LETTERS FROM AMERICA

SCOTT SEGERSTROM | From famine to fortune - a Swedish immigrant story with a golden twist

As this road trip passed through Boone, North Carolina, I was fortunate enough to sit down with Scott Segerstrom, who shared his family's story, starting with his great-great-grandfather, Anders Frederick Andersson, and his thirteen determined daughters, who all left a life in a cave outside Tybble, Sweden, to seek fortune in Mead, Nebraska. With a calm voice and a yellow notepad, Scott takes us past brutal landowners, famine, and death, through Ellis Island, New York, Wilmington, Boston - all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. - It's the story that echoes together with thousands of other Swedes who all shared a similar fate when leaving Sweden for a better life in the United States of America. But this one has its own golden twist in the end.

TROY CAMPBELL | Hear the creator of House of Songs unravel the Swedish music miracle

The list of Swedish artists on the Billboard 100 is long. Ever since Blue Swede reached number 1 in 1974 with their version of "Hooked on a Feeling", Swedes have frequently appeared on this iconic chart in the American music industry. - A Swedish footprint in popular culture that has become an industry standard. To try and get some answers on how this keeps happening, I drove to Bentonville, Arkansas, to meet up with Troy Campbell, artist, songwriter, and founder of House of Songs, to hear the story of how his life project started, and how it led him to collaborate with international artists while growing a great love for Swedish music, producers, and songwriters. - It's an outsider's view - from the inside.

RON MICHAEL | The story of Birger Sandzén, the Swedish artist and Renaissance Man, who changed the color palette of American Art

I drove the Volvo and Airstream to Lindsborg in Kansas - a town still proud of its Swedish heritage - to talk with Ron Michael, Director of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, about the Swedish artist who put Kansas high on the American art scene. Birger Sandzén was born in Blidsberg, Sweden, in 1871. He studied art in Stockholm with Anders Zorn and Richard Berg and in Paris with Edmond François Aman-Jean. At the age of 23 (1894), he left Sweden for a teaching position at Bethany College in Lindsborg - where he remained for the remainder of his career. - Only 100 years apart! What makes this extra special is that Birger Sandzén's birthplace, "Blidsberg" is in the southern parts of the County where I was born (Skaraborg) almost 100 years later, and that this museum in the middle of Kansas shows a series of motifs from where I grew up: Skara, Läckö, and Kinnekulle.

Sir DONALD GLENN PETERSON | From Värmland in Sweden and War in France - to a Swedish Knight in Colorado

Sir Donald Glenn Peterson's family history starts with his grandfather, Enoch, leaving Sweden at age 19 for a life in the United States, immediately signing up to fight with the US Army in France during WW1, only to return after the war to start a newspaper in Denver, Colorado, building a communication hub for Swedes and Americans alike that stood for three generations. And it culminates with Donald receiving the Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star medal for his long-standing service as Honorary Swedish Consul by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. - This road trip podcast stopped in Denver, Colorado, to hear him tell his family's epic story.

LARS RONÉR | The ten thousand Swedes of Utah (and how language defines home)

Between the 1850s and the early 1900s, approximately 10,000 Swedes left their homeland and emigrated to the United States to join the fast-growing movement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) around Salt Lake City, Utah. - Lars Ronér's family was one of those who came. Hear him tell the story of his family being a part of the Swedes who settled down at "the end of the world" and how a lucky move to San Francisco made him an icon in the advertising world - and how language can define 'home'.