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Anything by MJ , 20 July 2008

Geo tags: småland

Descriptive tags: history sweden immigration

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My husband's mom and dad are both 100% Swedish(purebred, if you call it that) making my husband also a pure Swede. I found this very charming and interesting when we met 31 years ago. He's tall as are all of his 4 siblings. Years ago, his dad was approached by a writer from Sweden who interviewed him for four hours about his parents (my husband's grandparents), their immigration and they life they lived upon coming to America. It was all done on cassette and later translated to paper. Much easier to read than to try to find 4 hours to listen to the whole tape set. The writer was going to use the material for an article, but not sure anyone ever saw the article. It is fun to know about how they lived and adapted back then. They had no runnng water, they rode horses, canned food and made massive amounts of cheese to last the winter. It was probably tough but they only knew what they knew so the perception was not of hardship. It was just normal. "Dad" told the Swedish historian/writer that he would get on his horse once a week to go to Confirmation class at church in the evening in late fall. It would be dark on the way back and he'd just let the horse do all of the navigating home. The horse knew the way! He talked about all of the days working in the fields and about the very cold beds in the winter nights and how they had to put bricks in the fire to get them hot and use them to heat up the sheets before crawling into bed. He described how people all took care of each other and their neighbors. He had such fondness in his voice as he recalled his younger life. What a bittersweet time and what a great way to grow up. We can't wish it back but hopefully we can keep the memory and try to keep the valuable memories of those days from not so many years ago.

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this is a very nice memory

By William , 6 January 2009

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There are three kinds of stories:
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