Our Sweden Adventure

On Sunday, May 19, Dale and I will accompany my parents on a trip to Sweden.

Mom and Dad will be picking up their new Volvo at the factory in Gothenburg. Volvo provides the necessary licensing and insurance for us to drive it around Sweden for the next two weeks, where we intend to visit just about every one of our immigrant ancestors’ home villages.

Here are our plans in a nutshell:

• First stop after Gothenburg is the Broddetorp area, home of the Brodd family. We will be visiting a working farm that still uses farming techniques from the late 1800’s. The farm is part of the Västergötlands museum in Skara.
• The on to Stockholm where we’ll do the usual tourist stuff plus find out what we can about Johan Hultman (my 7th great-grandfather), taffeltäckare for King Charles XII. We may or may not detour up to Söderhamn to visit the home village of Louis (Lars) Hanson, my great-great-grandfather.
• Then over to Aneby where the Rudeens came from. We will stay at the Nobynäs Manor House, where my great-great-grandmother was a maidservant. We have also contacted the current owners of the Eket farm, where my great-grandfather Gust Rudeen was born, and they have invited us to visit the property.

  

• After Aneby, we’ll head south towards Växjö to visit the Emigrants Museum. Along the way, we’ll visit some of the villages where later generations of the Hultman family lived.
• Then to Kristianstad, home of the Martinson family and also a Pearson ancestor. We’ll be staying at the Bockebodgården Bed and Breakfast, within walking distance of where John and NIlla Martinson lived before they came to America.
• We’ll use Kristianstad as a launch-point to visit Riseberga (home of Christian Pearson) and Skivarp (birthplace of John Martinson).

I plan to update this blog as often as possible as we travel along (depends on the availability of wi-fi…).

I don’t intend to post much on my Facebook page. If you want to stay up-to-date on our travels, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog and get an email notice every time there’s a new report.