The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

The First Foreign Periodical

The work among the Danish-Norwegians had assumed such proportions that a demand was made for a monthly paper in which persons of that nationality could receive instruction and encouragement in their own language. Therefore, on Jan. 1, 1872, there was issued at the Review and Herald office, a Danish monthly, a twenty-four page journal in magazine form, bearing the name, Advent Tidende (Advent Tidings). The following year the size of this journal was increased to thirty-two pages. It was the first periodical issued by Seventh-day Adventists in a foreign language. GSAM 414.3

In 1874 the interest was such among the Swedish-speaking believers that a sixteen-page monthly was started in that language, called Svensk Herold. GSAM 414.4

At the time Elder Matteson entered upon the mission to the Scandinavian people (June, 1877) in the old country, 266 copies of the Tidende were being sent from America monthly to Denmark, and 60 to Norway. Through reading these journals a number of persons were already keeping the Sabbath in Scandinavia. As a result of his labors for one year in Denmark, companies of believers were raised up in several different places. GSAM 414.5