SWEDES, NORWEGIANS, AND DANES
The common use of the term Scandinavian to describe Swedes, Norwegians,
and Danes in a broad and general way, is one of the products of the
commingling of these three peoples on the American side of the Atlantic.
The word really fits even more loosely than does the word British to
indicate the English, Welsh and Scotch. It was applied early in the
history of the settlements in Wisconsin and Illinois, to groups which
comprised both Norwegians and Danes on the one hand, or Norwegians and
Swedes on the other hand, when no one of the three nationalities was
strong enough to maintain itself separately, and when the members of one
were inclined, in an outburst of latent pride of nationality, not to say
conceit of assumed superiority, to resent being called by one of the
other names; for example, when a Norwegian objected to being taken for a
Swede. Thus the Scandinavian Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,
organized in 1860, included both Norwegians and Danes; ten years later
the name was changed to the Norwegian-Danish Conference; and in 1884 the
differentiation was carried further, and the Danes formed a new Danish
Evangelical Lutheran Church Association, supplementing the Danish
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which dated back to 1871.
Vigorous protests were made from time to time against the use of
"Skandinavian" or "Skandinav." "Shall we Norwegians let the Danes
persist in calling us Scandinavians?" wrote "Anti-Skandinavian" to the
leading American Norwegian weekly of 1870.[9] He also quoted the
sarcastic words of Ole Bull: "Scandinavia, gentlemen,--may I ask where
that land lies? It is not found in my geography; does it lie perhaps in
the moon?"[10] But the use and acceptability of the word steadily grew;
the great daily paper in Chicago took the name _Skandinaven_; in 1889,
the editor of _The North_ declared: "The term has become a household
word ... universally understood in the sense in which we here use it (to
designate the three nationalities)."[11]
[9] _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_, May 12, 1870: "Skulle vi Norske lade
de Danske fremture i at kalde os Skandinaver?"
[10] "Skandinavien, mine Herrer, tör jeg spörge, hvor det Land ligger?
Det findes ikke i min Geografi; ligger det maaske i Maanen?" Ole
Bull, _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_, May 12, 1870.
[11] _The North_, June 12, 1889.
Ole Bull was, of course, right in saying that there is no Scandinavian
language, no Scandinavian nation; but the ordinary reader or student
does not recognize clearly that Sweden, Norway and Denmark have
different spoken languages (though the Danish and Norwegian printed
language is one), different traditions, as well as different
governments. Almost while these words are being written, the coronation
ceremony in the ancient cathedral at Throndhjem completes the process by
which Norway is severed entirely from Sweden and again assumes among the
powers of earth that "separate and equal station to which the laws of
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."
The physique and characteristics of the three Scandinavian peoples have
been profoundly affected by the physical features of the northern
peninsulas; the mountains, fjords, and extensive coast lines of Norway,
the level stretches, lakes, and regular coast of Sweden, and the low,
sandy islands of Denmark find a counterpart in the varying types of men
and women of those countries. The occupations which necessarily grew out
of these differences of surface and soil tended to give to all a strong,
sturdy, hardy body; farming naturally claims by far the largest
percentage, though great numbers of the men yield to the call of the
sea. Both Norway and Sweden have large lumbering interests, while Norway
leads in fishing industries, Sweden in mining, and Denmark in dairying.
Nature is no spendthrift in any part of the Scandinavian peninsulas;
small economies are the alphabet of her teaching, and her lessons once
learned are rarely forgotten. Her children of the North, therefore, down
to the stolidest laborer, mountaineer, and fisherman, are generally
industrious and frugal, and when they migrate to the American West, to
enter upon the work of pioneering, with its stern requirements of
endurance, patience, persistent endeavor, and thrift, they start out in
the new life with decided temperamental advantages over most other
immigrants, and even over most native-born Americans.
Other characteristics common to these three peoples distinguish them
strikingly from the South European. From their Viking ancestors they
have inherited a love for adventure, a courage in facing the
possibilities of the future. Their hatred of slavery, and their clear,
high ideas of personal and political freedom, are strongly marked, and
their peasantry is ranked highest on the continent.[12] Their
adaptability to changes of clime, of conditions, of circumstance, has
been remarkably demonstrated over and over again, in Normandy in the
11th century, in Sicily in the 12th, and in America in the 19th; yet it
has not degenerated into a facile yielding to moods and whims even under
the rapid changes of New World society.
[12] N. S. Shaler, "European Peasants as Immigrants," _Atlantic_,
LXXI, 649.
The typical Swede is aristocratic, fond of dignities, assertive: he is
polite, vivacious, and bound to have a jolly time without troubling too
much about the far future. Yet he is not afraid of hard work; he is
persistent, ofttimes brilliant, and capable of great energy and
endurance. He is notably fond of music, especially the singing of
choruses and the opera, and the poetry of Bellman and the epics of
Tegner belong to the great literature of the world.
The Norwegian is above all democratic. He is simple, serious, intense,
severe even to bluntness, often radical and visionary, and with a
tendency to disputatiousness.[13] There is an unmeasured quantity of
passion and imagination in him, as there are unmeasured stores of power
and beauty in the snows of his mountains and the waters of his coast. He
has the capacity for high and strenuous endeavor, even verging on the
turbulent, but he rarely has developed the qualities of a great leader.
Like the Swede, the Norwegian is fond of music, but it is of a different
sort. Both in his music and in his literature, the dramatic element is
strong; no names in the realm of literature of the last generation stand
higher than those of Ibsen and Björnson, who are first cosmopolitan and
then Norwegian.
[13] N. P. Haugen comments on the good and bad features of this
tendency in his Norway Day speech at the World's Columbian
Exposition. _Skandinaven_, May 24, 1893.
