How Ballard became so Scandinavian Not all is as it seems in Snoose Junction

Take a look at photos of Scandinavian life in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. Take a look at photos of Scandinavian life in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 68 Caption Close How Ballard became so Scandinavian 1 / 68 Back to Gallery

If you’re looking to brush up on your Scandinavian flags, a wander through Seattle’s increasingly shiny Ballard neighborhood will probably do it.

(Hint: Red cross on white is the Faroe Islands.)

Freshly distilled aquavit? Old Ballard Liquor Co. has you covered. Freshly fermented fish Jell-O? Lutefisk options abound. That brown Norwegian cheese is probably lurking somewhere nearby, too.

From the Leif Erickson statute to the Nordic Heritage Museum to the Market Street plaza frequented by Nordic royals, Ballard is ostentatiously Scandi.

As for how Ballard became overwhelmingly Scandinavian, well, it didn’t, exactly.

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At their high-water mark in the early 1900s, Scandinavian immigrants accounted for less than a third of Ballard’s population, Seattle historian, journalist and activist Walt Crowley wrote at Historylink.org. Seattle-wide, Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Icelanders and the like never accounted for more than 8 percent of the population.

A great Scandinavian migration was underway in the late 19th century. As has so often been the case, political upheaval coupled with famine, and a new American ethnicity was born.

As of 1880, Scandinavians accounted for less than 3 percent of Seattle’s population. All 190 of them appear to have been Swedes, Patsy Adams Hegstad reported in an essay titled "Scandinavian Settlement in Seattle." By 1890, the city was home to 3,335 Scandinavia-born residents, who accounted for 7.8 percent of Seattle’s population.

Ballard’s maritime feel and fish-and-forest economy are cited as the key draws for the recently arrived Scandinavian immigrants during the late 1800s. Ballard was still an independent city then – it was annexed by Seattle in May 1907 – and claimed to be the world’s cedar-shingle capital.

Here’s how Ballard was described by “Scandinavians of the Pacific” author Thomas Stine, writing in 1909:

“Ballard merits the appellation, City of Smokestacks. No small town west of the Rocky has more factories. Saw mills and shingle mills are sending clouds of smoke into the air day and night, and brigades of industrious men are busily engaged.”

But it turns out an amusement park may also deserve some of the credit, or, thinking about that Norwegian cheese, blame.

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Natives of the Duwamish tribe had long made their homes on Shilshole and Salmon bays when the first white settlers arrived in 1852, Crowley noted in his 1999 entry. They left for reservation lands across the Puget Sound after the Point Elliott Treaty was signed in 1855, and homesteads sprung up in the area.

Steamship captain William Ballard won a large swath of the neighborhood that carries his name after losing a coin toss meant to settle a debt. Ballard convinced Charles Stimson to rebuild a sawmill there, and the small city blossomed.

It was a streetcar line to Golden Gardens – then an amusement park built to lure home buyers – that prompted Ballard’s boom in the 1890s, Crowley wrote. Scandinavians filled the newly accessible properties.

They brought their love of chewing tobacco west – the neighborhood was known as Snoose Junction.

Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.