My extremely long journey home from Sweden was redeemed in the Philadelphia Airport: the news store had Stephanie Laurens’ latest novel Beyond Seduction. HALLELUJAH! I was ecstatic. My mother thought I was quite insane. The remaining five hour layover and five hour flight passed by quite enjoyably. I adore Stephanie Laurens! The store also had a program where you could return the book at any airport for 50% money back when you were done reading it. Why on earth would I want to give back a Stephanie Laurens book? What would I do when I want to read it again? I can think of a number of other books on which I’d be more than glad to get my money back, but not Stephanie. Never Stephanie.

Where was I? Oh right, Friday in Trollhättan. We drove to Vänersborg where my great grandmother, Dagmar, was born and where her father, Anton Johansson, was a brew-master at the Bluchers Brewery. My mother made friends with the research librarians at the library and we were able to locate the quarter of the city where the brewery was located (it closed and was demolished in the ’50s) and where my great great grandparents lived. We wandered around the few blocks, taking photos of the houses that were in existence at the time. Then we visited the church to which the family belonged. The librarian pointed out a book in Swedish that showed old photos of the town and had a photo of the brewery. My mom bought it at a local bookstore, and looking through it that night found a photo of my great great grandfather!!! He is pictured in a group photo of the brew-masters (front row, second from right). This is the very first photo we have of him.

We then drove out onto a large peninsula that juts out into Lake Vänern to see the castle Läckö Slott, and just missed the last tour. It was very pretty: a collection of white towers overlooking the lake. We drove back and it poured. I was certain we were experiencing the second Great Flood.

Saturday morning mom made friends with an elderly couple staying in our hotel who turned out to be from Seattle. It’s a small world. We went for a walk along the lovely Trollhättan Canal and drove six hours back towards Stockholm, stopping for dinner in the picturesque ancient capital city of Sigtuna. You know the rest – a looong journey home where I was greeted by my cat; my husband is traveling for work for another two weeks.

Ciaralira’s Quick Overview of Sweden:

Food
The Swedes love cucumbers. Who knew? We can’t figure out why a country with so many lakes and so much coastline doesn’t eat fresh fish – they pickle it. Lots of good breads. I ate cheese, cucumber, and red or green peppers on a piece of bread for two meals a day. A breakfast buffet was included in all hotels and consisted of the same things: pickled herrings, cultured milks, cucumbers, peppers, cheeses and meats, and breads and crackers. Everyone served Lipton tea, yuck, but apparently they have really good coffee (which I don’t drink). Swedes take Fika every afternoon like the Germans, which consists of coffee (or tea) and a small pastry or cake. We indulged in the tradition. Some of my favorite were the cardamon rolls, the Napoleons and Princess Josephines. My mom reports that reindeer is a tough, not very tasty meat. I’ll report that being a vegetarian isn’t that difficult unless you object to bread and cheese for many meals, or, heaven forbid, don’t like cucumbers. They also seem to like McDonalds, which were everywhere. Oddly we didn’t see a single Starbucks.

Music
The Swedes have on average five radio stations, one of which plays a single melody in electronic chimes, like a clock. The radio stations play a few old American songs, but most of the time play four songs on repeat, one of which is Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”. My mom and I, driving for hours across the country, almost started crying after listening to it the five-hundredth time. We eventually gave up and turned off the radio altogether. Perhaps our rental car radio was broken? Perhaps most Swedes have satellite radio? Perhaps Swedes don’t listen to music? Who knows, but if you go to Sweden, bring your own music.

Transportation
Though the trains go most places and seemed quite efficient, it isn’t that cheap a way to travel. We ended up renting a car because it gave us greater flexibility and allowed us to visit the tiny village of Kannestubba. Swedish roads are very well engineered and Swedish drivers are über polite. Swedes bike everywhere. There are bike lanes and bike and pedestrian thoroughfares in all the towns. It was awesome. Apparently they even bike in the winter. I’ve never seen so many bikes in my life! My mom said it was like Holland. Unfortunately we didn’t get to go for a bike ride because of the rain.

Population
There are hardly any people in Sweden, which explains why there is no sprawl. One Swede explained to us that Sweden is twice the land size of the island of Britain, with a smaller population than the city of London. People are very well behaved, don’t litter, and are whiter than Seattlites, which is saying something. Everyone speaks English.

Highlights
Go to Stockholm and Lund. If I went again I might spend the whole time in Stockholm. It is, at this time, the most beautiful city I have ever visited.

More photos are up on flickr!

