Salen and kakelungar

Elin and Thor in salen in July 1960 with two of their
grandchildren, Birgitta Kindeskog (now Sturve) and
Thorbjörn Bäck on the day they were confirmed.

"If we walk back down the stairs again, then there was the hallway that ran across the front of the house to the east and there were two windows and a door to the outside to the veranda in between the windows. On that wall there were two shelves, where we put hats and gloves and such and there were hooks to hang your coats on. Opposite to the door to the outside was the door to salen. Salen was a room that probably should have been called the living room but we were hardly ever in there except if we had company or on holidays such as Christmas. Maybe parlor would be a better way to say it in English. In salen, to the right, there was a kakelugn, a ceramic stove. We had kakelugnar in salen and in hörnkammaren, the corner room. A kakelugn was special and expensive, so they only went in the special rooms. A kakelugn was made of tile, and they could either be a square shape or rounded. I think all our’s were rounded. There was also a particular basket for wood in salen; this should also be wood that didn’t spark too much. The kakelugn had

I couldn't find a photo of the kakelugn in 

Kjettestorp. This one is nearby in Mjölby

with Ingemar Bäck and CarlAdam Wittbeck

one little door on each side where you could open up for draft. On the front, there were two doors. In one was some kind of metal to take the heat from the fire. The outside doors were open when there was fire in the stove. They were made of myssing, which is mostly like brass here. As soon as the fire had burned up and the wood was in coals, they closed the doors and then the whole stove, the tiles, got warm. It was made in such a way that it stood there and exuded heat for hours.

Next to the kakelugn there was something we called a "sideboard" – they had already started to borrow words from English. This table was to put dishes on when you carried food into Salen. Then there was the door to the kitchen. We were not the only ones with a “sideboard”—everyone around had a “sideboard” but then everyone around had some relative in America so some English filtered into our language. On the other side of the door to the kitchen, there was a skänken. A skänken was a piece of furniture

I pulled this photo of a 1900s kakelugn

off Wikipedia so you could see one

more clearly :)

that stood up rather high, higher than us kids; I thought it was terribly high. On the bottom of the skänk, there were two doors and in there, they kept plates and nice serving dishes and then there were two drawers up above there, where they kept the silverware. On top there was always a pretty doily or tablecloth of some kind and there they had some especially nice pieces in view.

Salen had two windows to the west and in the middle was a big table. I believe they could put in leaves in that table to make it bigger when we had company. In the southwest corner, there was the pump organ. The organ had a special kind of candlesticks that you could move a little and adjust so they shone just right on the music you were playing. On the wall next to the organ there was a door to hörnkammaren. Beyond that door on the wall there was a big clock hanging. And then, there was the sofa. I remember thinking that it was truly the most beautiful sofa that you could ever find anywhere. The seat and the back of the sofa was red velvet and it had patterns of gold in it. Us kids were not supposed to sit on it.  Can you imagine six kids climbing up and down on that sofa? It probably wouldn’t have lasted very long, but we hardly ever got in that room. That was for guests and special times, not for everyday kids.

Now if we go into hörnkammaren, it was in the southwest corner of the house. It had one window on the south side and one on the west. It had a kakelugn and it had a kommod –a washstand – for company. Because this was the room for company, the washbasin and soapcup and such often had a pretty pattern, some flowers or something."