Swedish emigration to North America

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Farewell to home!": a ship leaving the port in Göteborg, bound to England and then on to America

The Swedish emigration to North America took place between 1840-1910. Like the Irish diaspora it was sparked by poverty in Sweden, which was exacerbated during bad years. Only Britain and Norway had a higher emigration rate. By 1910, Chicago had a greater population of Swedes than Gothenburg. Minnesota was also a place where many Swedish emigrants settled.

Most emigrants were from Småland and left on boats from Gothenburg, travelling via Britain. Several hundred of the passengers who died when the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 were Swedish emigrants with third class tickets.

Vilhelm Moberg, who nearly became an emigrant himself, would later write a monumental epic portraying the lives of two people who emigrated.

The southern Swedish town of Växjö contains the Swedish Emigrant Institute (Svenska Emigrantinstitutet) located in the House of Emigrants (Utvandrarnas Hus), founded in 1965 "to preserve records, interviews, and memorabilia relating to the period of major Swedish emigration between 1846 and 1930 when 1.3 million (about 20%) of the Swedish population left the country". In 1968, research materials Moberg had collected for his epic were donated to the Institute and an exhibition is housed in the House of Emigrants (where the headquarters of the Vilhelm Moberg Society is also based).