Signs of Sweden in Chicago

Many immigrants from Sweden either ended up in Chicago or came through the town on their way to other places. But you can't tell this from visiting. Instead there are other remnants of Sweden that I just happened to find while walking around. Here is a tour:


The building to the right, very ornate with an American flag on top is the Tribune building (as in the newspaper Chicago Tribune). In its walls, they have inserted rocks and bricks from famous buildings around the world.



Such as a brick from Stadshuset in Stockholm. At least I assume that is what they mean with Ancient Town Hall.


Another brick, this from the Old Swedes Church in the old colony New Sweden, now Delaware, not far from New Jersey. The Swedes were here early, already in the mid 1600s.


Now this is something strange, a "Swedish Viking Monument". This is apparently from somewhere close to Lake Mälaren, our home range in Sweden and according to the inscription "is a fine example of the crudely worked monuments which Sweden's early stone age men placed on the graves of their heroes". It was given to Chicago by the Swedish Museum of History in 1953. Now, first, as far as I remember, the stone age was not 500 AD in Sweden, that must have been the Iron age (correct me if I am wrong... at least the Viking age was around 1000 AD, and there was Bronze and Iron ages between the Stone age and the vikings). Also, I don't remember seeing any carved round stones on either stone age graves or viking graves - have you? Raised stones, yes, runestones, yes, stones in boat formation, yes, heaps of stones, yes, but a round stone on top, no! Maybe a correction is in order here?


I jumped into the famous department store Marshall Field's, which is now Macy's, and down in the basement I found some old leather bound books that were used as props among their antiques for sale. Yep! Swedish, nearly all of them. Classics, like Bonniers Lexicon, Änkleken, and Svenska folkets underbara öden. Maybe they came from some 1880's immigrant's chest of things brought over.




Finally, right outside Marshall Field's was a big construction site, and on it, what met my eye if not some real Swedish: Du Är Vacker ("you are beautiful"). I am not sure if they referred to the construction site or the people that read all the different phrases in different languages. Someone needs to tell them that you don't capitalize all the words in a sentence too :)