Viking life was hardly the lap of luxury. The houses were quite sparse, dirty, cold, unappealing. I decided that the Viking age is really quite a bad time period for a romance novel. Maybe I should read a few viking romances and see how authors deal with the problem. Thursday we walked around the adorable town of Lund, viewing its famous cathedral and crypt with Finn the giant and his wife holding up the pillars, before driving south to the Foteviken Viking Museum. Perched on a hill overlooking a choppy sea between Denmark and Sweden, the viking village consisted of a handful of reconstructed viking houses inside an earthen rampart. It was very cold and very windy and only one viking was in attendance, though he was quite knowledgeable and spoke six languages. He let me hold his sword, but I didn’t get a picture.

Afterward we drove to Trollhättan, a pleasant city just south of Lake Vattern, on the Göta Canal, and stayed in a swanky hotel where we could send laundry out to be cleaned, since laundromats are not to be found.

Not only was my flight cancelled, forcing me to stay overnight in an airport hotel after sitting on the tarmac for five hours, but I ran out of romance novels three days ago and can’t find any more in English in the bookstores. Corpus Bones! I read the first third of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark on said tarmac, but it isn’t nearly as engrossing as the reviews say it is. Set in England during the Napoleonic War (a few years before the start of the Regency period), the novel is about two magicians politicking in a country of theoretical magic. It is written in that humorous British style full of asides and anecdotes, but it lacks any passion. There is nothing like a good passionate romance novel to speed away the boring confinement of flying. I shall quite simply go mad with boredom during tomorrow’s fifteen hours of plane flight. Hopefully tomorrow there will, at least, be a flight!

The weather has been horrid. Rain, rain, go away, ciaralira wants to play… We stayed Monday and Tuesday night in Vaxjo at an odd little hotel that locked the door at 6. Tuesday was spent in the Emigrant Museum, which was short on exhibits but made up for it with an impressive research library. My mother searched the records for her ancestors, while I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. It was much, much shorter than I remember it, but just as good. I read it in about an hour, and was faced with the prospect of five more days, including another loooong plane ride, with only one more book. Ack!

The drive from Vaxjo, on the eastern side of Sweden, south to Karls-something-or-other (left), along the coast west to Lund, was lovely. We had lunch in the aforementioned city of Karl, famous for its 17th century naval architecture, and while its coastal views were nice, it didn’t stand out in my mind like Stockholm and Lund did. Lund was a beautiful university town full of bikes and cobblestone streets and old architecture, pretty little pedestrian thoroughfares and cafes and fashionable shops. We stayed in another funny little hotel with a tiny room and a bathroom in the hallway, that served breakfast in bed.

At dinner my mother struck up a conversation with the couple at the table next to us. They were architects and were able to tell us about the repressive planning regulations that keep Sweden so rural and picturesque. Apparently they plan for the good of the whole at the expense of the individual, but it looks a hell-of-a-lot nicer than American sprawl. I, as usual, contributed little to the conversation. My mummy told me never to talk to strangers. Ha!

(Kännestubba = Shan-e-stu-ba)

Internet, Hallelujah! Internet cafes and laundromats are hard to come by here in Sweden, but we make do.

From the Journal of Carl Lundblad, my Great Grandfather, 1914:

…On September 3 we went down to Småland to Hanna’s birthplace. That is in Hultsjö parish and the farm is called Kännestubba. We went by train early in the morning, 7:46, from Jönköping and changed trains in Nässjö. After having seen the town a bit we continued the journey to Sävsjö and were met there by a carriage and went the two mile long road passing lakes and fjords and the church’s school house and the parish house, manor farms and cottages, farms and small cottages with straw roofs, beautiful meadows, fields and potato fields, cliffs and hills, trees of all kinds and sizes, juniper bushes and heather, lingon and blueberries. At last we arrived at grandmother’s old cottage and were by then wet from the rain which had fallen quite copiously but were soon dry standing in front of the fire at the open fireplace. Then we had good coffee and sandwiches and felt happy. We were at home for several days and had the pleasure of all kinds of things among which were picking lingonberries and game parties and coffee klatches in every cottage. One day I and Alfred Svensson were out fishing for a whole day and caught a perch….

From the Scandic Swania Hotel in Trollhäattan by Ciara, 2007:

Sweden is completely rural outside of its cities- no sprawl. Rural as in quaint farms all painted the exact same shade of barn red. And it’s flat. There are a handful of houses painted yellow or white. Turns out the red color was traditionally made from the refuse of a large copper mine in Sweden, and it was used because it was cheap. Tradition keeps the buildings red. We held a contest to see who could spot a blue or green house. I actually saw a purple one. But just one. The lack of creativity (influenced by many stringent city planning regulations, not just by a love of tradition) keeps the rustic landscape covered in pristine farmland and lush forests, and dotted with small villages clustered around tall white steeples. It’s truly beautiful, and I can easily imagine my great grandparents greeted with the same view back in 1914.

