Now I want to tell you about my confirmation

Now I want to tell you about my confirmation. You don't have to be a James Michener to enjoy going back in history, back to the roots of things. I think sometimes in order to understand certain things, we need to know something about history.

Painting of Gustav Vasa by Jakob Binck

The first Christians who came to Norway, Sweden and Denmark were Catholic missionaries who established cloisters and abbeys and such. Then in 1523, a man named Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden and he was king to 1560. He was acquainted with Martin Luther's teaching and banned Catholics from Sweden. He established the Lutheran church as the state church of Sweden and it remained that way for 400 years.

So how does that connect to my confirmation? Well, when I was a kid, confirmation was mandatory for everyone because the Lutheran church kept all the records on the population. The baptism record was like a birth certificate. Then came first communion and then confirmation, then marriage records, and at the end, death certificates. There was no other form of registration for a long

Karin i Blåsten

and Astor Karlsson

from the 

confirmation 

photo

time. This is why when I was confirmed I was part of a class of 63 kids in a little town of 3000 or so people. That was pretty much all the 14 year olds in town.  There were other churches, but it didn't matter if you were Mission Friend, Baptist, Pentecost, Salvation Army, you had to be confirmed in the Lutheran church. At that time, we had all these other churches in town but they weren't called churches. What I mean is Kisa Kyrka, the Kisa Church, was the Lutheran Church. Salvation Army was Frälsingsarmen. The Pentecosts were called Sion and the Mission church was called Missionshuset. The Mission friends were an offshoot of the Lutheran church so they worked together a lot in our town when I was young and this was true for confirmation. The Lutheran church didn't have a big enough meeting hall to fit all of us kids, so our lessons were held at the Mission House, boys on one side and girls on the other. There would have been enough room in the Lutheran sanctuary of course, but it wouldn't have been proper to have rowdy kids taking lessons in the sanctuary! So we were over in the Mission House hall.

The Pastor

I enjoyed confirmation. Of course, I had learned things before in Sunday School and in regular school, but there was a lot about history and things which I found really interesting. We learned the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and we studied Martin Luther's Catechism. Karin i Blåsten and Greta and I were all in the same class, but Karin and I were on the young side of the class. You weren't supposed to be confirmed until you were 14. Karin was born in March so the Pastor said she was ok. I was born in June, though, and confirmation was done in May, so I wouldn't be 14 until a month after that, and Pastor almost didn't let me be confirmed. He called me in and talked to me individually and then he called Dad in and I think if it wasn't for Dad speaking up for me I wouldn't have been confirmed until the next year.

Mom's confirmation class. She's in the second row on the far right.

Chickens, horses, pigs and cows

Nils-Erik Carlsson, Mom's cousin, with
an Ardennes foal

You maybe have wondered what we made a profit from in a little farm like our's. There were a lot of things to sell. Milk was a steady income and we didn’t keep all the calves that were born either. It was the same thing when the brood mare had foals; most of them were sold. Some sheep were sold, too. Mama usually let the chickens sit on a batch of eggs in the spring and they might have a dozen chicks each. Mama kept most of the young hens to replace the oldest hens in the flock but all the little roosters were allowed to grow up a bit and then they were sold. They were sold to people in town. In those days, women would buy a chicken like that and kill it and pluck the feathers themselves. I’d like to see a townswoman doing that today.

Then one day Mama decided that she wanted to have a sow. She thought if we had a sow we could sell the piglets. Well, it’s a lot of work with any animal and Dad just did not like to fool with pigs. Finally he agreed that Mama could have a sow but he would not help with it in any way, and he kept his word! When it came time for the piglets to be born, Mama and I were up there. Papa wouldn’t set foot in the barn. He didn’t show up at all. We had Lång Anders for a hired man at that point and he felt so sorry for us that he was going to come and help. Funny thing was that the sow would not let him in the pen. She charged him everytime he tried to get in. So there was Mama and I. It took almost all night to help her have 13 piglets and get them cleaned off. Then when finally all was over, the piglets had to start nursing, and we had to help them. We had to watch pretty closely for a few days too because problems can come up. Animals can be a lot like people; having babies is supposed to be a natural thing but it doesn’t always happen without problems. So someone had to stay out there most of the time and keep an eye on the sow and her little ones for a while. It was quite a lot of work. After that, I never heard Mama want to have another bunch of piglets. We kept a few of the piglets but the rest and the sow were sold.