The Dane is the Southerner of the Scandinavians, but still a
conservative. He is gay, but not to excess; the healthiness and jollity
of a Copenhagen crowd are things to covet. He is pre-eminently a small
farmer or trader, honest and persevering, ready and easy-going, and
altho not given to great risks, he is quick to see a bargain and shrewd
in making it. Of self-confidence and enterprise he manifests a decided
lack.[14] His country is small, open on all sides, and near to great
Powers; his interests, therefore, have led him out from his peninsula
and islands, and foreign influences have more affected him than they
have his neighbors across the Sound and the Skager Rack. His best work
in literature and art has been done under strong Romantic and classic
impulses from the South.
[14] Borchner, _Danish Life in Town and Country_, 3-6; Bille, _History
of the Danes in America_, 1, 7, 8.
Such being the qualities of the peoples of Sweden, Denmark and Norway,
the conditions of life and society in those countries in the first half
of the nineteenth century seem on close examination quite unlikely to
produce a great emigration, in comparison with conditions in other
countries from which large numbers of men and women migrated to America.
There were no great social, economic, or political upheavals sufficient
to cause the exodus of any class; religious intolerance and persecution
were, with few minor exceptions, neither active nor severe. The
Napoleonic wars did not depopulate these northern lands, nor did they,
like their sister nations to the south, suffer seriously from the
commercial restrictions of the Emperor of the French. Militarism did not
crush them with its weight of lead and steel and its terrible waste of
productive energy. Political oppression and proscription, so marked in
the affairs of central and western European states down to 1850, were
not features of the history of Norway, Sweden or Denmark. Though Norway
protested in 1814 in no uncertain terms against the union with Sweden in
a dual monarchy, she was, under the constitution of that year, one of
the freest nations of Europe, "a free, individual, indivisible kingdom."
In Sweden before 1840, one of the chief restrictions on the individual
was potential rather than actual: a man who wished to leave the kingdom
must have a passport from the king, for which he had to pay 300 kroner
(about $81). He would also be under the close supervision of the state
church, to which he was expected to belong.
There were, however, conditions in the home-lands as well as in America,
which impelled immigration. Anyone who has travelled over the fertile
prairies of the Mississippi valley and then through Norway or Sweden,
will often wonder that so many people have been content to remain so
long in the older Scandinavia. In Norway there were in 1910, in round
numbers, 2,390,000 people on an area of 124,000 square miles.[15] Of
this population, about 425,000 were gathered in the larger towns, and
250,000 were in the smaller towns, making a total urban population of
29%, over against 21% twenty years before. The remainder were scattered
over the vast mountainous country or along the coast-line of three
thousand miles.[16] Thousands of fishermen's huts are grappled
barnacle-like to the rocks, while behind them along a trickling thread
of water stretches a precious hand-breadth of soil. The greater part of
the interior is one wide furrowed plateau, in whose hollows, by lakes
and streams, thrifty farmers skilfully utilize their few square yards
of tillable land and pasture their cattle on the steep slopes. Save
around Lake Mjösen, the Leir, Vos, and Throndhjem, there can scarcely be
found in all Norway anything like a broad rich meadow. The farm products
are almost literally mined from the rocks. "It is by dogged, persistent,
indomitable toil and endurance, backed up in some cases by irrepressible
daring, that the Norwegian peasant and fisher-folk--three-fourths of the
population--carry on with any show of success their struggle against iron
nature."[17] Yet in spite of such adverse conditions, these people have
ever clung with passionate tenacity to their mountainous storm-beaten
Norway, and by it have been made brave without bitterness, hardy without
harshness, strong yet tender.
[15] _Statesman's Year-Book, 1914_, 1141 ff.
[16] In 1880, 20% lived in towns; in 1890, 23.7% lived in towns, and
76.3% in the rural districts. _Norway_ (English edition of the
official volume prepared for the Paris Exhibition of 1900), 90.
[17] Wm. Archer, "Norway Today," _Fortnightly Rev._, XLIV, 415.
In Sweden the physical conditions are decidedly different. The area of
172,900 square miles supports a population of 5,600,000 (1912), of whom
50% dwell in cities of which there are now thirty with more than 10,000,
Stockholm leading with 350,000. The urban population increased 166%
between 1871 and 1912.[18] There are few lofty mountains and no jagged
peaks, majestically dominating the outlook; the crag-set fjords are
replaced by gentler bays and sounds sprinkled with beautiful islands; in
some parts of the country, as in Wermland and Smaaland, are low and
marshy sections, where, according to legend, the Lord forgot to separate
the land and water. Agricultural conditions are less hard and means of
communication are better than in Norway; closer relations exist between
provinces and between parishes; information is more readily diffused,
and gatherings of considerable size are held without particular
difficulty.
[18] _Statesman's Year-Book, 1914_, 1316. The increase of urban
population was five times the increase of the kingdom.
Denmark more closely resembles Sweden than Norway, and is in still
better touch with the larger world than either of the others. With an
area of about 15,000 square miles,--Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut, combined--it held in 1911 a population of 2,775,000.
Copenhagen and its suburbs had a population of 560,000. The urban
population was 26%. Unlike the other two, Denmark has several important
colonies in other parts of the world.[19]
[19] _Statesman's Year-Book, 1914_, 789 ff.
In all three countries, as in the rest of Europe, changes in commercial,
industrial, social, legal, and religious matters were sure to be slow.
The tenure and succession in lands, the limited market for labor, the
relatively small opportunity for initiative, especially for the younger
members of considerable families,--all of these conditions with the
characteristics already described, lent added attractiveness to the call
of the American West.