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Bishop Hill, Illinois: the Swedish utopia on the prairie, the million who followed it and what a krona buys in dollars

On a low ridge of rolling farmland in western Illinois, a few hours' drive from Chicago, stands a village of red-brick buildings, a white wooden church and a communal dormitory that look as if they were lifted straight from the Swedish province of Hälsingland. In 1846, a charismatic preacher named Erik Jansson led a group of about a thousand followers from Sweden, where they had been persecuted for rejecting the state church, to a patch of American prairie, where they founded a religious colony called Bishop Hill, after his birthplace Biskopskulla. They dug into the earth to survive the first winter, farmed wheat and flax, wove cloth and built a large community of brick. Jansson was shot dead in a quarrel in 1850, and the colony dissolved in the 1860s, but it started a stream of migration that carried around 1.3 million Swedes to North America between 1850 and 1930, about a fifth of the whole population of Sweden at the time. Their descendants are today millions. For anyone travelling from Sweden to the United States to look for roots or to visit friends, the first practical question is how many American dollars a Swedish krona buys. This page answers it. Use it to Convert SEK to USD with the daily reference rates published by the European Central Bank, in which both currencies are quoted against the euro; the page combines them into a krona-dollar figure and prints its date under the result. The amount you type never leaves your browser.

Using the converter

Kronor in, dollars out

Type the amount and Convert SEK to USD, then keep the date next to the figure in your travel notes.

Enter an amount in Swedish kronor and read the equivalent in United States dollars underneath, together with the date of the fixing used. A dollar is worth about ten kronor, so the answer is roughly a tenth of the number you typed and carries cents. Fixings come out once on each working day; on weekends and public holidays the page repeats the previous one and says so. Round sums and a thirty-day graph sit beneath the box. For the opposite direction, from dollars into kronor, see Convert USD to SEK.

A reference, not a quote

Whatever a counter promises, Convert SEK to USD first and measure the quote against the reference.

The figure shown is the midpoint of the market on a working day, before any bank's share. A bank, a booth or an app will always quote slightly less, and the difference in per cent is the cost of the service: under one per cent is very good, two or three per cent is usual, above four is a reason to ask elsewhere. Let every Convert SEK to USD be your yardstick. For simple arithmetic, the examples below use an invented, round rate of ten kronor to the dollar. It is not a forecast and not today's price; replace it with the real number.

Why they left

Hunger, land and faith

A passage across the Atlantic once cost many months of a labourer's pay; Convert SEK to USD today for the same journey and you will see how much has changed.

Sweden in the nineteenth century was a poor, mostly agrarian country with a growing population and little farmland to divide. Harvest failures in the 1860s caused famine in some provinces, and a fifth of the population left over the following decades. America offered land, jobs and religious freedom. Letters from the first emigrants, passed from hand to hand in villages, described endless wheat fields and wages several times higher than at home. Agents of shipping companies and railways in the United States distributed leaflets and sold tickets. The journey took weeks and cost the equivalent of a year's wages.

Erik Jansson and the colony

Jansson preached a strict form of Lutheranism that rejected the established church, clerical hierarchy and worldly pleasures. His followers burned books they considered sinful, which led to prosecution in Sweden. In America, he led them through the Great Lakes to Illinois, where the members shared property, ate in a common hall and worked under his direction. By the early 1850s, the colony had hundreds of buildings, a brickyard, a blacksmith shop, a mill and a flourishing economy. Disputes over leadership and property, a cholera epidemic and the murder of Jansson led to its end.

The church and the dormitory

Before you plan a long tour of the heritage sites, Convert SEK to USD for the tickets and the drive.

The Colony Church, finished in 1848, is a white wooden building with a clock tower and a simple interior. Next to it, the Steeple Building, constructed in 1854, houses a museum. Visitors can tour the Colony Hotel, the Bjorklund Hotel and the dairy. A state historic site and an association maintain the village. Entry to the museum costs about 10 dollars, and guided tours cost 15 to 25. Convert SEK to USD for the entrance, and you will see that history on the prairie is inexpensive.

Swedish America today

Minnesota, Chicago and beyond

Museums and bakeries are cheap by American standards; Convert SEK to USD for each stop and keep the receipts.

