Searching for My Roots in Sweden

Well, if I don’t feel up to writing this post now, I never will. If you are an Eyre or a Swenson in any way, I hope this post will be of some interest.

So, on the morning of July 29, Aaron and I trekked from our hotel in Mälmo over to the train station—it was about two blocks away. We did our best to read signs in Swedish and purchased tickets from a kiosk, not 100% confident that they would take us where we wanted to go, but pretty hopeful. After almost boarding the wrong train, we found a second set of platforms and managed to get on a train headed north toward Stockholm. As we pulled out of Mälmo, we watched the countryside morph from flat grasslands to rolling, evergreen forests rising to meet the sapphire skies overhead. My initial reaction to Sweden when we crossed the channel from Denmark had been a little disappointed, because after our rerouting through Oslo, I had expected Sweden to be as beautiful as Norway. Although Mälmo is a lovely seaside town, it wasn’t until we moved away from the coast that the scenery changed to meet my expectations.

After an hour-long train ride, to the soundtrack of a laughing little Swedish girl who reminded us of Addy (except that we couldn’t understand her), we arrived in Ösby. We got off the train on a high platform that overlooked the quaint, old-fashioned town blossoming outward from a shimmering crystal lake in the center. A few blocks ahead we could see a brick building with the word BRIO emblazoned on the outside, and I couldn’t help laughing that the same town that had given birth to my amazing Grandma Ruthie, lover of children and the creator of the original Joy School had also given birth to the company that made Theo’s favorite train set, our kids’ favorite building blocks, and some of the best toys in the world. Something in the water maybe?







Well, our first order of business was to find the red schoolhouse that Swen Swenson had taught in before his family immigrated, piecemeal, to the United States in the 1880s and 90s. My uncle Rick had told us to “just ask around” when we got there, so we got busy. We asked the man at the train station and he pointed to a red brick schoolhouse in the center of the town and also mentioned another, older schoolhouse a few blocks away. He said those were the oldest in the city, so it was probably one of them. We walked to the first, just across the town square, and saw “1913” emblazoned in large numbers on the front. Strike one. We made the trip under the railroad tracks and a few blocks up the road to the older school to check it out. “1907” this time. Strike two. We took pictures of both the buildings, just in case the dates were referring to some sort of renovation and decided to check out the gorgeous lake, as well as the old-looking church we had seen when pulling in.

The lake was gorgeous, and made me think of all the Eyres who love lakes. I couldn’t resist getting my feet wet, and wished we had thought to bring bathing suits or fishing poles or something. It was just this heavenly cold, moss-bottomed, clear mountain lake that looked good enough to drink from. There were a couple of kids splashing nearby, on a dock beneath a hanging tree, and it was positively picturesque. After spending some time there, we checked our watches and decided to make a quick run for the church before catching the train back to Mälmo for the afternoon, since it didn’t seem realistic that we would find the schoolhouse. It was a quick walk, and we were there in a few minutes.

When we got to the church, I thought for the first time that we must actually be someplace where my ancestors had been. The soaring white bell-tower topped with a modest golden cross, marked the spiritual center of the town, where the city and commerce buildings began to mingle with common Swedish homes, elegant in their lines and simplicity. On the front of the building, in black iron figures, the number 1834 assured us that the building had indeed stood in the days when the Swensons lived in the area. Although a couple of people drifted through the headstones scattered around the grounds, there didn’t appear to be anyone to ask if we could take a peek inside the church. We walked around it once before trying the door. To our delight, the handle turned and we entered the cool, white building. Inside, ancient family portraits hung from the walls and an arched nave pointed us toward intricate stained glass windows behind the altar. At our backs, a fine old pipe organ extended upward to the ceiling. I wandered around, touching everything, until I reached a gorgeous, hand-carved wood podium at the front that made me think of my Grandma Ruthie’s father, Dan, an excellent woodworker. We stayed briefly, snapping photos and I felt strangely connected to these ancestors of mine for a few moments before noting the time and heading back toward the train station.


Well, here’s where things got interesting. As we were walking back up a side-street toward the station, Aaron nudged me and said “hey, you should go ask in there,” and pointed to a Fuji film-developing shop on the street. Moments before he had been pulling a little anxiously at my elbow and nudging me a little quicker toward the station, so I was taken aback. I had suggested that we try to find the church’s pastor and ask him/her about the history and whether there was any information about the schoolhouse, but a film shop seemed a much poorer choice for information gathering. So I suggested we continue and look for someplace more promising if we wanted to stay a little longer. But he said he really thought I should go in. And I said well actually that seemed like not the greatest idea. And so he said fine he would go in so wait for him on the sidewalk. So I waited. And waited. After about five minutes, Aaron poked his head out the door and said “get in here Britt.”

