ABSTRACT
Nordic migrants arriving in the United States during the nineteenth century before the Civil War entered what was still an agrarian society, and indeed many of these new arrivals were motivated by the possibility of acquiring land in the Midwestern frontier. Those who came from around 1880 until the imposition of immigration restriction legislation in the 1920s entered a profoundly different country, one rapidly being transformed into an industrial and urban society. Given that the United States was a resource rich but population poor country, one with an expansionist vision reflected in the idea of Manifest Destiny, the nation’s doors were open to newcomers when Nordics departed their respective homelands. The first intervention on this open door policy predicated on race occurred shortly after the arrival of Chinese migrants on the Pacific coast. Nordics found themselves in a, comparatively speaking, enviable position. Certainly, the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes found themselves safely and squarely within the boundaries of whiteness.
