Day 8 - Fjallbacka to Tretten

Mom in front our hotel

This is the view from our room
looking north

Just writing to let you know we made it to Tretten.  The flood is bad but the roads were fine.  We have seen a camper in the water and lots of logs.  I think campgrounds located on the river with permanent campers or small cabins were hit...as were some low lying farms and houses.  South of Lillehammer the river is wide like the Mississippi.  They call it a Lake.  The water was glasslike, but it looked high.  North of Lillehammer the river narrows and is just raging.  E6 was a good 4 feet above the river at the lowest point of the road (though the road goes up the side of the valley sometimes too), though at one point it looked only maybe 1 - 2 feet higher than the water.  I think it's starting to recede.  Janna Glomstad, of Glomstad Gjesthus, said that the flood came on really suddenly Friday and that people were trying to move campers in Ringebu Friday afternoon.  They lost 3 campers.  We think we saw one of them. 

Our hotel is up the side of the valley 5 km north of Tretten.  The drive was sort of like the drive to GrandDad's Bluff in La Crosse...before it was closed.

More later...

Day 7 - Uddevalla to Fjallbacka

Today we had a 1 hour drive from Uddevalla to a museum we wanted to go to in Tanum.  We took a highway called E6 which is a lot like the 4 lane highways we are used to.  The landscape has been changing a lot in Sweden.  Yesterday, in Jonkoping, there were lots of big rolling hills with huge farms.  Today west of Uddevalla, there are huge granite outcroppings. 

Bronze Age Farm at Vitlycke, Tanum

One of the many, many rocks with
Bronze Age rock carvings.

At Tanum there is the Vitlycke Museum which has both rock carvings in several areas around the museum and also a replica farm.  Both the rock carvings and the farm are from the Bronze Age.  It really was a great museum! We got there around 11:30 and stayed until 3:00. 

After Tanum, we took a smaller road to Fjallbacka through a little town called Grebbestad.  Both Fjallbacka and Grebbestad are touristy fishing villages.  We're here a little before the tourist season, so things are a little quiet, but all of the shops and restaurants are open. 

Tonight we are staying in Room 7 at the Bryggan Fjallbacka.  It's on Ingrid Bergmans Torg, which we guess might the little square right below our window.  We ate dinner at the Bryggan restaurant downstairs and were able to eat outside.  Mom had a seafood casserole which turned out to be a cream-based fish soup and was yummy!  I had a grilled tiger prawns on pasta...equally yummy!

Tomorrow we leave Sweden for Norway.  There has been a lot of flooding in Norway so we are anticipating that we will have to take some detours.  We'll be leaving right after breakfast and hopefully will be in our next hotel by 4 p.m. or at least for dinner.  Wish us luck on navigating our potential alternate routes!

(photos will be posted soon!)

Day 6 - Stockaryd to Uddevalla

We just arrived at the Riverside Hotel in Uddevalle.  We had a very exciting day!!!  I will leave you with this one photo for now, but will write more after we eat dinner. Mom is standing with Mikael who isthe great grandson of Oskar Svensson.   Oskar was the brother of Claus Svensson who changed his last name to Nyberg when he move to the U.S.  Claus is Mom's grandfather.  They are standing in front of a newer house built around 1900.  The smaller house to the right is the house that Oskar and Claus were born.  That makes this the Svensson/Nyberg family house.  That also makes Mikael Mom's 4th cousin and my 5th cousin.  It was a great day!

Day 5 - Stockaryd

Hey hey! Swedes in smaller towns say this greeting really quickly.  In the big cities, it's just "hey."  It's not spelled "hey" it's spelled "hej."  When you say it back to them, they think you know Swedish which in my case always ends badly once they reply with some comment about the weather or some such thing.  Trying to fit in is not always a good thing.  I think I'll revert to "hello." 

We left Vaxjo this morning.  Drove over to the "Crystal Country" where they make nice things by Kosta, Orrefors, Boda, etc., etc.  We bought some things that we will have to be careful about packing and some fun things that we won't have to worry about at all.  So far our meager purchases have been self-serving.  (Don't want you to get any hopes up.) They did have a glass skull. I thought of you, Tom, as we have something like it in the liquor cabinet, but really, it's not worth the haul...and it's creepy. 

The road from Kosta up to Stockaryd (pronounced Stocka rude) looked a lot like Ely, Minnesota: tons of logging, no cars, and huge rocks.  And guess what the big industry in Stockaryd is?  Logging!  It's like we're in Hayward or someplace. 

Mom reading the note left for us at
Old Hjelmssryd Vicarage

We are staying in the Old Hjelmssryd church vicarage.  It's old and nice and cheap.  We had a dinner of bulghar salad and bread with caviar paste.  It's right next to the the old Hjelmssryd church which was built in the 1200s and was usurped in 1800s by the new Hjelmssryd church which is just down the road about 5 km. There are 3 villages with the name of Hjelmssryd within 25 km.  And here I thought Barron and Barronett was bad.  Har har!



