Dipping Deep into The Source

I have fond memories of James Michener's book "The Source" - the novel covers a few thousand years of history in Palestine. My scope is much less ambitious, but here's what I know from months of genealogical research. More than 200 years ago, my great-great-great-grandfather was born in this little village in the backwaters of south-central Sweden. The family was never during those years prosperous. The men always were either low-ranking soldiers as part of a sort of militia that made up the Swedish Army of the time; or what the Brits would call crofters, or tenant farmers. They owned no land and moved often, from cottage to cottage and from farm to farm as they no doubt sought the best opportunity available. It was a hard and unforgiving life, chronicled in a powerfully written set of novels by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg, a series known as "The Emigrants". At my mother's urging I read these stories while in college and found them very moving. As in the stories there was a famine, in 1868. My great-grandfather Johan Gustaf Johannesson was 16 years old, the oldest child, and no doubt old enough to fend for himself. He borrowed passage to Denmark from an uncle, and except for a brief winter visit about four years later he never looked back. He met and married a Swedish girl from a nearby Smaland town while in Denmark and went to the USA in 1878. He became John G. Johnson and launched the family that we are now, widespread and probably outnumbering our Swedish kin, due to American prolificacy, hybrid vigor and other factors too obscure to mention.

 Meanwhile, here I was at that little dimple in the map of Sweden where the family push-pin used to be. Used to, because there are no known close relatives of Johan Gustaf to be found in these parts. They have either died off or moved off; mostly to other cities large or small in Sweden. Very little trace remains of their lives and labors here in Ryssby; on our weekend visit here the only gravestone markers we found at the church where Johan was baptised were a couple belonging to the Svanholm branch, dating to the last 50 years or so. Even most of the old torps or tenant farm cottages had over time been moved or torn down - after all, the poor, anonymous tenants had moved on to better or worse things. Unremembered, their absence created a sort of real estate opportunity for later generations. The local history association had been diligently working on reconstructing the old maps of the area to put together an accurate list of what went where. In spite of the very kind help of a local man in Ryssby, who looked remarkably like some of the guys I had grown up with in Wisconsin, we were unable to get a fix on any of the spots that my ancestor had spent his formative first 16 years. But we were certainly in the very locale, and I breathed in the nature of the place. Ryssby the town, Ryssby the lake, Woebegone but not forgotten.

The days surrounding the weekend also held more "new cousin" meetings - visiting scenic and historic places in Sweden such as the old port town of Kalmar, whose proud castle had frequently been the target of marauding Danes; and the fertile southern plain of Skane (SKO-nay) which is probably the oldest inhabited portion of the country. Much of the territory there reminded me of my home in the lovely Finger Lakes region of New York state.  The welcome we have received from our new cousins here has been remarkable. There has usually been the mystery of establishing how we are related; old photos and the memories of the older generation work toegether to stitch the factual information I present into the fabric of the "family quilt". Then as it sinks in that we are really part of the same big family, people relax and we get to know each other a bit - the presence of the typically darling young Swedish children often breaks any remnant of tension left from the "Who in the world are these Americans?" phase. Without exception, we have been made welcome, cheerfully given food and drink, housed and ferried about, and generally treated as real family in the best possible sense. The books I read before coming did not prepare me for this. I had been led to expect cool, rather disinterested people who would be careful to make sure that everyone paid their own way. They would be ambivalent about Americans and probably upbraid us for our errant ways. They would be over-indulgent parents, and they themselves would probably be emotionally repressed. Well, let's hear it for smashing stereotypes! It no doubt helps that I grew up with Swedish Americans; but I found both family members and strangers without fail to be friendly, helpful, kind and generous. I love Swedes! They are often calm and quiet, out of consideration for others around them. They value self-control, and are rarley boisterous in public. They adore their children but find ways to positively parent them that appear to work very well. It impresses me as a culture and a country that I could imagine living in, and certainly hope to visit again. Soon.

Reuniting the Sons of Two Continents

To put a spin on a quote from Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion Fame (NPR) - "It's been a BUSY week here in Lake Woebegone".  Since meeting our cousin Kent Svanholm we have been on the run - meeting more and more cousins and seeing more and more sites of historical, cultural or kinship interest. Kent has felt like family since our first phone conversation, and his welcome as we arrived at his family's lakeside home near Linkoping in south central Sweden couldn't have been warmer. Much of that area, known as Smaland (SMO-land) is very like the USA upper Midwest in topography and feel - large forested areas and rather flat, with many, many lakes. The land is hopelessly stony, which was a big part of why many Swedes left when other opportunities opened up. Some areas we saw looked like rock quarries with a little soil sprinkled in for good measure. Here and there there were small-ish fields, cleared long ago by bone-wracking labor.

