PLACE-NAMES IN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES Concerning the Giving of Swedish Place-Names in America

FOLKE HEDBLOM

Translated by WESLEY WESTERBERG

Where history is silent, the land itself often speaks through the names of its rivers and mountains, its villages and farms. Place-names are without question to be counted among the most enduring creations of human thought. ESAIAS TEGNÉR, the Younger, Ur språkens värld, III.

Swedish emigration to North America during the latter half of the nineteenth century is without comparison the greatest in the history of Sweden. Approximately 1.3 million Swedes—a significant part of the nation's population—sailed over the At• lantic and established new homes for themselves and their fami• lies in the far-flung territory of the West. Compared with this folk migration, earlier emigrations from Scandinavia, like the Viking invasions of Normandy and of the British isles, appear almost insignificant. If on the other hand we were to assume for the sake of argument that nothing would be known in the future about Swedish colonization in America except what is derived from place-names, the comparison would be otherwise. The mi• gration to the New World would then seem to be a relatively minor episode.

It is a known fact that there are a good many Swedish names on the map of modern America. An annotated list made by the American-Swedish writer, Vilhelm Berger, was published in Namn och Bygd, III (1938). The list seems to be representative and fairly complete. Even if various names could be added here and there, they would not distort the overall picture either of the character of the treasury of American-Swedish place-names

246 that have been preserved or of its relative size and geographical distribution.1 Berger accounts for a total of approximately 225 different names. The same names appear in several places, for example, Stockholm, Vasa, New Sweden, et al. The number of places with

Swedish names in the United States and Canada is about 300.2 In Normandy alone the number of Scandinavian place-names far exceeds this figure. Names which include tomt or toft, as in• vestigated by Bengt Holmberg, add up to 346.3 No accurate count is available on other names with Scandinavian origin. Still more numerous are the Scandinavian place-names in England and

Scotland and the other British islands.4 They could well num• ber in the thousands. Even if one takes into consideration the fact that the frequency of place-names in America is in general less than in Europe,5 this comparison would show that there is no direct, simple connection between the number of immi• grants and the number of place-names they bequeathed to pos• terity.

"According to information in L. ljungmark, Den stora utvandringen (The Great Emigration, a textbook for Sveriges Radio, Stockholm, 1965), pp. 139 ff. O. R. Landelius, Göteborg author, has an unpublished collection of more than 800 place-names of Swedish origin in America. Included in it also are various Swedish names which have been given by Americans in an American setting and therefore do not indicate Swedish residence. The place-names referred to by Ljungmark are in all cases the same type as the names in Berger's list. Some additional names of the same kind are found in E. Gustav Johnson, "The Study of American Place-Names of Swedish Origin," in Covenant Quarterly, Nov., 1946, and in his "Place- Names and Swedish Pioneers," in Bulletin oj The American Swedish In• stitute, Minneapolis, Vol. V, No. 3, Sept. 1950. approximate figures, including even names of churches, children's homes, etc., in cities. It is often uncertain, from an American point of view, what should be regarded as duplication, as for example: Alfsborg, Elfsborg, Ells- burg, named for Älvsborg in Sweden. SB. Holmberg, "Tomt och toft som appelativ och ortnamnselement," and literature cited in Skrifter utgivna av Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien, XVII. See also: J. A. des Gautries, "Les noms de personnes scandinaves en Normandie de 911 å 1066," Nomina Germanica, XI, and literature cited. "In Lincolnshire alone there are c. 250 names ending in -by and over 100 ending in -torp, according to P. Skautrup, Det Danske Sprogs Historie (History of the Danish Language), I, pp. 99ff. See also especially Harald Lindkvist, Middle-English Place-Names of Scandinavian Origin, I; E. Björkman in Namn och Bygd, 1, pp. 80ff.; E. Ekwall, "The Scandinavian Element," in English Place-Name Society, I; and A. H. Smith, "English Place-Name Elements," Parts 1, 2, in English Place-Name Society, XXV- VI. For Scotland see, among others, articles by W. F. H. Nicolaisen in Scottish Studies. "George R. Stewart, Names on the Land (New York, 1945; rev. ed., Boston, 1958), pp. 418, 444. See also Georgacas's review in Names, VIII, p. 91.

