Thor and Elin's room and the America koffert

Kjettestorp around 1930. The household consisted of (left to right) Margaretha, Sara, Henrik, Thor, Elin, Lennart, Ragnar, Midi, Johan August, Hildegard, Brita and Gunborg.

"The room to the east was mom and dad’s bedroom. There was a window to the east in the bedroom and one to the north. The head of Mom and dad’s bed was on the wall toward the kitchen. In that room, there was an open fireplace. They always had a fire going there in the winter. It had to be birch wood or oak wood, so there were no sparkles. Fir and pine have too much pitch in it so sometimes they’d spark and shoot out a coal on the floor and somebody might step on it. By that stove, there was a door into what we called skafferi. That was a rather big closet.  On the right hand of the closet there were rods to hang clothes on and on the end, there were shelves and there they stored other things like hats. On the two top shelves, they had tin cans with cookies in. Now why do you think they had the cookies on the top shelves?

In there was also an indoor toilet, an arrangement that was like a big wood chair – there were a couple of steps on it so us kids could step up – and then there was a big bucket under there that would have to be taken out and emptied. It sounds bad but you can imagine having to go outside when it’s winter and so cold. It was better to have to empty the bucket. Between the kitchen door and the fireplace, there was another of what we called a kommod. There was a washbasin and a pitcher for water and a soap cup and below there was a cabinet. Over above there was a mirror with a black frame and below that there was sort of a fence to keep in brushes and such.

Then there was a window to the east, between that window and the door to the hallway there was what we called a junior bed. That was a bed that could be pulled out and three kids could sleep on it. In daytime, it was pushed together again with pillows and mattress inside and they covered it up with a bedspread.

It was on the other end of the hallway from Mother and Dad’s room. That was Hildegard and Midi’s room. They each had a bed in there and a chest of drawers. We didn’t really go in there much as kids. It was the sort of private place for those two sisters.

Next to Midi and Hildegards’ room, there was a stairway to upstairs.

The America koffert is upstairs at my house :) 

Upstairs there were two rooms, one room on the south end and one on the north end. The room on the north was Farfar and Ragnar’s and it was so much fun to go up there and see them. The room on the south end was used for other things. Sometimes a hired man lived there. Sometimes it was used as a weaving room. They had a big loom in there and there was always something set up in the loom, rag rugs and other things they wove. I never really learned to weave. The trick was setting it up. To sit there and pull the rags in for rag rugs or a shuttle for thread for some other cloth through once it was all set up was easy. Anyone could do that. But you really had to know how to weave to set it up in the first place. The rest of upstairs was an open attic. The south sides of the attic were used for closets. There were places to hang clothes there and out in the middle of the attic there

It still has the shipping tag on it from when
Mom and Dad sent it back to the US. 

was a skänk.  I think it had been Farmor’s skänk. That was used for storage of special things. It always smelled like mothballs in that skänk. Then there was the America koffert sitting on one side. That was the big suitcase or trunk that Farmor had used when she went to America. I have that here now. In 1966, when we were home, we used that to pack things in to bring home when we divided up after our parents. My sister said that it was the American koffert and it was meant to go to America."

Note: The closest translation for skänk that I can come up with is "sideboard." It was a piece of furniture in a dining room that held nice dishes and really good pieces were often displayed on top of it.