A Book About Our Earliest Settlers
Ahlstrom’s narration of the journey from Sweden as a child and his later travels as a Baptist Preacher was originally published in Swedish, and has now been newly translated by Carolyn Wedin and Inger Berggren of Mölndal, Sweden. This text is wonderfully supplemented by 19 pages of historical photographs and maps by Stanley Selin and illustrations by your very own Terry Kelzer."
Louis J Ahlstrom's slim, subtle, maroon-covered, Swedish, gold-lettered Historiska
Skildringar, or Historical Sketches, was a revered text on the small farmstead where I
grew up. Partly it was that Ahlstrom was a relative—the nephew of my paternal great grandmother or "far's farmor father's father's mother. Books are ready right now. The price is $17.99 plus $2 for postage or an even $20.00. Contact our site via e-mail for purchase information at svensk@foreverswedish.net
Louis J Ahlstrom's slim, subtle, maroon-covered, Swedish, gold-lettered Historiska
Skildringar, or Historical Sketches, was a revered text on the small farmstead where I
grew up. Partly it was that Ahlstrom was a relative—the nephew of my paternal great grandmother or "far's farmor father's father's mother. Books are ready right now. The price is $17.99 plus $2 for postage or an even $20.00. Contact our site via e-mail for purchase information at svensk@foreverswedish.net
An Excerpt from Historical Sketches
In the winter of 1868-69, Åkerlind’s and our cabins were built First we stayed in a shanty similar to a Swedish charcoal-burner’s hut. The builders were Åkerlind, Zetterquist, Andrew Ahlström (figure 12), and father. There was still no road and they carried their provisions with them through the deep snow and woods about six or seven miles after they had turned off from the road to St. Croix Falls. Åkerlind’s house was built with thicker timber than ours because the logs could be dragged downwards to their place, but most of ours had to be dragged up hill to our cabin site. Everything the timber men had to do themselves because still there was not an oxen hoof in Trade Lake. The houses were sixteen feet wide and thirty feet long, and blocked out into a larger and a smaller room. In the spring when the sap started to flow, we peeled bark off the trees and used it for the roof. When the sun got hot, the bark cracked and did not keep out the rain. We did not have time to split and rough-hew planks for the floor because we had to clear the woods and burn and get seed into the earth first.
Dialect Hunting in Swedish America
Daniel Hortland from Stockholm Sweden sent us this most interesting article from the Scandinavian Review of 1967 By Folke Hedblom
For anyone involved in the linguistics field research, America is an Eldorado. It has been said that few linguistic problems indeed cannot be illuminated by the material waiting to be investigated among immigrants in America. There, in the second, third, and later generations descended from the older immigrant groups, one can study earlier stages of European languages and dialects that have now vanished or been transfigured in their native country; in addition one can investigate a number of peculiar new usages and hybrid forms. Like the
people themselves, the language of the emigrants was lifted out of the environment it occupied for a thousand years and forced to begin a whole new life on its own. What happens to a language in a situation like this? Here we have a unique opportunity to study the principals related to the development of a language.
Many scholars in both Europe and America are using this opportunity. The Norwegians have done some pioneering research in this area. In the field of Swedish, however, nothing was done until the 1960’s, when a quarrel broke out in Swedish newspapers over the accuracy of simulated Swedish—American language in Vilhelm Moberg’s novels. We were embarrassed to find that no official record—either in Sweden or America could provide positive evidence in the question.
In 1962 Uppsala’s Institute for Dialect and Folklore Research got underway its first tape-recording expedition to Minnesota and Illinois. It was followed in 1964 by a new expedition to Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and on up to Minnesota and Wisconsin. They gave surprisingly good results. They found that there were many “frozen dialects” that had been preserved in the form they had had a century ago, and there was also interesting ways in which Swedish was influenced by English in America. Moreover, the stories the old Swedes told into our microphone—of their parents and grandparents emigration and pioneer years—provide a number of fresh, personal memories of life on the frontier.
