First Episode of "Who Do you think you are" on Swedish TV

The first episode of The swedish version of "Who do you think you are"(Vem tror du att du är) on the Swedish Television channel TV1 was broadcasted on March 24th. The first episode featured actress Helena Bergströms ancestors.
The program consentrated on some of Helena Bergström female ancestors her paternal grandmother who was a ballet dancer before her marriage as well as a paternal great aunt who was a modell to a famous sculptor in the late 19th century.
The program also contained information about the common practise of taking fosterchildren wich was a common way for married women in the working class to contribute economically to their familys upkeep.
Unmarried mothers had few possibilities to take care of their children on their own and to place them in fostercare was their only alternative.
Since Helena Bergströms paternal grandmothers family lived in the Stockholm area since the late 19th century the sources used were Stockholm sources often kept by the Stockholm city archive. To be able to se the program on webb TV please click here

The next episode of the program will feature former minister of justice Thomas Bodströms ancestors.

"The Day of Family Research" held on March 21 th.

On March 21 th "The Day of Family Research" was held in many places in Sweden.
In this yearly event Genealogical societies show people how to do genealogy.
It is usually held in public libraries and sometimes in archives.

Here in Växjö it was held in the county Library were representatives of the Genealogical Society of Kronoberg and the "Old soldiers database" showed people how to find their relatives.
Some lectures were also given, the theme for this years lectures seamed to be about how people dressed in the 19th and early and mid 20th century

Here my friend Carina Nilsson gets help finding
her relatives in one of the databases of the Genealogical Society of Kronoberg











A librarian is showing a visitor how to look at scanned microfilmed churchrecord available online.











Here lecturer Gunvor Dahlman shows a pair of old ladies underwear from the 19th century !

Computer Genealogy society in Sweden holds annual meeting

On March 7th DIS the biggest Computer Genealogy Society in Sweden held its annual meeting in Linköping in the province of Östergötland.
First a lecture was held by representatives from Jordbrukarnas Ungdomsförbund (The Farmers youth organsiation)about their Family Farm inventory .After that the meeting present chairman Olof Cronberg thanked former boardmember Sture Bjelkåker .

Swedish version of '' Who do you think you are ?''

Sweden will soon gets its own version of the popular Genealogy TV-show 'Who do you think you are ?''
In six episodes 6 famous Swedes will have their ancestors researched.The first episode will be broadcasted on march 24 .The show will be broadcasted by Swedens pubilc service TV company SVT

New Royal engagement in Sweden

Feb 24 saw the announcement of the engagement between the crown princess of Sweden
Victoria 31 eldest daughter of king Carl Gustaf and queen Silvia and Daniel Westling 35.

The couple met 8 years ago at a Gym in Stockholm where Daniel Westling worked as a fitness instructor (today he owns a succesful Gym and Fitness center. They have been a couple for about 7 years.
Daniel Westling comes from an ordinary middle class family in the small town of Ockelbo in the province of Gästrikland. Ockelbo is a small town with just 3000 inhabitants. The fact that Daniel Westling comes from neither a royal a noble family or a traditional upper class enviroment may have contributed a bit to the fact that king Carl Gustaf may have been hesitant to approve of him.
Traditionally members of the royal family had to marry members of other royal families or lose the right to inherit the throne and their royal titles(and be more or less kicked out of the family). Traditionally royal marriages were also arranged and sometimes the couple met for the first time on the wedding day or shortly before.
Two of the kings uncles and 2 other princes lost their right to the throne and was kicked out of the family in the 1930thies and 1940thies by the kings grandfather king Gustaf II Adolf when they married non royal ladies. However king Carl Gustaf married our present queen Silvia Sommerlath in 1976. Queen Silvia comes from a upper middle class family in Germany.

The wedding of Crown princess Victoria and Daniel Westling is planned for early summer 2010.
After the wedding Danel Westling will be styled "Prince Daniel duke of Västergötland".
the royal family has also taken the somewhat unusual step of announcing the engagement on Youtube.

Do you think the princess made a good decision or should she have given up Daniel and married someone of higher birth and social standing or resigned her right to the throne or should Sweden become a republic !!

Swedish Media on US elections

There is a lot of the USA presidental election in Swedish media these Days .The whole weekend has been full of programs and debates . Swedens public services channel TV 1.has their program "Godmorgon Sverige"(the swedish eqvivalent of "Godmorning America") producing and sending the program (with its presenters and staff) from Washington DC november 3-5th !TV4 the biggest private television channel does the same with their version of morning TV too !

The Local a webbased nespaper in english about Sweden also writes that "US election Fever hits sweden". With so mutch media coverage and the fact that US politics affects Sweden to maybe we swedes should be able to vote in the US Presidental election too? ;)

Swedish emigrant Institute gets a little money, but closes its research department until the end of the year and still faces a very uncertain future

Hello again all friends of Swedish genealogy. I have to apologize for not writing for a while. but I did not think I had much to write about.

A small Happy not it sthat the Swedish Emigrant Institute has recieved 2 donations of money.
It recieved 1.6 miljon swedish kronor (around 205 000 dollar) from the The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation to be able to complete the Emigrant Database EMIBAS. The database contains 1 million Emigrants from sweden to other countries taken from church records. The present database is to old it is impossible to add new information and it is also impossible to complete the system. Attemps to do that before have been unsuccesful since when the money attatched to it has run out the job has been left halfdone. I really hope it will be better this time.

The Swedish-American of the Year Barbro Osher has decided to donate 100 000 dollar (around 798 000 swedish kronor) to the Institute "It will be used to try to reconstruct the Institutes activities" says Lars Hanson (the present head of the Institute)according to an interview in the local newspaper Smålandsposten.

As I have written on the blog before there have been a lot of turbulence around the Swedish Emigrant Institute this year. There is lack of money, the Local governement and the county governement wants to merge the Institute with the local museum and a local archive but the Swedish Emigrant Institute have refused and so the local governement and county has cut all their funding as well as resigned from the Swedish Emigrant Institutes board of directors.

There have also been discussions of renting or moving parts of the exibitions to other places.
For now the battle ax seems to be buried temporarely. But the new donations hardly helps the Institutes all economical problems .I think they will have to cooperate with someone to be able to function in the long run.
The Swedish Emigrant Istitute has also recently closed its research deparment for new enquieries for the rest of the year.
One reason is to be able to answer the back log of all questions that has been send in by e-mailor letter .another reason is the uncertain futute. hopefully the research department can open again next year but it is far from sure.