Table Of ContentScandinavian Studies / American History
“It is a tribute to this admirable survey that one is left at the end wishing
for more personal details of the fascinating adventures of these pioneers.”
—Times Literary Supplement
Swedish Exodus, the first English translation and revision of Lars Ljungmark’s
Den Stora Utvandringen, recounts more than a century of Swedish emigration,
concentrating on such questions as who came to America, how the character of the
emigrants changed with each new wave of emigration, what these people did when
they reached their adopted country, and how they gradually became Americanized.
Ljungmark’s essential challenge was to capture in a factual account the broad
sweep of emigration history. But often he narrows his focus to look closely at those
who took part in this mass migration. Through historical records and personal let-
ters, Ljungmark brings many of these people back to life. One young woman, for
example, loved her parents but loved America more: “I never expect to speak to
you in this life. . . . Your loving daughter unto death.” Like most immigrants, she
never expected to return.
The story of Swedish immigrants in the United States is the story in miniature
of the greatest mass migration in human history, that of 35 million Europeans who
left their homes to come to America. It is a human story of interest not only to
Swedes but to everyone.
Lars Ljungmark received his doctorate and became a docent at Gothenburg Uni-
versity, where he retired as an associate professor of history. His research, begun in
1958 to explore Hans Mattson’s recruitment of Swedes for the state of Minnesota,
resulted in the book For Sale—Minnesota.
Kermit B. Westerberg was the major translator of From Sweden to America: A His-
tory of the Migration, edited by Harald Runblom and Hans Norman.
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Swedish Exodus
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale and Edwardsville
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Swedish·
Exodus
by Lars Ljungmark
Translated by Kermit B. Westerberg
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Copyright © 1979 by Swedish Pioneer Historical Society
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Gary Gore
Paperback editions, 1996 and 2008
11 10 09 08 6 5 4 3
Photographs of the Olof Krans paintings of the Bishop Hill Colony courtesy of Bishop
Hill Heritage Association.
Photograph of the Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Austin courtesy of Carl Widén.
Photograph of “Old Main” courtesy of Augustana College.
All other photographs courtesy of the Emigrant Institute at Växjo.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ljungmark, Lars.
Swedish exodus.
Revised translation of the work published in 1965
under title: Den stora utvandringen.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Swedish Americans. 2. United States—
Emigration and immigration. I. Swedish Pioneer
Historical Society. II. Title.
E184.S23L313 301.32'8'485073 79-10498
ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2047-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8093-2047-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. (cid:39)
Contents
List of Illustrations and Figures VI
Preface vii
Chapter 1: They Left for America 1
Chapter 2: Group Emigration from Sweden and Stage
Migration in the United States 14
Chapter 3: Mass Emigration from Sweden 28
Chapter 4: America for Sale 51
Chapter 5: They Sold America 57
Chapter 6: Bound for America 76
Chapter 7: Who Were They and Where Did
They Settle? 88
Chapter 8: Swedes Become Americans 101
Chapter 9: Americanization 126
Chapter 10: The Consequences of Emigration
in Sweden 132
Annual Emigration from and
Remigration to Sweden, 1851-1940 145
Notes 148
Selected Bibliography 152
Index 160
List of Illustrations
and Figures
Illustrations
following page 60
Portrait of Colonel Hans Mattson
Wilson Line shuttle across North Sea
Brigs loaded with iron bars
En route to Gothenburg
"Swede Town" in Chicago
Swedish lumberjacks felling redwoods
Homestead in Red· River Valley
Sod hut in South Dakota
Emigrant liner in I 920s
Passenger liner Stockholm
following page 104
Sillgatan (Herring Street) in Gothenburg
Emigrant ~ontract
Advertisement for railroad land
Posters of Atlantic steamship lines
"Mr. Coleson's Trip to Sweden"
Castle Garden
"Old Main," Augustana College
Typical church built by Swedish immigrants
Oil painting by Olof Krans
Olof Krans painting of Bishop Hill
Figures
1. Immigration to the United States, 1841-1960 7
2. Emigration and remigration, 1851-1962 11
3. Total emigration from the Swedish Ian. 1851-1925 47
4. Emigration from Swedish tan in relationship to population,
1881-1890 49
5. Regional distribution of Swedish-American population 89
Preface
The great migration from Europe brought some 35 million per
sons to the United States, among them, about 1.25 million Swedes. For a
small country like Sweden, the exodus was very significant, and almost
every Swedish family had relatives in America. Swedish historians were
nonetheless late in turning their attention to this mass movement. One
reason for this was the Swedish government's landmark inquest into its
causes, directed by the statistician Gustav Sundbarg in 1908-13. Its
twenty-one-volume report thereafter left the impression that there was
really nothing more to be said about the emigration and the emigrants.
In the later 1920s, the Stockholm school of economists, from several
countries, investigated internal migration and social change. Within this
framework, the sociologist Dorothy Swaine Thomas published her work
on the social and economic aspects of Swedish population movements,
including emigration. The geographer Helge Nelson toured Swedish
America in the 1920s and early 1930s, and his magnum opus The Swedes
and the Swedish Settlements in North America (1943) broke new ground for
future research on Swedish immigrants.
Only by the 19608, however, were Swedish academic scholars ready to
enter the field in earnest. A decisive stimulus was provided in 1960 by the
British historian Frank Thistlethwaite at the International Congress of
Historians in Stockholm. European historians, he argued, should not leave
the transatlantic migration entirely to their New World colleagues, for it
'could never be fully understood withou.t its European background.
