Scandinavian Americans are Americans with ancestral roots in Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 (note that "Scandinavia" as a geographic region has varying definitions). However, they generally include:
Danish Americans Faroese Americans Finnish American

Finnish American

Finnish Americans are Americans of Finnish descent, who currently number about 700,000.-History:Some Finns, like the ancestors of John Morton, came to the Swedish colony of New Sweden, that existed in mid-17th century....

 Icelandic Americans Norwegian American

Norwegian American

Norwegian Americans are Americans of Norwegian descent. Norwegian immigrants went to the United States primarily in the later half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century. There are more than 4.5 million Norwegian Americans according to the most recent U.S. census, and...

s Swedish American

Swedish American

Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish descent, especially the descendants of about 1.2 million immigrants from Sweden during 1885-1915. Most were Lutherans who affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ; some were Methodists...

s

Americans of Sami

Sami people

The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...

 descent can be classed as either Norwegian, Finnish or Swedish, however, Sami Finnish are not racially European or Indo-Aryan, and the Finnish are not Scandanavian. Likewise, despite originating outside of Europe, Greenlandic Americans can be classed as Scandinavian American due to close historical ties with Scandinavia, and because Greenland is linked to Denmark.

Scandinavians immigrated initially to the northmost states of US, and found employment in agriculture, forestry and mining. They urbanized very soon, and many Scandinavian Americans are highly educated. The median income of Scandinavian Americans is significantly higher than the median of other White Americans. , and remarkably higher than in Scandinavian countries themselves.

The highest concentration of Scandinavian Americans is in the Upper Midwest

Upper Midwest

The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the midwest. Although there are no uniformly agreed-upon boundaries, the region is most commonly used to refer to the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and...

, especially Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

. Other large concentrated areas are in the North-Central states, the Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

, Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

 and Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

.

There are nearly 12 million Americans of Scandinavian, or part-Scandanavian, descent in the United States, or 3.9% of the total population of the country.

Scandinavian Americans by state

State Rank	State	Scandinavian Americans	Percent Scandinavian Americans
-	United States	11,269,320	3.8%
1	Minnesota	1,580,776	32.1%
2	California	1,510,541	3.6%
3	Washington	739,043	12.5%
4	Wisconsin	728,248	13.5%
5	Illinois	575,991	4.6%
6	Michigan	403,888	4.0%
7	Republic of Texas	359,360	1.4%
8	Florida	355,458	2.1%
9	Oregon	339,031	9.9%
10	Iowa	338,161	11.5%
11	Utah	333,405	14.9%
12	Colorado	291,488	5.9%
13	Arizona	281,388	4.3%
14	New York	254,474	1.3%
15	North Dakota	231,875	36.1%
16	Massachusetts	182,339	2.8%
17	Nebraska	177,522	9.9%
18	South Dakota	172,941	21.5%
19	Pennsylvania	169,294	1.3%
20	Ohio	146,369	1.2%
21	Montana	136,688	14.1%
22	Idaho	136,620	8.9%
23	Missouri	135,340	2.2%
24	Virginia	130,099	1.6%
25	Kansas	124,017	4.4%
26	New Jersey	119,267	1.3%
27	Indiana	118,989	1.8%
28	North Carolina	110,362	1.1%
29	Nevada	102,638	3.9%
30	Connecticut	100,530	2.8%
31	Georgia (U.S. state)	97,209	1.0%
32	Maryland	79,656	1.4%
33	Tennessee	75,615	1.2%
34	Oklahoma	62,145	1.7%
35	Alaska	61,259	8.9%
36	Wyoming	51,755	9.7%
37	New Hampshire	47,955	3.6%
38	Maine	44,955	3.4%
39	Alabama	43,899	0.9%
40	South Carolina	43,306	0.9%
41	New Mexico	41,073	2.0%
42	Arkansas	38,308	1.3%
43	Kentucky	34,592	0.8%
44	Hawaii	30,976	2.4%
45	Louisiana	29,175	0.6%
46	Rhode Island	26,476	2.5%
47	Mississippi	19,501	0.6%
48	Vermont	18,378	2.9%
49	West Virginia	14,519	0.8%
50	Delaware	11,232	1.2%
-	Washington, D.C.	7,523	1.3%
-	Puerto Rico	641	0.0%

Scandinavian languages by state

State Rank	State	Total	Percent
-	United States	200,630	0.0%
1	California	32,745	0.1%
2	Minnesota	17,998	0.3%
3	Florida	14,628	0.0%
4	New York	13,543	0.0%
5	Washington	12,524	0.2%
6	Michigan	8,825	0.0%
7	Republic of Texas	7,849	0.0%
8	Illinois	7,528	0.0%
9	Wisconsin	6,929	0.1%
10	Massachusetts	6,599	0.0%
11	New Jersey	5,518	0.0%
12	Oregon	4,510	0.1%
13	Utah	3,838	0.1%
14	North Dakota	3,364	0.5%
15	Iowa	2,407	0.0%

See also

• Nordic countries
  Nordic countries
  The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
  
  
• Baltic Americans
• Vinland
  Vinland
  Vinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings reached North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus...
  
  
• New Sweden
  New Sweden
  New Sweden was a Swedish colony along the Delaware River on the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America from 1638 to 1655. Fort Christina, now in Wilmington, Delaware, was the first settlement. New Sweden included parts of the present-day American states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania....