Swedish emigration to the United States
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States of America. While the land of the
According to Joy K. Lintelman, mass migration from Sweden to the United States unfolded in five distinct waves between the 1840s and 1920s. Within this period, hundreds of thousands of Swedish emigrants made their way over and settled in both rural and urban scapes of the United States. Factors which brought migration to a trickle were found on both sides of the Atlantic, with restrictions on immigration placed in the United States and improving social and economic conditions in Sweden being the primary factors.[1]
Swedish migration to the United States peaked in the decades after the American Civil War (1861–1865). By 1890 the
Early history: the Swedish-American dream
The Swedish West India Company
The historian
Swedish debate about the United States remained mostly theoretical before the 19th century, since very few Swedes had any personal experience of the nation. Emigration was illegal and population was seen as the wealth of nations.
19th century
Akenson argues that hard times in Sweden before 1867 produced a strong push effect, but that for cultural reasons most Swedes refused to emigrate and clung on at home. Akenson says the state wanted to keep its population high and:
- The upper classes' need for a cheap and plentiful labor force, the instinctive willingness of the clergy of the state church to discourage emigration on both moral and social grounds, and the deference of the lower orders to the arcade of powers that hovered above them—all these things formed an architecture of cultural hesitancy concerning emigration.[10]
A few "countercultural" deviants from the mainstream did leave and showed the way. The severe economic hardship of the "Great Deprivation" of 1867 to 1869, finally overcame the reluctance and the floodgates opened to produce an "emigration culture".[12]
European mass emigration: push and pull
Large-scale European emigration to the United States started in the 1840s in Britain, Ireland and Germany. That was followed by a rising wave after 1850 from most Northern European countries, and in turn by Central and Southern Europe. Research into the forces behind this European mass emigration has relied on sophisticated statistical methods.[13] One theory which has gained wide acceptance is Jerome's analysis in 1926 of the "push and pull" factors—the impulses to emigration generated by conditions in Europe and the U.S. respectively. Jerome found that fluctuations in emigration co-varied more with economic developments in the U.S. than in Europe, and deduced that the pull was stronger than the push.[14] Jerome's conclusions have been challenged, but still form the basis of much work on the subject.[15][16]
Emigration patterns in the Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland—show striking variation. Nordic mass emigration started in Norway, which also retained the highest rate throughout the century. Swedish emigration got underway in the early 1840s, and had the third-highest rate in all of Europe, after Ireland and Norway. Denmark had a consistently low rate of emigration, while Iceland had a late start but soon reached levels comparable to Norway. Finland, whose mass emigration did not start until the late 1880s, and at the time part of the Russian Empire, is usually classified as part of the Eastern European wave.[15]
Crossing the Atlantic
The first European emigrants travelled in the
During the later 19th century, the major shipping lines financed Swedish emigrant agents and paid for the production of large quantities of emigration
Mid-19th century
Swedish mass migration took off in the spring of 1841 with the departure of
The rising Swedish exodus was caused by economic, political, and religious conditions affecting particularly the rural population. Europe was in the grip of an
The political freedom of the American republic exerted a similar pull. Swedish peasants were some of the most literate in Europe, and consequently had access to the European egalitarian and radical ideas that culminated in the Revolutions of 1848.[24] The clash between Swedish liberalism and a repressive monarchist regime raised political awareness among the disadvantaged, many of whom looked to the U.S. to realize their republican ideals.[citation needed]
