Swedish Americans

“ Swedish Americans have won a place in the history and heritage of the United States, and they continue their tradition of notable achievements today. Two Swedish Americans associated prominently with the American Revolution were John Morton of Pennsylvania, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and John Hanson of Maryland, who presided over the Continental Congress in 1781 and 1782. More than a million Swedes came to the United States between 1845 and 1910, and more than four million Americans today have Swedish ancestry. ”

“ The faces here strike him as duller and less regular than the faces of people in Sweden. Other Swedish-Americans, however, contend that formerly caste barriers in the fatherland so blocked the rise of gifted commoners that the immigrant stream is as rich in natural ability as is the Swedish people at home. Rugged Norway has less to hold at home the more capable stocks; but still one meets with candid Norwegian-Americans who think our million of Norse blood represent the brawn rather than the brain of their folk. ”

“ America also exerts a great influence on the mental and moral development of the people of Sweden, although this may not be so apparent on the surface. The thousands and hundreds of thousands of letters written every year by Swedish-Americans to the people of the working classes of Sweden arouse the latter’s ambition, and develop liberal, political and religious ideas among them. ”

“ Their experiences form a romantic prelude to the great Swedish migration, which reached its height in the eighties. Today the Swedes form the largest element in the Scandinavian influx, for well over one million have migrated to the United States.
Nearly three hundred thousand persons of Danish blood have come into the country since the Civil War. A large number migrated from Schleswig-Holstein, after the forcible annexation of that province by Prussia in 1866, preferring the freedom of America to the tyranny of Berlin. ”

“ LUND, HELSINGBORG,
GOTHENBURG
Gothenburg, Sweden,
August 15, 191—
My dear Cynthia:
As you see, I am at last in the land of the Swede,—a land even less known to Americans than is Denmark,—which is saying considerable. The sum total of information which most Americans possess about Sweden seems to be that Swedish girls make good cooks. Consequently, they appear to look upon all Swedish women as potential American “servant girls.” To be sure, in view of the fact that my ancestral roots sink deep in Swedish soil, I deserve no credit for such knowledge of things Swedish as I have ”

“ Gentlemen who meet on the street knock the tops of [255] their “tiles” against their knees, and continue to bow at each other long after they have passed. In feature and general appearance the Swedes are handsomer than the southern races of Europe, and for that reason wear a nearer resemblance to the Americans. I saw several men in Stockholm who would not have done discredit to California, in point of fine faces and commanding figures. The Swedish ladies are proverbially beautiful. It was really refreshing, after my visit to Russia, to see so many pretty women as I met here. ”

“ The name of Sweden is not even mentioned, a fact which does not point to a narrow or antiquated form of patriotism. There is in the nature of the Swedes a tendency to delight in the display of dignified luxury, which was known to Tacitus. The Swedes love to see the crown of one of the oldest states of Europe carried with dignity as an emblem of their ancient independence. The Swedish king has in reality less power than the President of the United States, but the Swedes have an inherited faculty of confidence and loyalty of which their king receives his full share. ”

“ In 1888 our Swedish fellow citizens in the East and West, who, especially since 1830, have enriched our national composite with their virtues, energies, and industry, celebrated the quarter millennial of the first settlement of their countrymen within the United States. ”

“ Lost now is the position to which Sweden once attained, chief military power in the North, but higher her place in the world. The sword-won dominion of Gustavus Adolphus could not endure for very long—geography forbade—but a nobler Swedish empire was founded, or at any rate consolidated, by the genius of Linnæus, and that shows no sign of decay. There will dawn a day when mere brute force will no longer be the test of a nation's weal, but in Europe it is hardly yet. ”

“ All Swedish-American activities are based on the people themselves, and one always has to start from scratch, so to speak, without satisfactory financing and without the backing of influential people with money. And, of course, without the support of the state or municipality. How far would the Swedes at home get under such circumstances? And, furthermore, it must be remembered that from a business point of view such undertakings here must be America, not Swedish. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that even Swedish-American cultural activities show the American influence. ”

