It is the consensus of opinion among competent observers that these northern peoples have been the most useful of the recent great additions to the American race.  They were particularly fitted by nature for the conquest of the great area which they have brought under subjugation, not merely because of their indomitable industry, perseverance, honesty, and aptitude for agriculture, but because they share with the Englishman and the Scotchman the instinct for self-government.  Above all, the Scandinavian has never looked upon himself as an exile.  From the first he has considered himself an American.  In Minnesota and Dakota, the Norse pioneer often preceded local government.  “Whenever a township became populous enough to have a name as well as a number on the surveyor’s map, that question was likely to be determined by the people on the ground, and such names as Christiana, Swede Plain, Numedal, Throndhjem, and Vasa leave no doubt that Scandinavians officiated at the christening.”  These people proceeded with the organizing of the local government and, “except for the peculiar names, no one would suspect that the town-makers were born elsewhere than in Massachusetts or New York."[33] This, too, in spite of the fact that they continued the use of their mother tongue, for not infrequently election notices and even civic ordinances and orders were issued in Norwegian or Swedish.  In 1893 there were 146 Scandinavian newspapers, and their number has since greatly increased.

In politics the Norseman learned his lesson quickly.  Governors, senators, and representatives in Congress give evidence to a racial clannishness that has more than once proven stronger than party allegiance.  Yet with all their influence in the Northwest, they have not insisted on unreasonable race recognition, as have the Germans in Wisconsin and other localities.  Minnesota and Dakota have established classes in “the Scandinavian language” in their state universities, evidently leaving it to be decided as an academic question which is the Scandinavian language.  Without brilliance, producing few leaders, the Norseman represents the rugged commonplace of American life, avoiding the catastrophes of a soaring ambition on the one hand and the pitfalls of a jaded temperamentalism on the other.  Bent on self-improvement, he scrupulously patronizes farmers’ institutes, high schools, and extension courses, and listens with intelligent patience to lectures that would put an American audience to sleep.  This son of the North has greatly buttressed every worthy American institution with the stern traditional virtues of the tiller of the soil.  Strength he gives, if not grace, and that at a time when all social institutions are being shaken to their foundations.

Among the early homesteaders in the upper Mississippi Valley there were a substantial number of Bohemians.  In Nebraska they comprise nine per cent of the foreign born population, in Oklahoma seven per cent, and in Texas over six per cent.  They began migrating in the turbulent forties.  They were nearly all of the peasant class, neat, industrious and intelligent, and they usually settled in colonies where they retained their native tongue and customs.  They were opposed to slavery and many enlisted in the Union cause.