This is one of those, look what I found while searching for something else items.
It seems that the Swedish diplomatic corps have a web site available to them (and to us!) that calls itself “the web site for Swedish Diplomatic Missions abroad.” The site provides a country by country index of information pages, which the diplomats can use as background material about their host county.
In the listing for their Washington DC office is a link to an address book, and one of the entries is titled Swedish America.
It turns out it’s not a big page, and really doesn’t have much content at all; just 2 cities are listed … and one of them is Lindsborg!
The other is Bishop Hill, located in western Illinois. I know there are other Swedish American communities out there; I wonder how they chose our two towns?
10:48 pm on April 19th, 2005
Lindsborg may be noted because Jan Eliasson, the Swedish Ambassador to the US has made 2 or 3 trips here in the last couple of years, most recently for the Palm Sunday performance of the Messiah, and as a guest during last Hyllningsfest. Several local people, including former mayors and others that have travelled to Washington DC have met with him there. Additionally, former Lindsborg resident and BC grad, Bruce Karstadt, is the Exec Dir of the Swedish American Institute in MN, and I believe is also a consul general. The Consul General of NY was also a distinquished Hyllningsfest guest at the last festival in ‘03. We (the community) have made some good friends in high places!
6:23 am on April 21st, 2005
Thanks for the interesting and light hearted news. Went to Embassy page and didn’t find Lindsborg. Bishop Hill is probably listed because of both its historical priority and importance. It is generally considered the beginning of the great migration, and the mass migration is dated from the arrival of Janssen’s colony. The Iowa settlers arrived a year earlier, but are historically not counted. I am not sure why. Perhaps because the Iowa group was much smaller than the Bishop Hill colony.