Intressant! Hur många känner till detta? Att det finns en svensk kultur borde vi alla erkänna, inte minst alla politiker. Svensk kolonisatörer levde t.o.m. i fred med den infödda befolkningen.

Eliot Stein

It was the smallest, least-populated and shortest-lived colony in the US. But despite being virtually unheard of today, it helped shape the nation’s birth 250 years ago.

The 125-year-old elevator wheezed to a halt somewhere above Philadelphia’s skyline. When the door creaked open, I was inside the clock tower of the US’s tallest municipal building, gazing down at ”The Birthplace of America” from a 500ft (152m) observation deck atop City Hall.

From my glass perch, I could make out City Tavern, where the Founding Fathers plotted the American Revolution. Just west, I spotted Carpenters’ Hall, where the Colonies united against the British at the First Continental Congress. Nearby was Independence Hall, where the US Constitution was signed in 1787.

Squinting, I then followed a parade of red-white-and-blue American flags down Market Street, towards the Delaware River and New Jersey in the distance.

”So, everything I can see from up here was once part of… Sweden?” I asked our guide.

”I think so,” he said, hesitantly. ”Though you’re the first visitor to ever ask about that.”

Ask most Americans and they’ll tell you that the United States started in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776 when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. Fittingly, the city is the epicentre of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations this week, and as many as 1.5 million people are expected to descend on it for what will be the nation’s largest Fourth of July festival.

But chances are, almost none of those coming realises that the US’s political and ideological birthplace was once part of a little-known Swedish colony known as Nya Sverige (New Sweden). In fact, very few Americans (or Swedes) have any idea that there ever even was a Swedish colony in America.

Läs vidare på BBC.