Kids and cows!
Mom is in the middle here, Margaretha is off
to the right and Lennart stands on the far left.
I'm not sure who the other kids are.

There was another time when a cow was due to have a calf and Papa had to go to a meeting. Brita and I were home. Well, the cow had her calf and they didn’t want the mother and the calf to bond so they took the calf away right away. Brita said, “I won’t touch that slimy thing!” So I had to clean the calf off and rub it real good. Then I found a burlap sack and rolled the calf onto it. Then I got Brita to take two corners of the sack and I took the other two and we got the calf in it’s box.

While we are in the cow business, there was another time when I was home helping Lennart get started farming and there was a cow who was pretty far along. I asked Lennart, “When is she going to have her calf?” Being funny, Lennart said, “She hasn’t told me.” I said it looked like she was ready and he made out some other joke. Lennart was working in the forest at this time so he went off and I thought I'd better check on that cow. I went up to the barn several times that day. Later in the afternoon, when I was going up to the barn, I heard all the cows bawling and bawling. It was such a racket in the barn that I thought some of them must have gotten loose. Instead, there was that cow trying to have her calf and she had worked so hard already that she was worn out. I could see the calves feet were already sticking out, and I was afraid it would suffocate in the birth canal, so I went into Torsten Davidson and asked him to please come and tell me what to do. He said, "I think we can pull it out, you and I." He put some strips of cloth around the feet and he and I pulled for all we were worth. We did manage to get the calf out and just as we stood there looking at it, Lennart came home and was so surprised. You can imagine how big his eyes were.

Left to right -- Grålla, Ragnar, Bläsen, Farfar Johan August, Gurli, Henrik, Flora, Papa Thor,
Ajax, Margaretha, Gun, Lennart and Mama Elin. It says something about the importance of
the horses in their life on the farm, that Mom wrote the horses' names on the back of the
picture with the names of the people. She knew and remembered all their names even though she was clearly not very old. Mom also used to shake her head when she looked at her own expression in this picture -- Ha! She didn't like the photographer and she wasn't going to play along but she admired how Margaretha stood with her hands clasped like a good little girl :D

Ordspråk och Gök (Sayings and Cuckoos)

Mom's Farfar,
Johan August Carlsson

Now, I’ve thought about some more of Farfar’s ordspråk. He’d say, “Små grytor har också öron.” A gryta is a cooking pot, usually round, with one handle on each side. The iron pots often had small round handles that kind of looked like ears and we actually called them ears. The saying translates as, “Little pots also have ears” which meant that little children can hear too. If there was something that shouldn’t be repeated, you shouldn’t say it in front of a small child. When we heard that saying as kids, we knew that we were going to miss out on something interesting!

Another of his sayings was “Lagom är bäst med det är sällan hemma.” This one can be said, “Moderation is best but that is seldom at home.” The Swedish word lagom is interesting because there isn’t really one English word that means exactly that. It does mean “moderation” or “enough” but it’s a good thing.  When we say “enough,” that sounds like too little doesn’t it? Maybe a better way to translate lagom is “just right.” Farfar would say this ordspråk at the same times as he would say, “Förmycket eller förlitet skämmer allt.” This one means, “Too much or too little will spoil anything.”  I remember him saying either of these when one of us kids would take too much food at the dinner table. He’d also say, “Den som gapar efter mycket missar ofta hela sticket.” “Those who desire too much often miss the whole thing.”

