True North

Even if you don't have Scandinavian roots, they are everywhere. My husband just got his DNA results back and surprisingly he has 10% Scandinavian roots. 

The first Scandinavian immigrants to North America came in Viking ships, captained by Leif Ericson, 1,000+ years ago. But that early settlement of "Vinland" at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, failed to take. The seafaring Scandinavians abandoned the New World and didn't return for more than 600 years, giving an Italian latecomer named Columbus the chance to hog the credit for their discovery. 

Today almost 11 million Americans trace their ancestry to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland or Iceland, making Scandinavians collectively the fifth-largest European heritage group.  A greater percentage of the population of Norway and Sweden emigrated to the United States than that of any country besides Great Britain. 

From Chicago to Seattle, through Minneapolis and the Great Plains, Scandinavians laid the rails and broke the sod in America.  Among the many who helped shape their new country:  Charles Lindbergh, Victor Borge, Knute Rockne, Eric Sevareid, Greta Garbo, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Carl Sandburg, Walter Mondale...and even the first "president of the United States" (under the pre-Constitution Articles of Confederation), a Swede named John Hanson. 

Leif Ericson's crew aside, the first Scandinavian immigrants to America were Swedes (and some Finns) who established a colony in Delaware in 1638, not long after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock; "New Sweden" was lost to the Dutch in 1655, however. Norwegians began emigrating in 1825.  

But chances are that your Scandinavian ancestors came to America in one of the great waves of immigration from roughly the 1840s to the 1920s. Governments encouraged emigration, and the United States was depicted as a land of milk and honey. 

Pushed by subsequent crop failures and pulled by the Gold Rush of 1849 and the Homestead Act of 1862, the trickle of Scandinavians to America became a flood. Jobs laying railroads across the growing nation also beckoned. 

Today, the number of Americans of Norwegian descent almost equals the population of Norway. 

Peak periods for US immigration varied by country:

     Sweden, 1850-1920

     Norway, 1836-1920

     Denmark, 1870-1905

     Finland, 1899-1914

     Iceland, 1874-1914

For centuries throughout Scandinavia it was common to take your last from your father's  first name ("patronymic" naming): If your father's first name was Magnus, in Sweden your last name would be Magnusson (or Magnusdotter, for Magnus' daughter, if you were female).  Families in Norway and Denmark also took the father's name for the surname, adding -sen or -datter. The permanent surname, passed on from one generation to the next, that we take for granted didn't become official until 1901 in Sweden and 1923 in Norway, and patronymics persist in Iceland. 

Other names came from the land. Norwegians often used a second last name, which might change depending on the farm they were working: Your ancestor might be Olav Petersen Dal while he was on the Dal farm, but Olav Petersen Li after he moved to Li. 

Still other names were changed in the military and may or may not have been changed back. 

Changing your name in America was common. The Danish Johansen, Jorgensen and Jensen families might all have become Johnsons. 

For those of you with Scandinavian roots, good luck with your research. With all the name changing, your work is cut out for you.