Since we didn’t have a carriage waiting to take us to the little backwater village of Kännestubba, mom and I gave up on the train and rented a car. We had lunch in the closest town and asked the waitress for directions, as we still had not been able to locate it on the map. Turns out the village comprises about six houses. We stopped along the way at the parish church and looked in vain for a grave marker of a recognizable relative- almost every single inhabitant was a Johnson or Peterson. Parking at random in front of a barn red house in the village, we happened upon the only person in our Swedish experience who didn’t speak English (we speak no Swedish). Magically my mother managed to convey that her grandmother came from there (and we were corrected as to the correct pronunciation of the village).

The old woman invited us into her house and phoned a friend who worked as a research librarian in the city, who also fortunately spoke English. Ingrid served us a quite excellent Fika while we waited for Ulf to call back with info. He located the name of the farm where Hannah was born and gave Ingrid directions, and she drove with us to the house. The current house was built after Hannah emigrated, but there were still stone steps along one side that belonged to the original cabin (left). Afterwards we went over to Ulf’s 17th century farmhouse where he served us dinner and researched more genealogy. My mother is amazing at talking to complete strangers. We left Kännestubba armed with Hannah’s family names and locations, and three new friends. Pretty good for a day’s work!

We left Carl and Hannah’s path and drove to Vaxjo for the night.

From the Journal of Carl Lundblad, 1914:

On Wednesday evening, August 19, we left beautiful Stockholm in order to travel to Jönköping and left at midnight from Riddarsholmen on the boat Victor Rydberg through the Göta Canal. Very pleasant and interesting trip on the whole. We passed Södertälje and Vadstena, Motala and Hjo and Söderköping. Passed through 36 locks in all including 15 stacked locks at one place and 5 at another and individual locks and bridges… Were met there by our brother-in-law, Anders Petterson, who immediately arranged a car for us and took us to their home at Klostergaten 36 where we were the rest of the time. We have been out on some shorter trips. We have been in Huskvarna, a very beautiful natural spot….

From an internet cafe in Uppsala train station by Ciara, 2007:

Though it took Carl and Hannah, my Great Grandparents, a day an a half to get from Stockholm to Jönköping by boat on the Göta Canal, we decided to take the extra day and visit the Viking graves in the old capital of Sweden, then take the train to Jönköping (above photo). We didn’t actually have the luxury of a choice, as the boats stop running after August. Would that the guidebooks have mentioned so many things close after August. Beware traveller! Go to Sweden during the summer.

Yesterday in Stockholm, after writing from the train station, we visited the map store across the street to try to find maps that have individual farms listed. We found maps of the parishes from which my great-grandparents hailed, but they didn’t have the farm maps in stock. The Vasa Ship was huge and had beautiful carvings on it. We had fika in a little cafe along the water and then took an hour-long train north to Uppsala, the medieval capital of Sweden. Uppsala is relatively boring, compared to the charm and vibrancy of Stockholm. We took a cab to the bed & breakfast in a suburb, where I promptly crashed.

This morning Marit (the B&B owner) drove us to Gamla Uppsala to see the ancient burial mounds (left) and the 13th century church that the guidebook proclaimed to be the most beautiful in all of Sweden. The mounds contain viking cremations and legend has it that pagan human sacrifices were conducted nearby. We went to the Viking Museum, where I got reaffirmation that a romance novel set in Stockholm in the early 1800′s is a fantastic idea. Apparently the 19th century was the age of Viking Romanticism. Awesome cultural backdrop, is it not? Afterwards we had lunch in Odin’s Mead hall where we quenched our thirst with its famous horns of mead.

We took the train to Jönköping and stayed on Klostergatan, the same street where my Great Grandparents stayed in 1914, purely by accident. Unfortunately we didn’t realize the coincidence until after we left, so we didn’t get a photo.

Picturesque buildings topped with mansard roofs and turrets, decorated with stone carvings and painted in peach, cream, apricot, rose, saffron, and buttercup, line the curving cobblestone streets on the small ancient island of Gamla Stan, “Old Town”. Along the waterfront float white archepelago boats, while bicyclists and pedestrians wander over bridges connecting the fourteen colorful islands that compose the city. Stockholm is beautiful. Forget London – Stockholm has the romantic setting, cosmopolitan culture, and court intrigue to make it an excellent setting for a Regency-style romance novel. Take Gustav III for example – the king instituted a renasaince of high art and culture, building a royal opera and theater in the 1790′s, and creating a noble society where the opera was the place to see and be seen. He was murdered by assassins at a masquerade at the opera, which was the inspiration for a Verdi opera. What better backdrop for a novel?