“Bättre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen.” That’s, “It’s better to have one bird in your hand than ten in the forest.” It’s the Swedish equivalent of “Better a bird in the hand than two in the bush.” That one came out whenever one of us kids was wishing for something different than what we had. It was important to be grateful and satisfied with what we had.

There were a bunch of sayings about cuckoo birds too. We had them in the part of Sweden where we lived. A cuckoo is a pretty big wild bird, about as big as a blue jay here. A cuckoo bird mama is very lazy though; she lays her eggs in another bird's nest and the other bird will lay on the egg for her. Then when the eggs hatch, the other baby birds are smaller and don't move so fast.

Young cuckoo being fed by a songbird

The baby cuckoo bird will kick all the others out one after another. Then finally the substitute parents only have the cuckoo bird left. They keep feeding him and working so hard. He's hungry all the time because he's a big bird. The two little birds will fly back and forth nonstop to find food for him. It's such strange behavior that somehow there came to be some old stories or traditions about this bird. People used to ask each other if they had heard a cuckoo bird yet and there was sort of a competition to see who could hear one first. It wasn't only to see who had heard him first but which direction you had heard him from. The saying was, "Norr-gök är sorg-gök. Söder-gök är döder-gök. Öster-gök är tröster-gök. Väster-gök är bäster-gök." In other words, "If you hear it from the North, that means sorrow. If you hear it from the South, that means death. If you hear it from the East, that is a consoling sound. But West is best." There was also a saying that if you see a cuckoo bird sitting on the fence to your yard, that means someone in that house will die that year. I saw a half-grown cuckoo bird one time sitting on the fence between Mellangården and us and watched the tiny mother bird flying back and forth feeding it, even though the cuckoo baby was already twice as big as her. But no-one died that year in either house. That made me start to wonder about these sayings.

Note: The video is of Mom reciting the cuckoo saying. Gök is the Swedish word for cuckoo. The background in the video is a drawing done of Mom in 1986 by Jeanne Peterson Link.

Ingeborg and the Well

Ingeborg, her husband Kjell and their
son Håkan, obviously much later
than the story Mom is telling here :)

One time I was sent to Grönede to look after Ingeborg. She was a toddler and Moster Rut had something special that she was going to do, and it was hard to look after Ingeborg too.  It was a nice summer day, and I got to take the bicycle Fram. It wasn’t very often that I got to take Fram by myself for a whole day. Well, Mama said, “When you get there, you park it on the outside of the fence and you don’t touch it while you’re there. Not until you go home. You do not take it in the yard.” So everything was going along fine. I had Ingeborg outside, and she was playing in the sand pile. She got so busy playing and that bicycle it beckoned to me from outside the fence there to come and ride it. I thought, “There’s nobody around and Ingeborg is so contented. Who will know if I take a little spin on the bicycle?” So I did. I went and got on it and rode just a little ways and back. I wasn’t gone very long but when I got back, Ingeborg was gone. I looked around and couldn’t find her.  I thought maybe she ran in the kitchen to her mother so I ran in there to see. Moster Rut said no she wasn’t there, and she just looked at me.  Then she ran out the door and down the yard. She kicked her shoes off as she ran because she could run faster and quieter in the grass without shoes. She thought she knew where Ingeborg had went. They didn’t have a fence around the yard but further down they had a well where they dipped up water for the cows. They had a pasture nearby where there was no natural spring. Twice a day they had to get the cows up into this pasture and dip up water and put it in a watering trough. So this well was open. There was no lock or lid on the well and no fence around it. By the time, Moster Rut and I got down there, Ingeborg stood looking down into the well. Moster Rut just went up behind her quietly and scooped her up. She didn’t dare holler

Moster Rut, about 20 years after this story.

because she was afraid that it would startle Ingeborg and she would fall forward into the well. When she turned around then with her child in her arms, the look she gave me burned. That was enough punishment for me. She never said a word to me about it. When I got home though, I thought I had to tell Mama. Mama said, “You see that when I tell you something, it is for a purpose. You have to listen.” And then it was never ever mentioned again.