So I went in, and this adorable older man with the kindest disposition handed me several albums of old black-and-white photos. “I have here old schoolhouses” he said pointing to one particular album. “I make some calls and I think I have person for you to speak to.” Aaron and I, with wide eyes (and he with a little jab to my rib-cage with I correctly translated to mean “I told you so”) began leafing through the albums. A few moments later, with a wide smile on his face, the man came back and said “I have a friend coming to see you now” and he led us back behind his shop to a lovely garden where an afternoon tea was laid out and his wife and a friend were nibbling on cookies. They graciously invited us to join them and served us the most delicious apple juice (Swedish apple juice is by far the best I’ve ever had—so good) and we chatted together for a few minutes until a 60-ish man in a white polo joined us. He sat beside us at the table, pulling out a sheaf of papers and booklets to show us. He introduced himself as Erik Ralsgård and told us he thought he had good news for us. First he asked me a little about my family history, anecdotally telling me that several years ago another man, a tall man, had come to town inquiring about the same Swen Swenson. I suggested that this had probably been my uncle Rick. Although Erik hadn’t met him, he had learned of his visit and been sad that he hadn’t had the chance to meet him. He had always been curious, it turns out, about what had happened to Swen and his family after they left Ösby

Well, this revelation certainly left us curious. Erik pulled out a picture of a schoolhouse in a little historical annual publication and told us he suspected this was the school we were looking for. Not only was it the school where Swen had taught, it was also the same school that he (Erik) had attended as a child. Swen had been the first teacher there, during the late nineteenth century, when the villages just outside of Ösby had overflowed with young children in need of education. A law had been passed just previously in Sweden requiring that an education be made available to every child over the age of 8, and Swen had been selected as teacher after graduating from nearby Lund University. Initially he had taught in a room of an old farmhouse, but the community built the Roena Skola within a few years and Swen and his family moved in to one half of the building, leaving the other half and an attic for teaching. Erik asked us how long we would be in Ösby and wondered if we would like to accompany him to the school. Would we?!! We anxiously accepted his invitation and quickly wrote off any other activities we might have intended back in Mälmo. We profusely thanked the owner of the film store and joined Erik in his car, parked just outside on the curb.

First we travelled back to the church, where Erik gave us a little more information about its history. For one thing we learned that the original church had actually been erected in the sixteenth century, but the gorgeous façade, organ loft, and larger building had been constructed in 1834. He took us behind the altar to a small room that had been part of the original church, and which had the names of all the pastors for the church since its initial construction. He even tried to take us up to the organ loft to play the organ, but the door was locked. Although we were sad at the time (the organ looked awesome), we were even more disappointed after we returned to visit Grandma Ruthie and learned that Swen had actually been an organist!

After our stop at the church, Erik drove us just outside of Ösby to the old, partially inhabited village of Roena. Immediately I was struck by the mossy stone walls that lined the gravel roads as they rose and fell with the green, rolling hills. I’ve always been drawn to stone walls—they were my favorite landscape feature in our New England days. The few homes that remained inhabited in the area were mostly painted a deep, vivid red. We passed several as we wound through the forested roads, finally pulling to a stop in front of the school from the picture, also a vibrant red, which looked as well tended and cared for as it had in decades-old photographs we had seen. We got out and Erik showed us around the front and back of the building, sharing a number of stories from his own youth. During the winters, he told us, students skied to and from school from November through April (obviously my dad inherited a few of those genes). In a shed that ran perpendicular to the building, he showed us the bathrooms students had used, as well as a door that had led to a sauna where the students would sit in their underwear until they were too hot to stand it, then they would run out the door and roll around in the snow to cool off. On one side of the building there was a small field where the teachers would garden during the summers. He told us about the flagpole that had stood bare through the years of World War II, until, on D-Day in 1945 the Swedish flag had finally been hoisted again.

We took pictures and as much video as our dying camera batteries would allow and drank in the peculiar sensation that comes with standing on the ground where ancestors once stood. After that, he took us over to the decrepit old building, with broken windows and degraded wood, where Swen had taught before the school had been built. Although the building had fallen into disrepair and was locked against vandals, Erik showed us an old photograph of a schoolmaster and a large class of young students that he had discovered inside by chance only three months before our visit. He couldn’t be sure, but he strongly suspected that the schoolmaster in the photograph must be Swen. There hadn’t been a class so large since the baby boom that had occurred in southern Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century. How excited we were to see this photograph and to hear of the kismet that caused it to fall into our hands so providentially! Grandma Ruthie later helped us confirm that Erik’s suspicions had been correct.

Well, after a wonderful, revelation-filled, exciting afternoon, we returned to the photography shop where we had begun. We exchanged email addresses and embraces and thanked the kind people who had so willing dropped whatever they had been doing to help us learn a little about my progenitors.

So that, in a nutshell, is our trip to Ösby. Wow. We took the train back to Mälmo and enjoyed the rest of the trip, but for me at least, that afternoon was the highlight. I feel connected to Swen and Thilda, to Dan (their son, my great-grandfather), and to my other relatives in a way I never expected. After we returned home, we visited Grandma Ruthie and she was able to fill in all the blanks I had while we were in Sweden (we were so caught up in painting our house and preparing to travel before we left that I hadn’t had a chance to ask all my questions beforehand). Among other things I learned that Swen and his family had been found by missionaries (one of whom was named Nels Monson, President Monson’s grandfather) in the 1880s. Around the time of their baptisms, Swen had lost his job and the family began their migration—two and three at a time—to America, finally settling in Logan, Utah.

In short, it was an amazing, life-changing trip and I feel so blessed to have been able to travel to Sweden, a dream of mine since I was quite young. I look forward to passing down more Swedish traditions to our kids, and making sure they appreciate how special and remarkable their Swedish ancestors were.