On 20 August 1781 approximately 1200 Swedes left their home on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa (formerly Dagö) and ventured on a trip to Ukraine that would take them nine months. They went on foot via Belarus, and during their travels, about a third of them perished due to low temperatures, food shortages and illness. The travellers were promised homes, timber and furtile land ready for farming near the Dnieper River. When they arrived, there was no trace of the houses they had expected to find and realised they had been fooled. By 1794, only 224 of the original Estonian-Swed settlers remained in Gammalsvenskby and they focused their industry more on fishing than farming.
In 2013 Alexandra Drotz Ruhn made this documentary about Gammalsvenskby. The tiny village in Ukraine where people still speak Swedish today
