Swedish Americans

Swedish Americans are Americans with Swedish heritage, primarily derived from the 1.2 million immigrants who left Sweden in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. About 3 million Americans (1%) claim some Swedish ancestry. Most Swedish Americans are Lutherans affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or Methodists. They are concentrated in the Midwest and Mountain states.

History

The few inhabitants of the Swedish colony of New Sweden (in existence 1638-1655) intermarried with other colonists. The seven Lutheran churches became Episcopalian and the group largely abandoned any Swedish heritage by 1800.

Swedes started immigrating in numbers after 1840, coming through New York City; most settled in the Midwest. The largest numbers 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 provide 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). Barton (1994) and Barton (2001) contrasts the generally positive views held by Swedes in American during the 1845-1900 era and the generally negative views held by native who remained in Sweden. Barton suggests three reasons for this difference: homeland perceptions of emigration as the leaving behind of everything and emigrant views of emigration as the most rational response to the terrible living conditions in the homeland; advertisements and propaganda for and against emigration distributed by both American companies and Swedish critics of emigration; and pathetic and tragic emigration tales written and published in Sweden that contrast sharply with the poems, short stories, and history written in America that convey a sense of pride, confidence, and satisfaction with life in the new country.

One religious settlement was the Bishop Hill Colony in Henry County, Illinois, created by pietist Erik Jansson. He was a layman who began preaching in Sweden in the 1830s against the formalism of the established Swedish Lutheran Church. His increasing radicalism led to persecution by state and church officials, convincing Jansson of the need to remove his group to the United States and establish his own colony in 1846. On 13 May 1850 Jansson was killed by John Root, a non-Janssonist resident of Bishop Hill.

Several all-Swedish-American units fought in the Civil War; historians have made detailed studies of Company C of the 43d Illinois Volunteer Infantry, Company D of the 57th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and Company H of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery.

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. The Swedes were more open to collaboration with outside religious groups, such as the Episcopal Church, while the Norwegians looked inward.

Most Swedes were Lutheran and belonged to synods now associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, especially the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church. Their ministers trained at Augustana College and Theological Seminary in Rock Island, Illinois. Theologically, they were pietistic; politically, they supported progressive causes, and prohibition. Two small spin-off group were the Swedish Evangelical Free Church of America, and the Swedish Covenant Church, both based in Chicago. The Swedish Baptists wet up small colonies in the Midwest.

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 provide ethnic identity and social services such as health insurance and death subsidies, operates numerous social and recreational opportunities, and maintains contact with fellow lodges in Sweden. Johannes and Helga Hoving were its leaders, calling for the maintenance of the Swedish language and culture among Swedish Americans, especially the younger generation. However they returned to Sweden in 1934 and Vasa itself became Americanized.

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 Midwest in Minnesota in particular as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and the Dakotas. Rockford, Illinois, was a major center. 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.

Assimilation

Assimilation into American life has been almost complete, with few experiences of hostility or discrimination.

Cultural leadership was exerted by numerous magazine and newspaper editors. The magazine Valkyrian (based in New York City) helped fashion a distinct Swedish American culture between 1897 and 1909. The Valkyrian helped strengthen ethnicity by drawing on collective memory and religion, mythicizing of Swedish and Swedish American history, describing American history, politics, and current events in a matter-of-fact way, publishing Swedish American literature, and presenting articles on science, technology, and industry in the United States. The community produced numerous writers and journalists, of whom the most famous was poet-historian Carl Sandburg from Illinois.

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. Religiosity declined sharply in Sweden in the 20th century but remained vital to the Swedish Americans. The authoritarian features of the established church in Sweden, controlled by the upper class, combined with the rigidities of social hierarchy, alienated most people. By contrast emigrants regarded their language and the Lutheran pietistic tradition as fundamental elements in their heritage and this combined with the freedom to pursue their religious beliefs without governmental interference strengthened Swedish Lutheranism.

Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church was a 20th-century church of Swedish immigrants from Finland in New York City that served as a center for a variety of activities, including many not directly of a religious nature. The church was founded in 1919 and remained active until 1977. In 1935 it changed its Swedish name to English. There were different activity groups in the church, such as a sewing circle, a youth group, the Luther League, and the Girls Aid. The church also had an adult choir, a children's choir, a string band, and a concert band. During the 1920s, luncheons, bazaars, and banquets were regular parts of the church's activities. There were also festivities with a more culturally bound background, in particular, festivities originating from the native country. Immigrant churches, with a broad range of contacts, became important cultural centers that reinforced the immigrants' cultural heritage. Many of the church's fund-raising social events were essential to maintaining a balanced budget. Another important factor was that most of the members of the church lived in so-called bolagshus (three apartment buildings purchased together by the community) very close by. Consequently, the church became a natural gathering place for members on Sundays and most weekdays. These factors united church members in the spiritual and cultural heritage they tried to protect and preserve in a new environment.

