Roots in the Southern Archipelag of Stockholm

 

Roots

Roots are where you have your feet. I tend to think so on days when the black hole of the soul feels to deep when I trudge along the Helsingörsgatan (street) and Kista Science Tower is embedded in leaden rain clouds.

Of course, if you don´t have a history, you don´t have a future either! As I came from a large family with a background i the Stockholm Archipelago, the relatives are there, but in modern society and time there is not always enough time for closer socialzation and contacts.

On August 17 2003,however, four talented women among the cousins arranged a trip and meeting back to the origins and back in our history. A bus from central Stockholm with 23 cousins and their respective brought us to Österhaninge Church and to Årstanäs (Årsta Isthmus) at Blistafjärden (bay), near Hårsfjärden and for a dinner at Strand Hotel in Dalarö.

It was a memorable day, the only remaining sister in our parents crowd, Elsa, turned 94. She was courted at Årstanäs by all of us.
Happy Birthday Elsa! How nice you are with your beautiful red rose in your hair!

Who is it? It´s Thommy. Oh is it says Elsa making it sound unique! (she said so to each one of us). When she greeted us all!

Since my father was the second youngest in the large group of children, not as many souvenirs were left behindfrom the beautiful situated archipelago home in Årstanäs as they had to leave in the thirties when he was a child.

However, I have a copy of a newspaper article in ST from 1925. The photo there is actually from a confirmation in 1922, the year my father Knut was born. Those who were confirmed were named Anna and Alf (twins) and standing in the far right in the middle row. Elsa the 94th birthday lady can be seen on the far left of the bottom row. Of all the siblings seen in the picture, three died at a young age, the rest survived and grew old and several of them lived to be over 90 years old. In addition to the Baltic herring from the sea, the fresh air and the hardening life, they have fun in the group of siblings. They played music with accordion and guitar, sang and laughed almost constantly. Good qualities for a long and goog life, I think.

A photo and an article

Late summer 1925  Österhaninge Parish, 18 children with parentes in front of the photographer and an archipelago home in the background. The Stockholms newspapers correspobdent writes about the Sjöbergs - Swedens largest family with children, yet one child is missing from the photo. I know because I have the lineup - sic! There should be 19 children!

A handsome couple ...

At Blista and Årstafjärden, filled with the glint of Baltic herrings, barren lands and Hanveden with forest and wild animals, the Sjöberg children would be formed and grow up. It was the time of the old farming society. It was a long way between a castle and a hut, before motoring and the breakthrough of modern society and long before healtcare could cure TBC with a course of antibiotics. Here it was about trusting one´s own ability and imagination. You had to develop what you would today call a comprehensive competence. Fishing, gear and boats would be handled. Farming with pasture, hay and animal husbandry was part o everyday life. Carpentry, building, fixing and repairing became a skill that the young brothers had to master. The women had to make fabrics and clothes like the worst seamstresses and in the household it was about cocking herring, wild animals, meat and baking and as we said, some children were born and then the older sisters had to look after younger siblings and got insights into the world of midwives. The sales talents were developed on Saturdays with Baltic herring sales at Kornhamnstorg in Old Town in Stockholm. A sale that in 1924 was facilated with the help of a newly purchased T-Ford, an example that they were no stranger to new fashions!

When it came to free time, they were no worse. Although I think they didn´t talk about free time in those days. Back then, they were entertainment organizers with access to party venue, Tallbacken, their own orchestra consisting of parts of the group of siblings who managed the music, coffe service with home baked goods and sisters who managed entry and took payment. People had fun here and there was a lot of joy, I have experienced it myself when I heard elderly aunts joking and laughing when talking about memories from the past. There are plent of strong women within the Sjöberg family.

It is clear that one becomes independent and developes what we  would today call an aptidude for good entrepreneurship when there is neither access to a fisheries consultant, a childcare center, the swedish agricultural agency, a construction program at the high school or for that matter the municipal music school, without detracting from any of these institutions, the children Sjöberg were tested constantly in everyday life.

It was a trip the Sjöberg children had to make. Not just because they moved to Stockholm as adults. A jorney that today takes half an hour by car then took several hours by horse and cart and then a few hours with the purchased T -Ford.

No the real journey was the one from a poor farming society to the modern world with the car, television and healthcare as symbols. The city instead of the country as a place of recidence, the people´s home and the good life for a few decades after the second world war. A modern life which over time, however, had other problems than the peasant society with it´s harshness and poverty. The journey from the farming society to the city and modern life was made by our parents, but I wonder if all of us cousins don´t have a little glimmering in our eyes, from baltic herrings to the bays of the archipelago in our hearts and isnt´t there an entrepreneur within us with a very special feeling for music. In any case, it is fantastic to imagine that the roots are in an archipelago home at Årstanäs in Österhaninge parish. Where a man Carl Albert Sjöberg createded a family with an young woman Anna Matilda Nilsson in another millenium and in an another society. A handsome couple who had a lot of talented children who were our parents.

PS A map of Årsta castle with surrondings around 1900, Årstanäs up in the right of the map.

Årsta castle is even the home of the author Fredrika Bremer, a pioneer of the swedish female movement. She writed the famous novel Herta and even a noticed travelstory about a journey in USA Hemma i den nya världen 1853 - 54, Home in the New World.

The picture, the photograph in the paper above is unclear but the line-up is probably as follows

Top row from the left: Agnes, Therese (mother to Paul Lederhausen), Kristian, Eva och Astrid

Middle row: Berta, Carl-Albert (father), Anna (mother) Helge Anna och Alf

Sitting: Elsa, Signe, Nils, Anders, Märta, Vega och Bror.

Små bilder: Knut till vänster och Hans till höger

If you count, there are 20 in the family, but one sibling is missing who couldn´t join.

- Gunnar Sjöberg, so 21 members of the family.

Strangely enough, there was another child who could have been with them, Agda Sofia Sjöberg b 1901 who died young. Grandmother Anna herself claimed before her 60th birthday in march 1938 in DN article, interview, a tribute, that she was the mother of 23 children.

© Thommy Sjöberg