Scandinavian Americans
Scandinavian Americans are white citizens of the United States of America who are of Scandinavian, therefore Germanic ancestry (including Danish Americans, Norwegian Americans and Swedish Americans) or Nordic ancestry (Finnish Americans, Greenlandic Americans, Icelandic Americans and Faroese Americans). Most are Lutherans affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or Methodists.
History
Swedes
The first known Swedish-Americans were the settlers of New Sweden, a colony established in 1638 by the New Sweden Company around the area of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. Though it was incorporated into Dutch New Netherlands in 1655, and ceased to be an official territory of the[Realm of Sweden, the Swedish and Finnish colonists were allowed some political and cultural autonomy. However, these original Swedish-Americans intermarried with other colonists and seem to have disappeared as a distinctive grouping before 1776.
Swedish Americans usually came through New York City and settled in the Midwest. Most were Lutheran and belonged to synods now associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, including the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church. A significant fraction, however, were Mormon converts who settled in or near Utah, and a few others in the Midwest converted to Catholicism after being exposed to the religion there. Theologically, they were pietistic; politically, they supported progressive causes and prohibition.
Swedish emigration to the United States reached new heights in 1896, and it was in this year that the Vasa Order of America, a Swedish American fraternal organization, was founded to help immigrants, who often lacked an adequate network of social services.
In the year 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Many others settled in Minnesota in particular as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. In the east, New England became a destination for many skilled industrial workers and Swedish centers developed in areas such as Jamestown, NY; Providence, RI, and Boston, MA. A small Swedish settlement was also begun in New Sweden, Maine.
The largest settlement in New England was Worcester, Massachusetts. Here, Swedes were drawn to the city's wire and abrasive industries. By the early 20th Century numerous churches, organizations, businesses, and benevolent associations had been organized. Among them, the Swedish Cemetery Corporation (1885), the Swedish Lutheran Old People's Home(1920), Fairlawn Hospital (1921), and the Scandinavian Athletic Club (1923). These institutions survive today, although some have mainstreamed their names. Numerous local lodges of national Swedish American organizations also flourished and a few remain solvent as of 2008. Within the city's largest historic "Swedish" neighborhood-Quinsigamond Village--street signs read like a map of Sweden: Stockholm Street, Halmstad Street, and Malmo Street among others. Worcester's Swedes were historically staunch Republicans and this political loyalty is behind why Worcester remained a Republican stronghold in an otherwise Democratic state well into the 1950s.
Many Swedes also came to the Pacific Northwest during the turn of the twentieth century, along with Norwegians. The Swedish immigrants that arrived in recent decades settled mostly in the suburbs of New York and Los Angeles.