247 The area settled by Swedes in the United States extends es• sentially all the way across the northern part of the country. The Southern states, except for Kansas and Texas, with their warm climate did not attract the Swedes. The densest agglomera• tion of Swedish immigrants around the turn of the century occurred in the North Central states: northern Illinois, Min• nesota, Nebraska, and Michigan. Other strong concentrations of Swedes are to be found in the East—in the New York-Boston area, in the western corner of the state of New York and ad• joining districts—and in the Pacific Northwest. To these areas must be added the neighboring provinces of Canada. Swedish settlements occur more sporadically in intervening states. • By superimposing on a map the place-names catalogued by Berger, the picture of Swedish settlement is shown more clearly concentrated in the upper Middle West and more specifically Minnesota. More than one-third of all the names are found in this state. Illinois, which taken as a whole has more Swedes than Minnesota, turns up only five names, and the large Swedish population in the East and the far West only a few names. The explanation of this sharp difference between Minnesota and Illinois, for example, is obviously to be found in the differ• ent types of settlements. In Minnesota Swedes were a rural people and in Illinois they were urban. Swallowed up by such metrop• olises as Chicago, Rockford, Rock Island, Moline, and others, the immigrants did not contribute place-names aside from sporadic names for churches, homes for the aged, and similar institutions.

In 1930,6 46.1% of the Minnesota Swedes lived in the country, but in Illinois the rural population comprised only 13.8% of first- and second-generation Swedes. In terms of the strictly "rural- farm" population, the figures are 32.5 and 7% respectively. Even in the West Coast states and in the East the relative number of city dwellers is large. Whether or not a group of immigrants generates place-names depends on the type of settlement, al• though other factors are also involved. The Swedish names which have survived on American maps strike the researcher as repetitious and meager. Approximately

"Statistical information from H. Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in North America, 2 vols. (Skrifter utgivna av Kungliga Hu• manistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund), XXXVII. 248 one-third of them are names of places in Sweden: Stockholm, Falun, Malmo, Boxholm, Smolan, etc. The next largest group comprises adapted Swedish surnames like Carlson, Erickson, Dahlgren, Holmquist, or Christian names like Erick, Oscar, Man• da, Olivia. Even nature names follow the same pattern: Bloom Lake, Skogman Lake, Lake Oscar, Ericsson Peake, Point Stock•

holm. The "generics"7 in these latter names are borrowed from the English. The same is true with compound settlement names like Hansonville, Munterville, and Palm Valley. Strict Swedish combinations have often been anglicized; along with Lindsborg and Mariadal can be found Swanburg, and Ericksdale. The spelling is sometimes adapted to English pronunciation: Larsson to Lawson, Vasa to Wausa. Difficult sound sequences are avoided by transposing to corresponding words or forms in English: Biskopskulla to "Bishop Hill," Nya Sverige to "New Sweden." Such names in our context must be considered Swedish in spite of the form; they have been applied in most cases by Swedes themselves. Biblical names also appear, as a rule, in connection with churches and congregations: Betania, Salemsborg. In some places a congregation has been divided into districts; in Vasa, Minnesota, were found Kyrkroten, Göta roten, Skåne, Väster• botten, et al.8

These types of name-giving follow the pattern that was cus• tomary in nineteenth-century America and was inherited from colonial times. Both the native Americans and the immigrants from different countries gave their new settlements place-names or proper names taken from the old country: Cambridge, Paris, Toledo, Lincoln, Bismarck, Thomas. Generics like -burg and -ville were popular at times and were combined with "specifics" from different languages.9 For the Swedes, this type of name- giving was well known from the homeland. New settlements in Norrland, in the northern part of Sweden, received names like Småland and Sibirien, and parishes received names like Gustav

'Swedish place-name research lacks internationally applicable terms for förled and efterled. American researchers use "specifics" and "generics." See Stewart, op. cit., p. 452, with references, and the journal Names. "E. Norelius, Vasa Illustrata, p. 189. "Stewart, op. cit. See distribution charts opposite p. 257. O. Springer, "Ortsnamen in der Neuen Welt" (Place-names in the New World), in Germ.-Roman. Monatsschrift, XXI, pp. 125 ff.