Dissenting religious practitioners also widely resented the treatment they received from the Lutheran State Church through the Conventicle Act. Conflicts between local worshipers and the new churches were most explosive in the countryside, where dissenting Pietist groups were more active, and were more directly under the eye of local law enforcement and the parish priest. Before non-Lutheran churches were granted toleration in 1809,[25] clampdowns on illegal forms of worship and teaching often provoked whole groups of Pietists and Radical Pietists to leave together, intent on forming their own spiritual communities in the new land. The largest contingent of such dissenters, 1,500 followers of Eric Jansson, left in the late 1840s and founded a community in Bishop Hill, Illinois.[26] Baptists, including the exiled F. O. Nilsson and fellow preachers Gustaf Palmquist and Anders Wiberg, started Baptist churches in the Midwest.[27] The Mission Friends, who emigrated in the 1860s, would later found the Evangelical Free Church[28] and Evangelical Covenant Church denominations.[29] Lutherans such as Lars Paul Esbjörn – influenced by Pietism and Methodism and felt he was denied advancement in the church because of it – also found new opportunities in the United States. There he became one of the founders of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church.[30][31][32] Swedish Methodist pioneers like Victor Witting began to emigrate in the 1840s.[33][34] Mormon converts found religious freedom in the United States as well.[35]
The first Swedish emigrant guidebook was published as early as 1841, the year Unonius left, and nine handbooks were published between 1849 and 1855.[36] Substantial groups of lumberjacks and iron miners were recruited directly by company agents in Sweden. Agents recruiting construction builders for American railroads also appeared, the first in 1854, scouting for the Illinois Central Railroad.[37]
The Swedish establishment disapproved intensely of emigration. Seen as depleting the labor force and as a defiant act among the lower orders, emigration alarmed both the spiritual and the secular authorities. Many emigrant diaries and memoirs feature an emblematic early scene in which the local clergy warns travellers against risking their souls among foreign heretics. The conservative press described emigrants as lacking in patriotism and moral fibre: "No workers are more lazy, immoral and indifferent than those who immigrate to other places."[38] Emigration was denounced as an unreasoning "mania" or "craze", implanted in an ignorant populace by "outside agents". The liberal press retorted that the "lackeys of monarchism" failed to take into account the miserable conditions in the Swedish countryside and the backwardness of Swedish economic and political institutions.[39] "Yes, emigration is indeed a 'mania'", wrote the liberal Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning sarcastically, "The mania of wanting to eat one's fill after one has worked oneself hungry! The craze of wanting to support oneself and one's family in an honest manner!"[40]
The great
Late 19th century
Swedish emigration to the United States reached its height in the 1870–1900 era. The size of the Swedish-American community in 1865 is estimated at 25,000 people, a figure soon to be surpassed by the yearly Swedish immigration. By 1890, the
Other forces worked to push the new immigrants towards the cities, particularly Chicago. According to historian H. Arnold Barton, the cost of crossing the Atlantic dropped by more than half between 1865 and 1890, which led to progressively poorer Swedes contributing a growing share of immigration (but compare Brattne and Åkerman, see "Crossing the Atlantic" above). The new immigrants were increasingly younger and unmarried. With the shift from family to individual immigration came a faster and fuller Americanization, as young, single individuals with little money took whatever jobs they could get, often in cities. Large numbers even of those who had been farmers in the old country made straight for American cities and towns, living and working there at least until they had saved enough capital to marry and buy farms of their own.[46] A growing proportion stayed in urban centers, combining emigration with the flight from the countryside which was happening in the homeland and all across Europe.[47]
