Swedes constitute a considerable ethnic group in Chicago, where a little over 15,000 people are of Swedish ancestry. [1]
Swedes constitute a considerable ethnic group in Chicago, where a little over 15,000 people are of Swedish ancestry. [1]
Like other European ethnic groups, people left Sweden in search of better economic opportunities during the mid-1800s.
In the year 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. By then, Swedes in Chicago, most of whom settled in the Andersonville neighborhood, especially in the years following the Great Chicago Fire, had founded the Evangelical Covenant Church and established such enduring institutions as Swedish Covenant Hospital and North Park University. The fire destroyed much of the Swedish-American community, including four Swedish churches, and as many Swedish newspapers. [2] Other Swedish neighborhoods included Lake View, which at its peak had about 20,000 Swedes. In addition to Chicago, Swedish immigrants settled in Rockford and other parts of Illinois. [3]
Like other Swedish-American communities, the Chicago Swedes had their own newspaper, Hemlandet (Swedish for "The Homeland"). This paper was founded by Johan Alfred Enander, who argued that the Vikings were instrumental in enabling the "freedom" that spread not only throughout the British Isles, but America as well.
Many Chicago Swedes entered the construction business as part working their way up the economic ladder, though most started as carpenters and laborers. The Gust K. Newberg Construction company has emerged as one of Chicago's most prominent architectural firms. It is estimated that Swedes have been involved in building almost half the buildings in Chicago. [2]
Today, Chicago is twinned with Gothenburg, Sweden, a testament to the longstanding connection between Sweden and the Greater Chicago Area. [4]
The following places in Chicago have been founded by Swedes or to preserve Swedish heritage:
Polish Americans are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 8.81 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.67% of the U.S. population, according to the 2021 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Polish Americans are the second-largest Central European ethnic group after German Americans, and the eighth largest ethnic group overall in the United States.
The Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) is a Radical Pietistic denomination of evangelical Christianity. The denomination has 129,015 members in 878 congregations and an average worship attendance of 219,000 people in the United States and Canada with ministries on five continents. Founded in 1885 in North America by Swedish immigrants, the church is now one of the most rapidly growing and multi-ethnic denominations on the continent.
Edgewater is a lakefront community area on the North Side of the city of Chicago, Illinois six miles north of the Loop. The most recently established of the city's 77 official community areas, Edgewater is bounded by Foster Avenue on the south, Devon Avenue on the north, Ravenswood Avenue on the west, and Lake Michigan on the east. Edgewater contains several beaches that residents enjoy during the late spring, summer, and early autumn. Chicago's largest park, Lincoln Park, stretches south from Edgewater for seven miles along the waterfront, almost to downtown. Historically, Edgewater was the northeastern corner of Lake View Township, an independent suburb annexed by the city of Chicago in 1889. Today, the Uptown community is to Edgewater's south, Lincoln Square to its west, West Ridge to its northwest and Rogers Park to its north.
Chicago's demographics show that it is a large, and ethnically and culturally diverse metropolis. It is the third largest city and metropolitan area in the United States by population. Chicago was home to over 2.7 million people in 2020, accounting for over 25% of the population in the Chicago metropolitan area, home to approximately 9.6 million.
Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish ancestry. They include the 1.2 million Swedish immigrants during 1865–1915, who formed tight-knit communities, as well as their descendants and more recent immigrants.
The Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church was a Lutheran church body in the United States that was one of the churches that merged into the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) in 1962. It had its roots among the Swedish immigrants in the 19th century.
Nordic and Scandinavian Americans are Americans of Scandinavian and/or Nordic ancestry, including Danish Americans, Faroese Americans, Finnish Americans, Greenlandic Americans, Icelandic Americans, Norwegian Americans, and Swedish Americans. Also included are persons who reported 'Scandinavian' ancestry on their census. According to 2021 census estimates, there are approximately 9,365,489 people of Scandinavian ancestry in the United States.
Tuve Nilsson Hasselquist was a Swedish American Lutheran minister and church leader. He was the second president of Augustana College, serving from 1863 until his death in 1891.
Lars Paul Esbjörn was a Swedish-American Lutheran clergyman, academic and church leader. Esbjörn was a founder of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church and of Augustana College. He served as the first president of Augustana College from 1860 until his resignation in 1863.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States of America. While the land of the American frontier was a magnet for the rural poor all over Europe, some factors encouraged Swedish emigration in particular. Religious repression and idiosyncrasy practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church was widely resented, as was social conservatism and snobbery influenced by 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.
Swedish Australians are Australians with Swedish ancestry, most often related to the large groups of immigrants from Sweden in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The 2011 Census showed 34,029 people who claimed Swedish ancestry, having an increase compared to those 30,375 in 2006. Most Swedish Australians are Lutherans affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church. They form the largest Scandinavian minority in Australia.
Arvid Frederick Nyholm was a Swedish-American artist, known primarily as a portrait and landscape painter.
Erland Carlsson was a Swedish-American Lutheran minister. He was one of the founders and served as president of the Augustana Lutheran Synod.
The Swedes in Omaha, Nebraska are a long-standing ethnic group in the city with important economic, social, and political ties.
New York City has the largest population of Italian Americans in the United States as well as North America, many of whom inhabit ethnic enclaves in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. New York is home to the third largest Italian population outside of Italy, behind Buenos Aires, Argentina (first) and São Paulo, Brazil (second). Over 2.6 million Italians and Italian-Americans live in the greater New York metro area, with about 800,000 living within one of the five New York City boroughs. This makes Italian Americans the largest ethnic group in the New York metro area.
Chicago and its suburbs have a historical population of Italian Americans. As of 2000, about 500,000 in the Chicago area identified themselves as being Italian descent.
The Mission Friends was an interdenominational Christian, mostly Pietist and Radical Pietist association in Sweden and among Swedish Americans in the United States, that eventually had an impact on several Protestant denominations and their missionary societies today, even outside of Lutheranism, the Swedish community, and the United States, eventually influencing other communities and forming new independent Radical Pietist, Baptist – especially Swedish Baptist – and later on Pentecostal and Charismatic free church denominations.
Svenska Amerikanaren Tribunen is a Swedish-American weekly newspaper which was published in Chicago and read by Swedish immigrants.
Anita Olson Gustafson is an American historian and academic administrator who is the 20th and current president of Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina. She took office on August 1, 2023, and was most recently the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
