Date: | Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:30 a.m. MT Bethany Lutheran Church |
| Program: | From Fika in Parker to Fika in Arvika |
Presenter: | Ann Gearing, SGSC Member |
Ann shared her tale of how just four months of serendipity and hard work added up to fika with Swedish cousins! As a new SGSC member in February 2019 – with a trip to Sweden in the works for late May – she was thrilled to have the “brick wall” surrounding her Swedish maternal grandfather and his parents expertly dismantled by Kjell during the April SGSC Fika coffee house session in Parker. Meanwhile, efforts were in full swing in Björkfors, Ostergotland, undertaken with gusto by her future host and her genealogist neighbor to “find living relatives!”
Ann shared what seemed to be the meager information she provided Kjell, the unfolding of the search process on two continents over four months, to sleeping at a guest house just yards from the sluiceway where Daniel Larsson labored at the sawmill on the shore of Lake Åsunden in 1873, to the June afternoon when Ann and her suband descended at the Arvika, Varmland train station to be greeted by some of her Swedish family, where Mats treated them to fika at Café & Kök Nystuga.
Videos and handouts available here.
