Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 9, 2008



During the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States of America. While the virgin land of the U.S. frontier was a magnet for the rural poor all over Europe, some factors encouraged Swedish emigration in particular. The religious repression practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church was widely resented, as was the social conservatism and class snobbery of the Swedish monarchy. Population growth and crop failures made conditions in the Swedish countryside increasingly bleak. By contrast, reports from early Swedish emigrants painted the American Midwest as an earthly paradise, and praised American religious and political freedom and undreamed-of opportunities to better one's condition. Swedish migration to the United States peaked in the decades after the American Civil War (1861–65). Most immigrants became classic pioneers, clearing and cultivating the prairie, while others remained in the cities, particularly Chicago. Many established Swedish Americans visited the old country in the later 19th century, their narratives illustrating the difference in customs and manners. (more...)

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