249 Adolf and Vilhelmina.10 Common to these Swedish names in America is the fact that they arose from a deliberate attempt to fix names; places were "christened." Most of the non-Indian names on the map originated in the same way. The question then arises: Was there also, at least within the larger settlements out in the country, any spon• taneous name-giving of the common variety with Swedish noun, adjective, name of person, etc., as root—in other words, an un• conscious name-giving as occurred in the Danelaw in England? The largest and most numerous of the strictly Swedish farming communities where our emigrants could most easily preserve their language and their own life style were found after 1850 in the virgin farmlands near the upper Mississippi River Valley and its tributaries. During the latter part of the nineteenth cen• tury, in such states as Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, arose a series of pioneer communities which in older times were called "settlements" and to which Swedes immigrated in large numbers. Here the Swedes were from the outset a safe major• ity, and the Swedish language was dominant for a long time. None of these settlements, however, has offered more favorable advantages for the use of Swedish names than the adjacent areas which form the largest part of both Chisago and Isanti Coun• ties in Minnesota, northeast of the Twin Cities. Both of these counties together covered an area of 2,223 square kilometers, comparable to almost half of Uppsala län.11 In 1910 the Swedes comprised 75% of the population. From my experience traveling in most sections of Swedish-America, I know that the Swedish language—especially our folk dialect—has nowhere been main• tained so well into the third immigrant generation as here. For the most part the Swedes in this area have been farmers living strictly in the country or in very small communities. The largest place is the town of Cambridge with 1,183 inhabitants (1930). Before Swedish immigration began in 1851—primarily from Da¬ larna, Hälsingland, and Småland—there were only a few insig• nificant scattered settlements. The land had not yet been sur-

10 A. Noreen, "Moderna Bostadnamn" in Namn och Bygd, 1915, pp. 1 ff. Regarding Nordic transferred names see also K. Hald, Vore stednavne, Copenhagen, 1950, pp. 194 ff. and, with respect to England, A. Janzen in Names, V, p. 98. 11 Nelson, op. cit., II, pp. 29-30. 250 veyed. It was part of the huge triangle-shaped wilderness which the Indians handed over to the U. S. Government in 1837-38." Here one could reasonably expect to find a strong concentration of Swedish place-names. But this is not the case. Scanning the modern well-detailed road maps of Minnesota, one finds within these two counties altogether about 45 place-names. Of these only five are unmistakably Swedish: Almelund, Lindstrom, Stark, Dalbo, and Walbo. A possible addition is Braham, which according to Berger is a Swedish form of Abraham. Berger also includes seven "lake- names" like Ogren Lake. In a couple of places I discovered two other names, Bodum and Vibo. Even if one would be able to add a Swedish name or two from manuscripts, old maps or pub• lications, or oral tradition, these would still be surprisingly few in an area where a very large part of the adult population even at the beginning of the twentieth century was monolingually Swedish, where the language of worship was Swedish, and where children went to "Swedish School" in the summer as late as the 1920s. The fact that the Swedish immigrants did not preserve their national or linguistic interests during the administrative parti• tion of the country into counties and townships (comparable to the civil kommunerna in Sweden) is not surprising. It was ac• complished by the end of the 1850s, and state officials made the partition. Chisago and Isanti Counties were divided into 25 townships, and only one bears a Swedish name: Dalbo. That is also the name of the Swedish Lutheran Church in that com• munity, but the origin of the name, according to Berger, is un• certain. Other townships have purely English names like "Maple Ridge," "Fish Lake," and "Oxford," and still others have names like "Wyoming" (Indian origin), "Athens," etc. Even though Swedes in this early period were relatively the most numerous immigrant group in Isanti-Chisago, their total number was not great and at the outset was scattered over a sparsely populated

