08/19/2026
IMPORTANT NEW RESOURCE!
Swenson Center Helps Bring 1.3 Million Pages of Swedish-American Newspapers Online
The Swenson Swedish American Research Center is pleased to announce the launch of the Swedish American Newspapers Project. In collaboration with the Minnesota Historical Society, Kungliga Biblioteket (the National Library of Sweden), and the American Swedish Institute, 348 Swedish-American newspapers totaling more than 1.3 million pages have been fully digitized and made searchable online. Many of the original newspapers represented in the digital collection are preserved in the Swenson Center’s archives, making the project an important extension of the Center’s longstanding work to collect, preserve, and provide access to Swedish-American historical materials.
The Swedish-language press in North America offers an extraordinary window into the lives, communities, and experiences of Swedish immigrants and their descendants. Over generations, Swedish-language newspapers documented the cultural, social, religious, political, and everyday life of Swedish America, reflecting the diversity of Swedish-American communities across the continent.
The digitization project began in 2011 as a major transatlantic collaboration among libraries and cultural institutions in Sweden and the United States. Augustana College and the Swenson Center have worked with the National Library of Sweden for more than a century to collect and preserve Swedish-American newspapers, many of which now form the core of the digital collection.
Digitization has transformed the ways these materials can be used. Researchers no longer need to travel to consult individual volumes or search issues page by page. Scholars, students, genealogists, and members of the public can now search across more than 1.3 million pages, making it possible to identify people, places, organizations, events, and connections that were previously difficult to uncover.
“This is a very significant step forward for all who are interested in Swedish-American history,” said Dag Blanck, director of the Swenson Center.
The project has received generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Marianne and Marcus Wallenbergs Stiftelse, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, and Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur. Additional digitization has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Digital Newspaper Program, as well as the Evangelical Free Church of America.
The complete collection is available free of charge through the Minnesota Historical Society’s Swedish American Newspapers website
Swedish American Newspapers
