The Land of Emigrants

From the mid 1800's to the early 1900's over one million Swedes emigrated to America. This amounted to 20 to 25 percent of the population of the country at the time. The province of Småland contributed the largest number of these migrating people. Why did they leave? There were many different reasons.

The old practice of dividing the family farm between the sons when the farmer died or got too old to farm had created many farms that were too small to feed a family. Years of bad weather had caused repeated famines. Some people (like those who established the colony at Bishop Hill, Illinois) left for religious reasons. The Homestead Act, signed by President Lincoln, offered fertile farmland to any who would spend a few years improving it and attracted farmers. Letters from early emigrants telling wonderful stories of opportunities in America, together with people who made a business out of selling ship tickets and making big promises attracted many. The migration from Sweden to America during this period was unprecedented. At one time Chicago had enough Swedes to make it the second largest Swedish city.

The story of this mass movement of Swedes is told in the Emigrants Museum in Växjö. Housed in the same building is a research center that contains countless records of the Swedish people, it was a place Len had to visit.

We got there late in the afternoon. The museum would be open for three more hours, but the research center would be open for only an hour. Again time was too short.

Len remembered that there was once a Swede living in Kane who was traveling around microfilming old church records and Vasa Lodge books, and interviewing Swedish Americans. Len's parents became friends with the man and Len could remember meeting him when he was back in Kane for visits. It seemed reasonable that the man had been connected with the Emigrant Museum organization, so Len asked a research assistant if he knew of a Lennert Sutterdahl. Not only had he heard of him, he pointed out an oil portrait of him on the board room wall. Sutterdahl spent ten years in the USA gathering information about what happened to the Swedes who went to America. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago.

With only a short time available in the research center, there wasn't much of a chance to do much searching for more ancestors. One ancestor that Len did not have much information about was Annie Severina Karlsdotter, his father's mother.

The research assistant found a microfilm of the family register book from the church she came from, and after a little looking, he found the names of her father, mother, brothers and sisters. The church where she was from, Långaryd, was not far off the planned route, so, a side trip was added to the agenda.

But first, a little more about the displays in the Museum.

There is quite a collection here, and it is impossible to describe it all. One case is full of Swedish American club memorabilia, and there are several medals and ribbons from Jamestown, NY included in the display. There is an exhibit showing Swede Street in Chicago. A full scale model of the berths on board the ships that carried many Swedes to America shows that each steerage passenger had a very narrow bunk bed with only a foot or so of head space. Len's grandmother Swanson traveled from Göteborg to Ludlow, PA for a total cost of $46 and must have had such a bunk. Since Len's ancestors took several weeks in such conditions to make the trip, he felt much better about the relatively minor inconvenience of being cramped in an airplane for seven hours to cover the same distance.

A large space is devoted to Vilhelm Moberg who wrote the stirring series of books about the emigrants. The books are highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the lives of these hardy people. Here stands the original plaster cast of the statue of Karl-Oscar and Kristina seen in the Karlshamn harbor park, and who are typical of more than a million travelers.

The House of Emigrants is a must for any Swedish American who visits Sweden.

Meeting the Immigrants

After visiting the Museum, we walked around the downtown Växjö pedestrian mall. It seems that there is such a place free of cars and full of people in every city in Sweden. We ordered sandwiches and a baked potato from a small shop and Len got a chance to try his "Jag kan inte tala Svenska" phrase. The shopkeepers could speak passable English, so ordering was really not a problem.

Later, while sitting at the outdoor cafe, we had a nice discussion with the husband of the woman who owned the shop. They were from Romania, and had lived in Sweden for about twelve years. It was very interesting to get a Swedish immigrants view of Sweden after just seeing the House of Emigrants Museum. He talked about the problem of the small restaurant owners' trouble with trying to compete with the new MacDonalds... "and why didn't the government do something about it?" (Sounds a lot like in the US.) His biggest complaint about the Swedes was that they didn't complain enough. We found out later that the Swedes biggest complaint about the immigrants is that they complain too much.

On To Långaryd

After spending the night in a parking lot behind a department store in Värnamo, we drove to Långaryd where Len's father's mother was from. This was our first visit to a rural Swedish kyrka (church).

The church districts are organized so that everyone was within walking distance of the church. As we found out, what was considered walking distance one hundred years ago was a full day for some people. At Långaryd, some had to walk 15 kilometers to get to church. This could take all day Sunday, especially in winter. The preacher there complained that 100 years ago, more people attended church when they had to walk 15 kilometers, then now when they have less than 15 minutes to drive. People seem to have a lot more to talk to God about when times are tough than when times are easy.

