"A young Swedish boy finds himself in penniless and alone in California. He travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the West. Driven back over and over again on his journey through vast expanses, Hakan meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre (travel narratives, the bildungsroman,...

Cather's sentimental and somewhat controversial novel tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish pioneers that settles for life in the American prairie. While Alexandra, the family matriarch, is able to turn the family farm into a financial success, her brother Emil must grapple with the tragedy of solace and forbidden love. A novel surprisingly ahead of its time, this proto-feminist work touches upon a wide range of themes, including love,...

"Follows a group of Swedish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century and their experiences trying to forge a life for their families in Swede Hollow, a collection of shacks in a wooded ravine on the edge of the emerging industrial city of St. Paul"--

Ingrid Larsen, a young Swedish immigrant, arrives in Michigan in 1871 to search for her brother who has disappeared into the woods to work the dangerous lumber camps. Destitute and barely hanging on to hope, she encounters a newly-widowed farmer who is struggling to raise five children on his own. Marriage would solve both of their problems, and so Ingrid proposes to a man she barely knows. She will fight to protect her new family-- but the hardest...

Stellan Skarsgard plays Jonas Engström, an enigmatic Swedish detective with a checkered past who arrives in a small town in northern Norway to investigate the death of a teenage girl. As he digs deeper into the heinous killing, his own demons and the tyrannical midnight sun begin to take a toll.