House in Kalberga

 

House in Kalberga

So we got here early and were able to drive around both before and after dinner.  Mom brought photos from home of some of the farms/homes that our relatives lived in.  The photos are from a village called Kalberga and were taken around 1900.  We found Kalberga.  It's about 8 homes on a dirt road leading off another small asphalt road.  In the photo mom has, the house door is very distinctive, so as we were driving we focused on finding a door that was exactly like it.  We also focused on finding a 1.5 story house with little half windows on the second floor under the eaves.  Here's what we found:

1. ) The distinctive door is on 5 houses...still...100 years after the photo was taken.  It's like they all shopped at Sears.  I'm betting the handle and hinge would be the same too. 

2. ) There are 2 main house designs.  1.5 story houses with a center gable dormer and 1.5 story houses without a dormer.  (check out photos from these 3 houses, to see what I mean)





Bottom line, we didn't find the exact house, but we know we are in the local area which is in itself a pretty neat thing.  The name of the house in Kalberga is Torpet Nybygget.  It means "newly built cottage" and sadly has nothing to do with "Nyberg"  though the Nyberg family is the one who lived there.

Kalberga's one road

We went to the Hjemssryd cemetaries today and found some Nybergs who we are not directly related to, no Rydbergs, and 2 Rylanders (thinking of Billie Rylander from up at the farm). 

Since we did a lot already today and got here earlier than expected, we're only going to stay here one night.  We're not sure where we'll be tomorrow night, but it will be between here and Fjallbacka.  Maybe we'll get to the west coast tomorrow. 

Few more things: 

-we spent 500 Skr on 3/4 a tank of gas

-photos aren't uploading well so we'll post them tomorrow

-we saw an animal that looks like a musk ox

-we saw a store called "Em"

'til tomorrow!

Deb and Marlys

Day 4 - Vaxjo



Vaxjo's crazy twin steepled
church



Greetings from Vaxjo! 



That's umlauts over the "a" *and* the "o", thank you very much! :-)

It was rainy today.  It was rainy last night, and it is supposed to be rainy tomorrow. 



Emmigrant Center, Vaxjo



Today we went to the Utvandrarnas Hus (Emmigrant Center) in Vaxjo.  We spent about 5 hours there.  It was a day that Tom, Dad, and Emily would've not tolerated, to be honest, but we got some good information and locations of places to visit when we go to Stockaryd tomorrow evening. 

At Ali Baba



Sooo...that said, we sadly don't have many photos.  Though, I cannot say this enough:  I am loving driving here with the roundabouts.  Rarely do you actually stop.  You just slow down for others and then gun it. 

Tonight we tried to go to a couple of good smelling restaurants to no avail as there were no available seats.  Instead, we went to a totally traditional (snicker snicker) Swedish restaurant called Ali Baba and had the biggest falafel wrap I've ever seen. 

Day 3 - Snarestad + Ale's Stone

On to day 3. 

Today we left Malmo.  This entailed taking the bus over to the Hertz agency, figuring out our new Volvo (the guys at the agency seemed to emphasize the newness of the car for some reason), and checking out of our hotel.  All went without a hitch.  We even got out of town swimmingly!

Upon our outstanding hotel receptionist's recommendation, we took E6 from Malmo to Snarestad.  It's a scenic route that follows the coast line.  We drove through Smygehamn, the southern-most town in Sweden (take that, Key West!) and Abbekas, which supposedly has really good fish, but had no restaurants open for lunch. 



At the Snarestad church



The Persson/Jonsson gravestone



Inside the Snarestad Church



Marsvinsholm Church



From there we went to Snarestad.  Snarestad is a little off the coast, up from Svarte.  It's a town of maybe 100.  We went to the church to check out the cemetary to find any Nyberg ancestors.  We didn't, but talked with the groundskeeper for the Snarestad church who called the church up the road past Balkakra.  The church is in a town called Marsvinsholm.  Ingrid and another groundskeeper there helped us to find the gravestone for Lars Persson and Karna Jonsson!  It's really amazing!  They are the parents of Ingrid Persdatter Jonsson who married John Reinhold...and they are the parents of Annie Julia Reinhold who is Grandpa Ferdy Nyberg's mom.  Got it?  :-)  In short, they are my great great great grandparents.  Cool, huh?  After that, we drove to Skarby, with Ingrid in the lead, to the central church office for the area.  We didn't find any matches, but we did get a good recommendation on what to eat at Ale's Stone...

By the time we left our genealogical hunt, it was 3:30.  We were pretty hungry with a lot of road ahead of us. 