Each of the smaller regions of the church district had to appoint a soldier to serve locally, or to heed the call of the King when required. One of the jobs these soldiers had was when someone died. They had to carry the body to the kyrkagård (church garden, or cemetery). For some reason no wagon was allowed for this.

We soon discovered that the kyrkagårds are very well taken care of. In the case of this church, there was one full time and one half time caretaker. In addition to that, many people were to be seen tending the flowers at the family graves. The day we were here was the morning of midsummer day, a big Swedish holiday.

Len got out his family history book, and approached an elderly couple to see if he could learn anything about his ancestors family or where their grave might be. His few words of Swedish were Greek to the couple, but they did recognize some of the names in his book.

They pulled us by the sleeves, and dragged us to the preachers' house near the church. Kontraktsprost Björn Berggren was home, and could speak English extremely well in spite of never having been out of Sweden. After taking a look at Len's book, he invited us into his house where he started digging out old church books to see if he could find any record of Len's grandmother.

 

Before long, he found records of the Karl Johan Arvidson family. He discovered that they were from the Bälshult region of the church district.

He then made a call to a Helge Olsson, an 86 year old man who made it his business to know where everything and everyone in the district was.

Pastor Björn invited us to go with him in his car and visit the site where Grandma Nasman's home had been when she was a girl. We picked up Helge Olsson and headed down a narrow paved road that turned into a narrower dirt track, from which we turned off onto a nearly invisible lane in the woods.

 

 

 

Here Helge showed us a hole in the rocks that had been the family root cellar.

And there was a pile of stones that had been the chimney of their house.

 

 

 

Of course one hundred years ago, there would have been a clearing here instead of the present thick forest of fir trees. It was a very beautiful site right on a very large unspoiled lake. But here the stories of Swedes leaving because of poverty came close to home. Helge Olson told of a neighbor lady who gave the Arvidson family food one day after she saw that the children were so hungry they were eating grass.

 

Anni Severina was the youngest of eight children. She went to Brooklyn, NY and worked as a housemaid until she married Len's grandfather and later moved to a farm in Scandia, PA. In her family were twin brothers who moved out of the district. Later one of them, Amandus, moved back here and built a new house nearby that still stands. Amandus died in 1913.

 

 

Back at the cemetery, Pastor Björn made it a project to find the grave site of Annie Severina's mother. In those days, people were buried in the order in which they died. The second person to die in a particular year was placed next to the first person to die that year. Since many families had little or no money, many graves are unmarked. The procedure for finding a grave, is to have a copy of the list of people who died that year, find a marker for one of the people on the list, and then count graves from there. Pastor Björn believes that the spot shown in this photo is the place where Len's great grandmother is buried.

Our experience with Pastor Björn and Helge Olsson was the first of many experiences where the friendly Swedes not only made us feel welcome, but went far out of their way to help make our trip delightful.

Moving On Through Småland

Our side trip to Långaryd had turned into a major adventure, and had put us a little behind schedule. Although we saw a lot of nicely decorated maypoles, we had missed the costumed dancers celebrating the midsummer festival. Actually, the word maypole is an English corruption of the Swedish word for the pole that is decorated with flowers and has nothing to do with our month of May.

Anyway, we had to resist the temptation to see more of the interesting sites of Småland. We could easily have spent the whole three weeks there and not see it all. We passed close to, but missed seeing, the Smålandsstener, a pre-viking era circle of stones similar to Stonehenge. We had to skip the Match Museum in Jönköping, the birthplace of the wooden safety match. The thousands of pristine lakes in the area promised lots of good fishing for trout, pike, and perch that were quite safe from Len's fishing skills.

Småland is also the home of Astrid Lindgrens Värld, the headquarters for everything related to the famous Pippi Longstocking and Emil who seem to be featured on every child's backpack and lunch box in Sweden.

Jönköping is a city of about 80,000 located on the southern end of lake Vättern, the second largest lake in Sweden. At one hundred kilometers long and thirty kilometers wide, it is the size of some of the American Great Lakes. The difference is that you can drink the water, and the lake shore (like all Swedish lakes) is pretty much unspoiled. The view of the lake from highway E4 between Jönköping and Gränna is quite spectacular.

Two thirds of the way up Vättern, on the east shore, is the old town of Vadstena. We stopped briefly there late in the evening, and took a quick look at the castle that is currently being restored. We moved on and spent the night at the Örebro EuroStop.

 

 

 

EuroStop

Imagine a high class gas station, hotel complex, indoor mall, grocery store, truck stop, and 24 hour convenience store with excellent rest rooms and free showers (ask the attendant for the nyckel [key]), and you are imagining a EuroStop.

We discovered the EuroStop in Örebro, and found that there were several of these in Sweden. It was a great place to rest and get cleaned up before traveling the next day to Västerås.