För Alltid Svenska

Under the heading discover "Little Sweden" JoAnn and Barry sent this from Kansas ~ a town said to be more Swedish than Sweden.

and then the same week this article from the local--read the full article at http://www.thelocal.se/ 

The town of Lindsborg is known as Little Sweden USA. It was settled by Swedish immigrants way back in the late 1800s and has been making meatballs ever since. This is no ersatz playland imitation of Sverige; as with everything and everyone else in the fine state of Kansas, it is genuine. The Lindsborg community library is stocked with Swedish books; the local college team is known as The Swedes. Its signs are in Swedish as well as English, and hearing Swedish spoken in the street is an everyday occurrence, even if only spoken by a refined elderly gentleman talking to himself in a quaint version his mother tongue so old that no one from Ystad to Haparanda would today have any idea what he is saying.

Many Swedes have relatives here and don't even know it. At a time when the Lutheran Church controlled the lives of Swedes, emigrants who grew tired of awaiting approval from their pastors to leave the parish were simply expunged from local records as if they never existed. In order to assist Swedes investigating their ancestry, Lindsborg today has access to the most detailed genealogy records in the United States.

Lindsborg is home to the biannual Svensk Hyllningsfest, a celebration of Swedish heritage which takes place in odd-numbered years. Don't expect crowds the likes of Berlin's Love Parade; after all, Lindsborg is a small town. What makes a deep impression is the community commitment and sheer enjoyment of efforts to make the festival a success. That other denizen of big cities—apathy—has no place in Lindsborg, where everyone participates in one way or another. From toddlers to seniors, almost everyone owns traditional Swedish clothing and is SO PROUD to wear it. Lindsborg adolescents, rather than scoffing at the past, fight for the privilege to dance in the folkdans group.

What does all this rurality mean? Come find out for yourself; it will do your cynicism a world of good. Kansas is the perfect destination for the quintessential American roadtrip with a Swedish twist. Lindsborg, and Kansas, make for a surprisingly transformational experience. I expected transformation in India, and Ethiopia has had a surprisingly permanent impact on my soul. Kansas, though, came as nothing short of a shock; never did I expect to find so many open-minded people, so much goodwill toward visitors, or so much cloudberry jam in rural America.

Robert La Bua (news@thelocal.se)

Published: 12 Oct 09

On Minnesota's North Shore, this once-rugged village is a cultural outpost.

© Beth Gauper

A cobblestone beach lines Grand Marais' harbor, protected by a breakwall.

A hundred years ago, Grand Marais was a wind-buffeted outpost at the tip of the North Shore, stomping grounds of trappers, loggers and fishermen. The dirt road connecting the village to Duluth often was impassable, and winter provisions had to be brought in by steamer before Lake Superior iced over.

But amid the hardship, there was always art.

Swedish immigrant Anna Johnson was first to create and sell art, at the log trading post she operated with her husband after their 1907 marriage. Trained at Augustana College in Rockford, Ill., she painted, drew and worked in stained glass, leather and ceramics. Some of her many oils now hang in a log replica of her store, the Johnson Heritage Post Gallery.

Other artists came, settling their easels in front of the picturesque fish houses and clapboard churches. One of those artists, a professor from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, founded the Grand Marais Art Colony in 1947. Its classes drew serious artists from the Twin Cities, but also fed the creativity of the locals, many of whom had been taught by Anna Johnson in the schools.

The Art Colony still flourishes in Grand Marais, offering workshops for visual artists,  writers and dancers. The Grand Marais Playhouse has been staging plays since 1971, now in the Arrowhead Center for the Arts, a $3.5 million testament to the importance of arts in a village of only 1,400. The center also is the home base for the North Shore Music Association, which brings in musicians.

 On the harbor, the North House Folk School teaches traditional crafts in a building painted Swedish red and nautical skills on a green twin-masted schooner named the Hjordis.

Creativity, obviously, is in the air.

"It’s that lake,’’ says Jim Mahle, who passes on village lore as a Cook County History Museum volunteer. "You can go anywhere here and get a good scene. It shows why that colony went over so well.’’

Built down a hillside and around a natural harbor, Grand Marais looks good in watercolors and pastels. The Sawtooth Mountains rise behind the village; in front of it, a breakwall connects the rocky outcropping of Artist’s Point to a small white lighthouse.

