lördag 30 augusti 2014

2014 Genealogy Convention

This weekend the 2014 genealogy convention took place in Karlstad, the town where the sun always shines. Over 80 different companies and societies were represented, Ancestry, FamilySearch and AD online are just three of them. We bought 4 discs; the Swedish death index 1900-2013, Kronoberg county database 2013, Östergötland county maps to use with Disgen and the intros of the estate inventories for Risinge ting. I am looking forward to many hours exploring these.

Apart from buying discs we also atended a couple of lectures where we learned about new features in Disgen and AD online.

Next years convention will take place in Nyköping. See you there!

tisdag 26 augusti 2014

Tuesday's Tip - Records from Mental Hospitals

There has ben mental hospitals in Sweden as far back as the middle ages. There are several musuems that show how the insane were treated and what life was like at the hospiatls and asylums. (link to list of museums).

Säter


A lot of the people treated at the hospital were women with frail nerves. If a woman was not happy taking care of her home she could from the beginning of the 20th century get electrical shock treatment.

If you find somebody in your family who spent time at one of these hospitals or asylums their journals can be found at the County Council archives. The journals tell the story of why the patients were taken care of, if they had been treated there or some where else earlier and which kind of medication that was given. The law about confidentiality, that everything is kept sekcret for 70 years, does not always apply to journals of this kind. The confidentiality is tried for each case and it depends on who is asking for the journals. But after  70 years they are available for everybody.

The records from the mental hospital Säter, for instance, is kept at Dalarna's County Council archives. Säter is probably one of Sweden's most famous mental institutions and is situated in Skönvik. It was built after a survey in 1902 determined that the counties of Gotland, Jönköping, Kopparberg, Kronoberg and Värmland had a high rate of insanity and amentia. Säter's Hospital opened in 1912 and was at the time one of Sweden's largest and most modern mental hospitals with 37 buildings. 20 of these were for taking care of up to 830 patients. The same year the "permanent" pavilion opened for the most dangerous patients. Several additions were made during the years and in 1975 the old main building from 1912 was torn down and replaced after huge restorations had been made to the rest of the hospital. In 1989 the "permanent" pavilion was closed down.


Tub for cold baths at Säter.
Photos used with permission from the photographer. More of her photos can be found at http://amateaur.se/

Source: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4ters_sjukhus
"Släkt" a magazine for Swedish genealogists. Year 32, no 5, 2013

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måndag 25 augusti 2014

Mystery Monday - Noak Larson from ?


Two years ago a man contacted me through Ancestry. He had been searching for information about his great grandfather Noa Larsson who had emigrated to the states from Sweden in 1891. I had a Noak Alexandersson born in 1869 in Lidhult, whose father's last name was Larson. Could these two be the same person? Sure looked like it. I did not have time at that moment to look further into the matter and we did not have any more contact about it.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got a new message from Noah's great grandchild, saying that he was coming to Sweden and asking if we could meet. So last Friday he came to Halmstad and I showed him around. We talked about Noah and what we thought were our joint relatives. The day after we planned to go to Lidhult, Odensjö and Femsjö where our ancestors had lived. But something did not add up... and it bothered me.

When I came home that evening I started looking into that side of my family tree and it turned up that I had not looked into it at all. When I met Noah's great grandchild the next day I told him that I had some bad news and some good news. The pad news was that my Noak and his Noah were not the same, mine never left Lidhult. The good new was that I thought that I had found his Noah, and he was born in the to Odensjö neighbouring parish Torpa. First I had thought that to find Noah's origins would be to look for a needle in a hay stack. Turns out that in the late 1860's it was only common in the area around Ljungby in Kronoberg Couty to name your children Noak and in 1868 there was only one Noak born in Sweden whose father was named Lars. Turns out that Noak's mother was born in Femsjö where we had planned to go and her father was born in Lidhult, where our original plans also would take us. But I was still not a hundred percent sure. We visited the village of Lidhult before going to Torpa. We visited the church where Noah probably had been christened and we also found the village where he was born and grew up. After that we visited some of my relatives where we had traditional Swedish fika - coffe, cinnamon buns, spunge cake and seven kinds of cookies. Our trip then took us to the village of Odensjö on the shores of Bolmen, followed by lunch at Tiraholm by the same lake. Our final destination was the village of Femsjö where we learned about Elias Fries who gave latin names to mushrooms, much like Carl Von Linné gave names to other plants.

