The Finnish Language on the Delaware

E VEN though Finland and Sweden were politically united in the seventeenth century, the common people of Finland maintained their own language, and this was true, to some extent, of the nobility as well.' Thus, when groups of Swedes and Finns migrated to America, both Swedish and Finnish were spoken in the settlements established at Fort Christina (now Wilmington, Delaware), at Fort Elfsborg (just south of Mill Creek on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River), at Upland (now Chester, Pennsylvania), at Tinicum (an island just below Philadelphia), and along the lower reaches of the Schuylkill,2 and eventually, as the settlers moved out from the fortifications, at places like Crane Hook3 and Tacony.4 The records are such that it is impossible to separate satisfactorily the Finns from the Swedes, but the settlers designated Finns in the sources at our command are as follows

Linguistics · Research in Social Sciences · History · Philosophy

• Materialities on the Move

  Open Access•Fredrik Ekengren•Scandinavian Colonialism and the…•2013

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