Borderlands of Swedish-Indigenous Encounters – Swedes and American Indians in North America, 1840s-1930s.
The emigration to North America in the 19th and 20th centuries led many Swedes to encounter American Indigenous peoples, and to settle on their land. Despite this, research on immigration and on Indigenous histories have been carried out in separate fields with little or no contact, even though these histories occurred in the same place and at the same time. The purpose of this project is to summarize more than a decade of research into contacts between Swedish immigrants and Indigenous nations. Travel accounts, letters, missionary accounts, objects, and newspapers are combined with maps, court records, and oral accounts to narrate concurrent histories, encounters, and conflicts, and consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. The study is significant as Swedes and Norwegians were among the earliest of European immigrant groups to arrive in large numbers and settle areas not yet dominated by the U.S. They participated in and became tools for a policy of dispossession of Indigenous peoples from the Midwest. Simultaneously, popular images grew in Sweden of particular friendships between Swedes and Indigenous peoples. This research shows how interactions created dependencies and perceptions that connected American Indigenous peoples, Swedish Americans, and Swedes in a transatlantic borderland with consequences for histories of migration and for how the division into separate fields led to both silences and romantic notions regarding “Indians” and Swedes.
Final report
The project’s most important results
For generations of Swedes the image of the many Indigenous peoples of North America, known under the collective designation of Indians, is intimately connected to entertainment and adventure through countless books, movies, television series, and games. However, little is known about how the massive emigration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to contacts between Indigenous people and Swedes. The grant has enabled me to go through a wide variety of disparate sources demonstrating how Swedish emigrants encountered and interacted with many of America’s Indigenous peoples in a conceptual as well as actual borderland which encompassed both North America and the Nordic north. Throughout this landscape humans, knowledge, and perceptions travelled in many different directions. Interactions were of major importance for the migrants’ abilities to establish themselves in a new world, and for spreading ideas, news, and prejudices that in turn impacted how encounters unfolded, and for the consequences for following generations. This research emphatically disproves a persistent tradition in Swedish research which holds that by the time Swedes came to North America, Indigenous peoples had already vanished from the areas where emigrants settled and instead demonstrates the multiple forms that encounters and sometimes conflicts took and how significant these interactions were for the establishment of immigrant settlements. The study also shows how Swedes, as one of the first major groups of new arrivals in northern America participated in and sometimes actively contributed to the colonial policies that drove Indigenous peoples from their homes and land during the decades surrounding the turn of the century 1900.
The research is, and will be, published both in Swedish and English. Firstly, a study of a Swedish settlement near and on an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota, Mille Lacs. The study was made possible through two novel source materials: digitized Swedish-American newspapers and contacts with Mille Lacs Ojibwe-historians and oral histories, which were analyzed in collaboration with American researchers. The article will be published at the end of 2025 in a special issue devoted to Nordic migration in Settler Colonial Studies, entitled ”Swedish Settler Dreams and Ojibwe Struggles on the Mille Lacs Reservation.”
During the fall of 2025, I will finalize a book manuscript in Swedish, with the tentative title Svenskar i Gränsland: Utvandrare möter Urfolk i Nordamerika (Swedes in a Borderland: Emigrants Meet Indigenous Peoples in North America). The project has met with great interest from University of Wisconsin Press to publish the book in English and I am at present discussing with the press how to best go about this. In addition, I am planning one more article in English dealing with Swedes who settle on or nearby reservations. The project as a whole will also be part of a book on Nordic colonialisms, which will be written together with Janne Lahti (Helsinki U. and Linnaeus U.) under contract with Oxford University Press.
Results beyond publications
The project has met with substantial interest from scholars and audiences in both the Nordic countries and North America (primarily USA). In 2023, I was asked to give a keynote presentation on the theme at the NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies) conference, held in Uppsala. In 2025, I was the keynote lecturer at the annual conference for SASS (Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies), which was held in Minneapolis. My presentation on Swedes who settled on the Mille Lacs-reservation (located a couple of hours north of Minneapolis) turned out to be an excellent fit with the conference’s main theme of “Location”. The presentation led to several new contacts with researchers and teachers in North America and to invitations to publish (including U. of Wisconsin Press). Together with other scholars in the Nordic countries who focus on emigration and colonial expansion I have formed a network with a focus on Nordic sources to North American Indigenous histories and culture. This network has inspired several publications and conference presentations and contacts with museums and historical societies on both sides of the Atlantic.