My Great Grandparents traveled back to Sweden in 1914 and my mother and I are loosely following my Great Grandfather’s trip journal. It took them sixteen days to reach to Stockholm by boat and train:

…after having traveled the whole night we arrived there the next day, August 6, at 10 o’clock in the morning, hungry and tired after having traveled 2 nights without any sleep to speak of. On our arrival there the town was full of refugees and in a mild uproar because of the war.

Fortunately it only took my mom and I forteen hours or so to reach Stockholm by plane. Today is our third day in the city. On Thursday we visited the “New” Royal Palace, so called because it has only been in existance for 250 years, as opposed to the previous Tre Kronar Castle that existed in its various forms since the 13th century, until it burned down and the new palace was built. It is fairly boring as palaces go, square with little detailing or carvings. There are no formal gardens attached. We walked around a few of the nearby small island parks, admiring the bike lanes and the historic boats and the fabulous architecture that makes me drool. I adore Stockholm!

Yesterday we walked to Skansen, the world’s first living history museum founded in the 1890′s, where historic buildings from all over Sweden were relocated. A few of the buildings were open with historians in traditional garb available to answer questions. I wish there had been more. It differs from an experience like Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg in that the buildings represent It also has animals from around Sweden, many of which are endangered. In the late afternoon we took a two-hour boat tour under the bridges of Stockholm and finally saw the modern part of the city. I prefer the historic districts, of course. It rained.

Today we will see the Vasa Museusm, the 17th century worlds-largest warship that, Titanic-like, sank on its maiden voyage. Fortunately it sank into some brackish mud that preserved it. Then we are taking the train to Uppsala, the original capital of Sweden built on a pagan sacrifice spot.

The weather is colder than we had anticipated, and we may have to indulge in the scandinavian’s talent for knitted wool sweaters. Fortunately for us, everyone speaks english here. I’ve finished two books by Stephanie Laurens, my new favorite Regency author. Her heroes are the epitome of true romance alpha-males: possesively protective, always honorable, gentlemen to the last. I intend to write a post on all her wonderful books, but it will have to wait till I get back from my travels.

Giant, chiseled blond men wielding axes feature prominently in my hopeful expectations for my maiden voyage to the ancestor-land, Sweden. Fortunately we plan to visit Foteviken, the Viking living history museum near Malmö. I am sooooo pumped. The Museum is a reconstructed Viking village in which the inhabitants recreate medieval handicrafts, occupations, culture and way of life. Villagers engage in traditional 12-century activities, including shipbuilding, sailing, archery, tanning, pottery, smithery, and music. They make their own clothing and build their own houses using medieval tools and materials. The Rough Guide to Sweden notes “the place has become a Mecca for people from all over Europe who want to live as Vikings, together with a not inconsiderable number of characters, sporting wild beards and lots of beads, who firmly believe they are Vikings.”

It occurred to me that I should use this opportunity to research for a Viking romance novel, hence the title of today’s post. I should probably have prepared for my trip by sampling some of the many Viking romances here. I’ve read On a Highland Shore, which I gave three Hearts, but in general Men-In-Kilts float my boat more than barbarians.

My trip to Sweden is actually more conducive to the Great American Novel, should I care to write about depressing things. My mother and I are taking the trip together to walk in the footsteps of her grandparents. It’s a story about love and loss and the American Dream, full of immigration, culture shock, out-of-wedlock births, family abandonment, family secrets, adoption, suicide, you name it. Interwoven with the story of my great-grandmother is the story of our voyage to Sweden, visiting the places written about in the journal of my adoptive-great-grandfather, to search for the ghost of Dagmar and find out something about ourselves, our own identity as Swedish and American and Woman. Deep huh? Ah, Real Literature. Give me Happily-Ever-After any day.

We fly into Stockholm on September 13th, stay for three nights, then travel north to Uppsala for a day, where the 200 birthday of Carl Linnaeus, the Father of Modern Taxonomy, is being celebrated this year. Then we travel to Växjö to visit the immigration museum that has records of the 1.2 million Swedish people who left for the United States between 1850 and 1930, where, hopefully, the researchers will have uncovered some information about our long-lost relatives. Armed with places and names, we will visit the towns where my mother’s adopted grandparents and biological grandmother came from, potentially knocking on doors and introducing ourselves to hither-to unknown second cousins. Next we travel south to Lund, the oldest city in the country and south again to Fotoviken, before returning to Stockholm and flying home. Somewhere during the trip we plan to take a boat ride on the Göta Canal (connecting the North Sea and Baltic Sea), bicycle through the countryside, and drink Kaffe in little cafes while people watching.

I will attempt to blog about my journey when I can find internet cafes.

Ha det så bra!