A Scandinavian Heritage: 200 Years of Scandinavian Presence in the Windsor-Detroit Border Region

By Joan Magee

The Scandinavian presence has been felt in many parts of Canada, including the Windsor-Detroit border region. A Scandinavian Heritage surveys the numerous contributions made in this area by the people of 5 nations: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The history of these people, from the first settlers to the present is explored in detail. The experiences common to each of the nationalities are shown and contrasted to the unique perspective brought by each group to this country. Included is a survey reflecting the experiences of the present-day Scandinavian community.

To highlight this special history, Joan Magee has included an ample selection of photographs and illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Aug 10, 1996
• ISBN: 9781459713932

Joan Magee

Joan Magee's previous publications include Loyalist Mosaic and A Dutch Heritage. She is a librarian at the University of Windsor and taught Scandinavian Studies there from 1971 to 1981.

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Index

Foreword

Miss Joan Magee has written three books of great interest. A common theme pervades them. A Dutch Heritage was my introduction to it, and to the author. The Loyalist Mosaic fascinates me, as does her study of the national groupings in Canada. A Scandinavian Heritage portrays the enriching role of the Scandinavian community in Essex County.

It is a privilege to contribute a foreword to this narrative. Canada is a land of many people; the Windsor region is typically multi-racial. The Scandinavian community is a case in point. For a long time it has helped to strengthen the heritage of the two founding groups of Canada’s confederation.

The author emphasized in Loyalist Mosaic our multi-ethnic heritage. The Loyalists of the American Revolution were not all English and Anglican; they were as varied as their countries of origin, as were their languages and religions.

The historic sense and well governed enthusiasm of the author of A Scandinavian Heritage give the reader a picture of the adventurous Norsemen, who first came to this continent and their descendants who form part of the Canadian mosaic.

Miss Magee’s books have been needed for a long time; they underline the importance of the racial divisions in our country’s structure and the intention to avoid the melting pot process. The author fortifies this desire and, hopefully, this achievement in her portrayal of the development of a Scandinavian community in the several parts of Canada, where are to be found Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Finns, and Icelanders. We are reminded of the difficulties and privations which attended the adventurous emigres. Not until 1870 was there an acceptable receiving system; it brought with it an increase in the number of willing newcomers, anxious to be relieved of the hard conditions of life in the homeland. Of course, the problems and trials of the new environment require portrayal, so well done by the author.

The achievements of contemporary Scandinavians in Essex County are duly described with references to living personalities. Happily ethnic survival combines pride of historic origins with new surroundings, aims, and achievements.

Miss Magee delights in her writing and enlightens her readers in the process. Her knowledge of the Scandinavians, the multiethnics, the French and the English in Canada strengthens her appreciation of the mosaic character of the Canadian nation. I like to recall the importance given to this concept by the great Sir Wilfred Laurier. He told a university audience in Western Ontario that Canada was the image of a cathedral he had recently visited in England. It was the image of the nation he wished to see Canada become. It was made of marble, oak and granite; here he wanted the marble to remain the marble, the oak the oak, the granite the granite. Out of these elements, he would build a nation great among the nations of the world.

Hon. Paul Martin

Windsor, Ontario

14 February 1985

Preface

In his preface to A Dutch Heritage: 200 Years of Dutch Presence in The Windsor-Detroit Border Region, R. Allan Douglas, Curator of the Hiram Walker Historical Museum of Windsor wrote:

Those who see only the Indians - whatever that vague term means - succeeded by the French and then the British, do themselves a great disservice by overlooking the depth and the variety of the country’s ethnic landscape. It is true that the groups just mentioned have, by reason of the historical process, been largely responsible for the character of life in Essex County. Others, however, from the Albanians to the Zimbabweans, have contributed important variations.

Among those who have contributed to this ethnic landscape are those immigrants who come from the countries often grouped together under the general name of Scandinavia, a term which includes Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and sometimes Finland and Iceland.

The five countries form a varied group. Three are monarchies — Norway, Sweden, and Denmark — while Finland and Iceland are republics. Except for a majority of the Finns, all of these Scandinavians are Nordics. All, with the exception of the majority of Finns, speak a related Nordic language. Only about 7 percent of the people of Finland speak Swedish (a Nordic language) rather than Finnish (a Finno-Ugric language) as their mother tongue. Yet both Swedish and Finnish are official languages in Finland, and many of the younger people are conversant with both having learned the second language in school. The majority of those who speak Swedish as their mother tongue live in the southwestern part of Finland where their ancestors settled in the middle ages.

