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Issues in U.S. Immigration

Scandinavian immigrants

by Brenda E. Reinertsen Caranicas

Identification: Immigrants to North America from Western Europe's Scandinavian peninsula, which contains Sweden and Nor way

Immigration Issues: Demographics; European immigrants

Significance: Scandinavians were the earliest known European immigrants to North America, and modern Scandinavian Americans still have strong links to their cultural heritages.

The earliest European immigrants to the Western Hemisphere are believed to have been Vikings of Scandinavian origin. In 986 c.e., a Norse expedition headed by Bjarni Herjolfsson sighted land thought to have been on the east coast of Canada. It was followed some dozen years later by Leif Eriksson, who made landing. Norse expeditions attempted to colonize Vinland (Newfoundland) in 1003–1006 and 1007–1008 but ultimately failed because of infighting and conflicts with the native communities. These and subsequent expeditions did not result in permanent settlements on the North American continent.

The first documented Scandinavian settlements in North America were Swedish and included a community along the Delaware River in 1638. John Hanson, the first president of the Continental Congress, claimed to be a fourth-generation descendant of immigrants who traced their family ties to Swedish royalty. Early Swedish enclaves founded in Delaware (Maryland), Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania still maintain their cultural affiliations.

The Nineteenth Century

In nineteenth century Scandinavia, social and economic conditions were stifling: Primogeniture ensured that only first sons could inherit their families' estates, land foreclosures abounded, and the nobility controlled much of the property and paid few taxes. Cleng Peerson (originally Kleng Peterson Hesthammer), a dissenter persecuted by the Lutheran State Church of Nor way, left for the United States in 1821. He became so enamored of the United States that he purchased a sloop, the Restauration, and began a career as an immigrant agent.

Peerson and other agents helped bring about a historically unparalleled exodus of citizens from both Sweden and Nor way. Approximately 750,000 Norwegians emigrated to North America between 1849 and 1914; the Swedish exodus during this same period totaled approximately 1.2 million, nearly one-fourth of Sweden's population. By 1890, about four hundred Minnesota towns sported Swedish names, and Norwegian-speaking travelers in North Dakota could find more people who spoke their native language than who spoke English.

Seafarers historically, Norwegians founded communities on both coasts, in places such as Massachusetts and the Pacific Northwest. Many also followed Peerson to Texas to bask in the milder climate. Others were attracted to the open lands of the upper Midwest, particularly after the Homestead Act of 1862 allotted 160 acres of newly opened land to anyone who could “prove up” a claim. Some enterprising couples positioned their bedrooms, and even their conjugal beds, exactly on the property line between two allotments in order to qualify for both allotments, or 320 acres.

Religious Influences

Both Swedish and Norwegian immigrants carried with them a religious faith that saturated every aspect of their existence. It shaped their behavior, the cycle of their daily lives, and even their community identities. Both groups came from heavily Lutheran environments, where the mandate of “the Word alone, grace alone, faith alone” translated to immediate personal responsibility to God.

Lutheranism, however, was not always a uniting influence for Scandinavians. Subdivisions within the church, called synods, reflected ethnic affiliations. The Swedish Lutherans supported the Augustana synod, and Norwegian Lutheranism included at least six synods. Some of the Norwegian Lutherans were followers of Hans Neilsen Hauge, a reformer who experienced a call to preach the gospel to Nor way while working on his farm. His American followers were pious and hardworking, separating themselves from those whom they regarded as frivolous. Haugeans, for example, abstained from dancing, believing that it facilitated contact between the sexes that was fraught with temptation and spiritual peril.

Swedish Covenant, Methodist, Baptist, Mormon, and a few Roman Catholic denominations also attracted both Swedish and Norwegian immigrants, and each group took their differences seriously. Haugeans, especially, abhorred anything resembling Roman Catholicism, while Catholics regarded Lutherans as spiritual heretics deprived of ritual. Interfaith marriages, when they did occur, alienated entire families; moving to different ethnic or religious communities could result in social isolation. In many instances, an unmarried pregnant woman was not allowed to marry the father of her child if he was not of her religion.

The Swedish and Norwegian pioneers' work ethic was also rooted in their religious orientation. Both groups frowned on complainers; both subscribed to biblical passages reminding the faithful that labor was an opportunity bestowed by God. Sunday Sabbath, however, was observed with diligence—any activity resembling work, even use of scissors or knitting needle, was avoided, and a farmer who worked in his fields on a Sunday invited general disapproval. Sundays were devoted to worship and visiting with neighbors.

Intergroup Relations

Despite the many traits and attitudes they shared, Norwegians and Swedes preserved distance from each other, both socially and theologically. Norwegians tended to view Swedes as somewhat undisciplined, and Swedes typically regarded Norwegians as cold and dour. A cemetery might well have separate sections for each ethnicity; the family of one Norwegian woman, for example, was disappointed that she had to be buried in the Swedish section of a cemetery because she had married a Swedish man.

Poster for a popular late 1890's stage play that built its humor on exaggerated stereotypes of Scandinavian immigrants by depicting its title character as a big, simple-minded, and good-natured oaf. The image at the right shows Yonson about to be victimized by hustlers after his arrival in New York. During the 1960's, the name “Yon Yonson” was again popularized, this time in a musical ditty that begins, “My name is Yon Yonson/ I come from Visconsin.…”

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(Library of Congress)

The Scandinavians' relationships with other immigrant groups were usually civil and often amicable. As long as ethnic boundaries coincided with those of cities and schools, mutual respect prevailed. Sometimes, however, school athletic rivalries became metaphors for national differences, as exemplified by the rivalry between two small towns in southern Minnesota, one predominantly Polish Catholic and the other, Norwegian Lutheran. Rivalries persisted for years, often to the point that character traits were assumed, by each side, to correlate with place of residence. The two small schools did not consolidate until the latter part of the twentieth century.

The ethnic and national boundaries began to blur in the twentieth century. Within the Lutheran Church, ethnic and synodical mergers began to bring Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Germans, and Finns together in worship. Automotive mobility brought together groups of people who had never been face to face before. Religious intermarriages were no longer exotic, much less reprehensible.

However, there was one group with whom the Scandinavian Americans did not get along: the Native Americans. The Native Americans in the areas where Scandinavian Americans settled saw no particular advantage in the mainstream society's intruding into theirs. The Scandinavian immigrants, like other settlers, viewed American Indians' lifestyle as anachronistic and in need of “civilizing.” They defined civilization in terms of religious conversion, manifested by “whitening” of dress and behavior.

A church worker involved in relations between Indian tribes and Scandinavian Americans noted that Norwegians, particularly, were in cultural opposition to the Native Americans. Norwegians were insular, while Native Americans were committed to their communities. Norwegians avoided dependence on others, while to the Native Americans, giving honored both the giver and the recipient. Many of these differences contributed to the cultural separation that persisted into the twenty-first century between Scandinavian Americans and American Indians, particularly in towns bordering Indian reservations.

Although Scandinavian Americans initially sought to immerse themselves totally in the mainstream culture, they gradually took steps to preserve their culture. The colleges they built preserved their ethnic and doctrinal definitions, until, following the path of the ethnic small towns, they, too, became more inclusive. Swedish and Norwegian Americans also established museums and hosted festivals and found them to be not only personally but also economically bountiful. Ethnicity, once a stigma, was now a distinction.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Reinertsen Caranicas, Brenda E. "Scandinavian Immigrants." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0190.

APA 7th

Reinertsen Caranicas, B. E. (2015). Scandinavian immigrants. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Reinertsen Caranicas, Brenda E. "Scandinavian Immigrants." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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