ABSTRACT
Toward the end of 1881, Knut Wicksell gave a lecture in Stockholm (twice) and Uppsala on the importance and causes of emigration, which he also published the following year (Wicksell, 1882).1 His point of departure was that at least 100,000 Swedes had left the country during 1880 and 1881 (the vast majority for the United States), a figure that he considered large for a country of 4.5 million inhabitants. In Sweden, large-scale emigration had begun in the 1860s (Hofsten and Lundström, 1976: 68), with a peak in 1868-9, when 66,000 people departed after fatal harvests. A second wave began in 1879 and continued up until 1893. During this period, more than 565,000 people – the equivalent of 37 percent of all of the emigrants between 1851 and 1930 – left Sweden. The peak years were 1882 (50,000), 1887 (51,000) and 1888 (another 50,000), about eleven per thousand of the total population each year.