Single young women, most commonly moved straight from field work in rural Sweden to jobs as live-in housemaids in the urban United States. "Literature and tradition have preserved the often tragic image of the pioneer immigrant wife and mother", writes Barton, "bearing her burden of hardship, deprivation and longing on the untamed frontier ... More characteristic among the newer arrivals, however, was the young, unmarried woman ... As domestic servants in America, they ... were treated as members of the families they worked for and like 'ladies' by American men, who showed them a courtesy and consideration to which they were quite unaccustomed at home."[48] They found employment easily, as Scandinavian maids were in high demand, and learned the language and customs quickly. Working conditions were far better than in Sweden, in terms of wages, hours of work, benefits, and ability to change positions.[49][50] In contrast, newly arrived Swedish men were often employed in all-Swedish work gangs. The young women usually married Swedish men and brought with them in marriage an enthusiasm for ladylike, American manners and middle-class refinements. Many admiring remarks are recorded from the late 19th century about the sophistication and elegance that simple Swedish farm girls would gain in a few years, and about their unmistakably American demeanor.[48]
As ready workers, the Swedes were generally welcomed by the Americans, who often singled them out as the "best" immigrants. There was no significant anti-Swedish nativism of the sort that attacked Irish, German and, especially, Chinese newcomers. The Swedish style was more familiar: "They are not peddlers, nor organ grinders, nor beggars; they do not sell ready-made clothing nor keep pawn shops", wrote the Congregational missionary M. W. Montgomery in 1885; "they do not seek the shelter of the American flag merely to introduce and foster among us ... socialism, nihilism, communism ... they are more like Americans than are any other foreign peoples."[51]
A number of well-established and longtime Swedish Americans visited Sweden in the 1870s, making comments that give historians a window on the cultural contrasts involved. A group from Chicago made the journey in an effort to
Mattson's first recruiting visit came immediately after consecutive seasons of crop failure in 1867 and 1868, and he found himself "besieged by people who wished to accompany me back to America." He noted that:
…the laboring and middle classes already at that time had a pretty correct idea of America, and the fate that awaited emigrants there; but the ignorance, prejudice and hatred toward America and everything pertaining to it among the aristocracy, and especially the office holders, was as unpardonable as it was ridiculous. It was claimed by them that all was humbug in America, that it was the paradise of scoundrels, cheats, and rascals, and that nothing good could possibly come out of it.[54]
A more recent American immigrant, Ernst Skarstedt, who visited Sweden in 1885, received the same galling impression of upper-class arrogance and anti-Americanism. The laboring classes, in their turn, appeared to him coarse and degraded, drinking heavily in public, speaking in a stream of curses, making obscene jokes in front of women and children. Skarstedt felt surrounded by "arrogance on one side and obsequiousness on the other, a manifest scorn for menial labor, a desire to appear to be more than one was". This traveller too was incessantly hearing American civilization and culture denigrated from the depths of upper-class Swedish prejudice: "If I, in all modesty, told something about America, it could happen that in reply I was informed that this could not possibly be so or that the matter was better understood in Sweden."[55]
Swedish emigration dropped dramatically after 1890; return migration rose as conditions in Sweden improved. Sweden underwent a rapid industrialization within a few years in the 1890s, and wages rose, principally in the fields of mining, forestry, and agriculture. The pull from the U.S. declined even more sharply than the Swedish "push", as the best farmland was taken. No longer growing but instead settling and consolidating, the Swedish-American community seemed set to become ever more American and less Swedish. The new century, however, saw a new influx.[56]
Religious confusion
In the 1800s–1900s, the Lutheran State Church supported the Swedish government by opposing both emigration and the clergy's efforts recommending sobriety. This escalated to a point where its priests even were persecuted by the church for preaching sobriety, and the reactions of many congregation members to that contributed to an inspiration to leave the country (which however was against the law until 1840).[57]
20th century
Parliamentary Emigration Commission 1907–1913
Emigration rose again at the turn of the 20th century, reaching a new peak of about 35,000 Swedes in 1903. Figures remained high until