Baigent (2000) explores the dynamics of economic and cultural assimilation and the "American Dream" in one small city. Most Swedes in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, between 1880 and 1920 were permanent settlers rather than temporary migrants. Many ended up comfortably off and a few became prosperous. They judged their success against Swedes in Sweden, not McKeesporters of other nationalities. They had no illusions about American life but they chose to stay and confront diffuicult living and working conditions rather than move on or return top Sweden where good jobs wwere scare and paid much less. Many of their children were upwardly socially mobile, and America offered girls in particular greater opportunities than Sweden did. The immigrants greatly valued the religious freedom that America offered, but their political freedoms were heavily circumscribed by McKeesport's "booze interest" and iron and steel bosses. Swedes dominated the prohibition movement in the town, but this did not open the door to a wider political stage. The dreams of many individual Swedes came true, but the dream of creating a permanent Swedish community in McKeesport was not realized, since individual Swedes moved on within the United States in pursuit of continued economic success.

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

In 1990 2.9 million Americans claimed Swedish ancestry. At present, around 160,000 residents speak a Scandinavian language at home, most of them being recent arrivals from Sweden in the suburbs of New York and Los Angeles.

Minnesota is 9.9% Swedish; other states with 3-5% are North Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, South Dakota, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Iowa.

Church membership in 1936 was reported as:

• Augustana Synod 1,203 churches, 254,677 members
• Baptist 300 churches 36,820 members
• Evangelical Free 150 churches 9,000 members
• Swedish Methodist 175 churches 19,441 members
• Mission Covenant 441 churches 45,000 members

The affiliated membership of a church is usually much larged than the formal membership.

Bibliography

Scholarly secondary sources

• Andersen, Arlow W. The Salt of the Earth: A History of Norwegian-Danish Methodism in America (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1962).
• Anderson, Philip J. and Dag Blanck, eds. Swedish-American Life in Chicago: Cultural and Urban Aspects of an Immigrant People, 1850-1930 (1992)
• Anderson, Philip J. and Blanck, Dag, ed. Swedes in the Twin Cities: Immigrant Life and Minnesota's Urban Frontier. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001. 367 pp.
• Baigent, Elizabeth. "Swedish Immigrants in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania: Did the Great American Dream Come True?" Journal of Historical Geography 2000 26(2): 239-272. Issn: 0305-7488 Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta
• Barton; H. Arnold, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish-Americans, 1840-1940. Southern Illinois University Press. (1994) online edition
• Barton, H. Arnold. "Emigrants Versus Immigrants: Contrasting Views." Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 2001 52(1): 3-13.
• Benson, Adolph B. and Naboth Hedin, eds. Swedes in America, 1638-1938. (1938) [online edition
• Beijbom, Ulf. "The Historiography of Swedish America," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 31 (1980): 257-85;
• Beijbom, Ulf, ed. Swedes in America: Intercultural and Interethnic Perspectives on Contemporary Research.

Växjö, Sweden: Emigrant-Inst. Väers Förlag, 1993. 224 pp.

• Blanck, Dag. Becoming Swedish-American: The Construction of an Ethnic Identity in the Augustana Synod, 1860-1917. Uppsala, 1997. 240 pp.
• Björk, Ulf Jonas. "The Swedish-American Press as an Immigrant Institution." Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 2000 51(4): 268-282.
• Blanck, Dag. The Creation of an Ethnic Identity: Being Swedish American in the Augustana Synod, 1860-1917, (Southern Illinois University Press; 256 pages; 2007).
• Hale, Frederick. Swedes in Wisconsin. Wisconsin State Historical Society (1983). 72 pp.
• 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),
• Ljungmark, Lars. Swedish Exodus. (1979). 165 pp.
• 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
• Whyman, Henry C. The Hedstroms and the Bethel Ship Saga: Methodist Influence on Swedish Religious Life. Southern Illinois U. Press, 1992. 183 pp. online edition

Primary sources

• Barton, H. Arnold ed. Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840-1914 (3d ed., 1990)
• Skoog, Donald P., ed. Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians: Oral Histories from Nebraska. Omaha, Nebraska: The Swedish Cultural Committee, 2000. 206 pp.

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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