I think I am being stalked by Sweden. Why do I think this, you ask? Well, consider the following:
June 25th: I watched part of a documentary about the raising of the Vasa, a warship commissioned by Gustav II Adolph, which sank in 1628. The new genealogy blogs posted on Geneabloggers, that same day, included Skäktresan. It is entirely in Swedish, so it could list all my Swedish ancestors back to the year dot, and I couldn’t tell. The one bit I could read was a link to SwedGenTour 2011, a series of talks on Swedish Genealogy to be given in various US locations this September. More information is available here. None of their stops are close to me. Bummer.June 26th: This review of The Inspector in Silence by Håkan Nesser, a mystery novel originally published in Swedish in 1997, was published in the Arts section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Sounds like a good read.
June 27th: This article on a gender-neutral preschool in Sweden appeared in the Monday edition of the Plain Dealer. I can understand why they would want to do it, but on the other hand, it seems kind of silly.June 30th: I had to pick up some books at my local library and on a whim checked to see if there any books on Swedish history. Surprisingly, as the branch is not very big, there was one – Sweden. The Nation’s History by Franklin D. Scott. It’s over twenty years old, but I checked it out anyway. It is now sitting on a shelf, where it will likely remain until I return to the library - unread, like most books I check out.
June 30th: I took some time to catch up about four weeks’ worth of Time magazine. In the June 27th edition was Grand Larssony a review of mystery novels: The Snowman by the Norwegian author Jo Nesbø and The Hypnotist by the Swede Lars Kepler. They also sound like good reads. The July 4th edition included Northern Star, an article about Stockholm’s progress towards its goal of being fossil-fuel free by 2050. If you are interested in sustainability issues this is a great article.
July 1st: An APG member posted a request for help finding the death date of a Swedish woman who died in the mid-sixties.July 2nd: In this week’s broadcast of It’s Only a Game, Charles Pierce told an anecdote about a Swedish tennis player (of whom I’ve never heard) whose matches were announced via radio in Sweden.
July 3rd: Okay, by this morning I was looking for references to Sweden. But that didn’t mean I would find them. Although, I really could not have missed the almost full-page article about Sweden on page 2 of today’s Business section, a reprint from the June 25th edition of The Washington Post. The article detailed how the lessons learned during a financial crisis of the early 1990s have helped Sweden weather the current one. Apparently, PR professionals in Scandinavia are working on overdrive. But why I am noticing all of these articles? Why now? Should I look for a job in Sweden? Are my ancestor’s calling on me to find and “visit” them? Am I reading the wrong sorts of books? I know I am probably being silly, but, on the other hand, I don’t believe in coincidences.
2 comments:
How wonderful to be stalked by a country in this way !
I wish I could find out more about my Swedish ancestors, but unfortunately my father had only heard the name, never seen it written; and more unfortunately, we don't know where my great grandfather was born, married or died so we can't find certificates to tell us.
Seriously, though, it's good that so much more is being published about Swedish family history.
I just wish SwedGenTour was coming to the UK.
Good luck with your seach Padraig. Luckily for me, my grandmother was very proud of her Scandinavian ancestry and kept in touch with family there for a while and got a copy of the family tree, back to her great-grandparents on a couple of sides of her family. Have you seen Of Trolls and Lemons? Astrid blogs about her hunt for Swedish, Norwegian and Italian ancestors.
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