New research directions
Few research tasks that I have undertaken have proved to be as sprawling as this one. The material I work with is large, but disparate. In addition, new information keeps emerging. People who have listened to my presentations, or read about the project on my website, contact me and want to tell me about the experiences of ancestors or family members, and sometimes they share written materials and photographs. I have only managed to scratch the surface and there is a wealth of new questions and directions this research could take. It appears important to investigate further how Swedish – and Nordic – settlements on or near Indigenous reservations unfolded and what consequences it had for both newcomers and Indigenous residents. In this, the digitization of Swedish-American newspapers has been invaluable as it has revealed many hundreds of settlers who have sought homesteads on reservations. Another task is to turn to local archives and publications in the USA and Canada, in which immigrants describe their memories and experiences. My study has demonstrated that such materials often include detailed information which is not present in other kinds of materials, but it is often difficult to access, and many times require actual visits to local historical societies and libraries. Of the greatest importance is to, if possible, collaborate with Indigenous historians to deepen the understanding of how relations developed and what they meant for Indigenous communities as well Nordic. An unexpected, and to some extent surprising, result of my study is that the information regarding encounters is so uneven, and it is particularly sparse regarding the West coast, despite the fact that significant numbers of Swedes settled in the area surrounding and eastward of Seattle. This silence ought to be investigated further, not least as several Indigenous leaders in the area carry surnames that indicate some Swedish connection. This points towards yet another research topic, regarding what it meant for identities, families, and traditions in North America as well as Sweden to be connected to both Indigenous communities and Swedish heritage. Likewise, there is room for studies of the pervasive interest in Indians in Sweden during most of the 20th century, including its relation to perceptions of liberty, individuality, and justice. Finally, I note an interest in the historic development of immigration to Canada, one that I have only been able to touch upon in a cursory manner.
Spreading of results and collaborations
Interest is great also beyond the academy, and on several occasions, I have been asked to present my work at schools, libraries, and local associations. I have also contributed to adding information about Indigenous peoples to the permanent exhibition at the Swedish Emigration Institute, in Växjö (“The new land – dreaming of America”). Contacts have also been made with the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, where the network on Nordic sources held one of its workshops in 2023. The museum is at present undertaking a major revision of their permanent exhibition on the Indigenous peoples of North America.
For generations of Swedes the image of the many Indigenous peoples of North America, known under the collective designation of Indians, is intimately connected to entertainment and adventure through countless books, movies, television series, and games. However, little is known about how the massive emigration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to contacts between Indigenous people and Swedes. The grant has enabled me to go through a wide variety of disparate sources demonstrating how Swedish emigrants encountered and interacted with many of America’s Indigenous peoples in a conceptual as well as actual borderland which encompassed both North America and the Nordic north. Throughout this landscape humans, knowledge, and perceptions travelled in many different directions. Interactions were of major importance for the migrants’ abilities to establish themselves in a new world, and for spreading ideas, news, and prejudices that in turn impacted how encounters unfolded, and for the consequences for following generations. This research emphatically disproves a persistent tradition in Swedish research which holds that by the time Swedes came to North America, Indigenous peoples had already vanished from the areas where emigrants settled and instead demonstrates the multiple forms that encounters and sometimes conflicts took and how significant these interactions were for the establishment of immigrant settlements. The study also shows how Swedes, as one of the first major groups of new arrivals in northern America participated in and sometimes actively contributed to the colonial policies that drove Indigenous peoples from their homes and land during the decades surrounding the turn of the century 1900.