Another time, Siri and Margaretha and I were left at Grönede to play with Ingeborg. She was a little bigger, three or four years old. We were playing house and in the dialect, she said she was going to run to a particular store and buy herself a cucumber. Well, the store she mentioned was a clothing store. She didn’t know that, of course. But oh, we giggled and giggled and repeated that for years.

Easter, Midsommar and the Hammock

This is Thor Boberg gathering the collection in Kisa church.

I've been thinking about holidays. I've already talked about Christmas. That was the biggest holiday for us, but another holiday we celebrated was Easter. Kids would send Easter cards to each other. I remember one year I got an Easter card that was signed from "Valskungen," The Waltz King. That was a boy who had come to the youth meetings that we went to. He was such a good dancer that all the girls like to dance with him. I don’t even remember his name now and I don’t remember where he lived. I wasn’t really acquainted with him. Why he sent me an Easter card, I don’t know. I never dated him or anything. Well, Dad just about hit the ceiling: “Waltz King! Who is that?!” Dad didn’t really think dancing was much good to begin with and he had only just let me start staying after the youth meetings for the dancing.  Brita finally had to stick up for me and tell Dad that we didn’t really know that boy; we just knew who he was. So then Dad calmed down. I must have been at least 16 at the time.

I know that Mom is on the far left here and her
sister Margaretha is on the far right. I believe
that the three girls in the middle are their cousins
are Karin, Maj and AnnaLisa, from left to right.

On Easter morning we always had boiled eggs for breakfast. That was always a contest between the boys in the neighborhood to see who could eat the most eggs. Henrik and Folke i Sör and Henning, they’d compete. Well, one year Sara said she could eat more eggs than the boys could. I remember that Folke ate 12 eggs once, and I don’t think Sara ever got up to that.

Another big holiday was Midsommar. My birthday is the 19^th of June and Mama’s was the 23^rd of June and Mama’s birthday was often on Midsommar day. She would usually have a party for her birthday and and Maria would come with their four girls and oh how much fun we had then. We didn’t do any special preparations for Midsommar aside from baking for Mama’s party. I remember

This is from one of Mom's albums
and is labeled "Siri" :)

we had our own garden, of course, and almost everything we ate was from the garden. One year Mama had had plenty of spinach, and I always loved spinach; she used to cream the spinach and I thought that was just delicious. Well this year, we sat down to eat and here came Mama with a big bowl of creamed spinach and put down on the table. Siri, Maria’s youngest girl, went to her mother and said, “Do I have to eat spinach here too?!” Her mother laughed and said that before they had left home Siri had said how glad she was to get away from home and all that old spinach. Then we all laughed. Of course, we teased Siri about that for years. Of course Mormor always came to Mama’s birthday and she always gave me one crown. She didn’t do that for the other kids, maybe because my birthday was so close to Mama’s. I remember that Margaretha used to be jealous of that. Her birthday was the 17^th of July and she thought she should’ve gotten a crown too.

Aron and Maria Patriksson, 1917

There's one Midsommar that I particularly remember. We were all excited because Moster Maria and Morbror Aron and the girls were going to come as usual. Well, that year somebody had made a hammock out of some kind of rope but it didn’t have any ends to it. Papa and Aron were in the workshop and they were going to make ends for it. Aron, the cabinet maker, couldn’t make just straight pieces of wood for the ends. They had to be made in a bend and then they drilled holes in those pieces to tie the hammock onto there and then they took the ropes on through to hang it up the trees. Well, then they went to hang it up between two trees and us kids scampered in there, a whole bunch of us jumped onto that hammock all at once. We heard a rrrrrrrip and then we were all bundled down onto the ground! It had split in the middle and we had fallen through! How quickly kids can get up and run you wouldn’t believe. We all headed off as quickly as we could in different directions. Nobody wanted to stay and hear what came after that!