In Minnesota we met up with Swedish Consul General Olaf Landress, who was always ready to help and Dr. Nils Hasselmo, former Uppsala scholar and now professor at the University of Minnesota and expert on the study of Swedish-American language-mix. We visited the old Swedish settlements around the Chisago Lakes. This is one the most extensive and homogeneous
Swedish colonies on American soil, and Swedish language and traditions are preserved better here than anywhere else—a statement I venture to make having visited all the states in the Union with sizable Swedish settlements. The area extends roughly from the Rum River on the west to the St Croix on the east, occasionally branching over to the Wisconsin side. Here Swedish colonists began streaming in as early as the beginning of the 1850’s, the majority from Dalarna, Halsingland, and Småland. They took up land close by one another and had no trouble retaining their language and Swedish way of life, here they were a solid majority.
An amazing thing happened to us between Center City and Almelund that could hardly occur anywhere else in America. On our first day we were unsure of the way to our next interview, and just at that moment a big tractor came down the road, driven by a man in his early middle age. I stuck my head out the window and asked him for directions in English. It occurred to me that he looked very Swedish, and after he answered, I thanked him in Swedish. Immediately he responded, “Are you Swedish?” with a genuine Småland inflection.
“What part of Småland were you born in,” I asked. “I’ve never been to Småland”, he replied. “But your parents, surely—?” “No,
they were born here, but grandpa came from Sweden.” This was fantastic in 1966 in Swedish America. But this experience was not
unique. When we paid him a visit at his farmhouse a few weeks later, we gathered that he wasn’t even born until 1921. His grandfathers on both
sides had come over about 1870. The language generally spoken at home, with company, and in church was still Swedish, all the time he was growing up. But now, a period of transition had gotten underway, and the situation in his family is typical. His wife is a third-generation Swedish-American too, and though she understands Swedish she doesn’t speak it. The children know no Swedish at all, so it is not spoken at home. His Swedish, which we recorded, sounded so free and natural that it seemed as if we’d been sitting talking in a village somewhere in Sweden. The particular sounds in his speech were free of American influence but marked heavily by old Småland dialect. As a rule, the same language was spoken on neighboring farms where we made recordings. We tried to gauge the extent of the local Swedish by asking for directions in our own language at stores and gas stations, and in most cases we got answers. They realized themselves that they spoke in a dialect with an old-fashioned ring to it; indeed, they called it bondsvenska, or “farmer Swedish.”
We had to cut our stay in the old Chisago Lake Settlement short and continue north exploring the fairly numerous Swedish settlements in Duluth and its surroundings, around Lake Superior, and on the Upper Michigan Peninsula. Here is a completely different type of Swedish settlement, for the immigrants did not settle down as farmers but worked in the mines or as lumbermen. The immigrations came somewhat later too, and people from various provinces—the majority came from northern or central Sweden—mingled together. As a result, the dialects were not supported by the linguistic environment and so they often faded away. But a few old emigrants hadn’t changed their childhood language to any degree, and among them we found a splendid example of uninhibited mixed-language from a woman who emigrated in 1907. When a couple of American women came into the room during the recording, she turned to them without making any noticeable change in her lingo, and evidently they understood her just as well as I. In terms of content, we also gathered valuable accounts of the strenuous life here in these northern mining towns.
For anyone involved in the linguistics field research, America is an Eldorado. It has been said that few linguistic problems indeed cannot be illuminated by the material waiting to be investigated among immigrants in America. There, in the second, third, and later generations descended from the older immigrant groups, one can study earlier stages of European languages and dialects that have now vanished or been transfigured in their native country; in addition one can investigate a number of peculiar new usages and hybrid forms. Like the
people themselves, the language of the emigrants was lifted out of the environment it occupied for a thousand years and forced to begin a whole new life on its own. What happens to a language in a situation like this? Here we have a unique opportunity to study the principals related to the development of a language.