The research is, and will be, published both in Swedish and English. Firstly, a study of a Swedish settlement near and on an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota, Mille Lacs. The study was made possible through two novel source materials: digitized Swedish-American newspapers and contacts with Mille Lacs Ojibwe-historians and oral histories, which were analyzed in collaboration with American researchers. The article will be published at the end of 2025 in a special issue devoted to Nordic migration in Settler Colonial Studies, entitled ”Swedish Settler Dreams and Ojibwe Struggles on the Mille Lacs Reservation.”
During the fall of 2025, I will finalize a book manuscript in Swedish, with the tentative title Svenskar i Gränsland: Utvandrare möter Urfolk i Nordamerika (Swedes in a Borderland: Emigrants Meet Indigenous Peoples in North America). The project has met with great interest from University of Wisconsin Press to publish the book in English and I am at present discussing with the press how to best go about this. In addition, I am planning one more article in English dealing with Swedes who settle on or nearby reservations. The project as a whole will also be part of a book on Nordic colonialisms, which will be written together with Janne Lahti (Helsinki U. and Linnaeus U.) under contract with Oxford University Press.
Results beyond publications
The project has met with substantial interest from scholars and audiences in both the Nordic countries and North America (primarily USA). In 2023, I was asked to give a keynote presentation on the theme at the NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies) conference, held in Uppsala. In 2025, I was the keynote lecturer at the annual conference for SASS (Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies), which was held in Minneapolis. My presentation on Swedes who settled on the Mille Lacs-reservation (located a couple of hours north of Minneapolis) turned out to be an excellent fit with the conference’s main theme of “Location”. The presentation led to several new contacts with researchers and teachers in North America and to invitations to publish (including U. of Wisconsin Press). Together with other scholars in the Nordic countries who focus on emigration and colonial expansion I have formed a network with a focus on Nordic sources to North American Indigenous histories and culture. This network has inspired several publications and conference presentations and contacts with museums and historical societies on both sides of the Atlantic.
New research directions
Few research tasks that I have undertaken have proved to be as sprawling as this one. The material I work with is large, but disparate. In addition, new information keeps emerging. People who have listened to my presentations, or read about the project on my website, contact me and want to tell me about the experiences of ancestors or family members, and sometimes they share written materials and photographs. I have only managed to scratch the surface and there is a wealth of new questions and directions this research could take. It appears important to investigate further how Swedish – and Nordic – settlements on or near Indigenous reservations unfolded and what consequences it had for both newcomers and Indigenous residents. In this, the digitization of Swedish-American newspapers has been invaluable as it has revealed many hundreds of settlers who have sought homesteads on reservations. Another task is to turn to local archives and publications in the USA and Canada, in which immigrants describe their memories and experiences. My study has demonstrated that such materials often include detailed information which is not present in other kinds of materials, but it is often difficult to access, and many times require actual visits to local historical societies and libraries. Of the greatest importance is to, if possible, collaborate with Indigenous historians to deepen the understanding of how relations developed and what they meant for Indigenous communities as well Nordic. An unexpected, and to some extent surprising, result of my study is that the information regarding encounters is so uneven, and it is particularly sparse regarding the West coast, despite the fact that significant numbers of Swedes settled in the area surrounding and eastward of Seattle. This silence ought to be investigated further, not least as several Indigenous leaders in the area carry surnames that indicate some Swedish connection. This points towards yet another research topic, regarding what it meant for identities, families, and traditions in North America as well as Sweden to be connected to both Indigenous communities and Swedish heritage. Likewise, there is room for studies of the pervasive interest in Indians in Sweden during most of the 20th century, including its relation to perceptions of liberty, individuality, and justice. Finally, I note an interest in the historic development of immigration to Canada, one that I have only been able to touch upon in a cursory manner.
Spreading of results and collaborations
Interest is great also beyond the academy, and on several occasions, I have been asked to present my work at schools, libraries, and local associations. I have also contributed to adding information about Indigenous peoples to the permanent exhibition at the Swedish Emigration Institute, in Växjö (“The new land – dreaming of America”). Contacts have also been made with the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, where the network on Nordic sources held one of its workshops in 2023. The museum is at present undertaking a major revision of their permanent exhibition on the Indigenous peoples of North America.