Searching for an Ancestral Past

The Myking Church

While the Hurtigruten Ferry was the catalyst for this trip, it has been much more about finding ancestral roots. Linda and I started in Norway before the ferry ride looking for places her family had lived in the wilds around Bergen. We were fairly successful with some help from Ancestry.com, Linda’s cousin Jerry and his wife Joni, and the kindness of our Airbnb host who set us up with her father who remembered the names of places where people lived. With that we were able to get a good look at a few of those locations before heading off to our ferry cruise on the Hurtigruten. We left information with him and another stranger we met nearby with hopes that they will get back to us with more information.

The extent of farmland in Fjordland

Naevda Farm

A water world

The land is good for sheep

We also took a drive to Vik where we had tours of two churches connected to Cherie’s family. We took some pictures and hope to join them when they head that way in the next few years.

The Hove Stone Church

Hove Gravestones

Then after some time exploring southern Finland, we took the ferry to Åland Island. Cherie had made contact with someone living on property that her aunt had corresponded with. Fortunately, the woman living there today responded to Cherie’s letter and invited us to visit her. Cherie learned a lot about her family and left documents with Carlita who promised to translate them. Her husband also set us up to meet relatives of my brother-in-law Roy through an address he still had. That was the most exciting part of the trip. When we arrived at that address, we were met by two families anxious to meet us and although they were disappointed we were not the actual relatives. Even so, they entertained us with pictures and memories. We left with promises to continue the communication and visit again. We finished our stay in Åland with a visit to the Emigrant Institute where we spent a lively afternoon with the two women in charge. Among other things we learned that many of the papers Cherie had saved when her sister passed are rare and have real historical value beyond what they will teach her about her family. We also learned a lot about the context of emigration from Åland Islands which helped us understand more about the emigration of our ancestors.

Fun with paper at Carita's winter home

Roy's family

At the Åland Emigrant Institute

Then after a few days in Stockholm, Linda and I headed off to Vetlanda, a small city of about 10,000 where my grandmother was born. We already had a lot of details about the family here because she and a few others of her generation had written about the family as their contribution to the American Bicentennial in 1976. We don’t have any names or addresses of current relatives living in Sweden, so we did not expect any kind of a reunion as we had experienced on Åland Island, but we did want to explore the area and see what we could of the land where they had lived. With one possible exception, the only buildings remaining from that time are churches and even some of the have been replaced in the intervening years. The possible exception is a root cellar. The pictures look like it could be the same, but there isn’t a lot of difference among root cellars, so we can’t be sure. We did have a good time driving around the area, visiting two marvelous Emigrant Museums in Göteborg and Växjö, and looking at the amazing variety of churches the Swedes have built. There have been times on previous trips to Europe when we did tire of visiting churches and cathedrals, but on this trip, the only times a church disappointed us was when they were closed and we could not get inside. Outside and in, the amazing variety and beauty of even the smallest of these churches continues to amaze as the number we have visited approaches 20.

Vetlanda Lutheran Church

The stone fence

Root cellar - perhaps used by my ancestors

Linda pointed out that it is a bit ironic that on this trip, the person who learned the most about their past and was able to make actual personal connections is the person who wasn’t even there. Nevertheless, we were all excited with what we did learn and we all are leaving Scandinavia with the promise to return and spend more time in this stunningly beautiful region of the world.