After 375 years, Swedish town honors emigrant whose name lives on in the Bronx

In this handout photo taken on Aug. 20, 2014, provided by the Savsjo municipality, Roy Gustafsson the co-founder of the Jonas Bronck Center, poses for a photograph outside the center in Savsjo, Sweden. The founder of The Bronx _ one of New York’s five boroughs _ is finally getting recognition in his native Sweden, where Jonas Bronck’s home town on Saturday will celebrate the 375th anniversary of his arrival in America. (AP Photo/Ida Bengstsson) (The Associated Press)

Nearly four centuries after Jonas Bronck set foot in America, his birthplace in southern Sweden is finally recognizing its historical link to the New York borough that bears his name.

On Saturday the small town of Savsjo (SEV-sher), deep inside the pine forest of Smaland province, is celebrating the 375th anniversary of the sea captain's 1639 arrival in what is now the Bronx, where he was the first European settler.

Several of his descendants in the U.S will join representatives from the Bronx and local officials in a ceremony where a monument to Bronck will be unveiled.

Bronck's origins have been disputed for decades — the Faeroe Islands still claim him as theirs — but historians recently established he was born in the Savsjo village of Komstad.