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I guess it was because they could not part with the mosquitos so many Scandinavians migrated to Minnesota. My grandfathers sister and brother settled in Duluth/Spooner right on the Canadian border 1915 and 1917.
Their first years were absolutely terrible and the women and children should have froozen and starved to death while the men were spending the winters in the forrests, if they hadn’t got help from the Native Americans living in a reservation close by. Duluth and Spooner are still very small places and this area where the brother and his wife settled outside Duluth I think is called Lake of Woods and it is still a very remote area.
I have always wonderad why my relatives choose Minñesota and practically the same terrible life with the mosquitos and hard and cold labor in the lumber industry they just left in Hälsingland Sweden? Everything else would have been better. Others went to California but not them. I have often wondered what was wrong with my relatives that not just went there but also decided to stay? It has often been said it was the strongest and smartest who made it to America but in this case I must say I doubt it.
My own grandfather went with his sister and her kid to Gothenburg 1917 and even managed to get on board the boat but then the police stopped him and took him off the boat and instead sent him to military service since he was in the age for the draft. 1917 Europe was still in the middle of the WW1. That is why I’m still sitting here in Sweden in the beginning of wet and dark winter 2024.
I have been many times to the US but I have never been to Minnesota and I guess you know why by now.
I worked in Duluth and lived near there for twenty years. About six years ago I really decided I needed to leave, but a certain political event intervened. It became reasonably possible again last year, so I did. Now I am among Germans and Swedes and Latin Americans. I only ended up there for a job opportunity, never otherwise would have considered it. I spent a few years in Grand Forks and went from there to Birmingham, Alabama, whereupon which I swore I would never live in a cold, dark place again. But I swore I’d never get remarried, either, and here we are 31 years later.
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May become a new category for grain effects 