scandinavian ancestry

Do you have roots in Sweden or Scandinavia? 

Did one or some of your ancestors emigrate to the US?

• Do you have emigrants/immigrants in your family?

• Do you know where they were born or where they came from? But not what happened to them in their new country?

• Do you need help with reading/translating the records or documents  from Sweden or Scandinavia? 

• Have you hit a 'brick wall' and can't seem to get over it?

• Try me, I can help.

Doing research on almost a daily basis the past decade, I have found and I have been found by second cousins, long lost and broken branches and the most peculiar kinship.

One of them who found me is a granddaughter to my paternal grandfathers sister. Her name is Monica. Since I never knew my paternal grandfather it means a lot to me to get 'access' to his past as well as living relatives on his side of the family. That broken branch is still alive. Monica didn't know about me either and absolutely nothing about my grandfather and his life in Skåne. We now exchange greetings & thoughts as well as old photos, scrap book articles and of course research results. It is great to be found and on top of that, to get a friend and a new family member!

And as an extra bonus in my life, I act as the contact person for a Swedish family association and their families here in the US. We found each other on a query list and since then I'm trying to find the last missing pieces in the family puzzle of the family's first immigrants. It was an honor to get to know them and I have more or less a daily contact with the association's board members in Sweden.

Having 'pen pals' and friends all over the US and in Sweden surely is an asset in life. One of them, Mats, to whom I am related to some time deep down in the 1770's, is an author, a co-author of a book about Verum. It is a most comprehensive book about life and living in Verum parish (in Skåne), covering many centuries. By now I must have read it about a hundred times, so you're really lucky if you have relatives in that particular parish!

Mats and I are now, together, collecting material to a book that hopefully will be published some time in 2009, and it is a book describing what happened to the early emigrants (leaving Sweden between 1850-1880) from Farstorp and Verum parishes. So if you have your roots in Farstorp or Verum, Skåne, Sweden, there is not much that we don't know about them or their emigrating relatives.

Interesting 'clusters' of immigrants were formed from these parishes and the population have pretty much gathered and populated areas like Ortonville, Big Stone, MN, St James, MN,  Galesburg, Knox, IL and many many more places. 

If you have relatives that emigrated from Verum or Farstorp I would love to get in contact with you. 

Read more about me and my ancestry in My Ancestry.