Up until about a year before leaving for Sweden, we didn't know much more about Sweden than that all of Len's grandparents came from there. Well, there were the Nasman family traditions, lutefisk at Christmas, the special Swedish recipes that Len's Mom was so good at (Swedish Rye Bread, Sylta, Korv) and his Dad's sill (pickled herring) and Swedish accordion music. Len's parents had a lot of Swedish American friends and had been active in the Vasa Lodge. And, whenever anyone from Sweden visited Kane, Len's parents were sure to invite them to the house for a visit. But Len left Kane right after graduating from high school and you know how much interest most high school kids have in studying their ancestors.
Len never thought much about doing any serious genealogy research because of what he thought he knew about the old Swedish customs for naming children. For example, if Sven Gabrielsson had a son named Gustav, he would be known as Gustav Svensson. A daughter might be Anna Svensdotter. If Gustav had a son named Karl, he would be Karl Gustavsson, and so on. This system was continued until the early 1900's. There were exceptions. Members of the nobility, clergy, or high ranking military officers maintained a consistent family surname. But, it appeared to Len that this system would make it impossible to trace ancestors in Sweden. This, he discovered was completely wrong. The explanation of why this was wrong requires a brief review of Swedish history.
Modern Sweden starts pretty much with Gust Ericksson who was a member of the Vasa family in the 1500's. At that time, what is now Sweden was controlled by King Christian of Denmark. He was known to the Danes as Christian the Kind and to the Swedes as Christian the Tyrant. Gust Ericksson had been taken as one of a group of hostages by Christian in an attempt to keep the members of the nobility in line, but had escaped to Germany. Gust got word that the Danes were making new trouble for the Vasa family in Stockholm, so he headed out to try to help.
In the mean time, King Christian rounded up all of the members of the Vasa family and had them killed in what is known as the "Bloodbath of Stockholm." Gust got word of this while he was on the way. He also heard that the Danish soldiers had orders to kill him on sight. There are lots of stories about young Gust hiding from the Danes; some of them might even be true, such as the story that he was disguised as a kitchen helper on an estate. When the soldiers came around looking for any Vasas that might be hiding there, the cook smacked Gust back and forth across the head and proclaimed that he was only a stupid low life helper. Once when a farmer was helping Gust travel by hiding him in a hay cart, one of the soldiers took a spear and jabbed it around in the hay piled in the cart. He stuck Gust in the leg, but didn't discover him hiding under the hay. Later, when the farmer noticed that he was leaving a trail of blood from Gust's wounded leg, he cut the horse's leg with his knife to explain the blood.
Anyway, after many adventures, Gust made it to Mora, a town on beautiful Lake Siljan, now considered the heart of the folk district of Sweden. As the people were coming out of church, Gust got up on a small hill and gave a speech, trying to convince the people that he was the last of the Vasa line, and that they should join with him to throw the evil King Christian out of their country. The people didn't pay too much attention to Gust, who by now was a scruffy looking dirty young man, and pretty much ignored him. Gust Ericksson strapped on his skis and headed for the hills hoping to escape to Norway. The next day some local businessmen returned from a trip and said something like "Hej, did you hear about the bloodbath in Stockholm? All of the Vasa family are dead. Now we have no one to lead us in the fight against Christian the Tyrant!"
The people looked at each other and said, "Oops!, we better find Gust Ericksson." So they sent their best young skiers to find Gust. They caught up with him at the Norwegian border. To this day, every year the great Vasalopet ski race is held to commemorate this event. As many as 12,000 compete for prizes.
Well, when Gust got back he was able to get a small group together and chase the Danes away from the famous copper mines at Falun. With word of this success, his army grew. He got some loans from his German friends who were members of the Hansa (Hanseatic League), and were very interested in the copper and iron mines of Sweden. With all of this help, Gust was able to drive Christian the Tyrant back to Denmark, and became known as King Gustav Vasa.
Now that King Vasa was in charge, he had to find a way to pay his bills to the Hansa, and to build cities, forts, and castles fit for a King. He checked around and discovered that the royal family controlled about five percent of the land, but that the Catholic Church controlled about 25 percent of the wealth. The King didn't much like the idea of all of that wealth going to Rome, so he decided that the Swedes would all be Lutherans, and that the Lutheran Church would be the official state church.
