Släktbloggen

The sisters Stina and Brita with the twins Else and Chris in Stockholm, when Chris visited Sweden in the 70s.

...Ellen Bergh with whom she lived in Värnamo during the 20's. Ellen is one of the oldest persons in the family that I know of. She was born in the US in 1857 and died in 1955, almost 98 years old. Her last years were spent at Östraboliden in Växjö, a home for widows of clergymen. She had been married to a clergyman, as had her mother Matilda, her grandmother Christina and her great grandmother Ingeborg.

I wonder how she looked upon the world. Did she reflect on matters? Could she have had any knowledge at all about natural science? Politics? Pornography? Could she possibly have had a sense of humour?

...Lydia's brother Sigfried Andrén, a farm leader and later accountant at Ersta Hospital, Stockholm. This is, to be sure, the first photo of mr Andrén that is ever published on the internet. Many, many people publish photos of their children and grandchildren. But how many publish photos of their great great grandmother's brother? I guess it's good that I don't have children myself (because in that case I wouldn't have done it).

The first gathering of my grandmother Brita's great grandchildren. Step 1 (furtherst back): Malkolm Vidlund. Step 2: Ruth Liljenberg, Seth Liljenberg. Step 3: Majken Vidlund, Viktor Ovebring, Ella Monemar Teke. Step 4: Lovisa Monemar Teke.

I wish I had been as cool as I look in this photo.

...at some time in the 60's. Vanessa, Helen, Jennifer, James, Ted and Kerstin.

...from 2008. It was just as idyllic as it looks like.

...we had a family reunion in Toronto for Kerstin Lindman's descendants + me and Amelie. The reunion was the second within our family. And in exactly one year, July of 2011, the third will take place at Skeda gård, Rydaholm, Sweden. Our plan is that, in the future, a reunion will take place every third year, either in Sweden or in Canada. It will be focused on the descendants of Salomon and Lydia, but other Lindman descendants will also be invited to join us.

...Stephen Ring (born 1982), Dick's youngest son, at the moment teaching English in Vietnam. One of the relatives that I would like to meet but haven't.

...from the summer of 1992 features a play that I had a part in: Häxan (The Witch) by Britta Falk. It was performed on Marholmen outside Norrtälje. A good example of amateur theatre, where the social process is more important than the artistic result. In this play I had five parts; this clergyman in the dream of the death sentenced woman was one of them.

I performed on Marholmen six summers in a row. And I remember it as idyllic despite the fact that I know I very often felt terrible. This is the reason why you never should trust your memory, or at least be very skeptical about its testimony.

...on July 4, 1920, my great uncle Gustav Salomon (Gösta) Wennberg was born in Backe in the north of Sweden. He grew up in Värnamo and went to high school in Södertälje where he met his wife AnnStin. At the university of Lund he studied, among other subjects, limnology and geography, which resulted in a licentiate degree. From the middle of the 1960's he lived in Uppsala where he was a lecturer in geography at the School of Education.

I met Gösta many times at Skeda and I mostly remember his great proficiency in a wide range of areas; he was a renaissance man. Complex but also complicated, anxious and sensitive. And he would not have denied that he had a great interest in himself. After struggling with religion in his youth he was a hardcore atheist. When I, as 23 year old thinker, discussed reincarnation with him (which I believed in) he stated - almost aggressively - that it was "embarrassing" that people could believe in such things.

After he had taken his doctoral degree at 70 (he lived to be 84), he started to write his family stories and memoirs. And I know from his daughter Ulla that he found this really amusing. I should say that those writings are the fundament of the family history that we have today, and which not many families are blessed with.

So thank you Gösta - wherever you are (not).