Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 69

Day 69 - Scandia

The small community of Scandia, founded in 1855, can boast having the oldest existing Swedish Lutheran Church building (1850) for the third-oldest Swedish congregation in Minnesota, the oldest Swedish Lutheran parsonage (1868) in the state, and a monument honoring the first Swedish pioneers to the region.

One of the loveliest Swedish American historic sites in Minnesota that has been developed is the complex of six pioneer structures called Gammelgården, or The Old Farm, 20880 Olinda Trail (651-433-5053; www.scandiamn.com/gammelgarden). The two most important structures historically are the old church (gammelkyrkan) and the parsonage (präst hus). In addition, there are an authentic Swedish red stuga, the immigrant house, barn (ladugård), corn crib, and windmill. In the 1970s and 1980s, the structures were repaired and restored. The parsonage and barn have always remained in their present locations while the stuga, the immigrant house, and old church have been moved to the site. A Visitor’s Center (Välkommen Hus) contains displays, an orientation room, and the Scandia Butik.

In 1867 the Elim Lutheran congregation purchased forty acres of the Ola Hansson farm and the following year built the parsonage. In 1884 another parsonage was constructed, and the old one was sold to a local family. The parsonage belonged to that family until 1970, when the house and six acres were purchased by the thurch. Two years earlier, five acres of the farm immediately north of Gammelgården had been bought to be converted into the Barton Johnson Memorial Park. Johnson died in Vietnam in 1968.

Elim Lutheran Church was founded in 1854 by the Reverend Erland Carlsson of Chicago at nearby Hay Lake. Two years later, the congregation erected gammelkyrkan, their first church, made of hand-hewn logs. When the congregation soon outgrew the building, a second church was erected on the present cemetery site, north of Gammelgården. The first church was then converted into a school and remained one until 1899, when a new brick school was constructed. The old church was sold to a school board member, who moved it to his farm, where it became a hay barn. In 1980 it was relocated to Gammelgården and rededicated in 1982 with many dignitaries, including Sweden’s Prince Bertil and Princess Lillian, in attendance. Inside the church the visitor can see one original pew (the others are reproductions) and the original folding key made so that it could fit into a person’s pocket. The candelabra are from the fourth church that burned in 1907.

The präst hus was considered a large house (five rooms downstairs and two upstairs) when it was built in i868. The rooms are fully furnished, many of the pieces having belonged to the Nelson family. There are a number of significant items from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Originally the stuga was located on the Gottlieb Magney estate near the St. Croix River. Magney was the architect who designed the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis, and he had used the stuga as a guest house. Built in 1930 and moved to Gammelgården in the late 1970s, the structure is divided into two rooms, one with built-in cabinets and a Swedish corner fireplace and the other with two built-in beds.

An annual event at Gammelgården on the third Saturday of August is a fiddling contest (spelmansstämma) featuring Swedish music. Midsummer Day is celebrated on the fourth Saturday in June with dancing and music. Lucia Fest, on the second Sunday in December, includes a prayer service in the old church. A lutfisk dinner is held in late November.

The present Elim Lutheran Church, 20071 Olinda Trail (651-433-2723; www.scandiamn.com/elim), a red-brick, Gothic-style building, is the Scandia congregation’s sixth sanctuary. The fifth was gutted by fire in 1930, but the altar, pulpit, pews, and some furnishings were saved, as were the exterior walls. The sanctuary is noted for its dark, wood-beamed ceiling, Gothic-style altar with a copy of nineteenth-century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaidsen’s famous statue of Christ, chancel rail, pews, and balcony. Over the main entrance, an inscription reads, “Swedish Lutheran Elim Church Scandia.”

Across the street in the cemetery are the graves of pastors and early Swedish immigrants, some dating back to 1860. The Methodist Church no longer exists, but its cemetery is located south of Elim Lutheran.