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The Unknown Swedes: A Book About Swedes and America, Past and Present

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In the years 1948-50, while researching the Swedish emigrants to the United States, Vilhelm Moberg wrote a number of articles for several Swedish newspapers. This book contains eight of those articles. Chapter one focuses on what the emigrants knew about America and where they learned it. Chapter two focuses on a fascinating journal kept by a nineteenth century Swedish emigrant, a journal that was apparently one of the cornerstones of Moberg's Emigrant series. The third chapter discusses what he found in a Swedish-American cemetery, while the fourth focuses on the Swedish language newspaper Hemlandet. Chapter five looks at the Church in America (he didn't like it much, but he didn't like the Church in Sweden either). Chapter six discusses what Swedes and Swedish-Americans know about either other, while seven gives his impressions on meeting some Swedish-American relatives, and eight is a rather unfocused explanation of how Swedes have fared in their new country.

The final chapter was written some twenty years after the other eight, and has an entirely different mindset. While he previously liked the United States, he now believes the freedom is dying there, and America is doomed to be a source of emigrants, rather than a destination for them. Finally, he expresses his opinion that American intervention in Vietnam will inevitably result in World War 3, waged between the unfree U.S., and the Soviet Union.

I enjoyed the first chapters of this book. Moberg's observations are quite fascinating, and speak quite clearly to me as an American of Swedish descent. Also, if you are a fan of the Emigrant books, then this book makes quite a fascinating addition, giving you great insights into the origin of those books.

The pill in this book is the final chapter. The first chapters and the Emigrant series were written in the 1950s, while the final chapter and A Time On Earth were written in the 1960s. It is obvious that his mindset was quite different by then (he committed suicide in 1973); his writing was rambling, with a decidedly pessimistic overtone.

So, let me recommend that you get and read this book, but that you feel free to skip the last chapter. Overall, I give this book a somewhat qualified recommendation.