Folke Boberg, Missionary to Mongolia

Photo taken in Kisa in 1915

"And then there was Folke. Folke was the third in line, so then there was both Ivar and Dad to work on the farm. I guess he worked at home for a few years but then he went off to school. He went to something that they have in Sweden called Folkhögskolla. They started to realize that people needed more education than just sixth grade, so they started up these schools for adults, and he became a missionary to Mongolia. He studied to be a missionary in -- I think it was – Jönköping, and then he studied some in America. He was a missionary for the Pentecostal church. 

He had a girlfriend that the whole family loved. I don’t remember her, of course because he went out before I have any memory of it but she died out there of one of these diseases that they had in those days in the foreign lands. Then he found another woman and got married, named Greta and Greta was not the most well-liked

This photo came from one of
Mom's photo albums and she
labeled it Faster Greta and
Farbror Folke in Mongolia

person around. They didn’t have any children of their own. They adopted a boy from Gothenburg. His name was Kjell-Egon. They went out together as a family to Mongolia. 

Folke had at least three times out. I remember one time he came home on furlough, and he was not married then. He brought home a bunch of Mongolian native hats; he let us kids try them on. We thought they were very funny.

Folke wrote two books about his time in Mongolia. The first one was called Med Fridbudskapet Till Mongoliet (With a Peace-message to Mongolia) and the second one was called Bland Pilgrimer I Djungis Khans Land (Among Pilgrims in the land of Gengis Khan). He wrote some lessons in how to speak in Mongolian too. He also wrote the first Mongolian/English dictionary and had an audience with the King of Sweden when he came home after he had retired. That

The kids trying on Farbror Folke's hats
I'm not sure who the first two on the left are -- Could the
first be Margaretha? Maybe the next little boy is Folke i Sör?
Then I think we have Brita, Henrik Sara and Mama

was king Gustav XVI Adolf; he was very interested in the Orient and in those kind of things."

I just found this picture on Kindabild.se. The website has digitized the photos taken by a professional photographer in Kisa. It says the photo was taken in 1921. I'm guessing it was taken in honor of Farbror Folke's impending departure for America -- that's him in the center with the flowers. He was going to Chicago to study. Mom's Farfar Johan August sits to the far left and Hildegard sits to the far right. Standing are Ivar and Adela with their children, Torsten sitting on the plinth and Ingegärd standing by Farfar. The last two standing in the back would be Midi and Ragnar.

Notes:

The Mongolian/English Dictionary in three volumes by Folke Boberg has become very rare. Last time I looked there were three for sale in the world and the average price was $1,000.