12 Regarding the history of colonization in this area, see Nelson, op. cit., and Svensk Geografisk Årsbok, 1937; also R. G[rönberge]r, Svenskarne i St. Croix-dalen, Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1879): and W. W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, 3 vols. (St. Paul, 1921-1926); Warren Upham, Minne• sota Geographic Names (St. Paul, 1920. Collections of the Minnesota His• torical Society, XVII).

251 wilderness where hunting, fishing, and lumbering were as im• portant sources of livelihood as farming. An additional factor, sociological in nature, must also be taken into account, in that the older settlers participated only to a small extent in public life. In an article on the large colony of Dalecarlians in Isanti

County, the Rev. Alfred Bergin writes in 1903 as follows:13

During all these years (since the 1850s) it has been left to a few persons, especially "Yankees" from Ireland or some other country, to assume almost all responsibilities. One looks up to these so-called Americans with a childish trust and willingly obeys their slightest nod. ... In politics the Swedes on the basis of their numerical strength have been obliged to partici• pate even if in many instances it has been with reluctance.

But now it is different, continues Bergin. All officials in six town• ships are Swedes, and in the other townships most of the official functionaries are Swedes. In three townships all public officials are Swedish, most of the school teachers are Swedish, etc. "In the future the Swedish language is certain to be more generally studied in the public schools than is now the case." This prediction was not fulfilled. Today in this area Swedish is a dead language in all public situations. It is spoken almost exclusively by the elderly for their enjoyment when the con• versation turns to Sweden or the Swedish-speaking milieu of their childhood. During my travels there in 1966 I met people of the third immigrant generation—the youngest was born in 1921—who freely and without American articulation and accent spoke the dialects of Dalarne or Småland of their grandfather's generation. But they would be the exception. The triumph of the English language is all but complete. The Swedish immigrant farmers during the decades after 1850 learned only as much English as was absolutely necessary; and there was, in their daily milieu of life and work, reasonable need for Swedish names and descriptive designations in the locale where they settled and which they transformed in a few years to a cultural community. Some form of "spontaneous" name- giving supposedly did occur at this point. Was it, in this case, a replica of the name one was accustomed to in the old home in Sweden? Is it possible to trace the origin of a pattern of place-

Prärieblomman (Annual for 1903), (Rock Island, 111.), pp. 117 ff. 252 naming which would have been developed further if Swedish

could have survived as a minority language?14 The old homestead and village in Sweden contained a large and richly varied treasury of place-names. The changing terrain with lakes, streams, rises, valleys, woods, and other vegetation provided the basis for innumerable names. The same was true of property holdings, with infields and outlying fields, arable land and pasture land, hayfields, etc. On the Swedish pioneer farms in the Middle West there were not many counterparts, especially on the prairies in states like Kansas and Nebraska, or for that matter in the hardwood forests of Minnesota. Both 'nature and the settled community show a more uniform and less complicated pattern. The land as a rule is flat; the monotony is broken only by low hills, brooks and rivers, and—in Minne• sota—an occasional lake. The monotony is accentuated by the strict geometric pattern according to which the land is parti• tioned. Every state is divided into a number of counties and these in turn into townships. The township as a rule forms a rectangular figure strictly oriented to the four points of the compass and unrelated to nature's own lines of separation by means of streams, lakes, and hills. Every township is divided into 36 sections, about an English square mile (640 acres) each. The roads follow the boundaries of the sections. Even the in• dividual farms often follow a geometric pattern.

