Scandinavian Imigration To America

Lutheran Roots in America

Sweden    The history of Swedish emigration to America goes further back in time than that of the United States. Swedes started to come in 1638, just eighteen years after the landing of the "MAYFLOWER."    Unlike the Pilgrim Fathers, the Swedes were not religious dissenters but rather an organized group of colonizers. They had been sent out by the government in Stockholm in order to establish a colony under the Swedish crown in Delaware. The era of NEW SWEDEN ended in 1655, when the colony was lost to the Dutch. But the original settlers remained and kept up their language and culture for a long time. Many of the descendants of the Delaware Swedes became distinguished fighters for freedom in the war against England in 1776. One of them was JOHN MORTON, who gave the decisive vote for independence at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. JOHN HANSON was the name of another Delaware Swede. In 1781 he was elected president of "the United States in Congress assembled" and thus preceded George Washington as the highest office holder of the new nation. Most likely these and other civil leaders and soldiers of Swedish descent, e.g. Count Axel von Fersen, influenced the Swedish decision to recognize the U.S. and to sign a peace and trade treaty with the new nation in 1783.    The tidal wave of Swedish emigration began in the mid 1840s, when the first organized emigrant groups started to arrive in New York. These farmers destined to Iowa and Illinois were followed during the period up to 1930 by almost 1.3 million countrymen. The Swedes still rank number seven among the European immigrant groups. In proportion to the population of their home countries, only the British Isles and Norway surpassed Sweden in the number of immigrants.

   The effect of this exodus from Sweden reached its climax around 1910, when 1.4 million Swedish first and second generation immigrants were listed as living in the U.S. Compare this to Sweden's population at the time: 5.5 million. Roughly one fifth of all Swedes had their homes in America right before World War I !

Norway
   In 1821 the Quakers community in the Stavanger area of Norway sent two members, Cleng Peerson and Knud Olsen Eide, over to America to explore the possibility of emigration in order to avoid religious persecution. Eide died soon after arriving in America but Peerson was able to return with encouraging news about the country. Cleng Peerson went back to organize the buying of land. On 4th July, 1825, a 52 foot sloop, Restauration, left Stavanger, with fifty-two Norwegians opposed to the Lutheran Church. Ninety-eight days later the ship arrived in New York where Peerson gave them the news that he had acquired land in Kendall, 35 miles north-west of Rochester. Over the next few years Kendall became a stopover on the way to the Middle West. Peerson also helped to organize another Norwegian settlement on the Fox River in Illinois. 

Iceland
   Emigration from Iceland began later than any other Scandinavian country, due in part to the small island nation's extreme isolation. Icelandic immigration is also difficult to track, as many Icelandic immigrants to the U.S. were counted as citizens of Denmark, which controlled Iceland at the time. The main emigration began in the 1870s, when families and groups of families began moving to the Great Lakes states, seeking to escape the famine and overcrowding that had struck Iceland just as they had other Scandinavian lands. At first, the Icelanders did not arrive in sufficient numbers to start their own communities, and so tended to attach themselves to Norwegian or Swedish farm settlements, or to go to work for established farmers. Within a few decades, though, Icelandic towns had been founded in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Denmark
   Like the immigrants of countless other nations, many immigrants from Denmark came to the United States for religious reasons. The greatest surge of Danish immigration came in the wake of a small group of missionaries who arrived in Copenhagen in 1850, spreading the word of a new faith from America. In the following years, several thousand Danes converted to Mormonism, and roughly half of those converts left for the United States—nearly 20,000 by the end of the century. For centuries, small groups of Danes had visited and lived on the shores of the New World. Danes had joined Dutch expeditions to navigate the Hudson River in the 17th  century, and in 1728 the Danish explorer Vitus Bering charted the Alaskan straits that bear his name. The New Amsterdam colony was home to many prominent Danes, including Jonas Bronck, whose land north of Manhattan Island became widely known as Bronck's, and, eventually, the Bronx. In addition, small numbers of Danes fled the established Dutch Reform Church to join larger, usually German, religious communities on the East Coast.
   
Finland
   The Finnish have also taken part in the colonization of America. Finnish explorers and colonists joined the Dutch and Scandinavian expeditions to eastern shores of the New World, they were often classified on ship's rosters as citizens of Sweden or Russia. It is known, however, that Finns were among the first Europeans to settle in Alaska, during the early 19th century, and even served as the territory's governors.

United States
   Ever since its founding in 1776, and even before then, the United States has attracted immigrants from around the world. For well over two centuries, people have flocked under this nation's protective wings as opportunists, sojourners, missionaries, refugees, and even illegal aliens. With the Statue of Liberty greeting Europeans entering Ellis Island, and The Golden Gate Bridge greeting Chinese and other Asians into San Francisco, the U.S. has long since been a refuge of the world, with opportunities abound and freedom for all. Over time, millions around the world have found emigrating to the U.S. as the only alternative to starvation, death, or a life full of hardship and suffering. thousands from nations spanning the globe, America has become a mosaic of people, culture, and hope.
   It has long been a spirited topic of debate as to who got here first. The mosaic palate of peoples and cultures which represents today's America heightens the intensity of such a debate. Discoveries made by various anthropologists of human remains over the past few decades provide evidence that long before Ellis Island opened its doors to welcome those seeking political and religious freedom as well as the "adventurer, the wanderer, the persecuted, the fortune seekers, and others" America was a kaleidoscope of ethnic and cultural groups! Thus, the history of US immigration spans a long period of migration of many different peoples from various parts of the world. One common belief is that America was originally peopled by wanderers from Northeast Asia about 20,000 years ago. These wanderers were believed by some to be the founding population (and ancestors!) of today's Native Americans. Others believe that the first Americans came from Polynesia, South Asia or even Europe. Even others believe that the very first Americans were killed by later arrivals and that they left no descendants. The debate rages on! However, not to be lost in this debate is the fact that whether 20,000, 10,000 or 1,000 years ago, most immigrant groups to America came full of hopes and dreams of the "Promised Land". Around the year 1000, a small number of Vikings arrived. Five hundred years later, the great European migration began.  
   The settling of America began with an idea. The idea was that people can join together and agree to govern themselves by making laws for the common good. With that idea in mind, 102 English colonists (later referred to as the "Pilgrims") set sail in 1620 on the Mayflower. They landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This is generally considered by many to be the "start" of planned European migration! In 1638, just 18 years after the Mayflower, the Swedes began their migration to America. Unlike the Pilgrim Fathers, the Swedes were not religious dissenters - they were an organized group of colonizers sent by the Swedish Government to establish a colony in Delaware. In 1655, the colony was lost to the Dutch. In the mid-1840s, a wave of Swedish migration began with the landing of a group of migrant farmers in New York and continued up to World War I. During the colonial era most of the immigrants to the U.S. came from Northern Europe. Their numbers declined during the 1770s, but picked up during the mid 1800s. New arrivals came from several countries, but mostly from Germany and Ireland where crop failures caused many to leave their homelands. Other groups also arrived from the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and Eastern Europe.