In 1874 the Icelanders celebrated the millennial anniversary of the settlement of Iceland, and only year before last certain of our fellow-citizens were commemorating the millennial anniversary of the cession of Normandy to Rollo the Dane. In all the thousand years since these colonizations, there has been no diffusion of Gothic blood to compare with the settlement in this country of nearly two million Scandinavian immigrants. Sweden has sent the most, but Norway has contributed a larger proportion of her people than any other country save Ireland. There are certainly half as many of Norse blood here as there are in the fatherland, and they own six times as much farming land. A Norwegian economist estimates that the property owned by his compatriots in this country corresponds in value to the entire national economy of Norway. The crest of the Scandinavian wave passed thirty years ago. The current runs still, but it is a flow of job-seekers rather than of home-seekers. America is no longer so attractive to the land-hungry; besides, their home conditions have greatly improved. By their wonderful development of rural coöperation, the Danes have made themselves the most envied of European peasant farmers. By harnessing their waterfalls, the Norwegians have gained a basis for new industries. The Swedes have drawn the power of half a million horses from their streams, and their multiplying factories take on about ten thousand new hands every year. DISTRIBUTION OF SCANDINAVIAN BLOOD The old Northwest, stretching from Detroit to Omaha, and thence north to the boundary, has been the Scandinavian's "land of Goshen." Here is the "New Sweden" that Gustavus Adolphus dreamed of when he planned a Swedish colony on the Delaware. In 1850, when there were only thirteen thousand of her race in that region, Frederika Bremer then in St. Paul had the vision of a Cumæan sibyl: What a glorious new Scandinavia might not Minnesota become! Here would the Swede find again his clear, romantic lakes, the plains of Scania rich in corn, and the valleys of Norrland; here would the Norwegian find his rapid rivers, his lofty mountains, for I would include the Rocky Mountains and Oregon in the new kingdom; and both nations their hunting-fields and their fisheries. The Danes might here pasture their flocks and herds and lay out their farms on less misty coasts than those of Denmark.... The climate, the situation, the character of the scenery agree with our people better than that of any other of the American States.