I hear about problems remote northern regions face where young people are trying to quickly get out of dodge and move to warmer climates. How did areas like northern Canada, Norway, or Russia ever get populated? I know there was money to be made with trading and mineral resources but life must have been very challenging, more acutely before modern high-tech winter gear. Especially for areas in North America, why would a colonist skip over Virginia or sunny California and move far north?
Well first of all, because most colonists would probably have had the same idea to settle in the parts of the US where the climate was nice. At some point, however, those areas start getting crowded, and the price of farmland starts to increase, so colonists would have sought cheaper and more abundant farmland in areas with slightly less hospitable climates. Ditto with most peoples who chose to settle in polar or desert regions - population pressures in temperate areas led them to seek new land where there was less competition.
Also, in the case of the US, most of the people who settled in the Midwest were Germans, or in the case of the really cold parts of the Midwest like Minnesota/the Dakotas, Scandinavians, who found a climate relatively similar to the one they left behind and which they were accustomed to.