The total recorded Scandinavian immigration, according to the statistics of the United States, from 1820 to 1912, is in round numbers 2,200,000. According to the statistics of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which may be disregarded for inaccuracy before 1850, the total falls about 142,000 short of this figure, a difference which may be easily enough accounted for by persons leaving those countries for a more or less indefinite stay in other parts of Europe, before starting for America.[148] The American statistics in later years have sometimes shown larger numbers than the Swedish, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that a great number of emigrants from Finland have passed through Sweden on their way to America and therefore are counted as Swedes.[149] The totals by decades with the percentages of the whole immigration for the decades, is as follows:[150]
Per cent Denmark Norway Sweden Total Sc. 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
[148] Nelson in his _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 253 ff., gives some careful and excellent tables of statistics compiled from official publications of the United States and of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Too much reliance should not be put upon the earlier figures derived from either source. It will also be noted that the European figures are in many cases given in even fifties and hundreds, which savors of estimates rather than of exact statistics. Nelson, p. 244, declares that these foreign statistics, so far as they go, are more reliable than the American.
[149] Sundbärg, _Sweden_ (English Translation), 132; Sundbärg, _Bidrag till Utvandringsfrågan från Befolkningsstatistisk Synpunkt_, 34 ff.
[150] The statistics of Norwegian and Swedish immigration were combined down to 1868, but for convenience here the combination is continued to the end of the decade. Statistical Abstract of the U. S. (1912), 110.
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.