The King Has Left The Area

A Minnesota school welcomed Swedish Royalty to their campus, last week.

Gustavus Adolphus College welcomed Their Majesties King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden to their  campus  for a three day visit, Oct. 5-7, of on-campus festivities which included an anniversary, a dedication and attendance at a Nobel Conference. 

  The main event was in celebration of the 150th  anniversary of the founding of the College by Swedish immigrants in 1862. During the Swedish immigration to the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States with a major  contingent settling in the Minnesota area due, in part, to dissenting religious practitioners who widely resented the treatment they received from the Lutheran State Church in Sweden.  Gustavus is the oldest of several Lutheran colleges in Minnesota. It was founded as a  college of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, and  in 1962  became a college of the Lutheran Church in America, and is currently ranked among the best 100 national liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report.Gustavus Adolphus College is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America located in St. Peter, Minnesota.

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 A co-educational, four-year residential institution, Gustavus is a school firmly rooted in its Swedish and Lutheran heritage. Originally founded  as a Lutheran  parochial school  at Red Wing, Minn, it was known as the Minnesota Elementar Skola (elementary school in Swedish). In April 1873, it became Gustavus Adolphus, a Literary and Theological Institute named in honor of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.

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While on campus, the royal couple will take part in the dedication of  The Sesquicentennial Plaza, which  features a historic timeline of the College from its founding in 1862 to 2012.

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Closing  last  weeks events, distinguished scholars and researchers in the fields of biogeochemistry, oceanography, deep-sea biology, molecular  genetics, and  coral ecology traveled to Gustavus Adolphus College to take part in the 48th annual Nobel Conference, titled “Our Global Ocean.”

The meetings centered around the marine realm: what we know, what we don’t know, and how we humans rely upon healthy vibrant seas.The marine world provides us with seafood and medicines, fertilizers and petroleum.Today, we know less about our own oceans than we do about the surfaces of other planets in our solar system.For almost five decades, Gustavus has organized and hosted the two-day Nobel
 Conference, which draws about 6,000 people to the college campus in St. Peter, Minn. The conference links a general audience, including high school students and teachers, with the world’s foremost scholars and researchers in discussion centered on contemporary issues relating to the natural and social sciences

Alfred Nobel

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Gustavus remains a major Scandinavian institution in the area featuring  Nobel Laureates and other world-renowned scholars  who share their expertise with the general public.Other important events that bring the royal couple to Gustavus include the Nobel Conference. This annual event was established in the mid-1960s when college officials asked the Nobel Foundation for permission to name their new science building the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science as a memorial to the Swedish inventor, Alfred Nobel . Gustavus remains a major Scandinavian institution in the area featuring  Nobel Laureates and other world-renowned scholars.

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia attended the Sunday service at the college Christ Chapel as 2,000 people lined the walkway to greet the royal couple. During the service, the king greeted the packed chapel's congregation, stating that he and the queen were proud of the accomplishments and goals of Gustavus Adolphus saying "We are proud of what you have done in the first one hundred fifty years, and we look forward to the coming years."

His Majesty, King Carl XVI  had earlier visited the area in 1976 , helping celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial, and both he and Queen Silvia visited Gustavus in 1982 and 1996.