By 1930, 1.2 million Swedes had settled in the United States, almost half between 1868 and 1893.  The total exodus reduced Sweden's late 19th century population by about one-fourth.  While most emigrants before 1880 left from rural areas, the majority after World War I came from urban centers.  
 
Their reasons for leaving were as varied as the emigrants themselves: economic difficulties, an exclusive class system, a reactionary government, personal misfortunes, failing farms, and religious intolerance.  By the 1860s, the network of contacts and services including American land companies, state immigration offices, steamship companies, and railroads increased the average Swede's ability to take advantage of opportunities in America. 

Swedish mass immigration to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a part of the economic and social transformation that affected both Europe and North America, when between 1850 and 1950 some fifty million Europeans settled in non-European areas. The mass exodus of some 1.3 million Swedes to the United States, often young and healthy men and women, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was due to the economic and social circumstances in Sweden. "Push and pull" factors on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the establishment of migration links, are other important factors that more precisely determined the scope and course of the migration patterns. A strong population growth in Sweden increased the pressure on a society which was fundamentally agricultural in nature, and moving to North America provided the Swedish emigrants with economic opportunity not available in the homeland. Religious and political reasons played a much smaller role for the move to America, although it was decisive in some instances.

The Settlements in America
As the result of immigration, the population group in the U.S. of Swedish extraction was thus well over one million during the first decades of the twentieth century. However, it was not evenly distributed throughout the country. The early phase of Swedish immigration established the Midwestern states as a prime receiving area. The agricultural areas in western Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and western Wisconsin formed the nucleus of the first Swedish settlements. Migration chains were quickly established between many places in the Midwest and in Sweden, encouraging and sustaining further movement across the Atlantic. After the Civil War, the Swedish settlements spread further west to Kansas and Nebraska, and in 1870 almost 75 percent of the Swedish immigrants in the United States were found in Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.

By 1910 the position of the Midwest as a place of residence for the Swedish immigrants and their children was still strong, but had weakened. Fifty-four percent of the Swedish immigrants and their children now lived in these states, with Minnesota and Illinois dominating. Fifteen percent lived in the East, where the immigrants were drawn to industrial areas in New England. New York City and Worcester, Massachusetts, were two leading destinations. A sizeable Swedish-American community had also been established on the West Coast, and in 1910 almost 10 percent of all Swedish-Americans lived there. There, the states of Washington and California had the largest Swedish-American communities and in Washington, a heavy concentration of Swedish-Americans grew up in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

Minnesota became the most Swedish of all states, with Swedish-Americans constituting more than 12 percent of Minnesota's population in 1910. In some areas, such as Chisago or Isanti counties on the Minnesota countryside north and northwest of Minneapolis, SwedishAmericans made up close to 70 percent of the population. If Minnesota became the most Swedish state in the union, Chicago was the Swedish-American capital. In 1910, more than 100,000 Swedish-Americans resided in Chicago, which meant that about 10 percent of all Swedish-Americans lived there. At the turn of the century, Chicago was also the second largest Swedish city in the world; only Stockholm counted more Swedish inhabitants than Chicago.

The Swedish-American Community
Svenskamerika or Swedish America, as the Swedish-American community began to be referred to around 1900, was a collective description of the cultural and religious traditions which the Swedish immigrants brought to their new homeland. These traditions were both preserved and changed through interaction with American society, and forming the basis for the sense of Swedishness or Swedish-American identity which developed among the immigrants and their descendants.

Swedish America was split, culturally, religiously, and socially, and by the beginning of the twentieth century different Swedish-American institutions, such as churches, organizations, associations, and clubs, formed an intricate pattern which spanned the entire American continent. The largest organizations were the various religious denominations founded by Swedish immigrants in the United States. These churches had their roots in both the religious experience of the homeland and the United States: the Lutheran Augustana Synod was founded by ministers from the Church of Sweden, the Mission Covenant had its Swedish parallel in Svenska Missionsförbundet, and the Evangelical Free Church developed from the Covenant Church. Other "American" denominations also attracted Swedish immigrants as members. In some cases, as with the Baptists, Methodists, Adventists, and the Salvation Army, separate Swedish-language conferences were organized as part of the American mother institution, whereas still others, such as the Congregationalists, Mormons, and Presbyterians, organized Swedish-language services in the American congregations with some regularity.

The Lutheran Augustana Synod was by far the single largest Swedish-American organization, and the total membership in the Swedish-American religious denominations has been estimated to be 365,000 at the end of the immigration era, which means that roughly a quarter of the Swedish-Americans of the first and second generations were members of a Swedish-American church at that time. The larger Swedish-American denominations did not only serve the religious needs of their members, but also founded educational and benevolent institutions, such as colleges, academies, hospitals, orphanages, old people's homes, etc. The Swedish-American institutions of higher education became particularly important, and today a group of American colleges and universities can trace their origins to Swedish immigrants—including Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and North Park University in Chicago.

The secular organizations attracted fewer members. Included here are the mutual-aid societies, which included the Vasa Order, the Svithiod Order, the Viking Order, and the Scandinavian Fraternity of America. In addition there were numerous smaller organizations and clubs scattered throughout Swedish America, with a wide array of purposes. Some examples include organizations for individuals from a particular province in Sweden, whereas others focused on musical, theatrical, educational, or political activities. A small, but vocal Swedish-American labor movement also developed, mainly in the urban areas. At the close of Swedish mass-immigration in the mid-1920s, it has been estimated that the total membership in the secular organizations, both mutual-aid societies and social clubs, stood at 115,000, which represented not quite ten percent of the first and second generation Swedish-Americans.

The different organizations catered to the different needs of its membership--be they religion, sick insurance, or the affection for a particular province in Sweden. However, they also eventually transcended these specific functions and came to serve as places where one could meet fellow country-persons, speak the Swedish language, and participate in the various social activities that were connected with the organization. This was particularly true with the churches and mutual-aid societies.

Swenson Swedish Emigration Research Center http://www.augustana.edu/swenson
American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia www.americanswedish.org
The American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis www.americanswedishinst.org
The Swedish American Historical Society, Chicago www.swedishamericanhist.org/
Kinship Center – the Bridge www.emigrantregistret.s.se
The House of Emigrants, Växjö, www.utvandrarnashus.se