Scandinavian Americans

The broad definition of Scandinavia includes Denmark (without Greenland and the Faroese Islands), Norway, Sweden and the semi-independent Finnish territory of Åland and the Swedish-speaking people of Finland (mostly concentrated in Western Finland). The joint ruling of Denmark and Norway from the mid-14th century until 1814, and then the joint rule of Sweden and Norway until 1905, have contributed towards a coherent culture and language. The Scandinavian languages are all descended from old Norse, and unlike Faroese and Icelandic, which have kept more of the old Norse grammar and spelling, the Scandinavian languages have undergone more or less the same simplifications and are mutually intelligible and readable, although the degree of ease with which people understand each other varies depending on country (and region) of origin.

The term Scandinavia is often misused when the term Nordic is meant. The Nordic countries consists of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland (a semi-independent Danish realm), the Faroese Islands (a semi-independent Danish realm), Åland (a semi-independent Swedish-speaking Finnish realm) and Finland. Sometimes also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are included, due to the tiny group of Estonian Swedes in the archipelago of Northern Estonia. Unlike the three linguistically Scandinavian countries, the Nordic countries have languages that are only partially mutually intelligible (closest being Icelandic-Faroese on one hand and Danish-Norwegian-Swedish on the other).

• Scandinavian immigration to the Americas
• Nordic countries
• Vinland
• New Sweden

• Barton, H. Arnold. "Where Have the Scandinavian-Americanists Been?." Journal of American Ethnic History 15.1 (1995): 46–55. in JSTOR
• Bergman, Klas. Scandinavians in the State House: How Nordic Immigrants Shaped Minnesota Politics (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2017) online review.
• Brøndal, Jørn. Ethnic Leadership and Midwestern Politics: Scandinavian Americans and the Progressive Movement in Wisconsin, 1890-1914 (University of Illinois Press, 2004).
• Brøndal, Jørn. "'The Fairest among the So-Called White Races': Portrayals of Scandinavian Americans in the Filiopietistic and Nativist Literature of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries." Journal of American Ethnic History 33.3 (2014): 5-36. in JSTOR
• Evjen, John O. Scandinavian Immigrants in New York 1630-1674 (Genealogical Pub. Co., Baltimore, 1972)
• Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Scandinavian American Family Album (Oxford University Press, 1997).
• Jackson, Erika K. Scandinavians in Chicago: The Origins of White Privilege in Modern America (U of Illinois Press, 2019) online review
• Lovoll, Odd S. ed., Nordics in America: The Future of Their Past (Northfield, Minn., Norwegian American Historic Association. 1993)
• Norman, Hans, and Harald Runblom. Transatlantic Connections: Nordic Migration to the New World After 1800 (1988).
• Sverdljuk, Jana, et al., eds. Nordic Whiteness and Migration to the USA: A Historical Exploration of Identity (Routledge, 2020).
• Thernstrom, Stephan; Orlov, Ann; Handlin, Oscar, eds. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674375122, (1980) online; scholarly coverage of all groups
• Wisby, Hrolf. "The Scandinavian-American: His Status." The North American Review 183.597 (1906): 213–223. online

• Media related to American people of Scandinavian descent at Wikimedia Commons
• Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey: English translations of 120,000 pages of newspaper articles from Chicago's foreign language press from 1855 to 1938, many from Scandinavian language papers.