20120623 Saturday Cool, mostly cloudy with a few sunny hours.
We’re just starting our day. Off to breakfast. Back from the buffet breakfast which began with herring, cheese, cold cuts, & sliced tomato before the (swedish) pancakes, sausages, bacon, and scrambled eggs. Juices and coffee were there for the taking. Muesli and yogurt were available. I could get used to this.
We decided to ride around in the country; I could pick the places and routes but D wanted to stay off main roads so she could get pictures of flowers and scenery she likes.
So we went in the general direction of Kopparberg up route 50. We’d seen some information on the Stripa Mine in Stora, so we went there. It’s a former iron mine that stopped production but was left to be a museum, except the train tracks are gone. It had not yet opened to tourists (next weekend) so we didn’t get any tour, but we could take pictures from the outside of what was obviously a big deal locally.
Then we went further north on 50 but turned off at the first sign for Ramsberg, where my great grandmother was born. The road went up over a ridge, down and up onto another one. There at Ramsberg we found the kyrka (church), a large white thing, and the graveyard across the road, very nicely tended. Ramsberg is a collection of 40 or 50 houses with no industry we could see. Dolores found plenty of flowers since lupins, daisies, lilacs (about finished), and others we don’t know are all in bloom. My nose knows it as well.
Then back to route 50, intending to head for Stjärnfors, but we had already passed that turnoff. So we arrived at Kopparberg and cruised through town into an area we hadn’t seen before. Dolores took pictures of a pond; the ducks thought she had food for them, hopped up onto the path and surrounded her, but were disappointed. We headed out that road toward Ställdalen, intending to try to find my grandfather’s birthplace. We turned off at a sign for “Kumlan”, but never found anything on it related to him. We did find our way out on a road to Hörken, and then headed for Ställdalen to get back to someplace we recognized. Lo and behold, we came across a sign reading “Östra Kumlan 3km”. Away we went, watching the odometer for distance. We found some houses and reckoned we were there.
We went through Östra Kumlan and noticed a group taking pictures of kids with a horse. When we had passed all the houses (a dozen or so) we turned around to go back and take pictures. We stopped at the first place and saw a couple with a teen-age daughter walking up the hill toward us. I got out and introduced myself; they said they spoke English (and did - very well). I told them why I was there, and they told me about the area. They live in Stockholm but have one of the houses here to escape to on holidays.
They suggested we should have come next weekend when a cultural activity is taking place. I had to tell them we are cruising next weekend but that we had thoroughly enjoyed Midsommar festivities in Kopparberg yesterday. They conceded that that was a good thing to have done.
It came out that the wife had been an exchange student in Cassopolis, Michigan for one year. She asked where I was born and then said that she’d been there during her stay. Small world.
They recommended now that I have the place more in mind, to go back and re-read “The Emigrants” by Moberg; they also said I should watch the movie, which was done to historic accuracy standards. I’ll do that. They also suggested reading some of the poetry of Don Andersson done in the 20’s after I said I enjoyed Rydberg’s “Tomten”. He said the Swedes still read it in school and have an affinity for poetry and stories that link to the land and a way of life in the country. We chatted about church oppression as expressed in Emigrants and as acted out by my grandfather. He noted that when grand-dad left was a period of large-scale emigration due to oppression and a feeling that Amerika would offer opportunities unobtainable in Sweden.
The man of this couple told me Östra Kumlan was once larger than the dozen or so houses. The residents would have worked at mining or logging. The terrain there is rough - lots of rocks, very hilly. It is on a well-packed but narrow gravel road 3km west of the road from Ställdalen to Hörken. He inferred that I should come back tomorrow when two of the residents of the houses where we were talking might be home and that we then could narrow down the house my grandfather was born in. We may do that tomorrow, depending. It’s somewhat unlikely the house would still be there.
The 1974 1:50,000 large-scale map I have of Ljusnarsberg Kommun is more useful in some ways than Google Earth since it shows the houses that existed then, some of which still do.
Then we decided to return to the hotel for a snack and to rest and to type these notes before I forgot too much. It was a wonderful encounter with the Swedish family in grandfather’s birthplace. After this, we’ll go back out and see what happens.
We went out for dinner, walking to the square near the transportation center (train and bus station) and into Palmas. It’s a nice medium-scale place. Our waiter didn’t speak English but we extracted enough from the Swedish menu and basic word exchange to order a pepper-steak and a temprillo for me, a schnitzel and a sauvignon blanc for D, plus garlic bread. The wines were nice, if small, and the spread furnished with the garlic bread was great. The meat dishes with roasted potatoes were done nicely. We had another wine each and coffee (*good* coffee here).
Then we started a stroll. The train station was off to one side so we went there. A schedule board showed a train would be along shortly so we waited for it. It came along (two-car electric train, see pictures), took in a few passengers and headed south. We walked on through the small park to the main street and along it, looking in stores. The storm clouds were returning, so we cut the walk short and went back to the room.
On TV, out the books, relax time.
Picture Link OPicture Link D
