When Bucks was New Sweden ruled by a 12-year-old girl.
Bucks County in its early history was New Sweden ruled over by a 12-year-old girl.
Let’s get a sense of that time. As a time traveler, you’re from England and visiting a wilderness of deep forests and wild creatures like cougars, wolves and bears. You’re jogging along in your Nike Air Max sneaks on a well-trodden Indian path following the course of the Delaware River south. It’s 40 years before William Penn will bound ashore in Philly to found Pennsylvania. So here you are setting a fast pace on the trail through an area that will become Tullytown where William eventually will build his Pennsbury Manor estate. You suddenly skid to a halt. A foreigner greets you with “Hei, muukalainen!” Huh? That’s “Hi, stranger!” — the common salutation of someone from Finland. Later, you chance upon a Dane in Bristol, then a Swede in the future Croydon. A Dutchman enthusiastically thunders, “Hallo, vreemdelingif!” as you pass through Bensalem. These hardy immigrants are sprinkled about, trading for beaver pelts from the natives to supply the haute couture market in Europe, planting tobacco and building boats to get around the tidal estuary.
You wonder: How did these guys get here?
Many arrived in 1638 aboard the Kalmar Nyckel, a three-masted Swedish tall ship built by the Dutch. The heavily armed cargo hauler nicknamed “the Swedish Mayflower of the Delaware” made four round trips from Gothenburg to help populate the estuary with Scandinavians as far upstream as present-day Morrisville.
I thought about this when Kalmar Nyckel docked at Bristol three years ago. It’s a full-scale replica that took aboard a few VIPs for an hour-long voyage sponsored by the Delaware River Basin Commission to highlight environmental protection efforts on the estuary. In the 1600s, the original ship represented the ambitions of Swedish Queen Christina who had just turned 12. She belatedly entered the empire-building sweepstakes in the Americas where England, France and Spain were flexing muscles. Christina was adventuresome and highly educated. She loved books, dissertations, paintings and sculpture, and eventually could speak eight languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. Religion, philosophy and mathematics were other interests. She lured scientists to Stockholm where she envi- sioned the capital city as the “Athens of the North.”
Christina conceived “New Sweden” in lucrative North America. She zeroed in on a vast frontier between Dutch New Amsterdam (the future New York) and England’s Maryland Colony. The territory – today’s Delaware Valley — was loosely claimed by the Dutch. Nevertheless, Christina decided to plant her flag there. She sent Dutch explorer Peter Minuit aboard the Kalmar Nyckel to the river estuary where he purchased land for settlements from Native Americans. That ensured peace with indigenous tribes and set the pat- tern for William Penn 44 years later.
Kalmar Nyckel was the forerunner of other ships supplying New Sweden. But things didn’t go as planned. The Dutch from New Am- sterdam militarily forced Sweden out in 1655. Many Scandinavians chose to return to Europe. But others remained, first under Dutch rule and then English. By the time Penn arrived in 1682, they could be found in what are today’s Bristol Township, Bensalem, Lower and Upper Southampton and Northampton. When Penn arrived, Swedish settlers served as interpreters between him and local tribes.
These days, little remains of Scandinavian influence in Bucks other than descendant family names and a few locales. Upper Bucks has the hamlet of Finland in Milford. In Churchville, the North and Southampton Reformed Church traces its foundation to Dutch settlers. The village of Historic Fallsington has its 260-year-old Moon-Williamson log house patterned after iconic Swedish log cabin architecture that took hold throughout North America. A more direct link, of course, is Kalmar Nyckel, berthed in Wilmington as the official tall ship of Delaware.
Had New Sweden persevered, it’s likely traditions around here would be unique. We’d be reminding outlanders at Christmas that a reindeer is food, not a pet. It’s a traditional food of Sweden. If you were to get cabin fever this time of year, your Swedish neighbors would say you are “skogstokig” (meaning “forest crazy”). If you had no worries, you’d express it as “igen ko pa isen” (meaning “no cow on the ice”). In the gloom of winter, you’d be demanding “fika,” Swedish for a jolt of caffeine and a donut. Swedes are known to fika five times a day. If a neighbor brought five types of sweets to the fika, which requires seven, it’d be insulting. You’d yell angrily, “Vad fan!” Meaning, “What the devil!”
Of course, young Christina’s New Sweden was too short-lived from 1638 to 1655 to have had that kind of impact.
Sources include “Place Names in Bucks County History” by George MacReynolds (1942). New Sweden’s history can be found on the web at https://colonialswedes.net/brief-history/
Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com