For the new settlers in these surroundings, such designations as hemman or gård must have seemed strange. They were re•

placed by the loan word "farm"15 or by the Swedish word plats

(English: "place"16). The designation for nybyggare was settla¬ re (English: "settler") and for jordbrukare it was farmare (Eng• lish: "farmer"). The neighboring properties were commonly called Svensons farm, Linds plats, etc., or just Svensons and Linds. Families with the same name would be distinguished by such designations as Petersons på kullen ("on the hill") Johnsons på kricken ("on the creek") and Cuba Olsons or Cuba (Olson had

14 Around the turn of the century this was thought possible by Adolf Noreen (Vårt språk, I, p. 97) et. al. Därhemma på vå'r farm (Tape recording in Minnesota. Tape numbered Am 94 in Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet [ULMA], Uppsala, Sweden. References below to Am 84, Am 102, etc., are all to this same Uppsala archive).

253 visited Cuba), or also by reference to the number of the section of land where they lived, as for example in New Gottland, Kan• sas: Peterson i sjuan ("Peterson in the Seventh") and Peterson i åttan ("Peterson in the Eighth"). The customary type of place- name from Central Sweden—Per-Lars, Erik-Ols—seems to be rare. I heard of such a name in the oldest of our larger colonies, Bishop Hill, Illinois (founded 1846), where one of the farms was called Jan-Jans. Names of church parishes were dealt with earlier. Even the fields which were ploughed out of virgin soil did not keep their Swedish nomenclature; everywhere they were called fil ("field"), filen, fila, filarna, filera, and other variations. Different parts of the farm would be called vete-filen ("wheat field," corn-filera ("corn field"). I can not remember any of the hundreds of farmers I met using the word åker." Other parts of the farm would be named as follows: Brä'cket or Ny'bräcket (from the English "break," meaning newly broken ground) ;18 Kliringen or Kleringen ("clearing"), a portion of land where one had klirat ("cleared") the trees for ploughing; Förtingen ("forty" acres, 1/18 of a section) ,19 which the farmer often pur• chased and annexed to his homestead; Åttingen (an "eighty" acre piece, or x/& of a section); Låglanne ("low land"); Wick¬ manlanne (in South Dakota a piece of "land" purchased from one whose name was Wickman); Dalen as in ner i da'la ("down in the hollow"); Långrumpa ("long ridge"), Styggudden (a "bad

'"Där ä min hemplass—"my homeplace" (Am 84). With reference to the landed property itself, the word land, is used—in this case a substitu• tion for the English "land": Mett lann, "my land" (Am 102). " To some extent this could be related to the fact that the Swedish åker was used by the early immigrants as equivalent to the etymologically identical English term of measurement, "acre." Israel Acrelius, priest in New Sweden, Delaware, 1749-56, writes in his Beskrifning Om De Swenska Församlingars Forna och Närwarande Tilstånd uti Det s. k. Nya Sverige . . . (Description of the Former and Present Situation of the Swedish Congregations in the so-called New Sweden . . .) (Stockholm, 1759), p. 119, about the founding of Philadelphia on land within the old Swedish parish of Wicacoa: "The land, 360 acres, was given for that purpose by the three brothers of the family of Swäns Sons . . ." Later (p. 431) he writes that a neighboring cloister in Pennsylvania "sits on about 130 acres of land (åkerland)." Åkerland most likely here means the English "acres." Regarding åkerland in North Swedish dialect, see F. Hedblom, Namn och Bygd, 1947, p. 14.9. 18 Vi plantade ka'rn där opp på brä'cket: "We planted com up there in the clearing" (Am 97); ja feck en kråpp kålrötter på dä ny'bräcket: "I got a crop of rutabagas on the clearing" (Am 100). 254 point of land"); Berglunds högbacken ("level ground"); Bjork• backen ("birch hill"); Wårmbacken ("worm hill"); Kyrkbacken (in Isanti County: "the church grounds"). The great plains which Americans called the "prairies" became on Swedish lips präjjan.20 The fenced-in pasture generally became pa'stern or pa'stert. Only in exceptional instances have I heard the word hage used.21 The enclosure where the cattle were kept at night was called jä'rden ("the yard"). It was surrounded by fe'nset ("fence"), and the animals were injensade ("fenced in"). This is the only word for an enclosure (Swedish: stängsel) that I heard; words like gärdsgård and hage were not appropriate to enclosures so different from the Swedish22 The low-lying fields of meadow grass along Sunrise River in Chisago County were called Re'vermåsen or Ri'vvermasen2s and "lumber camp" be• came lumberkampen, etc. This sampling of names may suffice to illustrate the fact that within the Swedish farming communities there were various names, especially nature names, of genuine Swedish character, but the descriptive vocabulary in the immigrant's language, which should have provided the basis for a nomenclature according to the model of the country districts in Sweden, was partly stymied and partly influenced by the English language. The unfamiliar aspect of the physical surroundings was difficult to accommo• date to the tenor of Swedish words, and the utterly simplified partitioning reduced the need for distinguishing names and ap-

