Most Norwegians emigrated to America for economic reasons, although some also came for religious freedoms.

Emigration was illegal and population was seen as the wealth of nations. However, the Swedish population doubled between 1750 and 1850, and as population growth outstripped economic development, it gave rise to fears of overpopulation based on the influential population theory of Thomas Malthus.

In the early and mid-19th century, nearly all of the immigrants coming to the United States arrived from northern and western Europe. In 1860, seven out of 10 foreign-born people in the United States were Irish or German. Most of the Irish were coming from poor circumstances.

Swedes, moreover, were among the first founders of America with their New Sweden colony in Delaware. Swedish America was present in Congress under the Articles of Confederation period, and its role was momentous in fighting the war against slavery.

A strong population growth in Sweden increased the pressure on a society that was fundamentally agricultural in nature, and moving to North America provided the Swedish emigrants with economic opportunity not available in the homeland.

Minnesota

Massachusetts

But researchers have long wondered who these settlers were, and where they had come from. Many of the tools they left behind suggested that the first Scandinavians came from the southwest, and migrated northward along Norway’s long and winding coast.

Driven to emigrate by overpopulation, unfulfilled nationalism, and a fractured economy, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians came to Minnesota between 1851 and 1920, making the Twin Cities the unofficial capital of Norwegian America.

Over a quarter of a million Swedes came to Minnesota between 1850 and 1930, drawn primarily by economic opportunities not available to them at home. Once Swedish immigrant settlements were established in the state, they acted as magnets, creating migration chains that drew others.

That data shows that 25% of the state’s foreign-born population was born in Germany, compared to 46% from either Sweden, Norway or Denmark. No other state had a higher share of Scandinavian-born people. Paul, agrees that Germans can often get lost in Minnesota’s Viking heritage.

Reasons for immigration Many immigrants during the early 1800s sought religious freedom. From the mid-1800s however, the main reasons for Norwegian immigration to America were agricultural disasters leading to poverty, from the European Potato Failure of the 1840s to Famine of 1866–68.

Who were the slaves and where did they come from? The Vikings in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland had slaves, or thralls. These thralls probably held multiple roles, serving their masters in many ways in Viking society a thousand years ago.

Pallonji Mistry

The United Kingdom