| Denmark | Norway | Sweden | Total Sc. | Per cent of immig. | |
| 1820-1830 | 189 | 91 | 280 | .2 | |
| 1831-1840 | 1,063 | 1,201 | 2,264 | .4 | |
| 1841-1850 | 539 | 13,903 | 14,442 | .8 | |
| 1851-1860 | 3,749 | 20,931 | 24,680 | .9 | |
| 1861-1870 | 17,094 | 109,298 | 126,392 | 5.2 | |
| 1871-1880 | 31,771 | 94,823 | 115,922 | 242,516 | 8.6 |
| 1881-1890 | 88,132 | 176,586 | 391,733 | 656,451 | 12.5 |
| 1891-1900 | 52,670 | 95,264 | 230,679 | 378,613 | 9.8 |
| 1901-1910 | 65,285 | 190,505 | 249,534 | 505,524 | 5.7 |
The fluctuations of the annual immigration have been very great, as an inspection of the accompanying chart and the tables in Appendix I, will readily show. The addition of other lines to this chart indicating the fluctuations in the numbers of immigrants from Germany and Ireland, demonstrates that these rather striking variations were chiefly caused by conditions and prospects in America, rather than by circumstances in Europe. In 1849 the total immigration of Norwegians and Swedes passed 2,000, and even reached 3,400, but the terrible scourge of cholera in that year under which so many of the Scandinavians in the West fell, caused a falling off of more than half in 1850. After the panic of 1857, the Danish immigration fell from 1,035 to 252 in one year, while the total from the Northern lands fell steadily from 2,747 to 840 in 1860.
The Civil War disturbed comparatively little the conditions favoring Scandinavian immigration, for the Northwest was never in danger of invasion, and nominal prices for farm produce ranged higher and higher. Furthermore, the Homestead Act of 1862 gave new and cumulative impetus to the immigration which sought farming lands.[151] So from a total of 850 in 1861 (the statistics of Norway show 8,900 emigrants for that year, and those of Sweden, 1,087), the numbers gradually increased, in spite of the war, to 7,258 in 1865. The panic of 1873 did not affect the Scandinavian movement so immediately and seriously as might at first thought be expected, probably because the Northmen were seeking farms in the West, and also because the farmers as a class are about the last to feel the effects of financial crises like that of 1873. As the depression deepened, letters from America to Northern Europe lost their tone of buoyancy and enthusiasm; the eastward flow of passage-money and prepaid tickets almost ceased. At the same time a series of good crops in the three Scandinavian countries caused a rise of wages about 1873, doubling them in some instances.[152] Consequently the current of immigration lost force and volume for several years, the totals dropping, in round numbers, from 35,000 in 1873, to 19,000 in 1874, and to 11,000 in 1877.
After the high-water mark of 105,326 in 1882, reached during the revival of business from 1879 to 1884, the totals did not again fall below 40,000 Scandinavian immigrants per year, until after the industrial and financial stagnation of 1893 to 1896; 62,000 in 1893 became 33,000 in 1894, and 19,000 in 1898. With the prosperity of the first years of the new century in the United States, the number again passed 50,000, reaching another climax in the 77,000 of 1903.
In general, the variations of the curves for the three nationalities under discussion have been nearly co-incident, as for example the high points in 1873 and 1882, and the low points in 1877, 1885, and 1898. The Danish immigration did not rise proportionately with the other two, especially in 1903, probably because of the democratizing of land-ownership in Denmark, and because of the remarkable improvement in methods of cultivation in the course of the nineteenth century.[153] No such decided improvements took place in the other peninsular kingdoms.
Another feature of the fluctuation is entitled to some consideration. In proportion to the population of those nations, the emigration from Norway and Sweden since 1870 has been very large, and such drafts as were made in the years 1882 or 1903 could not be expected to keep up. The periodicity of the ripening of a good “crop” of eligible emigrants for the great American West seems to have been since 1877 from five to eight years. In this connection it is a noteworthy fact that the population in each of the Scandinavian kingdoms, notwithstanding the great emigrations, has steadily tho slowly increased since 1850.[154] For the last decade of the nineteenth century, the figures for the increase were, Denmark, 16.6%, Norway, 10.6%, Sweden 7.3%, United States 20%.[155] In this statistical distribution, account must also be taken of the Scandinavians of the second generation, born in this country of foreign-born parents, since this element, racially speaking, is just as much an alien stock, with its inheritance of tendencies, temperament, and passions, as were the original immigrants. The census of 1910 enumerated among the foreign-born and the native-born of specified foreign parents:[156]
| Foreign-born white | Native white having both parents born in specified country | Total | |
| Danes | 181,621 | 147,648 | 329,269 |
| Norwegians | 403,858 | 410,951 | 814,809 |
| Swedes | 665,183 | 546,788 | 1,211,971 |
| ———— | ———— | ———— | |
| 1,250,662 | 1,105,387 | 2,356,049 |
To these must be added still another group, made up of those persons having a father born in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, and a mother born in one of the other two countries, in other words, persons of pure Scandinavian descent. The number of such in 1910 was 72,152. It does not include, be it noted, those persons of equally pure Norse blood whose parents, one or both, were born in the United States. The minimum number of Scandinavians, then, in the United States in 1910, who must be taken into account in all calculations and estimates of power and influence exercised by that factor of the population, is 2,428,201. If it were desired to bring the estimate up to date, the immigration of 1910-1913 and an approximation of the increase of the native-born, would have to be included, and the grand total of persons of pure Northern stock would not be far from 2,700,000 at the present time (1913).
The distribution of this vast company to the different States of the Union is a consideration of primary importance. The detailed analysis of the motives, processes, and results of the occupation of the Northwestern States by the children of the Northlands, belongs in later chapters.[157] The reasons why the stream flowed to the north of Mason and Dixon’s Line are a combination of climate and a fear and hatred of slavery. If the movement from Scandinavia had begun fifty years earlier, before the anti-slavery agitation became acute, the New Norway and the New Sweden of the nineteenth century, would doubtless still have been in the North and probably in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, for very much the same reason that the Western Reserve was a New Connecticut.