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Sweden in the Delaware Valley: Everyday Life and Material Culture in New Sweden

På svenska

Author

Editor

  • Magdalena Naum
  • Jonas M. Nordin

Summary, in English

In 1637 the Swedish Crown, encouraged by Dutch merchants, developed a plan to establish a colonial outpost in America to tap into profitable tobacco and beaver pelt trade. The same year the first cargo ships left Sweden and sailed westwards to claim their piece of America along the Delaware River. Although in many ways unsuccessful and short-lived (the colony collapsed in 1656), New Sweden became a home for generations of colonists. This chapter focuses on the different aspects of their daily life: their longing and desperation, practices of homemaking and domesticating the landscape, their perception and interactions with the neighbouring Native American groups. It discusses the ways material culture was used, exchanged and appropriated by the colonists and the local Lenape and Susquehannock in the processes of meeting, negotiations and daily coexistence.

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

169-187

Publication/Series

Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • History and Archaeology

Keywords

  • New Sweden
  • Colonialism
  • Colonial America
  • Archaeology
  • Historical Archaeology
  • Material culture
  • Migration

Status

Published

Project

  • Sweden in the Delaware valley. Everyday life and identities in the seventeenth century colony of New Sweden