SWEDISH GENEALOGY
A lot has changed since 1850 The Swedish emigration started 170 years ago. A lot has changed in the world since 1850. Sweden may be one of the countries that have changed the most. When you think about Sweden today, it’s not obvious what life was like for our ancestors. Many things are
Maybe you have seen the word torp, croft, in your Swedish genealogy. An ancestor may have been a crofter, torpare. Or your ancestor was a soldier and lived at a soldier’s croft, soldattorp. But what is a Swedish croft? The modern Swedish Croft is an old cottage Today the word croft makes
Most Swedes in the 19th century had a last name from their father’s name, a patronymic. But there were other types of surnames. One, probably the largest, of the groups with a different type of last names was the soldiers. They went by a solider's name (soldatnamn). The ground for soldier's
Can you imagine being forced by law to leave the farm your family has lived on for generations? That was the reality for many Europeans in previous centuries. Sweden implemented land reforms in the 1700s and the 1800s. The last one was laga skifte. If you haven’t stumbled upon the term before, it
In our times, when Sweden has been among the top in various global rankings for half a century, it may seem odd that so many Swedes emigrated to America in the 19th century. For instance, in 2017 Sweden was number 8 on the OECD Better Life Index, while the US was number 10 [1]. Why would
A smith with an axe to-be in 1920. This is from a documentation of the ironwork Vira bruk in Roslags-Kulla Parish, Stockholm County, but the face of the smith fascinates me the most.
Just walking my pigs in the main street. The boys were shepherding pigs at Storgatan 15 in Falköping in 1895.
Soldier Karl Magnus Berglund from Jönköping regiment I 12 with his wife Hulda Emilia Sundell and children. The soldier croft is still there, outside Gränna in Jönköping County.
The old man Fredriksson. Possibly in Funbo Parish, Uppsala County.
