Fredrik Ekengren

Materialities on the Move: Identity and Material Culture among the Forest Finns in 17th Century Sweden and America

This chapter takes its departure in the persistent mythology surrounding the so-called forest Finns who migrated from Finland to Sweden and further on to America in the seventeenth century. The forest Finns have traditionally been regarded as a clear-cut and bounded ethnical group, represented by a specific suit of material culture and practices. However, by comparing archaeological remains and written sources from both Sweden and America, it can be argued that the Finnish-speaking migrants fairly quickly transformed their traditions from the homeland and melded their material culture together with practices of various origins. It is suggested that while certain practices may have been used to inscribe the new environment with a sense of familiarity, perhaps as part of a strategy to retain the link to a perceived cultural background, this was likewise an amalgamation where old practices blended with new ones. The forests Finns were thus living within a field of tension between difference and hybridity—a testament to the diversity of early modern Sweden and America.

Sweden in the Delaware Valley: Everyday Life and Material Culture in New Sweden

In 1637 the Swedish Crown, encouraged by Dutch merchants, developed a plan to establish a colonial outpost in America to tap into profitable tobacco and beaver pelt trade. The same year the first cargo ships left Sweden and sailed westwards to claim their piece of America along the Delaware River. Although in many ways unsuccessful and short-lived (the colony collapsed in 1656), New Sweden became a home for generations of colonists. This chapter focuses on the different aspects of their daily life: their longing and desperation, practices of homemaking and domesticating the landscape, their perception and interactions with the neighbouring Native American groups. It discusses the ways material culture was used, exchanged and appropriated by the colonists and the local Lenape and Susquehannock in the processes of meeting, negotiations and daily coexistence. (Less)