The surrounding forests are where the artists live, bringing their works into town to sell. Sometimes, however, they can be seen in town. Over Eight Broadway Art Gallery, a sign hangs: "Art in Progress.’’ Inside, a painting of sunset over a lake sat on an easel.

 The community name derives from Swedish for "elm valley"

The first European visitors to the area were French traders who bought furs from the resident Ojibwa Indians in the 17th century. Swedish immigrants arrived in the 1850s to buy farm land along the St. Croix River and beside the lakes of Amador Township.

Almelund was founded in 1887 by John Almquist. The first building was a Lutheran Church. Almquist built a general store and ran it for thirty years until it burned down in 1911. A school was built in 1910. The two-room brick building now houses the Amador Heritage Center.

Still in a prominent place at the center of town is Immanuel Lutheran Church. Originally known as the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Emmanuel Church, the current building was built in 1926.

 4th of July Runners at the start of the Freedom Five in Siren

800 runners start the morning in the tiny town of Siren with a real bang!

After years of taking race pictures this is the first  time  I ever captured on film the gun and the smoke at the start line.  I was excited about that.

And what is so Swedish abut Siren?

 The village was founded in 1846 by Swedish immigrants affiliated with the Pietist movement, led by Erik Jansson. Prior to founding Bishop Hill, Jansson preached to his followers in Sweden the abominations of the Lutheran Church and emphasized the doctrine that the faithful have no sin. As Jansson's ideas became more radical, he began to lose support from many of his sympathizers and was forced to leave the country in the midst of growing persecution. A scout, who Jansson had previously sent to the United States for this very reason, found a suitable location where the Janssonists could set up a utopian community centered around their ideology. In Jansson's vision, this community would become the New Jerusalem, which would soon spread across the world. As a result, from 1846-1856, a migration that would eventually amount to 1400 colonists, left Sweden for their new home in western Illinois.

The colony struggled early on in its life. Many of the first 1000 colonists died from disease on the way to Bishop Hill (named for Eric Jansson's birthplace), while others became disillusioned and stayed in New York. Housing was cold and crowded, while food was scarce. After the first winter, life at Bishop Hill drastically improved. In the next few years housing was upgraded from dugouts to brick living areas, and crops were planted on 700 acres (2.8 km²) of land. By 1849, Bishop Hill had constructed a flour mill, two sawmills, a three story frame church, and various other buildings. The colony was communistic in nature, as dictated by Jansson. Thus, everything was owned by everyone and no one had more possessions than another. Work in the colony was highly rigorous and regimented. It wasn't uncommon to see hundreds of people working together in the fields or large groups of laborers engaged in some other task.

 from Wikipedia

Andersonville is so named because it was originally developed by a farmer named John Anderson. It developed as a Swedish community starting in the 1870s and still serves as a port of entry for the modern trickle of Swedish immigrants, as well as home for second or third generation Swedes moving back in from the country and suburbs.

Andersonville is characterized by a large set of boutiques and restaurants along Clark Street. The pictures below are all taken along or very near that street.

 Andersonville's roots as a community extend well back into the 19th century, when immigrant Swedish farmers started moving north into what was then a distant suburb of Chicago. In the 1850's the area north of Foster and east of Clark was a large cherry orchard, and families had only begun to move into the fringes of what is now Andersonville. The neighborhood's first school, the Andersonville School, was built in 1854 at the corner of those two thoroughfares, and served as the area's primary school until 1908.

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, wooden homes were outlawed in Chicago. Swedish immigrants, who could not afford to build homes of stone or brick, began to move outside of the city's northern limits. Swedish immigrants continued to arrive in Andersonville through the beginning of the 20th century, settling in the newly built homes surrounding Clark Street. Before long, the entire commercial strip was dominated by Swedish businesses, from delis to hardware stores, shoe stores to blacksmiths, and bakeries to realty companies. The local churches, such as Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Bethany Methodist Episcopal Church, and St. Gregory's Roman Catholic Church, were also built by Swedes, and reflected the religious diversity of the new arrivals.

Today, in addition to being one of the most concentrated areas of Swedish culture in the United States, Andersonville is home to a diverse assortment of devoted residents and businesses, including one of Chicago's largest gay and lesbian communities, a large collection of Middle Eastern restaurants and bakeries, and a thriving Hispanic commercial area north of Catalpa Avenue.