The Census of Canada has reported the Scandinavian population in a variety of ways since 1871. At first, in 1871 and 1881, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes were reported together as Scandinavians, while Finns were included with Russians. In the 1901 and 1911 Census reports Finns were reported separately. Since 1921 Scandinavian has been divided into Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. Since 1901 Finnish has been reported separately, and has not been included when Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish are at times referred to collectively as Scandinavian in certain census reports. This variety in reporting methods is reflected in the census figures included as Appendices 2-10 of this book.

Within Scandinavia a newer collective name for these countries has gradually come into use during the past 50 years. This is Norden, translated as The North, and it includes all five of the countries mentioned. This book, A Scandinavian Heritage, sponsored by the Norden Society of Windsor, also includes all five countries in this wider definition. Immigrants from each of these five Northern nations will be considered in turn, in the order of their arrival over a period of 200 years, ultimately to form an integral part of Essex County’s ethnic landscape.

Joan Magee

A map of Scandinavia. The five countries Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland are together popularly known to the outside world as Scandinavia. Within Scandinavia since the 1930s these five countries have come to call themselves collectively Norden (The North), in reference to the community which they have formed together.

1

Beginnings:

1000 A.D. to 1850

In the year 985 the first Norse settler, Eric the Red, arrived in Greenland to found a Norse colony that was to survive for 500 years before vanishing from history. Thus 1985 is an anniversary year, marking the founding 1,000 years ago of the first settlement in North America to be established by immigrants from Europe.

The first Europeans to settle in continental North America were also Norsemen of the Viking Age who founded a small colony in Vinland nearly 1000 years ago. The story of this early emigration from the Norse colony in Greenland is told in two Icelandic sagas, Eirik’s Saga and The Saga of the Greenlanders. Although details differ, both tell the main facts about the founding of the Vinland settlement and its brief and unhappy history. The founder was a wealthy Norwegian trader by the name of Thorfinn Karlsefni who, about the year 1011, led an expedition from Greenland to Vinland. According to the Saga of the Greenlanders:

In the end he decided to sail and gathered a company of sixty men and five women. He made an agreement that everyone should share equally in whatever profits the expedition might yield. They took livestock of all kinds, for they intended to make a permanent settlement there if possible.¹

The colony was short-lived, and was abandoned about 1014, after three winters, apparently because of the enmity of the native Skraelings.² Along with the departing colonists went a small child, Snorri Thorfinnsson, the son of the expedition leader and his wife Gudrid. Snorri had been born in Vinland, and was thus the first child of European descent to be born in America.

The recently excavated L’Anse aux Meadows site in Northern Newfoundland has many Norse artifacts, and has been carbon-dated to about the year 1000 A.D. It is quite possible that the Vinland colony was situated there. However, this cannot be said with certainty, for there may well have been other such Norse settlements in America during medieval times.³ Written sources and recent finds in Northeastern Canada show that from about 986 to 1350 the Norse made many voyages from Greenland to the territory now known as Canada.⁴ In the latter half of the fourteenth century the Norse colony in Greenland became weaker, and within the next century it disappeared.⁵ With the gradual decline of the Greenland colony early Norse exploration of America came to a halt.

It recommenced centuries later with the expedition led by Jens Munk, the Norwegian-born son of a Danish nobleman, who set out with two ships in 1619. King Christian IV, ruler of both Denmark and Norway, had given Munk and his men the task of discovering the North West Passage leading to the riches of Asia. The expedition reached Hudson Bay before winter set in, and landed at a site now Churchill, Manitoba. Munk named the land Nova Dania or New Denmark, claiming it in the name of King Christian IV. During the winter of 1619-1620 Munk and his men suffered extreme hardship in their small settlement, many dying from scurvy. Of the 67 men, only Jens Munk and two of his crew survived the harsh winter. After heroic effort, they managed to sail one of the ships to Bergen, Norway, where they arrived 25 September 1620. Angered that they had abandoned a ship in Hudson Bay, King Christian ordered Munk to return to New Denmark with a second expedition to recover the ship and to found a permanent settlement. This voyage did not materialize and no further attempts were made to settle New Denmark.

