First Stop: Stockholm !!

Page 63 of the Household Examination Roll reports that Ernst August Teodor Hansson Jonsson (Hemmansägarson = unmarried man), born 7/12/1873 emigrated from Eldstorp Säteri, Askeryd, Jönköpings län (Småland), Sweden to Nordamerika on 3/7/1896.  How he ended up in Blackberry Township, Illinois, USA is still to be determined, but lets just say that I graduated High School one hundred and twenty years later within a few miles of there.  



I have a specific admiration for a 23 year old boy who leaves his homeland to pursue the chance of a better life for him and his future family ... quite possibly alone, at great distances on both land and sea, with fear, sadness, and great hope for what awaits.  However, I will save that perspective for the next post.  This one in particular is about his grand daughter, Elaine Carroll Hanson Jones, my mother.


Being of majority Swedish decent and having a particular fondness for her Father, it has been a dream of my Mom to visit our homeland.  Perhaps it sounds a bit strong from a fourth generation American (me) to claim to still feel roots, especially without any sort of obvious Swedish heritage in my upbringing.  However, I do, and after being there I certainly know better why. Certainly for my Mother, this was a journey of epic proportions.

This year said grand daughter flipped a significant birthday and with my current proximity to Sweden it seemed a very reasonable suggestion we should visit.  Done and done.  We shall start in Stockholm for two days and follow through with a road trip down south to find the origin of our modern family afterwards.


So here we go!  A flight to Stockholm, a booking in an antique furnished hotel in the old city (Gamla Stan), and 48 hours to see what we can see there.  The Gamla Stan island is a small but saturated piece of historic Stockholm.  As soon as we got in, we started zig-zaging the streets, browsing all the trinket shops, scenic coastalways, and lucked our way into a lunch of delightful Swedish meatballs ... how do we still feel comfort food from third generation relatives?  Not sure, but we do, as we also prioritized that meatballs with gravy and mash must also be our dinner for the last night in the city.

Dinners, bonding, cinnamon rolls, knitting shops (with an apple green Gotland wool skein I shall post about in the future), trolls, horsies, walks down scary dark alleys, pastries, jewellery shopping, paper shop hunting, blue plates  ... it was how it was supposed to be ... and oh wait, I can't close without mentioning the food market. 

Because I like what I like and what I like just happens to be food, there was an amazing food market in the Stockholm that we made a morning of.  Was quite delightful for me ... we braved the metro and I managed to get in a few salmon rolls, eyeball the lingonberry jams, and appreciate the reindeer meat sausages (yep!).

Stockholm ... a good portion was covered, but only a teaser into understanding our heritage ...  more to come ... until next post.
 

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