That evening I continued my research on Noah and together with his great grandchild we managed to confirm my suspitions that his Noah was born in Torpa in 1868. Felt really good to know that his trip to Halland and Småland had not been in vain. And with his ties to Lidhult, Torpa and Femsjö the probabilaty that we are related in some way are really high.

So this is a genealogy mystery that I managed to solve. :)

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onsdag 13 augusti 2014

Work Wednesday - Teachers


Södermanland, cirka 1930

This week means back to work for most of Sweden's teachers. Most teachers have in their employment that they work 35 hours at school and 10 hours at home every week. A normal work week in Sweden has 40 hours. The extra 5 hours for teachers mean they can have days off during Christmas, spring holliday, Easter and most of the 10 weeks' summer holliday.

As in most of Europe the church was responsible for education during the middle ages. During the 1500's the state took over the schools when the catholic faith was abandoned. Not many people wanted to get education though and only a privilaged few actually studied. Schools were founded in different places but there was no over all plan for the education of the Swedish people. Latin, French and German were the languages used in education.

In 1842 the government decided that all children should attend school for four years and that is considered to be the start of the school system that Sweden has today. In the beginning a lot of schools moved around so the teacher could spend some weeks or months in one place and then go to the next village to teach the children there for the same amount of time. At time went by more and more schools became permanent and more and more teachers were needed. More years were added and in 1882 the obligatory school became six years long. Still, not all children attended school because they were often needed at home where they helped out on the farm. In 1905 laws were passed that ment that schools were for everybody, the could not be different schools for different social groups. From 1936 school was 7 years and in the 1950's it became 8 years long. Since 1972 all children must attend school for nine years, between the ages of 7 and 16. Education for teachers are different depending on which ages they teach and also varies in length, from 3,5 years to 5,5. Teachers for younger children have to have knowledge of more subjects but teachers of older students focus on 2-4 subjects. Some subjects, like Swedish and Social Studies, take longer to study in order to become a teacher. From year 7-9 a stundent has 15-16 subjects so there needs to be a lot of different kinds of teachers; Swedish, English, French, Spanish, German, maths, physics, chemistry, biology, technology, religion, history, geography, social studies, P.E. textile/fabrics, wood works,home economics and music.

Before the nine year obligatory school is a pre-school year that is becoming more and more like a tenth year. After the nineth year the students choose what kind of education they want to attend, what kind of occupation they want to have. The so called Gymnasiet is three years and some programs that the students can choose are more occupation oriented and some are more to prepare the students for higher education. Most teachers at Gymnasiet only have two subjects.



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tisdag 12 augusti 2014

Tombstone Tuesday - Selma Rosenberg, a sad story



At Vänge cemetary on Gotland is this tombstone placed. The girl, Selma, has written the poem on her stone herself.

What is all the thinking, 
what is it?
What is all the searching 
in the human soul?
It is a child's game 
with sea shells in the sand
and what we find
is a foam by the beach
But deep and enigmatical
flows still
infront of us the sea
that is the truth!

Selma was born on the main land, not far from Stockholm. As a child she developed a heart condition. Her father died after battleing cancer for a year and a half when she was 13. Her mother was then left with 6 children and hardly any money to feed the family. This led to the mother's placement in a mental institution.

She started writing poetry at an early age and was very talented. So talented that she was offered a job, which she turned down. Instead she worked with clothes and embroidering. Her health was poor and her siblings tried to find a way to help her. She longed to visit her friend at Etelhem on Gotland, auntie Kökeritz and recieved an invitation.

June 4, 1901, Selma arrieved in Visby. None of her siblings could afford to go with her so she travelled on her own. She stayd the first night wiht some friends outside the town and the next day she was supposed to take the train down to Etelhem. She did not have the patiance to wait so she started walking. She came as far as Vänge on the evening of the fifth. She writes there in her diary about how tired she is and how ill she feels.

On the morning of the sixth her body is found on the estate of Backér. She had laid her scarf out on the ground to rest a bit but never woke up.


Source:
http://www.guteinfo.com/?id=2497

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söndag 10 augusti 2014

The man-of-war Vasa sinks 1628



The war ship Vasa was built in 1626-1628. The king, Gustav II Adolf, had ordered five ships to be built that would be the largest and  most powerful ships of their time. They would be symbols of the military and political strength Sweden had.

