Around Swedish America in 
Day 15 - Nome
The story of how Erik Lindblom found the lonely spot that would make the "Three Lucky Swedes" millionaires in the first place, is worth re-telling.
The short and skinny 42-year old tailor had emigrated to San Francisco from Sweden. There he caught the gold fever and could not talk or think of anything else, until his wife got fed up and told him to go and check it out. With his limited English, he by mistake signed on as a whaler for two years in the Arctic Ocean, thinking he was buying an inexpensive passage to the Klondike. When the whaler stopped at Port Clarence for fresh water supplies, Lindblom took his chance and ran away. A native found the bare-headed white man without any equipment wandering around on the tundra three days later and showed him the way to a settler’s cottage. Here Lindblom asked for the way to the Klondike but they had not even heard about the gold rush. Eventually Erik Lindblom found an English prospector named Blake who promised to show him the way to the Swedish mission station. On the way Blake stopped at a creek someone had told him to investigate, and panned for gold. He understood right away that he made a find but did not want to share his discovery with the "dumb Swede". Lindblom insisted that he had seen gold glitter in the pan, but Blake told him this was nothing.
When the half-starved Erik Lindblom appeared at the Swedish Mission in Golofnin Bay in 1898 ranting about gold, everybody thought he was a bit crazy. But thanks to the religious John Bryntesson, who thought well of everybody, and Jafet Lindberg, a consortium was formed. Late in the night they made an agreement on how they would share their claims, unaware that they were to become the "Three Lucky Swedes". Next morning the three left early and a few days later the schooner they had borrowed from the Mission reached an area where the red-haired tailor said he recognized the mountains. They tied up at the mouth of a river they named Snake River and continued by foot over the tundra. Eventually they reached what was later named Anvil Creek. Here Lindblom had carved the sign "Lindblom’s Mine" on a tree. Bryntesson took out his pan, filled it with sand, and started panning. The pan was only half washed when the bottom started to glitter. "Boys," he shouted, "we are millionaires!"
In the end the Swedes beat Blake to the stake and Lindblom could return a very rich man to California where he became the owner of the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, among many other things. John Bryntesson, who at the age of fifteen had walked barefoot to Oslo from his poor home in Värmland, could return to Sweden in 1905 as one of Europe’s richest men. He wanted to buy Baldersnäs manor near his birthplace but this wish was denied because of his simple origin. Instead he bought the Svaneholm manor with its industries in nearby Svanskog where he lived until 1959. Jafet Lindeberg’s big dream was to return to Vardo in Norway, where the Hammarfest boys had not allowed Samis to come to the Saturday night dances. He got his revenge when he staged an opulent ball to which no Hammarfest boys were invited.
There was no Eskimo or European settlement at Nome before the "Three Lucky Swedes" discovered gold on Anvil Creek. News of the discovery reached the outside world that winter. By 1899, Nome had a population of 10,000 and the area was organized as the Nome mining district. In that year, gold was found in the beach sands for dozens of miles along the coast at Nome, which spurred the stampede to new heights. Thousands more people poured into Nome during the spring of 1900 aboard steamships from the ports of Seattle and San Francisco. By 1900, a tent city on the beaches and on the treeless coast reached 48 km (30 miles), from Cape Rodney to Cape Nome. During the period from 1900 – 1909, estimates of Nome's population reached as high as 20,000 and Nome was the largest city in the Alaska Territory.
Jafet Lindeberg had experienced many prejudices in America, but the worst came from gold rush late-comers who were jealous of the original discoverers, and tried to "jump" the original claims by filing mining claims covering the same ground. Laplanders were the first to be challenged by the dubious lawyers claiming that the land belonged to Americans. Even though the Laplanders were all US citizens, they generally lost their claims in the misconduct of justice that followed. Jafet Lindeberg himself was arrested and his company was ordered to relinquish its claims within twenty-four hours by the "claim-jumper" Carpenter who had brought a judge and soldiers to assist him. The "Nome Daily Chronicle" noted, in 1900, that "hardly a day passes but some new suit is filed, and in nine cases out of ten some unfortunate Swede, whose only crime is that he has worked for a fortune that others wish to obtain through an easier process, is made the defendant..." When the Norwegian-born senator Knute Nelson heard what was going on, he managed to put some limitations on the "Nome Scandal". The bald-faced theft using the federal judiciary was eventually stopped, but provided the plot for Rex Beach’s best-selling novel The Spoilers, which was made into a stage play, then five times into movies, including one version starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. I am not sure who was the inspiration for Marlene Dietrich's role, but it could be Swedish Maja Kry, who under the name of Mae Bale was another type of gold-digger who ended up as the richest woman in Nome with mining claims, fur stores and a hotel.