During the years immediately following Munk’s voyage, 1621-1665, several hundred Scandinavians emigrated to America as settlers for New Netherland. This Dutch colony had been founded by the West Indian Company in 1621 for trading purposes and populated with settlers drawn from the Netherlands. It was a prosperous time for the Dutch and few were willing to leave for an unknown fate in America. Many of those attracted to the thought of emigration were refugees from the religious wars of the time, Protestants from various parts of Northern Europe. Among them were individual Scandinavians willing to settle among the Dutch in New Netherland. One of these was Laurens Andriessen Van Boskerck from Slesvig, the immigrant ancestor of all members of the Van Buskirk family in America. Such Scandinavian settlers were soon integrated into the cosmopolitan population of New Netherland, where they adopted the Dutch language and customs.

In 1638 the Swedes founded the first permanent Scandinavian settlement in America. This colony was located on the Delaware river and was named New Sweden. Dismissed by the Dutch as director-general of New Netherland, the Dutch leader Peter Minuit had gone to Sweden and persuaded the authorities there to found a colony. In the 1630s the Swedes were engaged in warring against the Hapsburgs and the power of Catholic Spain, and were interested in establishing a base for attacking Spanish possessions in the New World. In addition, the Swedes, too, wanted to take part in the profitable colonial trade of this period. In 1637 Sweden chartered the New Sweden Company, a trading company based on the model of the Dutch West India Company. Then Minuit was sent with a party of Swedes and Dutchmen to found a Swedish colony on the Delaware River. There he selected a site where the city of Wilmington now stands and named it Fort Christina in honour of the Swedish princess, later the famous Queen Christina. Minuit was careful to establish New Sweden beyond the limits of the territory claimed by the Dutch, and to make a treaty with the Delaware Indians, peaceably purchasing the right to settle in the Delaware Valley, obtaining all the land west of the River as far to the north as what is now Philadelphia and westward to where the sun sets.

It was difficult to arouse an interest in emigration among the Swedes, and it was hard to find settlers. New Sweden was settled with a few Dutch followers of Minuit in addition to a number of Swedes and Finns. Finland was under Swedish rule at this time, and Finns formed a minority group in Sweden, where their skill in forest crafts was prized.

For 10 years New Sweden grew slowly, with occasional ships arriving with Finnish and Swedish settlers abroad, some of them army deserters, others were people caught poaching in the royal forests. Some Norwegians and Danes also arrived on these ships, while a few Dutch settlers moved from New Netherland to New Sweden. The population had reached only about 600 when in 1655 Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New Netherland sailed up the Delaware with a Dutch fleet of seven ships and seized Fort Christina. Greatly outnumbered, the Swedes gave up the Fort without a fight, ending Swedish claims to the New Sweden. In 1664 the British took the territory from the Dutch when they captured New Netherland.

Although few in number, the Swedes in the Delaware Valley had a strong influence on their fellow settlers in pioneer America. The Swedes and the Finns cleared the forests with great efficiency. They taught the settlers of other nationalities how to construct log cabins, which were much better suited to the rugged American climate than the woodframe houses built by the British colonists. Soon the log cabin became the accepted type of pioneer home on the American frontier, and after the American Revolution, in Canada, as well. The Swedes maintained friendly relations with the Indians, thus paving the way for the work of William Penn in founding Pennsylvania.

The Norwegians among the settlers of New Netherland are said to have taught the Dutch in the Catskills the use of waterwheels instead of windmills as a source of power. It is certain that the familiarity of the Scandinavians with forest crafts was of immense benefit to the early Dutch settlers, and influenced future generations of pioneers.

More Swedish and Finnish immigrants continued to arrive in the Delaware Valley as late as 1664. In the 1650s some Swedes moved to the present state of Maryland, while others went to Virginia. Later, more Swedish and Finnish settled on the eastern side of the lower Delaware, and others moved to the north and northwest as far as present-day Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Although the British took over political control of New Sweden in 1664, the Swedish language continued to be spoken in certain villages and districts. In 1683 Andreas Rudman, a clergyman in Pennsylvania, sent a report back to Sweden that:

We live scattered among the English and Quakers, yet our language is preserved as pure as anywhere in Sweden. There are about 1,200 persons who speak it.⁶

A replica of a Norse sod building atLAnse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, at a site identified as an early Norse settlement of about the year 1000 A.D.