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“New Sweden: The 350th Anniversary of the Settlement of
the Swedes and Finns in Delaware,” an exhibition of books,
pamphlets and maps relating to the Swedish-Finnish
colonization on the Delaware River in 1638, was on view from
March 1 to July 15, 1988, in the Special Collections
Department Gallery in the Hugh M. Morris Library.
More than sixty items selected from Special Collections depict the social, political, economic, military
and religious life of the Swedes and Finns in Delaware.
They include printed accounts by colonists and Swedish
contemporaries, early American histories of the Swedish-
Finish settlements, nineteenth-century American literary
works, and publications from previous commemorative
celebrations.
Among the materials on display relating to events in
New Sweden are
- two rare tracts published in Stockholm in 1625
and 1626 by the Dutch entrepreneur Willem Usselinx
encouraging the establishment of the Swedish South Company
to promote Swedish commerce in the New World;
- a treatise by
Johannes De Laet, historiographer to King Gustavus Adolphus
of Sweden, published by Louis Elzevier in Amsterdam in
1644 concerning the origins of Native American populations;
- and a map engraved by Henricus Hondius from the 1638 edition
of Gerard Mercator’s and Jodocus Hondius’s Atlas Novus
showing Sweden and its provinces at the time of the founding
of New Sweden.
Views of the Swedish-Finnish settlements in Delaware
include three maps from a series known as the Jansson-
Visscher maps:
- one by Nicholas Jansz Visscher
- and another by
Justus Danckers, both issued after 1682,
- and a third
published in a 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus’s
Amerika.
Rare printed materials by the colonists and their
Swedish contemporaries include
- a copy of Martin Luther’s
catechism published in Stockholm in 1696 and translated into
the language of Delaware Indians by Johan Campanius Holm;
- a
dissertation presented at the University of Upsala in 1731
by American-born Tobias Erick Biorck, son the Reverend Eric
Biorck, a Swedish pastor of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes’)
Church in Wilmington, detailing the establishment of the
Swedish Church in America;
- and the published journals of
Swedish botanist and agriculturalist Pehr Kalm, who traveled
through America from 1748 to 1751 and described the old
Swedish-Finnish settlements.
A number of early American regional histories included
information on the Swedish-Finnish colony in American.
Among those selected for the exhibit are
- William Smith’s
History of the Province of New-York (London, 1757),
- Samuel
Smith’s History of the Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New
Jersey (Burlington, N.J.), 1765,
- and Robert Proud’s History
of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1797-98).
In the nineteenth century, the story of New Sweden
became a popular subject for historical fiction. Examples
of this genre include
-
Washington Irving’s farcical A History
of New York (New York, 1809), which contains a humorous
account of the Swedish-Dutch conflict in America and the
fall of Fort Christina;
- Koningsmarke, the Long Finn, A Story
of the New World (London, 1823), by Irving’s friend and
collaborator James Kirke Paulding;
- Printz Hall: A Record of
New Sweden (Philadelphia, 1839) by North Carolina
congressman and author Lemuel Sawyer;
- and Two Hundred Years
Ago: or, Life in New Sweden (Philadelphia [1876]) by New
Castle author Emily Read.
Among the tercentenary materials included are
-
the 1938
English and Swedish editions of New Sweden on the Delaware
by Christopher Ward, a Wilmington historian, lawyer and
author who was executive chairman of the Delaware
Tercentenary Commission and decorated as Commander of the
Royal Order of Vasa by King Gustav V of Sweden.
- The Christopher
Wards papers are housed in the Special Collections Department,
University of Delaware Library.
All items on display are described in an illustrated
catalog published to accompany the exhibit, with an
introduction by John A. Munroe, H. Rodney Sharp Professor
Emeritus of History, and entries compiled by Gary E. Yela,
Assistant Librarian, Special Collections Department. (The
catalog is out of print.)
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