The great waves of Swedish immigrants settled mainly in the Midwest: Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas, where the landscape and the winters reminded them of home. In Chicago, the district of Andersonville was a Swedish stronghold, and today it keeps a Swedish American Museum, a bakery selling cardamom buns and a Midsommarfest in June. Minneapolis has the American Swedish Institute in a mansion built by a newspaper owner, with exhibitions and a café serving fika. Admission is 15 to 20 dollars. Swedish names are everywhere: Johnson, Anderson, Carlson, Nelson.

The Emigrants, a novel

The Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg told the story of a farming family leaving for Minnesota in four novels, beginning with The Emigrants in 1949. The books were turned into films and a musical by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, called Kristina från Duvemåla, and into stage productions. A Moberg trail in Småland shows the real places. The characters' fortune is a story of hope, toil and loss, and many Swedes read it as part of their school curriculum.

Swedish-American traditions

Swedish-American communities keep Lucia processions in December, Midsummer celebrations in June, Easter egg painting and the Christmas table with lutfisk, dried fish treated with lye, and meatballs. A lutfisk dinner in a church hall costs 15 to 25 dollars. The Swedish language is rarely spoken now, but many families keep sayings and recipes. Folk-dance groups, choirs and heritage societies thrive.

Travelling to the United States

Flights and entry

An electronic authorisation costs a small fee, and a flight costs much more; Convert SEK to USD for both before you book.

Direct flights link Stockholm with New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles in some seasons, in about nine to eleven hours; otherwise, connections run through other European hubs. Swedish citizens can visit the United States without a visa under the visa-waiver programme, but they need an electronic authorisation, ESTA, which must be requested online before boarding. Use only the official government website, because there are imitations that charge higher fees. Chicago is seven hours behind Sweden. To compare times across the continent, Convert EST to PST shows the gap between the east and west coasts, and Convert CET to EET gives the one-hour step within Europe.

Prices, tax and tips

Remember that every menu price grows by tax and tip, so Convert SEK to USD for the total, not for the number on the board.

Posted prices exclude sales tax, which varies by state, and a tip of 18 to 22 per cent is expected in restaurants. A coffee costs 3 to 5 dollars, a casual lunch 15 to 20, a mid-range hotel 150 to 300. A price of 20 dollars on a menu becomes about 26 on the bill. Add a third to any menu price before you Convert SEK to USD.

Miles, gallons and degrees

The United States uses imperial units. Convert km to mi turns kilometres into miles, Convert L to gal relates litres to gallons, and Convert °C to °F gives Fahrenheit. Midwestern winters are very cold, often below minus fifteen degrees, and summers hot and humid.

The Swede who built the Monitor

From Värmland to New York

Not every Swedish emigrant came to farm. John Ericsson, born in 1803 in the forests of Värmland, was a mining engineer's son who trained as a military surveyor, worked in England on steam locomotives and ship propellers, and sailed to the United States in 1839. In New York he became one of the most inventive mechanical minds of his century. In 1861, as the Civil War began and the Confederacy converted a captured warship into an armoured vessel, the Union asked Ericsson for a counter. He drew up a low, flat iron raft with a single revolving gun turret, a design so strange that the press nicknamed it a cheese box on a raft. The USS Monitor was built in about a hundred days and launched in January 1862.

Ironclads at Hampton Roads

On 9 March 1862, the Monitor met the Confederate ironclad Virginia off the coast of Virginia in the first battle between armoured steam warships. Neither vessel could sink the other, and the fight ended in a draw, but the lesson was understood in every navy of the world: wooden ships were finished. When Ericsson died in New York in 1889, the American government sent a cruiser to carry his body home, and he was buried in Filipstad, in Värmland, with a navy salute. A statue of him stands on the Battery in Manhattan, and another in Stockholm. If you visit the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, you can see the Monitor's turret, raised from the seabed in 2002.

What the story tells a traveller

The tale is a reminder that the emigration worked in two directions. Swedish ideas, from the propeller to the safety match, crossed the ocean along with people, and dollars returned in letters and parcels. Even now, travellers use the money they earn in one country to pay for a visit to the other, so a quick Convert SEK to USD sits at the start of most trips.

Land for the taking

The Homestead Act

In 1862, the same year as the Monitor's battle, Congress passed the Homestead Act. It offered any adult citizen, or anyone who had declared the intention to become one, 160 acres of public land in the West, free of charge, if they lived on it and farmed it for five years. For a family from Småland, where the whole farm might be a few hectares of stones, this was an astonishing offer. Letters sent home described fields without boulders, soil without frost until October and neighbours who spoke Swedish. Tens of thousands of families filed claims in Minnesota, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Kansas.

