Annie: You've got it correct in the post you made and the citation by Michael Quinion.
B-stone: I don't think it has any connection to naive or being unskilled, though that is a plausible explanation which does have some degree of tie-in with the actual use of unskilled laborers to build the railroad.
I don't believe navvy has ever been used as a derivative to describe those of Scandinavian ancestry.
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