Examine the genealogy of any American Church member with four or more generations of Latter-day Saint heritage and you are likely as not to find some proportion of Scandinavian ancestry.

Courtesy Museum of Church History and Art

Painting by C.C.A. Christensen depicts a sailing ship carrying Mormon emigrants.

Courtesy Museum of Church History and Art

Painting by C.C.A. Christensen, a 19th century Latter-day Saint from Denmark, depicts Church missionaries in Denmark. The first large company of Scandinavian Mormon emigrants to Zion embarked 150 years ago.

In more recent times, many of those descendants have returned to the mother land of their ancestors to help build Zion.

Thus, Latter-day Saints on both sides of the Atlantic have cause to celebrate an event of 150 years ago. It was on Dec. 20, 1852, that a company of 293 passengers bound for Zion in the valley of the Great Salt Lake left Copenhagen, Denmark. It was the first large company of Church converts from Denmark, Sweden and Norway to so embark, according to the Contributor of August 1892, a small company having left a few months previously.

Appropriately, the journey was under the leadership of Elder John E. Forsgren of the Scandinavian Mission. This hardy ex-seaman joined the Church in Boston, Mass., went west from Nauvoo, Ill., with the saints, and was sent on a mission to Scandinavia along with apostle Erastus Snow. In 1851, he had gone to his hometown of G�vle, Sweden. There he taught and converted his brother, Peter, and performed the Church's first baptism in Sweden before being banished from the country for his unpopular religious beliefs.

Under Elder Forsgren's direction, the emigrating company boarded the steamship Obotrit in Copenhagen. The departure was not altogether peaceful. "A great multitude of people had gathered on the wharf to witness the departure of the 'Mormons,' recounted the Contributor, and many of the rabble gave utterance to the most wicked and blasphemous language while they cursed and swore because so many of their countrymen were disgracing themselves by following 'that Swedish Mormon priest' (an appellation they gave Elder Forsgren) to America. No violence, however, was resorted to."

The steamship took them to Kiel, Holstein, Germany, arriving on the evening of the 22nd. From there they traveled by rail to Hamburg, where they enjoyed supper provided for them in a large hall rented for the purpose. The next day, they boarded the steamship Lion and went down the river Elbe to Cuxhaven, where heavy fog compelled the captain to cast anchor. Here they observed Christmas Eve with songs and amusements, departing on Christmas Day for the mouth of the river, where heavy winds prevented their entering open sea. After a stormy voyage that destroyed the ship's bridge and part of the gunwale, the Lion arrived in Hull, England, from whence the passengers made their way by rail to Liverpool, arriving on Dec. 29.

Boarding the Forest Monarch were 297 Latter-day Saint emigrants, the original number augmented by a few converts. They were obliged to wait until Jan. 16, 1853, for departure because of storms or contrary winds.

They were accorded pleasant weather on the Atlantic crossing, but Spartan food and provisions made for trying conditions for the passengers, many of whom were unaccustomed to sea travel. Becalmed waters made for a long and tedious passage.

"I was much seasick the first days," wrote passenger Peter Madsen in his autobiography, "but when I got more used to the circumstances I got well again. . . . Our food was not of the best kind, and the water was so little and simple."

Maren Jensen Cutler Norton provided more detail in her autobiography: "We were on the Atlantic eleven weeks and three days and had very little to eat. They gave each of us a tin plate, tin cup and a spoon when we started, and we kept them as our own. Then a man came around with two large pails, one in each hand, and gave us our rations. Every other day we had split peas boiled without seasoning, and often burnt at that. The next day we had barley prepared for food, and boiled the same way. The grown people had one cup each day, us children half a cup. Then we had what they called sea-biscuits. They were as large as a small saucer and were made of shorts or some [coarse] meal of some kind, and so hard we could only gnaw them, but we were glad to get the one each for the grown-ups and the one-half for children."

Diaries and the emigrating company's manuscript history tell of an orderly organization with appointed leaders supervising the distribution of food and the cleaning of the ship. Priesthood brethren delivered talks on agreed-upon topics such as the Resurrection. "A good spirit was present at the meeting; great blessings were over us, and all the brethren and sisters raised their hands in agreement to live in harmony with each other, so that they also might be obedient to the ship's officers, and that the blessings of the Lord might be with us," read the entry for Jan. 11 in the manuscript history.

Reports of births, marriages and deaths, poignant in their brevity, occur in the accounts of the voyage. "This morning Poul Poulsen, a son of Brother Anders Poulsen, died, and his body was cast into the sea," read the entry for Feb. 7. "In the afternoon, a son of Brother H.C. Hansen became so sick that he was nearly dead, but after having been blessed twice by Elders Forsgren and Christiansen, and several of the brethren, he began to get better, for which I am thankful to my Heavenly Father."

The ship finally landed at New Orleans, La., in latter March. The emigrants sailed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Mo., remaining there a month waiting for a steamer large enough to carry them further up the river to Keokuk, Iowa. That outfitting point was near Nauvoo, Ill., from which Brigham Young and the earlier pioneers had made their exodus seven years earlier.

The Contributor article recounts that in Keokuk, "some of the Scandinavian emigrants, who at first rejected the American ways of driving oxen in yokes, went to work and manufactured harness in regular Danish fashion; but no sooner were these placed on the animals than they, frightened half to death, struck out on a wild run, refusing to be guided at all by the lines in the hands of their new masters from the far north. Crossing ditches and gulches in their frenzy, parts of the wagons were strewn by the way side; but the oxen (many of which had never been hitched up before) were at last stopped by men who understood how to manipulate that most important article of all teamsters outfits — the whip; and the Danish emigrants, profiting by the experience they had gained soon concluded that, although harness might do well enough for oxen in Denmark, the yoke and whip were preferable in America; and they readily accepted the method of their adopted country."

Departing from Keokuk on May 21, the company reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, in three weeks, rested there for several days and resumed their journey on June 27. By Sept. 30, the company arrived in Salt Lake City, where President Brigham Young counseled them to settle in different parts of the territory and mix with people of other nationalities. Most located in Sanpete Valley in southern Utah, and that area today has a rich Scandinavian heritage as a result. But, as the Contributor reported, "President Young's advice has not been unheeded, as the people from the three countries of the north (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) are represented, to a greater or less extent in nearly every town and settlement of the Saints in the Rocky Mountains."

Note: The principal source for this article was the Mormon Immigration Index published by the Church on CD-ROM.

E-mail: rscott@desnews.com