We spent these first days in Smaland visiting both with Kent's father Gunnar Svanholm, and with Kent's daughter Ingela and her fiance Robert. We had  lovely coffee times in the mornings and afternoons - Swedes love their coffee and cakes! Extra vanilla sauce (custard) on the apple pie, please. Gunnar Svanholm was the oldest cousin we were to meet in Sweden, observing his 89th birthday that very week. He is widowed and lives in the same apartment he has for years, independent and active, looking much younger than his years. He is a retired Swedish Air Force officer - military service runs strong in the Svanholm branch of the family. Earlier in the day we had visited the Saab Air Museum, which included a new extensive wing devoted to Sweden's role as a key Western ally in the Cold War. The main exhibit is a DC-3 intelligence gathering airplane that had been shot down by the Soviets, and much later retrieved. It was presented as found, in a ghostly bottom-of-the-sea preservation chamber that provided a haunting reminder of those days of nuclear nightmare. At Gunnar's apartment we looked at old maps and photographs together, and at a book that had belonged to his grandfather, Carl August (Johannesson) Svanholm, who was brother to my immigrant ancestor Johan Gustaf Johannesson. In this book he had practised writing his name change to Svanholm; the law had changed at that time allowing name changes and Swedes had begun to take less common names to help sort them out from the masses.  Gunnar had never heard from his father or grandfather of an American connection, so all of this was quite an eye opener to him. We found this to be the norm; many Swedes  we met were aware of only one or two close cousins and more distant ones had receded into the category of unidentified photos in old scrap books.

This dis-connection from family links seems to go hand-in-hand with another Swedish charachteristic - a disconnection from religious activity. As a country Swedes are very secular and nonreligious in terms of church attendance or most other measures of religiosity. Both of these factors are most likely due to the rise of the social system here of cradle to grave care by the state. The Swedes have historically accepted a scandalous rate of taxation by American standards for the assurance that their every basic need would be met. Many feel, who needs God or family in this situation? In the developing world these are the two most important parts of life; in this most socially engineered society, the least imporant. At the same time, very many Swedes are actively interested in family history and sorting out their ancestry, using technology and their famously thorough historical records to find their way far into the past. We visited the Swedish headquarters of just such a society known by its Swedish acronym DIS, of which I am a member, and learned more about resources available in our continuing ancestor and cousin search.

Friday included a boat tour of the lovely lake near Kent's cabin, commonly known as a "spare-time home" when translated from Swedish. The Swedes love their country retreats, some of them going back to ancestral homes while others repair old available cottages or build new. Some are rustic and spartan, even without water or electricity, while some are year-round capable like Kents' and even a few are quite luxurious. Swedes as a people aim for the middle - in a social safety net system, few are poor and even fewer are truly wealthy. Those who are often prefer not to show off their riches, as the prevailing opinion is that all should be equal. Human nature being what it is, envy is never very far away. Hard as it is for Americans to imagine, Swedes can learn the income of virtually anyone in the country with the click of a mouse - it is all public information. With this kind of social structure and pressure, it is not surprising that most Swedes opt for more time off to enjoy life rather than increased salary when presented the choice.

Our only full weekend in Sweden Included being graciously hosted by more new relatives, and also a central reason for my trip - a visit to the home village where it all started so long ago. What shall we find in Lake Woebegone - or rather, in Ryssby?

The Mythic (almost) Land of Dalarna

I heartily recommend the Swedish breakfast. The hotel breakfast buffet, which I commented on before, is quite typical. Perfectly fresh and moist whole grain rolls and Swedish flatbread (sort of a chewy super-cracker) provided a platform for a lovely sandwich that could include boiled or smoked ham, some of the best salami I have ever had, fine-grained and no stringy or bony bits. Plus two kinds of cheese and a choice of sliced vegetables, and butter for the bread. I did not see or feel the need for mayo. Then hard or soft boiled eggs, fresh crispy bacon or sausage, two or three kinds of yogurts (some, including a kefir-like "sour milk" we don't see in the USA). I had lingonberry preserves with mine. Lest I forget, there were also pickled herring and anchovy, and oatmeal. Celeste and I found that we ate moderately, had sufficient protein with no cheap over-refined carbs, felt satisfied but not bloated and weren't hungry again until early afternoon. I honestly don't think this approach would work in the USA; too many people would over-indulge or take a doggie bag. The system depends on the Swedish understanding of a concept called "lagom" - translates as "just right" or "it's enough". This is typical of the laudable Swedish expectation that people will exercise self-control.