But something went wrong with the construction of Vasa. She was too instable to be able to sail in rougher winds and she was wrecked on her maiden voyage. The ship had not more than left the harbour when a gust of wind filled the sails and the ship was forced to the baboard side. The wind passed and the ship sailed straight again but it was not long until a new gust of wind filled the sails and the ship went so far down on its side that it started taking in water through the portholes. Vasa capsized and sank at a depth of 32 meters, 120 meters from the shore.

Attempts to salvage the ship were made in the 1600's but all fail and the ship was forgotten. Its exact location was determined in 1956 and in 1961 the ship was salvaged. Since 1990 it has its own museum in Stockholm and is really worth a visit.

For more information in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

Picture: Vasa's stern
Under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Souce: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regalskeppet_Vasa


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fredag 8 augusti 2014

Family Recipe Friday - Wallenbergare (Veal burgers)


Wallenbergare is a traditonal Swedish dish. It is made of ground veal, cream, egg yolks, salt, pepper and bread crumbs. It shold be fried lightly and is often served with boiled or mased potatoes  and green peas.

The dish got its name after the district judge Marcus Wallenberg. There are many story about how the dish got its name but no one knows which one is true. One is that Markus one day in the middle of the 1930's came in to his favorite restaurant Cecil in Stockholm. Hed just gotten home from a trip abroad where he had had a wonderful dish of chopped veal. He asked the chef, Julius Carlsson, to make something like it and so he did. Another story says that Marcus' wife, the daughter of a famous cookbook author, created the dish.

For the recipe in English: http://www.swedishfood.com/swedish-food-recipes-main-courses/91-veal-burgers

Sources:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallenbergare
http://kockarna.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/det-fins-manga-historier-bakom-receptet-pa-wallenbergare/

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söndag 3 augusti 2014

The Runestone at Viklau Church, Gotland


On the wall of the entrance to the graveyard at Viklau on Gotland is a funeral slabb with runes. The text reads: "Botvid, the heir of Peter". What makes these runes special is the fact that they are mirrored.




Sources:
http://kmb.raa.se/cocoon/bild/show-image.html?id=16001000328204
Thorgunn Snaedal, antiquarian and runologist.

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lördag 2 augusti 2014

Society Saturday - Gotlandståget

During my trip to Gotland I stayed with a relative who had rented an old, small, railroad station, Tule. It used to only be tha cottage of the level crossing attandant but has resently been upgraded to station. The first railroad on Gotland was built in 1878 when the line Visby-Hemse was built. In 1898 the railroad between Klintehamn and Roma was finished and it is along that line that Thule station is situated. The line was built to make it easier for the farmers to transport their sugar beats to the sugar mill in Roma. The railroads on Gotland were discontinued in the early 1960's and all the rails were taken away.

In 1978 had a small portion of the railroads been restored and could be taken into use. During the beginning of the 21st century further tracks have been put down and this year you could travel by train a distance that takes 10 minutes. More tracks are being added and next year you should be able to travel all the way from Dalhem to Roma. The society that runs the railroad and is working to restore it has recieved money from the EU and you can also fund the project by buying a railroad tie. You will not be able to take it with you but your name will be on a board by one of the stations.

There is one steam locomotive but when the weather is too dry, like it is this summer, they use diesel locomotives instead. There are several wagons from different time periods that you can choose to ride in. The train stops at different stations and the train conductor tells the history of the railroad.

All trips start and end at Hesselby station in Dalhem. There is a café and a railroad station. You can also buy souvenirs.

Tule Station

Diesel locomotive with wagons.


Insiede the youngest of the wagons.

With the renting of the station came the free rent for two trollies so we hopped on the trolleys and peddled 30 minutes up hill to Tule where we had fika (Swedish word for having coffe, tea, something to drink, cookies and/or cake) and then we peddled our way back. For SEK 100 you rent the trolly for 90 minutes. It is not very steep up hill so not even I had problems with peddling.

Trolly in Dalhem.

Dalhem station

The big building is the railroad musuem.


Source:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotlands_j%C3%A4rnv%C3%A4g
http://www.gotlandstaget.se/

Photos: By Lena Svensson

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