Sod houses and long winters

The first years were harsh. On the treeless plains, settlers cut blocks of sod and stacked them into walls, and a family of six might share one room with a dirt floor. Winters brought blizzards, summers brought hail and swarms of grasshoppers, and fever took many children. Churches and mutual-aid societies were built first, since neighbours were the only insurance anyone had. In a good year, a farm paid its debts; in a bad one it was sold for the cost of the mortgage. Many who failed moved to the cities, where the same Swedish names turn up in the records of carpenters, seamstresses and streetcar drivers.

Money in the pioneer years

Dollars were scarce on the frontier, and families traded eggs, butter and labour as often as they paid in coin. Savings were sent to Sweden in bank drafts, and the rate depended on the day and on the bank's charge, just as it does today. What changed is that a person with a phone can now check the reference rate in a second, instead of trusting the clerk.

Colleges, churches and Little Swedens

The Lutheran campuses

The Swedish churches founded schools almost at once. Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, began in 1860 to train pastors and teachers, and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, followed in 1862. Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, opened in 1881. These colleges taught in Swedish at first, then in English, and their choirs became famous: the Messiah performance at Bethany has been held every Easter since the 1880s. Today they are open to students of all backgrounds, with tuition of the same order as other private colleges, often thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year before aid.

Lindsborg and its painted horses

The small town of Lindsborg, in the middle of Kansas, calls itself Little Sweden. Its main street is lined with red Dala horses, copies of the carved and painted wooden toys that come from the province of Dalarna, and its shops sell Swedish glass, flags and gingerbread. Every second year the town holds a Svensk Hyllningsfest, a Swedish festival, with folk dancing, a parade and long tables of meatballs. Lodging is inexpensive, a room in a small inn costs around 100 to 150 dollars, and the best-known meal is a Sunday smörgåsbord. Convert SEK to USD for the room and the meal, and you may be surprised how little a prairie weekend costs.

Names that changed

Many arrivals changed their surnames on arrival, to avoid the confusion of too many Anderssons, or because a clerk wrote down what he heard. A man called Ola Månsson from Skåne, who left Sweden in 1859, became August Lindbergh in Minnesota; his grandson Charles was the aviator who flew across the Atlantic alone in 1927. Genealogists today trace ancestors through church books in Sweden, which are among the best preserved in the world, and many offer free searching online.

Studying and working in America today

Scholarships and tuition

Swedish students go to American universities on exchange programmes or on full degrees. Tuition at a private university runs from 40,000 to 65,000 dollars a year, and at a state university from 12,000 to 30,000 for an out-of-state student. Scholarships exist, including the Fulbright programme, which is run in Sweden by a joint commission, and many universities offer sports scholarships. Plan your budget by converting each large item with the same fixing, so the arithmetic stays consistent. Convert SEK to USD for tuition, rent and health insurance separately, then add the three.

Opening an account, paying bills

A newcomer needs a social security number or an individual taxpayer number to open some accounts, and a local address. A Swedish card works in shops, but cash machines charge a fee and the terminal may offer to convert the price into kronor at its own rate. Decline that offer. For rent and tuition, a bank transfer from Sweden costs a fixed fee plus a margin on the rate, and a specialised provider is often cheaper.

Other krona conversions

If your trip continues

Travellers who go on to Canada can use Convert SEK to CAD, those who stop in Britain Convert SEK to GBP, and those returning through the euro area Convert SEK to EUR.

A habit worth keeping

Write down the rate and date of each exchange, and compare them later with the statement. It takes seconds.

Mistakes to avoid

Forgetting tax and tip

The price you see in America is rarely the price you pay. Add tax and tip.

Paying in kronor at the till

If the terminal offers a conversion, decline it, then Convert SEK to USD at home and check the charge on the statement.

A terminal that offers to charge you in kronor uses its own rate. Choose dollars.

Using an old rate

A rate from last month can be wrong by several per cent. The date shown beside the result protects you each time you Convert SEK to USD.

In short

The only thing fetched from the network is the table of daily rates, while your amount stays in the browser and no account is needed. From a clay-brick colony in Illinois to a bakery in Andersonville, the routine is the same: Convert SEK to USD, read the date and compare every offer with the number on this page.