This seemed to work out pretty well. At least until Gustav Vasa died. Gust had a number of sons, the oldest being Eric (known to some as Eric the crazy). Eric liked excitement. One of his favorite games was the blanket toss; he would sit in the middle of a blanket and people would hold on to the edges and bounce him up in the air. One time he was bounced so high that his head took a great whack on a ceiling beam. This knocked him cold for a bit. Maybe that is how he got to be crazy, or maybe he already was. Anyway, he was no match to his Father when it came to running the country, and things started to deteriorate. He was locked in the castle tower for a time and some say he died from poison placed in his split pea soup.
The crown was worn by several of King Vasa's children, but it was his grandson Gustav II Adolf who was the genius of the family, and who made Sweden a major European power. Gustav Adolph was very successful waging war in Poland and Germany, saving the protestants there from the Pope and his allies. You might have read about the 30 Year's War. Gustav Adolf had some very clever advisors, the most notable probably Axel Oxenstirna. At one time Gustav Adolph's chaplain was Johannes Rudbeckius. During a military campaign in Russia, Johannes is said to have given a real hell-fire-and-damnation sermon about the duties and responsibilities of rulers, and how they should set a good example for their subjects and not fool around with women without being married. So, Gustav Adolf settled down some, got serious about religion, and took a wife.
Johannes Rudbeckius
became Bishop of the domkyrka (Cathedral) at Västerås. He established the
practice of having each local church keep the official birth, marriage, and
death records for the state. This is why Len was wrong about how hard it is
to do genealogy research in Sweden. These family register books, with
records well back into the 1600's, have all been microfilmed (by the
Mormons) and are available for study at any Mormon Family History Center.
Many of the records are now being computerized. This will make it even
easier to do genealogical research in the future.
The country of Sweden is now divided into provinces for political purposes. But the old geographical organization by church districts is still very much alive and operating. Churches were built so that every person was within walking distance of a church. Each church district is divided into smaller regions. At one time each of these regions had to contribute soldiers to the King's army, or taxes to fund the country. In the rural areas, it is still possible to identify the farms associated with each region, and many churches and communities have books that trace the owners and workers on these farms back to the 1600's and sometimes earlier.
Now that you know why Len was wrong about how hard it is to find your ancestors in Sweden, we can get back to the main story.
About a year before the trip, Len was fooling around on the computer. He was using what is called a "search engine" on the internet World Wide Web. Since the name Nasman is not too common, he decided to see what references the computer would come up with if he searched on nasman. There were about 200 references. Several were personal. For example, the course syllabus for several Engineering Graphics classes appeared because they are using books that Len has written. Someone in Sweden posted the results of a sporting event, so the fact that a Gunther Näsman took 12th place in an Orienteering competition popped up in the search.
A fellow named Mats Naslund in
Sweden, who counts genealogy as one of his hobbies, had posted on his web page
a listing of all of his ancestors. Buried in this list was one individual
named Näsman. 
Len sent
a brief email note to Mats mentioning that all of his grandparents were from
Sweden, and asking if Mats thought there might be some connection between the
Näsman on his list and Len's ancestors. Mats responded by explaining the
church record keeping system in Sweden. He also offered to do a search for Len
if he could supply the church and birth date of a grandparent.
Len supplied his grandfather Peter Nasman's birth date and the fact that he was from Tynderö (near Sundsvall). Mats did a search and soon supplied Len with a large amount of information about his ancestors. Although Mats now lives in Stockholm, he is originally from Harnösand, which is only about 40 kilometers from Sundsvall. After several rounds of email messages, and more searching by Mats, it was determined that Mats and Len are something like 12th cousins.
Also, it was discovered that Peter Nasman's mother was descended from Johannes Rudbeckius, the very person who made genealogy study in Sweden possible. Len was hooked! If you like to play detective, and enjoy putting puzzles together, doing genealogy can become very addictive. Len continued searching the internet for more information about his ancestors. He discovered a number of distant cousins who shared his interest, both in Sweden and in the USA. He also developed a strong interest in studying Sweden, its people, and its history. All of this (combined with Diana's long-time interest in international travel), led up to the big trip to Sweden in the Summer of 1997.