10 Vi ska ut på förtingen ("We're going out to the Forty"), or östra förtingen (East Forty"), or sö'nnre fortingen ("South Forty") as the case may be (South Dakota, author's own recording). 20 Västra präjan, Minnesota. See Nelson, op. cit., p. 230. Smålänska präj• jan, Burnet County, Wisconsin. The name was later changed to "Al• pha," after a milk separator (Am 242). The suffix -an should prob• ably be grouped with names like Sätran, Kumlan, Vasan. See F. Hedblom, De svenska ortnamnen på säter, pp. 164 ff. 21 Därhemma var halve farmen i hage ("Back home, half of the farm was in pasture"); släppte ... ut dom i hagen ("let them out to pasture"). Minnesota (Am 95). 22 A common type of fence in Minnesota was kro'kfeuset. It consisted of tree trunks laid on one another at an angle. See the illustration in Pehr Kalms resa till Norra Amerika, III. (About 1750. Skrifter utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, CXX, p. 15.) 28 For å and bäck the loanwords ri'vver ("river") krick ("creek") are used almost exclusively. On the other hand, sjö ("lake") is retained: över sjöarna å över re'vern ("over the lakes and over the river"), Min• nesota (Am 100). However, in combined place-names it is usually "Lake," as in "Oskar Lake," and "Lake Rosen."

255 pellations. The immigrant's language came to be marked, in the same way as his life style, by a radical oversimplification of cul• tural patterns. His first home was a cave, a log cabin, or a sod house; his furniture and tools were simple, crude, and unembel¬ lished. Many words and expressions in the language he brought

with him from Sweden were superfluous.24 On the other hand, he encountered new conditions which forced him to borrow from the language of his new home. His borrowings included even the most common words in the farmer's daily life, like farm and fil, rivver and Erick. Even differences in Swedish dialects be• tween neighbors had their effect; uncertainty with respect to which Swedish expression was the correct one led to adoption

of the English equivalent.25 In most areas, with the exception of the religious, one lived under the constant pressure of one lan• guage and one culture which appeared to be superior, a pressure which was all the more effective inasmuch as the bulk of the immigrants did not come from the leading social and cultural strata in Sweden, but quite the reverse. They did not come in order to set themselves up as lords of the land but to create for everyone a better existence in a free society about whose governance at the outset they were not concerned. They were also not disposed to isolate themselves but kept in open commun• ications with their environment, which gradually led to the social,

cultural, and linguistic assimilation that is now all but complete.26 This process, especially the shift in language, had the result that the relatively few names and designations, which were strongly influenced by English and which prevailed on the farms and their vicinity, disappeared without opposition. These names now exist only in the memory of the older Swedish-speaking people

21 The pervasive significance of cultural simplification in immigrant com• munities has been strongly underscored by E. Haugen in Norsk i Amerika. pp. 28 ff., and later in his large work, The Norwegian Language in America, 2 vols., 1953. Comparable views on the simplification of cultural forms ("functional and social retreat") in remote communities have been cited by D. Trotzig in the treatise, Slagan (Stockholm, 1943), Nordiska Museets Handlingar, XVII, p. 113 f., and by J. Granlund in the essay, Oxen, oket och smålänningen (Hyltén-Cavellius-föreningens Årsbok 1943). I am grate• ful to Professor Granlund for kindly informing me about this. 2S See F. Hedblom in Svenska Landsmål, 1964. p. 17 passim. ""Regarding efforts within more enlightened circles to preserve and but• tress the Swedish language, see N. Hasselmo, "Language in Exile," in The Swedish Immigrant Community in Transition, 1963, pp. 121 ff.

