ’17 came to Luther because of the music program, but a Norwegian language class her sophomore year turned everything upside down. “It was thrilling,” Lianna says. “Then I took a literature class on [Norwegian author] Henrik Ibsen, and it changed my life. It felt like magic to me.”
Lianna (Stewart) Torres '17 teaches Norwegian language—including to Dorian Summer Camp students at Luther in June—on her way to earning a PhD in Scandinavian studies.
Lianna committed to Nordic studies in a major way. Before her senior year, she attended summer school in Oslo to study the language. At the end of that summer, she passed the Norwegian fluency exam.
“I’ve never been more exhausted and hungry and motivated,” she says. “It was a defining moment for me, because learning a language is really hard and immersing yourself is really challenging, yet by the time I left, I loved it even more. I thought, I can be that challenged and still care about it. That’s been a recurring theme throughout my schooling.”
After graduating from Luther as a Nordic studies major, Lianna earned a master’s degree in Ibsen studies at the University of Oslo in Norway. She’s now pursuing a PhD in Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington, where she’s focused on Norwegian literature and theatre while also sharing her love of Norwegian language as an educator of both private clients and through organizations, including Luther’s Dorian Camps and Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School in Decorah.
As a Luther student, Lianna tutored fellow students in Norwegian and also taught language and culture classes for elementary school kids at the Vesterheim. After graduating, her relationship with Vesterheim deepened. When the museum expanded its online offerings in the wake of COVID, Andrew Ellingsen ’03, who directs the Vesterheim’s education program, reached out to ask if Lianna was interested in teaching intermediate and advanced language classes.
Lianna wants her students to experience the invigorating feedback loop that she feels when diving into a new language: “I want to share with them that learning language is not just conjugating verbs—even though I love that. But language-learning is culture-learning is history-learning. Language is so fun because it’s connected to everything. It opens up an entire world, and that’s what’s so thrilling about it. As you progress, the thrill morphs into so many other things, like being vulnerable as you speak and converse. And before you know it, you have all these new books to read and new songs and podcasts to listen to. The learning is never-ending.”
In 2025, Lianna received a $5,000 grant from Vesterheim to develop a brand-new Norwegian pronunciation course based on research done at the University of Oslo. “It makes me kind of emotional,” she says, tearing up. “It’s a dream. If I can spend my life connecting institutions like the Vesterheim with institutions like the University of Oslo, and develop this connection between Norway and America that I’m so lucky to have, that’s the coolest thing ever.”
She muses for a minute. “If I never took that first Norwegian class at Luther, I don’t know where I’d be. Not this happy.”