Customer Reviews

The Scandinavian American Family Album (American Family Albums)

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Leafing through a family album of photographs is a pleasant experience, especially when in the presence of a grandparent. This book is exactly like a fine evening spent with an older relative and a stack of photographs, recipes, memorabilia, and the rich storehouse of memories in an old person's mind. I loved reading this book. It provided me with a chance to learn about the life of my grandparents. Even though they died when I was a child, this book helped me to find answers to the types of questions that I would have loved to ask them as an adult.

Hej, Cousin, did you know that us Scandihoovians are an ethnic minority with colorful Old World customs, and not just ordinary white-bread Americans? This here book tells the story of how we Swedes and Finns were the first colonists in Delaware and invented the log cabin and cranberry sauce, and how a Swedish Pennsyvanian named Morton, originally Mortonson, cast the deciding vote for Independence in 1776, but then most of us came to Minnesota and other states after the Civil War like our mothers' mothers' kin, about a quarter of the whole population of Sweden at the time. Judging by the photos, they had more work than fun in the early days, but other than that, they all look just like our uncles and aunts when we used to picnic on the Henriksson farm out there by Blue Earth. There's a picture of some Henrikssons on page 40, which I'm pretty sure is our great-gramma's kinfolk in Nebraska, and another on the contents page of a kid that looks just like you holding three big lake trout but I guess the picture must be too old. Anyhow, the book tells all about the kind of work our ancestors did, and how well they adapted, and which of them became famous like Ole Bull, and Gutzon Borglum, and Hubert Humphrey (did you know he was a Norski?), and Carl Sandburg, and Charles Lindbergh. Some of the pictures will carry you back to our childhood in the '40s, though I still haven't forgiven you for stepping on my pet bullfrog that time. Let me know if you're planning to show up at the family reunion in Hibbing this August so I can practice up on my Indian wrestling and tin can shooting.
Take it like you find it,
Your cousin Göran