256 or are preserved in English translations where Langrumpa be• comes "Long Tail" and Styggbacken becomes "Bad Point." Comparable conditions have obtained within related immi• grant groups, especially the Norwegian, whose place-names have been researched by Haugen and Cassidy. The latter's inven• tory of place-names in Dane county, Wisconsin,27 where the Nor• wegian element in the population is especially strong, accounts for a total of 11 Norwegian place-names out of 1,553 that were investigated. With respect to official names (post offices, com• munities, etc.) the Norwegians in Minnesota have nevertheless maintained their national interest more than twice as well as the Swedes, while the Danes had difficulty coming up with ten names.28 Among the Scandinavians the Icelanders in North Da• kota and Manitoba have managed the best. This coincides well with Haugen's observation about the different rates of assimila• tion among the Scandinavian groups.29 It would be interesting to broaden the comparison to other immigrant groups, but this would carry us too far, especially since the necessary documents are lacking or are difficult to ob• tain. It should be added, however, that the American attitude toward place-names from foreign language groups as a rule has been generous. A known example is New York, where, when the city was seized from the Dutch in 1664, only the name of the city itself—Nieuw Amsterdam—was changed; the large sec• tions like Brooklyn, Harlem, Yonkers, and others continue to retain their Dutch names. The period of time which allowed for "spontaneous" place- naming in Swedish was short in most places, at best not more than 50 to 60 years. In one case, at least, it has been consider• ably longer. The Swedish colony of New Sweden in the Dela• ware River Valley was founded in 1638 when the first shipload of colonists set foot on land and the area was occupied for the Swedish crown. However, Sweden could not maintain its posi• tion as a colonial power in America for more than 17 years. New Sweden was seized by the Dutch in 1655 and by the English in

27 F. Cassidy, The Place-Names of Dane County, Wisconsin (Publication of the American Dialect Society, VII). 28 Roy W. Swanson, "Scandinavian Place-Names in the American Dane• law," in Swedish-American Historical Bulletin, II: 3, p. 14. 20 Haugen, The Norwegian Language, I, pp. 228 f., 279 ff. 257

l 1664, but the Swedish language survived there for more than a century, and the Swedish crown continued to send priests to hold Swedish services. The last of these, appointed by Gustaf III, died in 1831. We know that significant numbers of Swedish place-names were located in New Sweden by means of the maps that were drawn up during the last years of the colony by the surveyor, Per Lindeström.30 The names were partly Christian names like Christina skans, Printzhof (residence for Governor Printz), Nya Älvsborg, and partly spontaneous names like Baste

Creek ("Bathhouse Creek"), Fiskekilen (a stream),31 Timmer• ön, Traneudden, Lillefallskilen (a stream), etc. In addition there were Indian and Dutch names that the Swedes sometimes accommodated to their own terminology and sometimes trans• lated. For example, Furuudden ("Pine Point") was the transla• tion of the Indian Koijäkä.3' It is often precarious to determine what is primary and what is secondary in such a transference; one meets the same common problems with respect to place- names everywhere in America. The Swedish names about which we can be reasonably certain are sufficiently numerous to dem• onstrate that in New Sweden the right conditions existed for giving nature names of the Swedish variety, but also that the Swedish place-names had been considerably influenced by the Dutch and English environment. Not many names had been kept in use until our time after the decline of the Swedish lan• guage in the Delaware Valley. O. R. Landelius33 has called at-

