The first visit of Scandinavians to America proper in post-Columbian times occurred in the year 1619, just a year before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. In the spring of that year King Christian IV fitted out two ships, the _Eenhjorningen_ and the _Lamprenen_, for the purpose of finding a northwest passage to Asia. The commander of this expedition was the Norwegian, Jens Munk, born at Barby in southern Norway in 1579. Sailing from Copenhagen with his two ships and sixty-six men May 9, 1619, he explored Hudson Bay and took possession of the surrounding country in the name of his sovereign and gave it the name of Nova Dania. All the members of this expedition perished except Jens Munk and two of his crew, who returned to Norway September 25, 1620, the undertaking having proved a complete failure. The ship chaplain on this expedition was a Danish Lutheran minister, Rasmus Jensen Aarhus, the first minister to preach Lutheranism in the new world. He died February 20, 1620, on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River. His last sermon was a funeral sermon preached from his own death bed. Norwegians and Danes came to New Amsterdam (New York) at a very early period. Traces of Scandinavians in New York can be found as early as 1617. In 1704 these Norwegians and Danes built a stone church on the corner of Broadway and Rector streets, where regular services were held in the Danish language until the property was sold to Trinity Church, the present churchyard occupying the site of the early building. The first directory published in New York shows many names of unquestionable Norwegian or Danish origin. It is well known that the Swedes founded a settlement on the Delaware in 1638, and the Swedish language was used in a Philadelphia church as late as 1823. John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and an active member of the Continental Congress, was a descendant of the Swedes of Delaware. Robert Anderson, the gallant defender of Fort Sumter, against which the first gun of the Civil War was fired, was also a scion of the Swedes on the Delaware, and so it appears that love of freedom and patriotism and statecraft and valor came to America not only in the _Mayflower_ but also in the _Kalmarnyckel_ and _Vogelgrip_, which brought the first Swedish settlers to America in 1638. How many Norwegians landed in America between the years 1492 and 1821 it is impossible to determine. There are no government statistics to guide us and we know there was no regular or systematic emigration from any of the Scandinavian countries. It is certain that no Norwegians came in collective bodies to form settlements, and we can trace them only through their descendants who have kept family records or through public documents or published works where they happen to be mentioned. In this way some of the Scandinavians who settled in New Amsterdam have been found.