The town of Kaseberga is on the coast at the foot of the hill that leads to Ale's Stone.  We ate fried Baltic herring, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry sauce.  Except for the flavorful fish, this was a lot like our Christmas dinners.  (ha!)

Ale's Stone

After we ate, we walked up the hill to the amazing Ale's Stone.  You might have to look this up to more fully understand it, but the Ale's Stone is a series of 30+ stones all on end placed in the shape of a ship.  Like all good ancient stone formations, the axes of the "ship" align with the summer and winter soltice sunrise and sunset.  Much to our surprise there was small herd of docile (sometimes horned) cows in and around the stones.  :-)  The stones are up on hill/cliff that sticks out into the Baltic Sea a bit, giving an amazing panorama.  It was beautiful up there, but extremely windy.  We thought of everyone back home dealing with the heat (though it looks like the heat wave broke...thanks goodness!) as we were shivering. 

After Ale's Stones we drove up to Highway 19 to 23 that took us up to Vaxjo.  The drive took about 3.5 hours and was dotted with animal crossing signs for warthogs (seriously), deer, and moose.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for my car insurance) we didn't see or meet any of them.  The drive was different than we expected.  We expected flat farmland.  Instead we went through lots of hills and forests, and to Mom's dismay, very few rivers. 

Our hotel is really nice.  We got here just as the hotel keeper was leaving...so that was lucky.  Our room is about 1/3 the size of our room in Malmo, but it has everything we need and even overlooks a lake!  We walked over to the nearby restaurant, the Villa Vik, tonight.  I had a Swedish beer (who knew?) and mom had a wonderfully flavored elderflower juice. 



10 p.m. at Villa Vik

 Hope everyone is well and happy. We'll be staying in Vaxjo tomorrow, too!  Take care!

(((The internet is very slow and I'm tired.  I'll edit this to post photos tomorrow.  Loves!)))

Day 2 - Malmo

Hello! 

We are really now Vaxjo at the Toftastrand Hotell AND we have internet!! And we saw lots of neat things today...but first, let me share with you what we did yesterday...

We slept like logs last night!  I think we went to sleep around 9 p.m. Unfortunately, around 3 a.m. some boisterous folks were meandering (we imagine) down our street.  So that woke us up, but by at least an hour later we were both back asleep and woke up by 8 a.m. All in all, we both got a good amount of rest. 



G-ma took this phot for Emily.



 We wanted to see the Malmo Castle, so we took the bus to the central train station, exchanged enough money to hopefully take us through Sweden, and then walked over to the castle.  G-ma thought Emily would get a kick out of seeing the bike parking lot that was floating on the canal by the train station.  We also could see the Turning (Twisting??) Torso building by Santiago Calatrava in the distance.


 They also had cool things that you just don't think about like public air hoses that are located in places that you would really need them...like parks, not gas stations.  So, I took a photo. 

Isn't this a great idea?  Public air hoses *in* the park!

Back to the castle...The castle is surrounded by a moat that is *filled* with alligators!  No, really it just had a few swans and geese ducks. (bummer!) The castle was built at an unfortunate time in which medieval was “out” and renaissance wasn’t quite yet fully defined.  So, it’s just about the ugliest castle we’ve seen, but you be the judge:


Malmo Castle.  Ick.



The castle currently houses a restaurant and a bunch of different museums: art, natural history, castle stuff.  We focused on the castle history, but toured a little of the natural history part as well.  The first diorama we looked at was really an indication of the things to come.  It had 5 taxidermied foxes eating a half-eaten bird.  [see amazing photo @ right]

I don’t think this would have passed typical U.S. diorama standards as it seemed a little brutal, but so be it.  In later exhibits we found that this was pretty normal here as there were human skeletons in numerous exhibits that covered topics ranging from prison life (the castle had been used as a prison at one point) to Bronze Age graveyards.  Then there were the illustrations showing, in flip book fashion, what happens during a beheading.  Then there was the diorama representing some medieval holiday in which there were two people.  One was of a woman’s butt basically sticking out of a herring barrel.  The other was a guy who had drunk too much during the festivities.  Really?!  You have a holiday that has to have *some* sort of cultural meaning and *that* is how you choose to represent it?! Oh, we could go on, but at some point it all got to be too much for us, and we feel like sparing you all the details. 

To be fair, seeing the rooms of the castle was pretty cool. 

But those good exhibits are always offset by this exhibit's name:



The gardens of the castle were really pretty, and we saw the castle windmill. 

We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant at Lilla Torg which is a square surrounded by really old half-timber buildings.  I got pasta with white sauce and veggies.  Mom got Swedish sausage with potatoes and salad, and cauliflower with a cream sauce.

 

 

And then we walked past a Salon called Rydberg and Company! 

 

More on what happened today later...