Ager and friend O. E. Rølvaag enjoy a smoke in the back yard of the latter's Northfield residence, 1929.  Rølvaag is known best for the novel Giants in the Earth, the fame of which gave him the edge over Ager among Norwegian immigrant writers.  According to the late Einar Haugen, Ager was the master of the short sketch..

"Ager's own fictional production is reckoned as being, on the whole, nearly as good as Rølvaag's best—and Ager was surely the most talented short story writer among Norwegian-Americans." —Kenneth Smemo, "Waldemar Ager and the Golden Age of Norwegian America"

"In subject matter, style, theme, and narrative approaches, Ager is much better matched with and compared to Anderson and Lewis than to Rølvaag, for example. Rølvaag writes heroic drama, steeped in archetype and myth. Ager writes psychological studies and social satire, full of clever dialogue and subtle irony. Ager and Rølvaag are easy to contrast, but difficult to compare. They were much closer as friends than they were as writers. Much more work needs to be done to "reconstruct" Ager as an American novelist as well as a Norwegian-American novelist."

—Tim Hirsch, WaldemarAger Association founder, Profesor Emeritus, UW-Eau Claire

Writing to his son on Rølvaag's sudden death in 1931:

"I was at the funeral Monday. There were a lot of telegrams. [ . . .]

"I had been in his upstairs study several times before, but this was the first time I noticed he had my photograph, framed and under glass, on his wall (the photograph was taken in Los Angeles). It was one of three photographs he had in the room. It was sad, terribly sad. I can hardly believe he is gone."

— Waldemar Ager