Whence Our Ancestors Came

The history of Sweden inhabits our story. I have not studied it in an orderly manner, but rather by looking for historical events as needed to write more than names and dates. Give yourselves an opportunity to learn whence our ancestors came.

Some of the oldest petroglyphs in Europe are found in Sweden. The people of that region are people of migration, moving north as the ice receded and south as the population exceeded its capacity to sustain itself. Or west across the seas and east into Europe. Our people have been there a very long time.

We clothed ourselves for warmth in skins and woven plant fibers; we fished, hunted, dug and gathered food for sustenance; we agreed on alliances for safety and went to battle in their absence. We explored forests and coasts and rivers.

Water plays a part for all of us. When frozen, we skied across it; when open, we sailed across it.

The west coast of Sweden, along the Katagatt Sea is broken into many, many islands and fjords. Orust, one of the country’s largest islands, sits across Havstansfjord, to the west of the communities of Udevalla, Grinnerod, Myckleby, Resterod; these are parishes that we will see often in family research.  Orust has a similar coastline, all this the result of glacial activity and the subsequent melting at the end of the ice age. Lane-Ryr lies eastward, nearer to the country’s largest lake, Vanern.

This stone-laden land (or wet lower elevation areas) was cleared for small farming, and the development of kommuns, loosely connected, that allowed groups of farmers to help and rely on one another. In some areas, the forests were the source for banding together. Others fished the shallow sea or ventured further out for deep sea hunting and trade. Sweden had its own variety of Vikings, too, so that there was trading (yes, and raiding) anywhere with a coast! Not all farmers owned the land they tilled. One family history refers to Sweden’s own variety of share crop farmers, topare. Many records identify pigans, female servants, probably tasked with drudgery. The widow risked the poor house (my phrase).

Climate and environment have never been far from the experience of the people of Sweden. Early 19^th century saw a series of weather related food disasters with their resultant health concerns. Failed farms drove unemployed farmers into cities, where the industrial revolution was creating its own inequities and health concerns.

Sweden was, at one time a very powerful country, with subjugated peoples and territories, even competing with Poland and Russia. As a monarchy, it developed land owning classes as well as non-landed working classes. Early on, saw fault with tyranny, moving to elect its kings, taking on the landed church, and even its sister states of Denmark, Norway and the Baltic States. For more than a century it was the dominant power in northern Europe, according to the history in my Travel Sweden book, gaining strength in Finland, and northern Germany, as well. Family alliances have made it into world news more than once.

A constitution ‘came into force’ in 1719, from this same book, which is described as a parliamentary democracy. There came cultural shifts as well, even the declaring of a national costume.

This is the Sweden our family lived in.