30 Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638- 1664, II. Lindeström's map is produced in facsimile opposite p. 514. (Cf. also, among others, Per Lindeström, Resa till Nya Sverige, edited by Alf Åberg.) 31 The generic -kil in this and other Swedish names in New Sweden could well have come about under the influence of the Dutch kil ("stream"), of uncertain origin. See Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, KIL (II) with references. Cf. Swedish kil in place-names like Lysekil, et. al. See, among others, Ortnamnen i Göteborgs och Bohus län, II, p. 131. 32 A. R. Dunlap, Dutch and Swedish Place-Names in Delaware, pp. 29 ff. See also the review by G. Franzén in Scandinavian Studies, XXIX: 3, pp. 142 ff. 33 O. R. Landelius, "Some Extant Swedish Geographic Names in the Delaware Region," in The Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly, IX: 4, pp. 124 ff. Landelius does not mention Upland, which is found on modern maps as a western part of the city of Chester, between Wilmington and Phila• delphia (see, for example, the map in Esther Chilstrom Meixner, Swedish (Landmarks in the Delaware Valley). The name is found in the same location on Lindeström's map (see Amandus Johnson, op. cit., II, opposite p. 514: Vplandh and Vplandhkijlen). According to Johnson (op. eit, I, p.

258 tention to nine names in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area: "Christina River," "Christiana" (a village), "Shellpot Creek" (Swedish: Sköldpadde, meaning "turtle"), "Cobbs Creek" (from the family name Kabb), "Garret Road" (after the Swedish proper name, Gäret), "Longacre Boulevard" (Swedish farm name, Långåker), "Morton" (a town after the Swedish proper name Mårtensson), "Mullica Hill" and "Mullica River" (after Erik Mullica, a Finn from Hälsingland). The Scandinavian immigrants' contribution to modern Amer• ica's treasury of place-names is not significant, whether one views it quantitatively or qualitatively. But it is nevertheless interesting to study these names and the linguistic and communal condi• tions which constitute their background and which are close enough in time for us to follow them in detail. Just as the study of modern dialects casts a light on linguistic changes in the past, this more recent Scandinavian process of name-giving in a strange environment could illuminate in certain respects the problems which always arise concerning place-names at the point of "lan• guage contact."

The most obvious example would be the tremendous extent of Scandinavian place-names on British and French soil during the Viking period. Just as in America, the invaders encountered a native population whose language and prevailing culture — especially in Normandy — soon assimilated them. The fact that they still left such an extensive system of place-names — and in addition a number of loan words in English and French dialects

— does not seem at first to depend, as some would like to think,34 on their number, but rather on their having dominated the po• litical and social situation over a long period of time, giving them the opportunity to determine and establish a pattern of place-

307 passim) a Swedish fort and plantations were found there. He assumes that the place was named after the Uppland province in Sweden. Mean• while the name is found in various places in America and includes in many cases the English "upland," a word which even appears as a loan word in American Swedish: åpplann, a highly situated land-area (ULMA Am 102). Dunlap mentions only a Dutch Fort Oplandt, which he does not link to Upland. The latter is also treated by Ruth L. Pearce, "Welsh Place- Names in Southeastern Pennsylvania," in Names, XI, pp. 37 f. In Welsh it has become Uwchlan. 34 See, for ex., Skautrup, op. cit., p. 98.

259 naming that weathered the changes in language and survived until our time. This is more than the Swedish-Americans of the nineteenth century could accomplish. Place-names, "the most enduring cre• ations of human thought," are still, along with some surnames,35 the only aspect of their language which they bequeathed to con• temporary America. The American language has not deliberately adopted from the Swedish language more than the loan word "smorgasbord," but that, at least, is well known across the whole continent!36

See, among others, Roy W. Swanson, "The Swedish Surname in Amer• ica," in American Speech, III, pp. 468 ff. 30 In passing one should mention the Swedish loan word ombudsman, which has been introduced directly from Sweden in recent years. It is an American equivalent to the Swedish justitieombudsman. Regarding the appointment of an "ombudsman" in New York, see the article in Dagens Ny• heter, Nov. 13, 1966, p. 17, by S. Åhman.

260