Class inequality in Swedish society was a strong and recurring theme in the commission's findings. It appeared as a major motivator in the 289 personal narratives included in the report. These documents, of great research value and human interest today, were submitted by Swedes in Canada and the U.S. in response to requests in Swedish-American newspapers. The great majority of replies expressed enthusiasm for their new homeland and criticized conditions in Sweden. Bitter experiences of Swedish class snobbery still rankled after sometimes 40–50 years in the United States. Writers recalled the hard work, pitiful wages, and grim poverty of life in the Swedish countryside. One woman wrote from North Dakota of how in her Värmland home parish, she had had to earn her living in peasant households from the age of eight, starting work at four in the morning and living on "rotten herring and potatoes, served out in small amounts so that I would not eat myself sick". She could see "no hope of saving anything in case of illness", but rather could see "the poorhouse waiting for me in the distance". When she was seventeen, her emigrated brothers sent her a prepaid ticket to the United States, and "the hour of freedom struck."[61]
The Emigration Inquest, according to Franklin D. Scott, had little effect on emigration. A year after the Commission published its last volume, World War I began and reduced emigration drastically. Despite a slight increase after World War I, the American Immigration Act of 1924 significantly reduced quotas for Swedish immigrants, and by the late 1920s those quota were not even filled anymore.[62] Barton points to the rapid implementation of essentially all the commission's recommendations to improve conditions in Sweden, from industrialization to an array of social reforms, and claims that "its findings must have had a powerful cumulative effect upon Sweden's leadership and broader public opinion".[63]
Swedish Americans
The Midwest remained the heartland of the Swedish-American community, but its position weakened in the 20th century: in 1910, 54% of the Swedish immigrants and their children lived in the Midwest, 15% in industrial areas in the East, and 10% on the West Coast. Chicago was effectively the Swedish-American capital, accommodating about 10% of all Swedish Americans—more than 100,000 people—making it the second-largest Swedish city in the world (only Stockholm had more Swedish inhabitants).[45]
Defining themselves as both Swedish and American, the Swedish-American community retained a fascination for the old country and their relationship to it. The nostalgic visits to Sweden which had begun in the 1870s continued well into the 20th century, and narratives from these trips formed a staple of the lively Swedish-American publishing companies.[64] The accounts testify to complex feelings, but each contingent of American travellers were freshly indignant at Swedish class pride and Swedish disrespect for women. It was with renewed pride in American culture that they returned to the Midwest.[65]
In the 2000
Memory
The best-known artistic representation of the Swedish mass migration is the epic four-novel suite
In Sweden, the "House of Emigrants" (Emigranternas Hus) was founded in
See also
- American Swedish Historical Museum
- American Swedish Institute
- Eric Janson, established in 1846
- Emihamn – a database of passenger lists from major Swedish ports
- Nordstjernan, Swedish newspaper founded in New York, 1872
- Swedish colonization of the Americas
- Swedish language in the United States
- Swedish-American relations
References
Footnotes
- ^ Lintelman, I Go to America, 71-74.
- ^ a b Colenbrander, Koloniale Geschiedenis, 14-15.
- ^ Carlsson, "The New Sweden Colonists", 173-80.
- ^ Carlsson, "The New Sweden Colonists", 180-81.
- ^ Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 1-2.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 5–7.
- ^ Kälvemark, 94–96.
- ^ Beijbom, "European Emigration".
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 11.
- ^ Akenson, Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 70.
- ^ The pictures originally illustrated a cautionary tale published in 1869 in the Swedish periodical Läsning för folket, the organ of the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge (Sällskapet för nyttiga kunskapers spridande). See Barton, A Folk Divided, 71.
- ^ Akenson, Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914 pp. 37–39
- ^ Åkerman, passim.
- ^ Norman, 150–153.
- ^ a b Runblom and Norman, 315.
- ^ Norman, passim.
- ^ Brattne and Åkerman, 179–181.
- ^ Brattne and Åkerman, 179–181, 186–189, 199–200.
- ^ Barton, 38.
- ^ Brattne and Åkerman, 187–192.
- ^ Unonius, quoted in Barton, A Folk Divided, 13.
- ^ Pehrson, Den nya världen, 239–240, 260–261.
- ^ Quoted in Barton, A Folk Divided, 14.
- ^ Cipollo, 115, estimates adult literacy in Sweden at 90% in 1850, which places it highest among the European countries he has surveyed.
- ^ Gritsch, A History of Lutheranism, 180.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 15–16.
- ^ Douglas, In Search of the New Testament Church, 232-33.
