About forty miles directly west of Rock Prairie lies Wiota, about which town stretches in all directions a Norwegian settlement of considerable size. It is separated from Luther Valley by Green County and lies only twenty-five miles distant, northwest, from the old settlement of Rock Run, in Illinois. Here extensive lead mines were being operated in the forties, and they were the means of drawing to that locality a large number of immigrants of different nationalities, many of whom, to be sure, only remained there temporarily, going elsewhere to buy a home as soon as they had accumulated sufficient funds. The mines were at that time called "Hamilton Diggings." As early as 1840 we find two Norwegians working in these mines, namely, the brothers Andreas and John O. Week, both from Eidfjord, in Hardanger. The Week brothers seem to have been two of a party of about forty from Hardanger, who emigrated in 1839.[173] I do not believe, however, that either Andrew or John Week entered a land claim in the vicinity, and they remained there only a few years. In 1844 John Week moved to Dodgeville in Iowa County, where he established a shoe store in company with John Lee, from Numedal, Norway. Andrew Week went to Marathon County some years later; here he built a saw mill, which, however, was bought out by his brother John in 1849, when Andrew joined the California gold-seekers. [173] They came in the same ship as Knut Roe. In the spring of 1842 Lars Davidson Reque, an immigrant from Voss in the year 1839, came to Wiota. We have already met him as a purchaser of land in Deerfield Township, in Dane County, in December, 1840. Not having the means to begin the improvement of his land, he says, he decided to go to Hamilton Diggings, and he did not take possession of his land until the summer of 1842.[174] Rekve remained at the Diggings only about one year. In 1841 the first permanent settlers arrived; these were Per Unde, from Vik Parish, Sogn, Per Davidson Skjerveim, Sjur Ulven, and Arne Anderson Vinje, from Voss. The first of those was, it seems, the earliest emigrant from Sogn to America. He was a man of considerable means, but a copy of Rynning's _Sandfaerdig Beretning om Amerika_ fell into his hands and he decided to emigrate. He remained in Chicago the first year and a half or over. Ulven and Skjerveim had come from Norway in 1840. Arne Vinje (born 1820) came to Chicago in September, 1840, after having been five months on the journey. He had left Norway April sixteenth with his wife,[175] and a party of twenty other persons from Voss. The following spring Vinje and Skjerveim, having decided to go to the mines in Wisconsin, secured each their yoke of oxen, and drove overland, arriving at Wiota on the seventh of July, after five days of difficult travel; Unde and Ulven came at the same time. Unde immediately entered a claim on a piece of land in the vicinity and built a house, as did Skjerveim and Vinje a short time