A Scandinavian Heritage. Joan Magee
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.