Swede Hollow, Saint Paul

[the] Swedish Valley), a designation that remained (in English translation) long after they moved on, to be replaced by a wave of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century.

People and industries occupying the surrounding "upper" neighborhoods used the Hollow as a makeshift dump, which the inhabitants down below routinely scavenged for clothing, metals, building supplies, and even shoe repair needs.

A 1917 report remarked, "Phalen Creek and the banks of this stream are ideal for park purposes, while in their present state they constitute a menace to the health of the residents and to the community at large.

[2] The award-winning album Minnesota: A History of the Land, released by musician Peter Ostroushko in 2005, included a piece called "Swede Hollow Lament".

[8] In Sweden, the history of 19th-century migration to Minnesota was popularized by Vilhelm Moberg's four-novel series The Emigrants (1949–1959), which describes rural, hard-working, successful settlers in the 1850s.

It was so named after the original home of its Irish settlers, who arrived in the United States under the sponsorship of Archbishop John Ireland, who settled them on prairie claims near Graceville, Minnesota.

When the original rural colonization plan was aborted by poor planning and the long, blizzard-wracked "Snow Winter" of 1880-81 (a season so harsh it was immortalized in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter),[9] the desperate immigrants were resettled along lower Phalen Creek in the area between East Seventh and East Fourth streets as a stopgap measure—one that ultimately became permanent.

The legendary Irish-language storyteller Éamon a Búrc spent several years in the district before a railroad accident took his leg, leading him to return to his village in County Galway, Ireland.