<P> Emigration patterns in the Nordic countries--Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland--show striking variation . Nordic mass emigration started in Norway, which also retained the highest rate throughout the century . Swedish emmigration got underway in the early 1840s, and had the third - highest rate in all of Europe, after Ireland and Norway . Denmark had a consistently low rate of emigration, while Iceland had a late start but soon reached levels comparable to Norway . Finland, whose mass emigration did not start until the late 1880s, and at the time part of the Russian Empire, is usually classified as part of the Eastern European wave . </P> <P> The first European emigrants travelled in the holds of sailing cargo ships . With the advent of the age of steam, an efficient transatlantic passenger transport mechanism was established at the end of the 1860s . It was based on huge ocean liners run by international shipping lines, most prominently Cunard, White Star, and Inman . The speed and capacity of the large steamships meant that tickets became cheaper . From the Swedish port towns of Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg, transport companies operated various routes, some of them with complex early stages and consequently a long and trying journey on the road and at sea . Thus North German transport agencies relied on the regular Stockholm--Lübeck steamship service to bring Swedish emigrants to Lübeck, and from there on German train services to take them to Hamburg or Bremen . There they would board ships to the British ports of Southampton and Liverpool and change to one of the great transatlantic liners bound for New York . The majority of Swedish emigrants, however, travelled from Gothenburg to Hull, UK, on dedicated boats run by the Wilson Line, then by train across Britain to Liverpool and the big ships . </P> <P> During the later 19th century, the major shipping lines financed Swedish emigrant agents and paid for the production of large quantities of emigration propaganda . Much of this promotional material, such as leaflets, was produced by immigration promoters in the U.S. Propaganda and advertising by shipping line agents was often blamed for emigration by the conservative Swedish ruling class, which grew increasingly alarmed at seeing the agricultural labor force leave the country . It was a Swedish 19th - century cliché to blame the falling ticket prices and the pro-emigration propaganda of the transport system for the craze of emigration, but modern historians have varying views about the real importance of such factors . Brattne and Åkerman have examined the advertising campaigns and the ticket prices as a possible third force between push and pull . They conclude that neither advertisements nor pricing had any decisive influence on Swedish emigration . While the companies remain unwilling, as of 2007, to open their archives to researchers, the limited sources available suggest that ticket prices did drop in the 1880s, but remained on average artificially high because of cartels and price - fixing . On the other hand, H.A. Barton states that the cost of crossing the Atlantic dropped drastically between 1865 and 1890, encouraging poorer Swedes to emigrate . The research of Brattne and Åkerman has shown that the leaflets sent out by the shipping line agents to prospective emigrants would not so much celebrate conditions in the New World, as simply emphasize the comforts and advantages of the particular company . Descriptions of life in America were unvarnished, and the general advice to emigrants brief and factual . Newspaper advertising, while very common, tended to be repetitive and stereotyped in content . </P> <P> Swedish mass migration took off in the spring of 1841 with the departure of Uppsala University graduate Gustaf Unonius (1810--1902) together with his wife, a maid, and two students . This small group founded a settlement they named New Upsala in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, and began to clear the wilderness, full of enthusiasm for frontier life in "one of the most beautiful valleys the world can offer". After moving to Chicago, Unonius soon became disillusioned with life in the U.S., but his reports in praise of the simple and virtuous pioneer life, published in the liberal newspaper Aftonbladet, had already begun to draw Swedes westward . </P>

Where did the new immigrants of the late 19th century settle when they arrived here