Reality TV show seeks Swedish-Americans
Published: 28 Feb 11 12:03 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/32312/20110228/
Swedish producers are scouring the United States for Americans with Swedish ancestry to take part in a new reality television series that will bring participants to Sweden to compete in cultural challenges.
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The series seeks to take Americans, who have even the tiniest fraction of Swedish lineage, on a journey throughout Sweden to discover the land, the culture heritage and their roots.
“It's Americans who come here and seek their origins. Their experiences and surprising encounters with our culture also will reflect the image of Sweden," Mathias Engstrand, Entertainment Manager for Sveriges Television (SVT) told the Metro newspaper.
Chosen participants will travel to Sweden and compete in extreme cultural challenges to discover their roots while trying to win the grand prize: meeting their Swedish relatives.
“The Great Swedish Adventure” will be shot and broadcast in Sweden and potentially other countries as well.
The show will be produced by Meter Television, producers of the Swedish version of “American Idol” and “Minute to Win It.“
“It’s sort of like ‘The Amazing Race’ with a ‘fish out of water’ hook,” Christer Åkerlund, producer of the project, said in a statement.
From 1846-1930, about 1.3 million Swedish people immigrated to America in hopes of building a better life for their families.
According to US Census data from 2000, about 4 million Americans claim to have Swedish heritage.
External link: Great Swedish Adventure website »
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
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Arent many Canadians Scottish?
I would think Canadians would also be welcome. It's on N. American with similar immigration statistics, eh?
I have been living in Sweden since 2000.
I have also started helping Americans find their ancestors. One of the things that surprised me is the fact, that as I got to know the Americans and the Swedish part of their family, they were very similar in their likes and dislikes.
I had a dingy one in the USA and the family here is just as dingy, another pair were dog lovers, science seems to be foremost in a recent search. I hope that I am like my family here as I think they are great.
"outgoing Americans with Swedish ancestry"
that seems like an oxymoron. shouldn't be more than a dozen or so..
Then how about you do us a favor and stop posting your clueless opinions of Sweden and it's culture which are based on nothing but your imagination and admitted ignorance. You have NOTHING worthwhile to say about somewhere you've never even visited. Literally nothing.
I am about as anti-immigration as it gets, but your delusional, fantasy portrayals of Sweden and it's "vanishing" culture are absurd and indicative only of your ignorance on the subject.
Swedish culture is far from disappearing. There is a proudly traditional and deeply historic culture rooted here that's not going anywhere. INFINITELY moreso than in America. Many of us would like to keep it this way, hence the debate.
This sort of arrogant ignorance is why people dislike Americans. Leave these boards for those of us who actually live here and have something relevant and reality based to say.
Go give your "opinions" on a physics board or some other topic you know nothing about instead of trolling here insulting Swedes and their great country.
I doubt they'd be impressed much by the mentality of reality-TV. They'd have more constructive things to do.
It could just as easily go the other way. Television shows are manipulations.
Anything the producers wish to project can be accomplished by the cast they selectively assemble, sins of omission.
There's nothing 'reality' about it. They are contrived and carefully crafted fabrications designed to advance a particular and usually very narrow point of view.
The brief colony "New Sweden" had many Swedes and Finns who were absorbed into the anglo-saxon population as first the Dutch, and then the British took over what is today much of Delaware. People there probably do not know of their Scandinavian ancestry, as the language switched over to English. -I am told the greeting/word "Hi"/"Hey" may be a surviving language trait that spread to American English.
The later 19-century emigrants often brought with them a fervor for religion which as since faded in the old country (although some may say that Scandinavian countries offer a secular version of many values of the judeo-christian tradition. You would have to look long and hard to actually find someone who is starving).
-A cool fact is that there is a continuity of people from stone- and bronze age through the iron age up to the medieval period and finally to the present. You can find some old wood church in Norway that is 1000 years old, and one or to buildings in Sweden of nearly the same age. Alas, I cannot prove that those who made 3000-year old rock carvings in my home village are direct ancestors to those living there today -the records only go so far...
While we're at it. The Bronx is a derivation of "Bronck's estate" named after Jonas Bronck, an immigrant from Småland in Southern Sweden.