We emptied our hotel room and drove over to the University area where we had arranged to meet our first "lost" relative - Anneli Svanholm. She is a student this year at Upsalla University in Linguistics. We spent a warm and friendly two hours chatting easily about our families, culture similarities and differences, current music, and many other things. Then we remembered our parking meter had run out, and said our goodbyes; we had a long drive to the north to Dalarna (pronounced doll'-arna). Dalarna is the home of the traditions of Sweden - beautiful handicrafts and arts, dreamy landscapes, and museums of the homes of famous Swedes such as the artist Carl Larson. It was a three hour drive for us to the town of Insjon (in-shoon), home to the folk school where Celeste expects to be studying in 2011. Sweden has for many decades supported these schools that teach traditional crafts such as woodworking, smithing, weaving and others. It is heartening to see arts, crafts and artists get the support, recognition and opportunity to exercise their talents in an income-producing manner (Swedes don't expect to pay Chinese import prices for artistic, quality handwork).

The nature of this landscape is a challenge to describe in words. We had heard it was pretty; and we live in a gorgeous part of New York state, the Finger Lakes area. But there was something truly exceptional about what we saw. Part of it was the extremely tall evergreens, towering over rocky outcroppings covered with a breathtaking palette of mosses, some so pale as to appear to be drifts of lichen-tinted snow, others rich and leprechaun green.

Around every corner were small farmsteads that were the polar opposite of what Malvina Reynolds described in her song as "houses made of ticky-tacky and they all looked just the same". These building shared a very narrow set of design elements, but like a handful of dice shaken out of a jar they came out in an endless variety of combination. They shared a sturdy, ages-old squared log style of construction; tiled roofs that one would have associated with the Mediterranean, one or one and one-half storey construction, and a limited paint scheme that bound the disparate whole together. There was first of all Falun Red - a deep, ruddy-rusty red that was based on local iron oxides; a magnificent slightly mustardy rich yellow; a delicate gray-green paint that resembled the velvety underside of certain flowers' leaves; and an emphatic blue used very sparingly as an accent trim. The sum of the effect left quite an impression.

After checking into our very handsome manor house hotel, we spent most of the afternoon getting a tour of the Folk School, Saterglantan. The two hours there strongly reinforced to Celeste that it was indeed THE place she wanted to come and study Swedish Weaving. I was particularly impressed with their philosophy of establishing for the student a deep sense of understanding the integrity the materials they were working with. For example, woodworking students fell trees, hand-split lengths of green wood, work it green on draw-horses and dry it for further cutting and processing. Weaving students harvest and process flax and shear sheep, working the whole from start to finish. Blacksmithing students spend two weeks living in the woods making charcoal, hardly sleeping while they tend the slow fire that transforms wood to charcoal. Overall, most impressive.

The next morning we concluded our brief visit to Dalarna by visiting the iconic home of Carl Larson. We greatly enjoyed a tour in English with a very well-prepared guide. Carl Larson was Sweden's most loved painter. His bold approach of painting his own family's private life, and his well-known love for them was quite transformational for an overly-formal
Victorian society that kept the children quiet and out of sight. Swedish families today tend to be very close and affectionate, and Larson gets some credit for that. The home and studio have been preserved as he left them, and have a deep imprint of the entire family.

The day ended when we reached our cousin Kent Svanholm's lakeside home after a six hour drive south. We re-fueled our efficient diesel, to the tune of nearly $7.00/gal. Once we found Kent, as tired as we were he and I found ourselves talking, comparing notes, and poring over genealogy papers until, both exhausted and excited, we finally crashed at midnight with plans for more family meetings on Thursday. Whew!

Outbound Travel Recap

Sunday August 15th turned out to be the perfect day to begin my journey. The fact that I was saying "goodbye see you later" to my wife Elizabeth on our 35th anniversary seemed perfectly appropriate somehow; we had greeted our 20th anniversary while in separate vehicles in an Iowa thunderstorm, saluting each other by walkie-talkie enroute from Colorado to Massachusetts as we relocated for my graduate school program. We pre-celebrated this time on Saturday night, by visiting a Rochester NY local foods resturaunt that we had wanted to try called Lento.

