Swedish Americans

Swedish American
*Svenskamerikan*
	; ; ; File:Greta Garbo in Meyers Blitz-Lexikon 1932.jpg Notable Swedish Americans:; Jake Gyllenhaal • Carl Sandburg; Uma Thurman • William Rehnquist; Charles Lindbergh • Kim Basinger; Buzz Aldrin • Greta Garbo ;
Regions with significant populations
	Midwestern United States, especially Minnesota
Languages
	American English, Swedish
Religion
	Predominantly Lutheran, Church of Sweden, other Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon minorities
Related ethnic groups
	Swedes, Swedish Canadians, Scandinavian Americans, Finnish Americans, Danish Americans, Norwegian Americans

Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish descent, especially the descendants of the 1.2 million immigrants from Sweden in the period from 1850-1930. Most were Lutherans who affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), or Methodists.^[2]

Migration

Colonial

The first Swedish Americans were the settlers of New Sweden. A colony established by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1638, it centered around the Delaware Valley including parts of the present-day states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. New Sweden was incorporated into New Netherlands in 1655 and ceased to be an official territory of the Realm of Sweden. However, many Swedish and Finnish colonists remained and were allowed some political and cultural autonomy.

Present day reminders of the history of New Sweden are reflected in the presence of the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia, Fort Christina State Park in Wilmington, Delaware, Governor Printz Park and The Printzhof in Essington, Pennsylvania.^[3]

Midwest

Swedish emigration to the United States had reached new heights in 1896, and it was in this year that the Vasa Order of America, a Swedish American fraternal organization, was founded to help immigrants, who often lacked an adequate network of social services. Swedish Americans usually came through New York City and subsequently settled in the upper Midwest. Most were Lutheran and belonged to synods now associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, including the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church. Theologically, they were pietistic; politically they often supported progressive causes and prohibition.

In the year 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. By then, Swedes in Chicago had founded the Evangelical Covenant Church and established such enduring institutions as Swedish Covenant Hospital and North Park University. Many others settled in Minnesota in particular, followed by Wisconsin; as well as New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. Like their Norwegian American and Danish American brethren, many Swedes sought out the rural lifestyle they had left behind in Sweden, as many immigrants settled on farms or in small towns throughout the Midwest.

New England

Passport of Hilmer Emmanuel Salomonsson, 1921 From Guldsmedshyttan, Sweden to Worcester, MA

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. A small Swedish settlement was also begun in New Sweden, Maine.

The largest settlement in New England was Worcester, MA. Here, Swedes were drawn to the city's wire and abrasive industries. By the early 20th Century numerous churches, organizations, businesses, and benevolent associations had been organized. Among them, the Swedish Cemetery Corporation (1885), the Swedish Lutheran Old People's Home(1920), Fairlawn Hospital (1921), and the Scandinavian Athletic Club (1923). These institutions survive today, although some have mainstreamed their names. Numerous local lodges of national Swedish American organizations also flourished and a few remain solvent as of 2008. Within the city's largest historic "Swedish" neighborhood-Quinsigamond Village—street signs read like a map of Sweden: Stockholm Street, Halmstad Street, and Malmo Street among others. Worcester's Swedes were historically staunch Republicans and this political loyalty is behind why Worcester remained a Republican stronghold in an otherwise Democratic state well into the 1950s.

West Coast

Many Swedes also came to the Pacific Northwest during the turn of the twentieth century, along with Norwegians. The Swedish immigrants that arrived in recent decades settled mostly in the suburbs of New York and Los Angeles. ^{[citation needed]}

Assimilation

In the 1860-1890 era. there was little assimilation into American society, and little outmarriage with other groups. The Swedish Americans attached relatively little significance and the American dimension of their ethnicity; instead they relied on an extant Swedish literature. There was a relatively weak Swedish American institutional structure before 1890, and Swedish Americans were somewhat insecure in their social-economic status in America.

An increasingly large Swedish American community fostered the growth of an institutional structure—a Swedish-language press, churches and colleges, and ethnic organizations—that placed a premium on sponsoring a sense of Swedishness in the United States. Blanck (2006) argues that after 1890 there emerged a self confident Americanized generation. At prestigious Augustana College, for example, American-born students began to predominate after 1890. The students mostly had white-collar or professional backgrounds; few were the sons and daughters of farmers and laborers. These students developed an idealized view of Sweden, characterized by romanticism, patriotism, and idealism, just like their counterparts across the Atlantic. The new generation was especially proud of the Swedish contributions to American democracy and the creation of a republic that promised liberty and destroyed the menace of slavery. A key spokesman was Johan Alfred Enander, longtime editor of Hemlandet, the Swedish newspaper in Chicago. Enander argued that the Vikings were instrumental in enabling the "freedom" that spread not only throughout the British Isles, but America as well. Swedes, moreover, were among the first founders of America with their New Sweden colony in Delaware and they were more honest than the cynical and avaricious Dutch and English. Swedish America was present in Congress under the Articles of Confederation period, and its role was momentous in fighting the war against slavery. As a paragon of freedom and the struggle against unfreedom, and as an exemplar of the courage of the Vikings in contrast to the papist Columbus, Swedish America could use its myth to stress its position as loyal adherents to the larger Protestant American myth.^[4]

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.^[5]

As a highly literate population, their output of print media was even more remarkable, and cultural leadership was exerted by numerous magazine and newspaper editors more so than by churchmen. The Swedish American press was the second largest foreign-language press in the United States (after German language imprints) in 1910. By 1910 about 1200 Swedish periodicals had been started in several states.^[6] Valkyrian, a magazine 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.^[7] The community produced numerous writers and journalists, of whom the most famous was poet-historian Carl Sandburg from Illinois.^[8] The harsh experiences of the frontier were subjects for novelists and story tellers, 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). Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg, whose novel The Emigrants (1949) was made into a movie, wrote a series of four other books were translated in the 1950s and 1960s.^[9]

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 difficult living and working conditions rather than move on or return top Sweden where good jobs were scarce 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.^[10] Swedish Americans formed their own social identity within the U.S. during the period through their memberships of social clubs and their deliberate membership or non-membership in different ethnically-based institutions.^[11]

Swedish Americans opposed entry into World War I, in which Sweden was neutral. Political pressures during the war encouraged a rapid switch from Swedish to English in church services—the older generation was bilingual by now and the youth could hardly understand the old language. Swedish language newspapers lost circulation. Most communities typically switched to English by 1920.

By the 1930s, assimilation into American life styles was almost complete, with few experiences of hostility or discrimination.^[12]

After 1940 Swedish was 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.^[13] 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.^[14]

Churches

Formal church membership in 1936 was reported as:^[15]

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 much larger than the formal membership.

Demographics

Distribution of Swedish Americans according to the 2000 census

A few small towns in the U.S. have retained a few visible Swedish characteristics. Some examples include Silverhill, Alabama; Cambridge, Minnesota; Lindstrom, Minnesota; Karlstad, Minnesota; Lindsborg, Kansas; Gothenburg, Nebraska; Oakland, Nebraska; Andover, Illinois; Kingsburg, California; Bishop Hill, Illinois; and Carroll, New York.

Around 3.9% of the U.S. population is said to have Scandinavian ancestry (which also includes Norwegian Americans, Danish Americans, Finnish Americans, and Icelandic Americans). At present, according to the 2005 American Community Survey, only 56,324 Americans continue to speak the Swedish language at home, which is down from 67,655 in 2000.[1] Most of them being recent immigrants. Swedish American communities typically switched to English by 1920. Swedish is rarely taught in high schools or colleges, and Swedish language newspapers or magazines are rare.