Chapter 10 In Search of the New Jerusalem: Millennial Hopes and Scandinavian Immigrants to America

The immigration from Scandinavia to America started in the seventeenth century, with the establishment of a Swedish colony near today’s Philadelphia. A large number of dissident groups followed, leaving their homelands for religious, political, or economic reasons. Utopian and millenarian ideas were exported to America and flourished, partly in a sectarian, religious form, partly in a secularized, communitarian form. Scandinavians arriving with later waves of immigration were often motivated by the ideals of “the Land of Promise,” and some by “the Promised Land.” Many Scandinavians also joined the religious community who succeeded in establishing their Zion on the American continent, the Latter Days Saints. This chapter traces some of the connections and networks that constitute a Jerusalem code amid Scandinavian immigrants to America.