A research project, "Sweden and America after 1860," initiated in 19 60
by Professor Sten Carlsson at Uppsala University, became the center for
the new research. Its participants established a wide network of contacts
with researchers in the other Nordic countries and, overseas. Their inves
tigations included migration within Sweden, the economic and social back
ground to emigration, the social composition of the emigrants, and their
movements within the United States. More than a dozen doctoral disserta
tions and numerous papers, articles, and works of popular history were
VII
Preface
VlU
produced. The final report of the project, From Sweden to Arnerica, edited
by Hans Norman and Harald Runblom, was published in 1976.
Lay researchers were inspired in part by the Uppsala historians, but
even more by Vilhelm Moberg's internationally celebrated emigrant novels
(1949-59). The radio series" Den stora utvandringen" in 1965-66, accom
panied by the course book, of which this book is a revision and translation,
revealed this newly awakened popular interest. This expressed itself in the
formation of hundreds of study circles throughout Sweden. In Halland
County (tan) alone, local emigration was studied in thirty-three communi
ties, by more than three hundred persons, resulting in the volume
Hallandska ernigrantOden 1860-1950.
When the revised version of the present book was published in English
as Swedish Exodus in 1979 for the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, hope
was expressed that "a new generation of students and historians will be
stimulated to prove the effects of Swedish immigration on their own lives
and communities." In large degree, these hopes have been fulfilled, as
academic research in the field has since then increased considerably. A
brief survey of earlier immigration research by Swedish Americans will
provide background to this phenomenon.
Almost all the early immigrants were far too involved with the imme
diate concerns of getting started in the new land to be able to devote
themselves to ethnic activities per se. Still, there are already signs of interest
in the history of their people by the 1850s. In 1859, PastorT. N. Hasselquist
undertook to send copies of all Swedish-American newspapers and other
publications to the Royal Library in Stockholm, a task later assumed by the
Augustana College library, resulting in the two largest existing collections
in the field. In 1869, Pastor Erik Norelius was appointed historian of the
Swedish-American Augustana Lutheran Synod. In 1890 and 1916, he
came out with his great two-volume work on the Swedes in America and
their Lutheran congregations, De Svenska Luterska Forsarnlingarnas och
Svenskarnes Historia i Amerika.
The writing of ethnocentric histories by various immigrant grou ps was
greatly stimulated by the. American Centennial in 1876, giving rise to the
"Swedish-Americanism" of which Johan A. Enander, editor of the news
paper Hernlandet in Chicago, was the leading exponent. Between 1874 and
1876, he came out with his five-volume history of the United States, FOrenta
Staternas Historia, according to which the Norsemen were America's first
colonists, and the Swedes on the Delaware in the seventeenth century were
likened to the Pilgrim Fathers. In the wake of this popular work, several
histories of Swedish immigrants in particular localities appeared, such as
Robert Gronberger's Svenskarna i St Croix-dalen i Minnesota in 1879 and
Eric Johnson and C. F. Peterson's Svenskarne i Illinois in 1880. Like other
Preface IX
immigrant groups at the time, the Swedes organized a historical society in
1889, although nothing further was heard of it.
In 1905, however, the Swedish Historical Society of America was
founded in Chicago, which between 1907 and 1917 published several
numbers of its Yearbook, containing popular historical accounts and biog
raphies. The society also collected Swedish-American published and
manuscript materials, first housed by the Swedish Methodist Seminary in
Evanston, then by Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and finally,
since 192), by the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul.
Publication of locally oriented studies continued, including A. C.
Strand's History of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota (1910) and Ernst
Severin's Svenskarne i Texas i ord och bild (1918), which, like Enander, strove
to raise the self-esteem of Swedish Americans by describing their contri
butions to their new homeland.
By the 1920s, American professional historians began to discover the
immigration as a field of research. The first academic center for the study
of the Swedish element was the University of Minnesota. A. A. Stomberg,
professor of Scandinavian languages, became president of the Swedish
Historical Society of America, and the historian George M. Stephenson
gave a new, scholarly character to the revived Yearbook, succeeded in 1928
by the Bulletin. English now became the language of publication, and more
meticulous use of sources became evident. The older ethnocentrism gave
way to a new scholarly objectivity.
Stephenson inspired a number of younger scholars, resulting in John
S. Lindberg's Background of Swedish Emigration to the United States (1930)
and Florence E. Janson's Background or Swedish Immigration, 1840-1930
(1931), both drawing heavily upon the Swedish government's inquest of
1908-13.
The transformation of the Swedish Historical Society of America
reflected a reaction by second-generation Swedish Americans against eth
nocentric values. The society, along with many other ethnic organizations,
nonetheless expired by 1934 during the Great Depression.
Ethnocentrism was meanwhile championed by Amandus Johnson,
author of The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1639-1667 (1911) and
Swedish Contributions of American Freedom, 1776-1783 (1953-57). Johnson
founded the American-Swedish Museum iri Philadelphia, a monument to
the accom plishments of the Swedes in America, which opened in 1929 and
fittingly served as focal point for the tercentenary celebration of the New
Sweden colony ~n 1938. Johnson'S success stimulated new ethnocentric
works, such as E. G. Westman and E. Gustav Johnson's four-volume Swedish
Element in America (1931-34) and Adolph B. Benson and Naboth Hedin's
Swedes in America, 1638-1938 (1938).