“ Those meaningless social courtesies which sit well enough upon the gay, volatile, mercurial Frenchman, seem absurd affectations when practiced by the tall, grave, sedate Scandinavian. The intelligent Swedes feel this, but they are powerless to make headway against the influence of a court which was wholly French, even before Bernadotte's time. "We are a race of apes," said one of them to me bitterly. Gustavus III. was thoroughly French in his tastes, but the ruin of Swedish nationality in Stockholm was already commenced when he ascended the throne. ”

“ The United States of America receive a large majority of the emigrants, and only a very small percentage returns. The Swedish people belong to the Scandinavian branch, but the population includes in the north about 20,000 Finns and 7000 Lapps. Other foreigners, however, are few, and the population is as a whole homogeneous. ”

“ Had the Swedish successors of Gustavus Adolphus devoted their energies to colonization in America, instead of squabbling with Slavs and Germans for one or two wretched Baltic provinces, they could undoubtedly have built up in the new world a Sweden tenfold greater than that in the old. ”

“ During the more than eighty years of peace which Sweden has enjoyed under the rule of the Bernadotte dynasty, she has developed her constitutional liberty and her material prosperity in a high degree. The dreams of glory by conquest belong to days gone by, but in the fields of peaceable industries she has attained a greatness which the world begins to realize. At the expositions of Paris in 1867, 1878 and 1889, of Vienna in 1873, of Philadelphia in 1876 and of Chicago in 1893, Swedish industry and art have taken part with honor in the international competition. ”

“ No matter which way he turned, he heard only rumors of fresh preparations to conquer Sweden. When guests visited the castle, they talked from morn till night of the splendid armaments of Christiern. On one occasion he heard them declare that so soon as Sweden fell, her aristocracy were to be put to the sword and their wives and daughters parted out among the peasantry of Denmark. The Swedish peasants, they said, would soon learn to drive the plough with one arm and a wooden leg. ”

“ In the mixture of patriotism and unreserved cosmopolitanism, true genius and superficiality, earnestness and recklessness in the character of Gustavus III., the Swedes have recognized peculiarities of their own national temperament, for which they are tempted to love him as dearly, although not considering him to be as great, as his two predecessors and namesakes on the Swedish throne. ”

“ Germany was alive to it and feared it; but, in Sweden, rather than admit it and its practical effects, the rulers ignored it, were shocked by the great tide of emigration to the United States, yet careless of its effects on Swedish popular opinion.
On one occasion in Copenhagen, King Gustav asked me why so many of his people emigrated to my country. The King of Sweden is a very serious man, not easily influenced or distracted from any subject that interests him, and the good of his people interested him very much. ”

“ If, above all others, the people should be considered happy, who, in their position in the world and towards other nations, find the claim of their destiny clearly stated, when this destiny is at the same time great, noble and important, the Swedish people undeniably possess such a happiness, which, without to fall into a deep and degrading delusion, cannot fail to both understand and highly value. ”

“ The American statistics in later years have sometimes shown larger numbers than the Swedish, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that a great number of emigrants from Finland have passed through Sweden on their way to America and therefore are counted as Swedes. ”

“ The Swedes are no more Swedes than I am; else how could I have understood the oaths of the Swedish dragoon that fired at me to-day? He swore in good round German, and it was one of the most wonderful oaths I ever heard. He said'—
The journeyman sprang up hastily, and put his hand before the lad's mouth. 'Silence!' he cried earnestly. 'Do not repeat the oath you heard to any one. When a man has once heard a wicked thing, it sticks in his memory for years. It is the good things we find so hard to remember. But to return to the Swedes. Their anger against us is not altogether without excuse. ”