Thirty-five years ago, I made my first (and only previous) Atlantic crossing. I was an unmarried student going on a college year abroad to England, Jordan and Yemen; I spent my time studying Arabic and getting to know Westerners associated with Non Governmental Organizations (NGO's) doing medical work. (That experience was responsible for my later decision to enter the Nursing profession, in which I still labor as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist - CRNA). I left the US August 26,1974 with traveler's checks and a red, white and blue backpack (which item earned me more grief and derision in an anti-American/anti Vietnam War world than you can imagine). The news of the day was dominated by President Richard Nixon's recent resignation announcement. I arrived at London Heathrow Airport on the busiest UK travel day of the year, Summer Bank Holiday and general chaos, surrounded by Brits returning from their final summer holiday of the year. I managed to follow scribbled instructions to travel to the northern London suburb of Finchley via the Tube (subway) and arrived, alone and exhausted. As you might expect, things have changed.

For this trip, my airline, hotel and car rental reservations had all been made in advance via the internet. I arrived stocked with credit and debit cards, my bank pre-warned I would be using them in Sweden, thus heading off any possible alarms over theft or fraud. While waiting in JFK airport, I was notified of flight status, including a gate change, by text message. I had the luxury of being met by my own personal guide, my daughter Celeste who has spent the last two months diligently studying the language and culture of our ancestors. Once in our Hertz rental car, a 5-speed manual transmission Ford Fiesta diesel, I mounted the GPS I brought wih me from home (thanks to wifey!!) that I had also preloaded with Garmin Nordic maps and updated firmware, and headed of comfortably and reasonably confidently toward our first destination, the medieval university town of Uppsala, just north of the Stockholm airport.

My daughter and I spent the afternoon touring this handsome old town, admiring its richly-hued buildings and cobblestone streets and squares, many painstakingly laid out in fan-shaped patterns of stones. The plastered buildings, public and private, ranged from deep, rich golds and sandy reds to moss green and even to the pink of the medieval castle towering over the city from a bluff. We window shopped as Celeste suggested clothing style points for me, several of which I look forward to adopting. I'm beginning to think we American men are casual to the point of being just sloppy. On the other hand, some of the styles I see on men in Sweden would definitely call one's masculinity into question in the States! We rounded up the afternoon with gelato and coffees before heading to our hotel.

Decent hotels in Sweden are not cheap. Come to think of it, not much in Sweden is cheap. I had booked a room at one in Uppsala of a chain called Scandic. While somewhat spartan (small room, narrow beds, no wi-fi, small towels and pillows) the beds were exceptionally comfortable, service was very friendly and the best ever hotel breakfast was included. The quality and freshness of the food put any American hotel breakfast I have had for years to shame.

You may wonder about jet lag. A long eastward bound flight is problematic; one arrives at one's detination to a local time (in my case) six hours later than body-clock time. I read up on the topic and found several approaches helpful. 1) I set my mind to the new time once on board the flight. I changed my watch immediately to Sweden time and tried to roll with it. 2) I rested up well in advance. For the two weeks prior to leaving, I slept every chance I got (I'm a world-class napper). This always worked well for me in the past when doing on-call shifts in the hospital. 3) I invested in a noise-cancelling headset. Not just for music, the headset electronically jams incoming sound so it pretty much goes away. Miraculous! And by searching C-Net reviews, I found an exceptional value. 4) No alcohol or caffeine on the flight. I did have tea prior to landing, and several cups of coffee my first day to prevent needing a nap. 5) Sleep in-flight if you can. I had at least a two hour quality nap, and two more hours of rest. This all helped me jump into my new time zone and just go to bed that first night and sleep eight hours and feel great in the AM.

Tuesday we'll meet the first of the "new" cousins, drive up north to Dalarna Province, the home of Swedish folk arts, and tour the Folk School that Celeste plans on attending in 2011.

Peering into the Past to Better Understand the Present

My Swedish immigrant ancestor, Johan Gustaf Johannesson, was born 102 years and thousands of miles way from my own time and place. And yet, there are enough similarities in our lives that should we have met, I think we would have found common ground. We both grew up on small struggling farms in remote rural areas as part of large families. We both left home as teens to find our way in the wider world - I to college and he to Denmark at age 16 to work as a farmhand at a time of widespread famine in Sweden (1868). Some of his siblings followed him to America, while others he left in Sweden and never laid eyes on them again; I have had brothers (and cousins) at every corner of this country, sometimes regrettably not seeing them for 20 years at a time.

This blog is an attempt to chronicle a long-standing ambition of mine - to make a pilgrimage to the past. I am embarking on an expedition to follow my ancestors into their misty history, to discover what they left behind, and to recover for myself a sense of connection with the places and forces that shaped my forefather and mothers for thousands of years. As I write this, my daughter Celeste is already in Sweden and has spent the summer there beginning to acquire the use of the Swedish language. Together she and I will travel, meet previously unknown cousins, visit the places central to our family history and generally try to have a great time together! I invite you to follow along and enjoy vicariously the little details of our journey. Valkommen!