- ^ Gustafson, D. L. Moody and Swedes, 6, 167.
- ^ "Scandinavian Pietism". Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
- ^ Gustafson, Swedish Chicago.
- ^ Lagerquist, The Lutherans, 176.
- ^ Westin, Lars Paul Esbjörn.
- ^ Nausner, "Swedish Methodists in America"
- ^ Barten, The Old Country, 38-39.
- ^ "Mormonism in Europe - The Mormonism and Migration Project". Claremont Graduate University. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
- ^ a b Barton, A Folk Divided, 17.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 18.
- ^ Proclaimed in an article in the newspaper Nya Wermlandstidningen in April 1855; quoted by Barton, A Folk Divided, 20–22.
- ^ Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 1849, quoted in Barton, A Folk Divided, 24.
- ^ 1851, quoted and translated by Barton, A Folk Divided, 24.
- ^ Beijbom, "European Emigration".
- ^ Sven Ulric Palme: Hundra år under kommunalförfattningarna 1862–1962: en minnesskrift utgiven av Svenska landskommunernas förbund, Svenska landstingsförbundet [och] Svenska stadsförbundet, Trykt hos Godvil, 1962[ISBN missing]
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 37.
- smallholders; see Barton, A Folk Divided, 37.
- ^ a b c Swenson Center Archived 18 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine .
- ^ Beijbom, "Chicago Archived 6 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine "
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 38–41.
- ^ a b Barton, A Folk Divided, 41.
- ^ Lintelman, I Go to America, 57-58.
- ^ Hoerder, "Historical Perspectives", 78.
- ^ Quoted by Barton, A Folk Divided, 40.
- ^ Private letters by Anders Larsson in the 1870s, summarized by Barton, A Folk Divided, 59.
- ^ Quoted by Barton, A Folk Divided, 60–61.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 61–62.
- ^ Svensk-amerikanska folket i helg och söcken (Ernst Teofil Skarstedt. Stockholm: Björck & Börjesson. 1917)[ISBN missing]
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 80.
- ^ Vår svenska stam på utländsk mark; Svenska öden och insatser i främmande land; I västerled, Amerikas förenta stater och Kanada, Ed. Axel Boëthius, Stockholm 1952, Volume I, pp. 92, 137, 273 & 276; for the whole section[ISBN missing]
- ^ 1.4 million first- and second-generation Swedish immigrants lived in the U.S. in 1910, while Sweden's population at the time was 5.5 million; see Beijbom, "Review Archived 2 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine".
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 149.
- ^ The phrase is from Ernst Beckman's original liberal parliamentary motion for instituting the Commission; quoted by Barton, A Folk Divided, 149.
- ^ Quoted from Volume VII of the Survey by Barton, A Folk Divided, 152.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 164.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 165.
- ^ For Swedish American publishing, see Barton, A Folk Divided, 212–213, 254.
- ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 103 ff.
- ^ American FactFinder, Fact Sheet "Swedish" Archived 13 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine .
- ^ American FactFinder: Minnesota, Selected Social Characteristics in the United States, 2005 Archived 11 February 2020 at archive.today.
- ^ Moberg biography by JoAnn Hanson-Stone at the Swedish Emigrant Institute Archived 6 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine .
- ^ Corliss, Richard (24 September 2009). "Kristina: A New Musical from the ABBA Guys". TIME. Archived from the original on 27 September 2009. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
- ^ "About Kulturparken Småland AB". Kulturparken Småland. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
- ^ "Swedish Texans". digital.utsa.edu.
Reference bibliography
- Akenson, Donald Harman (2011). Ireland, Sweden and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914. McGill-Queens University Press.
- Åkerman, Sune (1976). "Theories and Methods of Migration Research"". In Runblom and Norman (ed.). From Sweden to America. pp. 19–75.
- American FactFinder, United States Census, 2000. Consulted 30 June 2007.
- ISBN 9780809319435.