“ It is difficult to believe that long ago, in the Middle Ages, the cities of southern Sweden were among the great commercial centers of the world. Stockholm and Lund ranked with London and Paris. They absorbed the commerce of the northern seas, and were the admiration of thousands of travelers and merchants who passed through them and trafficked with them.
Much nearer to our own time, Sweden was the great military power of northern Europe. The ambassadors of the Swedish kings were received with the utmost deference in every court. Her soldiers won great battles and ended mighty wars. ”

“ We might take a leaf out of the royal book of Sweden, and, by a wise administration of our vast national landed property, make it contribute something to the support of the government, while we improved its value. That would be certainly more statesmanlike than to give it away by millions every year to speculators. The Swedish soldiers are also employed in making roads, and on other public works, as ours might be, greatly to their own moral benefit, and to the advantage of the country. ”

“ Heartfelt kindness and hospitality, seriousness and mirth in pure family life; these characteristics of Swedish life, where it is good, should be transplanted into the Western wilderness by the Swedish colonists, as they are in this instance. That day among the Swedes by Pine Lake; that splendid old lady; those handsome, warm-hearted men; those lovely, modest, and kind young women; that affectionate domestic life; that rich hospitality in poor cottagers,—all are to me a pledge of it. The Swedes must continue to be Swedes, even in the New World ”

“ For the Swedes were the first settlers on the river Delaware, and were possessed of land from Trenton Falls to the sea, and it was from them that William Penn bought the ground on which Philadelphia now stands. It was the great Gustavus Adolphus who, together with Oxenstjerna, sketched out a plan for a Swedish colony in the new world, and the king himself became surety to the royal treasury for the sum of 400,000 rix-dollars for the carrying it out. Persons of all conditions were invited to co-operate in the undertaking. The colony was to exist by free labour. ”

“ This was a great victory over the nobles, who in nearly all the Northern and Eastern Kingdoms of Europe—and in Sweden itself at a later time—succeeded in erecting an oligarchy, which oppressed the peasants and crippled the activity of the State. (2) Again, by his consistent favouring of the middle classes, and his conclusion of commercial treaties with Russia, France, and the Netherlands, he became the founder of Swedish commerce, and dealt a serious blow at the Baltic supremacy of the Hanseatic League. ”

“ A Swedish diplomat, who visited Minnesota twenty years ago, and, among others, met one of his father’s former farm laborers, who was now in good circumstances, in an official report to the government of Sweden expressed his astonishment at the change which the Swedish people had undergone in that respect.
It cannot be denied that many among the higher classes in Sweden feel very unfriendly toward the United States, and it was even not long ago a common saying among them, “America is the paradise of all rogues and rascals.” ”

“ These magnates therefore turned, in 1388, to Margaret, regent of Denmark and Norway, and offered her the regency of Sweden, promising to recognize as king whomever she should choose. In 1389 she entered Sweden with her army, overthrew King Albert, and got possession of the throne. In 1396 the Swedish Cabinet, at her desire, elected her nephew, Erik of Pomerania, already king of Denmark and Norway, to be king of Sweden; and on the 17th of June, 1397, he was crowned at Kalmar. [4] Thus began the celebrated Kalmar [Pg 14] Union, one of the greatest political blunders that a nation ever made. ”

“ Her possessions made the Baltic almost an “inland lake of Sweden,” and efforts soon followed to make it completely so. Sweden exerted a beneficent influence throughout her large [Pg 230] possessions, which, from a cultural point of view, hardly can be overestimated. Her methods of planting the seeds of culture, by establishing Swedish and German universities, and by abolishing serfdom in the conquered lands, are worthy of the highest respect. But with her new political grandeur Sweden acquired formidable enemies ”

“ They have a great talent for arguing with gentleness and courtesy, and of protesting with politeness, and they learn our language with singular ease. I once had a Swedish maid who argued me out of my desire to have the dining-room swept, in better language than I could use myself. One must, in hiring servants, take into account all these national characteristics. The Swedes are full of talent, they can do your work if they wish to, but ten chances to one they do not wish to. ”