Swedish Americans

Swedish Americans are Americans with Swedish heritage, primarily derived from immigrants from Sweden in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Some 8 million Americans claim Swedish roots, of whom 4.5 million have been confirmed as Swedish Americans. Most Swedish Americans are Lutherans affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or Methodists.

Around 3.7% of the U.S. population reports some Scandinavian heritage (which also includes Norwegian Americans, Danish Americans, and Icelandic Americans). At present, around 160,000 residents speak a Scandinavian language at home, most of them being recent arrivals from Sweden.

History

The few inhabitants of the Swedish colony of New Sweden (in existence 1638-1655) intermarried with other colonists and seem to have disappeared as a distinctive grouping before 1776. The Swedish immigrants that arrived in recent decades settled mostly in the suburbs of New York and Los Angeles.

Swedish Americans usually arrived via New York City and settled in the Midwest. Most Swedes arrived during the 1850s-1880s, settled in core areas after migrating in steps, and stayed in geographic clusters based on their home provinces and parishes in Sweden (a phenomenon called "chain migration"). Their letters back to Sweden proivide a major resource of information on their social history. Of interest revealing the immigrant experience are the novels of Lillian Budd (1897-1989), especially April Snow (1951), Land of Strangers (1953), and April Harvest (1959).

The Swedes and Norwegians, although they had little contact in Europe, migrated to the same areas in the U.S. and had quite similar, but separate, experiences in terms of lifestyles, religion, politics and community building.

Most Swedes were Lutheran and belonged to synods now associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, especially the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church. Theologically, they were pietistic; politically, they supported progressive causes, and prohibition. Two small spinoff group were the Swedish Evangelical Free Church of America, and the Swedish Covenant Church, both based in Chicago.

A significant fraction were Mormon converts who settled in Utah.

In 1896 the Vasa Order of America, a Swedish-American fraternal organization, was founded to help immigrants, who often lacked an adequate network of social services.

In the year 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Swedes were attracted to the rich farmalands of the upper Misdwest in Minnesota in particular as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and the Dakotas. In the east, New England became a destination for many skilled industrial workers and Swedish centers developed in areas such as Jamestown, NY; Providence, RI, and Boston, MA. The largest settlement in New England was Worcester, MA. Here, Swedes were drawn to the city's wire and abrasive industries. By 1900 numerous churches, organizations, businesses, and benevolent associations had been organized. Many Swedes also came to the Pacific Northwest during the turn of the twentieth century.

A representative 20th century leader was Conrad J. I. Bergendoff (1895-1997) He served as president of Augustana College and Seminary and was a longtime theological leader of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (now part of ELCA). Central to his mission was the Lutheran church's bridging of the cultures of immigrant Swedes, with American culture. Bergendoff also embraced ecumenical relations and was equally critical of social liberalism and fundamentalism. Allegiance to a living Christ was fundamental to his theology.

Assimilation

Assimilation into American life has been almost complete, with few experiences of hostility or discrimination. Swedish American communities typically switched to English by 1920. Swedish is rarely taught in high schools or colleges, and Swedish language newspapers or magazines nearly all closed. A few small towns in the U.S. have retained a few visible Swedish characteristics. Some examples include Silverhill, Alabama; Lindstrom, Minnesota; Karlstad, Minnesota; ; Gothenburg, Nebraska; Andover, Illinois; Kingsburg, California; and Bishop Hill, Illinois. Lindsborg, Kansas is representative. It was founded by Lutheran pietists in 1869 on land purchased from the Kansas Pacific Railroad; the First Swedish Agricultural Company of Chicago spearheaded the colonization. Known today as Little Sweden, Lindsborg is the economic and spiritual center of the Smoky Valley. The rise of agribusiness, the decline of the family farm, the arrival of nearby discount stores, and the "economic bypass" of the new interstate system wrought economic havoc on this community. By the 1970s Lindsborg residents pulled together a unique combination of musical, artistic, intellectual, and ethnic strengths to reinvent their town. The Sandzén Gallery, Runbeck Mill, Swedish Pavilion, historical museum at Bethany College, and Messiah Festival were among the activities and attractions used to enhance the Swedish image. The Lindsborg plan is representative of growing national interest in ethnic heritage, historic preservation, and small-town nostalgia in the late 20th century.

Demography

The ten states with the most Swedes in their populations (by percentage):

1	Minnesota	9.9%
2	North Dakota	5.0%
3	Nebraska	4.9%
4	Utah	4.3%
5	South Dakota	3.9%
6	Washington	3.6%
7	Idaho	3.5%
8	Wyoming	3.5%
9	Montana	3.4%
10	Iowa	3.3%

Bibliography

Scholarly secondary sources

• Anderson, Philip J. and Dag Blanck, eds. Swedish-American Life in Chicago: Cultural and Urban Aspects of an Immigrant People, 1850-1930 (1992)
• Barton; H. Arnold, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish-Americans, 1840-1940. Southern Illinois University Press. (1994)
• Benson, Adolph B. and Naboth Hedin, eds. Swedes in America, 1638-1938. (1938) [online edition
• Beijbom, Ulf. "The Historiography of Swedish America," Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly 31 (1980): 257-85;
• Blanck, Dag. The Creation of an Ethnic Identity: Being Swedish American in the Augustana Synod, 1860-1917, (Southern Illinois University Press; 256 pages; 2007).
• Kvisto, P., and D. Blanck, eds. 1990. American Immigrants and Their Generations: Studies and Commentaries on the Hansen Thesis after Fifty Years. University of Illinois Press.
• Lovoll, Odd S. ed., Nordics in America: The Future of Their Past (Northfield, Minn., 1993),
• Nelson, Helge. The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in North America 2 vols. (Lund, 1943)
• Nelson, Robert J. If We Could Only Come to America . . . A Story of Swedish Immigrants in the Midwest. Sunflower U. Press, 2004. 166 pp.
• Ostergren, R. C. 1988. A Community Transplanted: The Trans-Atlantic Experience of a Swedish Immigrant Settlement in the Upper Middle West, 1835-1915. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Pearson, D. M. 1977. The Americanization of Carl Aaron Swensson. Rock Island, Ill.: Augustana Historical Society.
• Pihlblad, C. T. 1932. "The Kansas Swedes". Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 13: 34-47.
• Runblom, Harald and Hans Norman. From Sweden to America: A History of the Migration (Uppsala and Minneapolis, 1976)
• Schnell; Steven M. "Creating Narratives of Place and Identity in 'Little Sweden, U.S.A.'" The Geographical Review, Vol. 93, 2003
• Stephenson, George M. The Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration (1932).
• Swanson; Alan. Literature and the Immigrant Community: The Case of Arthur Landfors Southern Illinois University Press, 1990

Primary sources

• Barton, H. Arnold ed. Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840-1914 (3d ed., 1990)

External links

• Where Did The Swedes Go? The Causes of Swedish Immigration and Settlement Patterns in America
• Vasa Order of America website at http://www.vasaorder.org

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