Nicolaus Bergensköld
early leader of revivalist movement among Swedish settlers in the United States
Nils Gustaf Nicolaus Bergensköld (1838–1907) was a Swedish-American Lutheran clergyman and an early leader of the revivalist movement within Swedish immigrant settlements of the Midwestern United States during the later part of the 19th century.
Biography
Nicolaus Bergensköld was born May 20, 1838, at Vintrosa parish in Orebro, Sweden. He studied for the ministry at the Fjellstedt mission training school which had been established by Swedish Lutheran missionary Peter Fjellstedt during 1845 in Uppsala. He also became strongly influenced by the Piestist teaching of Swedish Lutheran minister and revivalist Carl Olof Rosenius, founder of the Swedish Evangelical Mission. After completing his education, he served as a priest (1865–1867) of Överums Church which had been established in 1862 at the mill town of Överums bruk in Småland under the guidance of the "Reader Count" Adolphe Stackelberg (1822–1871) who was an enthusiast within the Swedish Lutheran revivalist and missionary movement.
In 1867, he emigrated from Sweden to the United States. He first settled in Galesburg, Illinois. Many within the congregation wanted him to minister in the church there. However, due to his association with Rosenius, the pastor of the congregation refused him. However, several of the members on the board of deacons arranged private devotional services led by Bergensköld.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5571623. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1907, 1845 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nicolaus Bergensköld” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.