Many scholars in both Europe and America are using this opportunity. The Norwegians have done some pioneering research in this area. In the field of Swedish, however, nothing was done until the 1960’s, when a quarrel broke out in Swedish newspapers over the accuracy of simulated Swedish—American language in Vilhelm Moberg’s novels. We were embarrassed to find that no official record—either in Sweden or America could provide positive evidence in the question.
In 1962 Uppsala’s Institute for Dialect and Folklore Research got underway its first tape-recording expedition to Minnesota and Illinois. It was followed in 1964 by a new expedition to Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and on up to Minnesota and Wisconsin. They gave surprisingly good results. They found that there were many “frozen dialects” that had been preserved in the form they had had a century ago, and there was also interesting ways in which Swedish was influenced by English in America. Moreover, the stories the old Swedes told into our microphone—of their parents and grandparents emigration and pioneer years—provide a number of fresh, personal memories of life on the frontier.
In Minnesota we met up with Swedish Consul General Olaf Landress, who was always ready to help and Dr. Nils Hasselmo, former Uppsala scholar and now professor at the University of Minnesota and expert on the study of Swedish-American language-mix. We visited the old Swedish settlements around the Chisago Lakes. This is one the most extensive and homogeneous
Swedish colonies on American soil, and Swedish language and traditions are preserved better here than anywhere else—a statement I venture to make having visited all the states in the Union with sizable Swedish settlements. The area extends roughly from the Rum River on the west to the St Croix on the east, occasionally branching over to the Wisconsin side. Here Swedish colonists began streaming in as early as the beginning of the 1850’s, the majority from Dalarna, Halsingland, and Småland. They took up land close by one another and had no trouble retaining their language and Swedish way of life, here they were a solid majority.
An amazing thing happened to us between Center City and Almelund that could hardly occur anywhere else in America. On our first day we were unsure of the way to our next interview, and just at that moment a big tractor came down the road, driven by a man in his early middle age. I stuck my head out the window and asked him for directions in English. It occurred to me that he looked very Swedish, and after he answered, I thanked him in Swedish. Immediately he responded, “Are you Swedish?” with a genuine Småland inflection.
“What part of Småland were you born in,” I asked. “I’ve never been to Småland”, he replied. “But your parents, surely—?” “No,
they were born here, but grandpa came from Sweden.” This was fantastic in 1966 in Swedish America. But this experience was not
unique. When we paid him a visit at his farmhouse a few weeks later, we gathered that he wasn’t even born until 1921. His grandfathers on both
sides had come over about 1870. The language generally spoken at home, with company, and in church was still Swedish, all the time he was growing up. But now, a period of transition had gotten underway, and the situation in his family is typical. His wife is a third-generation Swedish-American too, and though she understands Swedish she doesn’t speak it. The children know no Swedish at all, so it is not spoken at home. His Swedish, which we recorded, sounded so free and natural that it seemed as if we’d been sitting talking in a village somewhere in Sweden. The particular sounds in his speech were free of American influence but marked heavily by old Småland dialect. As a rule, the same language was spoken on neighboring farms where we made recordings. We tried to gauge the extent of the local Swedish by asking for directions in our own language at stores and gas stations, and in most cases we got answers. They realized themselves that they spoke in a dialect with an old-fashioned ring to it; indeed, they called it bondsvenska, or “farmer Swedish.”
We had to cut our stay in the old Chisago Lake Settlement short and continue north exploring the fairly numerous Swedish settlements in Duluth and its surroundings, around Lake Superior, and on the Upper Michigan Peninsula. Here is a completely different type of Swedish settlement, for the immigrants did not settle down as farmers but worked in the mines or as lumbermen. The immigrations came somewhat later too, and people from various provinces—the majority came from northern or central Sweden—mingled together. As a result, the dialects were not supported by the linguistic environment and so they often faded away. But a few old emigrants hadn’t changed their childhood language to any degree, and among them we found a splendid example of uninhibited mixed-language from a woman who emigrated in 1907. When a couple of American women came into the room during the recording, she turned to them without making any noticeable change in her lingo, and evidently they understood her just as well as I. In terms of content, we also gathered valuable accounts of the strenuous life here in these northern mining towns.