Andersonville is now considered one of Chicago's "hot" neighborhoods. It also enjoys nationwide renown for its unique commercial district, comprised almost entirely of locally owned, independent businesses. In 2004, an economic study of Andersonville was reported in newspapers across the globe. It demonstrated what Andersonville locals haev known for a long time: that the locally owned businesses are a crucial part of Andersonville's vitality and quality of life, returning far more to the community in economic benefits and neighborhood involvement than would non-local businesses. Communities everywhere now look to emulate Andersonville as a model of a thriving urban neighborhood.

In the summer of 1853, a cholera epidemic struck many of the first Swedish immigrants. The disease did not affect the Americans. The Americans did everything to help, providing food, clothing, and even medical help.

Almost half of the Swedes died. But the early immigrants wrote to their friends, family, and neighbors urging them to come to Rockford. Although the G & CURR had a bridge across the Rock River by 1853 and ran farther west, Swedish immigrants streamed into Rockford. By 1854 a thousand Swedes lived in the city. By 1862 Rockford counted two thousand Swedes as residents.

THERE'S a little Swedish village tucked away in California's hot San Joaquin Valley.

Kingsburg, between Fresno and Visalia on Route 99, attracted Swedes in the late 1880s, who migrated from Michigan to escape the cold winters.

Kingsburg's known history started with the Natunulu Indians; in the 1850s, it became a sheep ranching town and then a railroad town in 1875 for the Central Pacific Railroad. In the late 1880s the ethnic migration began with a small search party of Swedish men. They were pleased to find fertile farmland, water, mild winters and free government land. For the next 10 years, a steady stream of Swedes moved to the center of the San Joaquin Valley, settling in Kingsburg.

Don't expect another Solvang, which is ultra Danish. Kingsburg is low-key Scandinavian. Buildings along Draper Street, the wide main downtown thoroughfare, have Swedish architectural frontage -- steeply peaked roofs, dormer windows, frontal cross boards, and Swedish flags flying alongside Old Glory.

Brightly painted, stiff-legged Dala horses -- the town's symbol -- unwaveringly guard Draper Street. One is at the alley on Draper between Smith and Marion streets. In the 17th century in Dalarna, Sweden, handcarved, colorful wooden Dala horses were used as barter to supplement income from farming. Hand carved Dala horses are for sale in the town's Swedish gift shop, along with lingonberry jam and other Scandinavian merchandise.

The city's charming water tower, in City Park at Marion and Lewis streets, stands proudly. A replica of a giant metal Swedish coffeepot, complete with spout and handle, it is decorated with pretty painted flowers. At 122 feet tall and illuminated at night, it is a landmark that can be seen for miles around. As a symbol of warmth and welcome, Swedes offer guests a cup of coffee, much as is our custom in the United States. Kingsburg's 60,000 gallon "coffee pot" attests to how welcoming the town is.

The Central Pacific railroad depot, at Draper and California streets, is an historic monument, and the Kingsburg Historical Park celebrates the past with preservation of an old school, farm machinery, antique medical equipment and a 1928 LaFrance fire truck.

With a population of nearly 10,000, Kingsburg is the type of place where folks don't lock their doors and where they can walk without fear at night. The town's demographics have changed since the 1920s, when the Swedish population was about 90 percent. Now Swedes make up only a small percentage. Fortunately, the town's Scandinavian heritage comes alive for Swedish Days in May and the Santa Lucia Festival in December (which this year will be Dec. 6).

I would never have known about this charming town if it were not for an early snowfall in Sequoia National Park. We had planned to take the more-direct northern route out of the park, but at daybreak snow covered the ground and the possibility loomed that the northern road would be closed at any minute.

We hurriedly ate breakfast and quickly headed out the southern route to Visalia, where we turned north on Route 99 on our way back to the Bay Area. It was here that I spotted a billboard for a "little Swedish village." I vowed to come back and investigate this intriguing prospect.

We returned to Kingsburg -- about 30 miles south of Fresno -- for the annual Santa Lucia Festival. As we got out of the car on that December day, an inviting aroma welcomed us. The sweet smell of hot roasted, cinnamon-covered almonds beckoned. Dozens of booths were up along Draper Street, offering handicrafts, jams, soaps, Swedish breads or pastries, and other holiday goodies. Some locals wore traditional Swedish garments