- Barton, H. Arnold (1996). Swedish America in Fifty Years—2050. Swedish American Historical Society. Archived from the original on 4 August 2007. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
- ISBN 9780809389506.
- Beijbom, Ulf. "Chicago, the Essence of the Promised Land". Swedish Emigrant Institute. Archived from the original on 6 October 2013. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
- Beijbom, Ulf (1996). "European Emigration: A Review of Swedish Emigration to America". American West. Archived from the original on 2 June 2006.
- Brattne, Berit; Åkerman, Sune (1976). "The Importance of the Transport Sector for Mass Emigration". In Runblom and Norman (ed.). From Sweden to America. pp. 176–200.
- Carlsson, Sten (1995). "The New Sweden Colonists, 1628-1656: Their Geographical and Social Background". In Hoffecker, Carol E. (ed.). New Sweden in America. University of Delaware Press. pp. 171–87. ISBN 9780874135206.
- Cipolla, Carlo (1966). Literacy and Development in the West. Harmondsworth.
- Colenbrander, H. T. (1925). Koloniale Geschiedenis (in Dutch). Vol. 2. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
- Elovson, Harald (1930). Amerika i svensk litteratur 1750–1820 (in Swedish). Lund.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Glynn, Irial (2011). "Emigration Across the Atlantic: Irish, Italians and Swedes compared, 1800–1950". Institute of European History. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
- Fur, Gunlög (2006). Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland. Brill. ISBN 9789047410652.
- Gritsch, Eric W. (2002). A History of Lutheranism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ISBN 9780800634728.
- Gustafson, Anita Olson (2018). Swedish Chicago: The Shaping of an Immigrant Community, 1880-1920. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. OCLC 1129197373.
- Gustafson, David M. (2008). D.L. Moody and Swedes: shaping evangelical identity among Swedish mission friends, 1867-1899 (PDF). OCLC 489777085.
- Lintelman, Joy K. (2009). I Go to America: Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Anderson. Minnesota Historical Society. ISBN 978-0873516365.
- Hoerder, Dirk (2015). "Historical Perspectives on Domestic and Care-Giving Workers' Migrations: A Global Approach". In Hoerder, Dirk; van Nederveen Meerkerk, Elise; Neunsinger, Silke (eds.). Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers. Brill. pp. 61–109. ISBN 978-9004280144.
- Kälvemark, Ann-Sofie (1976). "Swedish Emigration Policy in an International Perspective, 1840–1925". In Runblom and Norman (ed.). From Sweden to America. pp. 94–113.
- Nausner, Michael (October 2000). "Swedish Methodists in America and their quest for identity" (PDF). Methodist History. 39 (1).
- Norman, Hans (1976). "The Causes of Emigration". In Runblom and Norman (ed.). From Sweden to America. pp. 149–164.
- Pehrson, Lennart (2014). Den nya världen. Utvandringen till Amerika (I) (in Swedish). Stockholm: OCLC 880134785.
- Runblom, Harald; Norman, Hans, eds. (1976). From Sweden to America: A History of the Migration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Scott, Franklin D. (1965). "Sweden's Constructive Opposition to Emigration". S2CID 144459398.
- The Swedish Emigrant Institute. Consulted 30 June 2007.
- Swenson Center, a research institute at Augustana College, Illinois. Consulted 7 May 2007.
- Weaver, C. Douglas (2008). In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story. Macon, Georgia: OCLC 180752918.
- Westin, Gunnar. "Lars Paul Esbjörn". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon(in Swedish). Retrieved 3 May 2022.
External links
Organizations
- The New Sweden Centre — museum, tours and reenactors
- The Swedish-American Historical Society is a non-profit organization founded in 1948 to "Record the Achievements of the Swedish Pioneers." The society publishes the academic journal The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly
Articles
- The Swedish Emigration to America
- The Emigrant Routes to the Promised Land in America
- Sillgatan: The Emigrant Path through Göteborg