Greta Garbo.
Ingrid Bergman. Alfred Nobel. August Strindberg. If you know these names, then you may already
know a little something about historic Stockholm, Sweden.
Stockholm and Swedish-American immigration and culture have
always been intertwined closely because so many Swedes emigrated to America
from places like Gothenburg and Stockholm, the Swedish capital.
By about the 1900 era from which SweAme seeks to document
American Swedish families, beautiful Stockholm was the only place in the world
that had more Swedish inhabitants than Chicago, America’s largest-population
Swedish City.
Stockholm connections
for your family?
Chances are that some of your Swedish relatives, even those
who grew up in rural areas of Sweden, lived there at one time before leaving for
the United States. Have you checked
Stockholm's Roteman database that features population records from 1878 to
1926? You can at least get some background and a start here, putting in as much
information as you know about your Swedish ancestors.
Stockholm cultural
highlights
Since Stockholm has served as the capital of Sweden since
1436, the island city that still houses Swedish royalty has influenced all of
Swedish culture in various ways. That means that it affected Swedish-American
folkways of our ancestors, too. It is a highly walkable and clean city, and is
noted for the venue of the ceremonies connected to prizes established by Alfred
Nobel in 1901. You can visit the Nobel Museum.
Here, in steep Old Town (Gamla Stan), by walking in the
footsteps of generations of Swedes back to the 13th century, you can
begin to feel the essence of Swedishness. There is much beauty in the
well-preserved churches, and many of the buildings are originals from hundreds
of years ago when our ancestors lived in Sweden.
It was to Stockholm that many of our ancestors fled when
times got hard in the countryside. There they learned dressmaking, tailoring,
railroading, glass making, and some of them even became indentured servants as
they left Sweden to pursue farming in the citrus industry in Florida. Because
of similarities between Stockholm and San Francisco and New York City, many Swedes emigrated
to California and New York in addition to Chicago, enriching our cities.
Our Swedish history
for urban and rural Swedes in Stockholm
If you’re interested in Swedish culture and art, you will be
able to see the art and culture enjoyed by your ancestors at close to 100
museums in Stockholm. And if your
ancestors were seagoing Swedes, as many were, you can see the Vasa Museum there
in particular. It is described as the museum with the most visitors in all of
Scandinavia.
If your family’s Swedes hailed from the rambling
countryside, though, you can see the kinds of homes they lived in and what
their daily life was like by visiting Skansen – the oldest open-air museum in
the world.
As we expand and enhance the family trees at SweAme, we may remember with pride that it was only
18 years after the Mayflower arrived that the first documented Swedes came from
Stockholm to set up a Swedish colony in Delaware. In many ways right from the
beginning, Stockholm and America have always been one. As Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjold said
about the importance of taking chances, “Never look
down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye
fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.”
Jeanne Rollberg (jnrollberg@aol.com)