"A thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegian"
Actually because I am 3/4ths Norwegian and 1/4 Swedish, I can poke fun at either side.
I am keeper of my family's genealogy and have traced back my family to ~1230 AD. Most Americans when they try to trace their roots back to Europe usually come to a dead end to times when disease like the plague killed whole towns.
In my case I was fortunate in that I had an ancestor that was a late Viking era town chieftain who was sent as part of a council of leaders to meet the Romans who were settling parts of Europe. Because it was a historic event his name and family tree were listed in history books so I was able to trace back further than others. Most of my family was from the Trondheim area (Selbu, Stjordalshalsen, Rissa).
I enjoy telling my children that with my Norwegian background I am more Norwegian than the King as he is Danish.
The Swedish part of my family is from my fathers father who was from Malmo but moved to the Trondheim area to work.
I grew up as the oldest of the grandchild on all sides of my family and grew up speaking Norwegian and Swedish with my Grandparents.
My mothers family were ministers who moved to the US to then help bring other Norwegian seminary students to America as all of the Norwegian churches within a generation were becoming English speaking american and they didnt have any young people who still spoke Norwegian who wanted to be pastors so my grandfather recruited them from Norway. In 50 years he had sponsored over 600 ministers from Norway to become pastors of Norwegian churches in the US.
My Fathers family came over from Norway to be fisherman on the Great Lakes in the Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin area.
My parents being those Norwegian young people that wanted to be cool and American refused to speak Norwegian or Swedish around the house. Because I was the oldest and spoke to my Grandparents, my 3 brothers and my sister who were younger never spoke Norwegian as my grandparents were old or dead by then. My mother says that she raised 5 children but only one Norwegian.
I come from a musical family so growing up I would be able to sing, pick up and play any instrument that was in front of me. I collect instruments of all types and try to play each of them a least a little every week.
My wife is also musical (as are our 3 children) which is good because in our home we have around 160 different instruments of all types including a large pipe organ that was salvage from destruction when a church was being torn down that is waiting for a room to be built to hold it. Some day I will build a music room on our house to hold all of the instruments and have a good acoustic space for concerts and the built-in pipe organ.
I speak only a little Norwegian and Swedish as conversation is the only way to keep that up but read fluently and write okay. I originally learned Icelandic to read the Viking sagas. Today the only way I keep my Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic fresh is by reading on the internet and posting to Scandinavian forums.
When I was studying in a conservatory my major was music composition and opera. For the opera major a requirement is that you have to learn all of the languages that you would sing so that is how I picked up different languages.
By the way, my last name is not really Carlson...when my parents and Grandparents came to the US, a common practice in immigration is that if your name were too complicated to write or pronounce, the border agents would tell you, your name is Smith or whatever.
My grandfathers name was Kristoffersen to which the immigration agent told him, you are now Mr. Carlson (!!!) and it has stayed that way since. My first name was to be Soren after the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard but my parents thought that a good american name would be Shawn.
Login
Register
FAQ
Seriuosly, that sounds like a great opportunity, I bet you'll learn a ton. Have fun!
