Jian and I first planned to visit Sweden in the summer of 2009.  We had signed up for an Anderson Scandinavian tour – specifically the tour called “Highlights of Sweden.”  Following the tour, we planned to travel on our own to Karlstad, Sweden, to visit the places in Värmland where my grandfather and grandmother Johnson had lived before emigrating from Sweden to Minnesota in 1893.  When Jian’s mother became seriously ill, we canceled our visit to Sweden.  Mr. Dean Anderson, the proprietor of Anderson’s Scandinavian Tours, located in Lindsborg, Kansas, graciously offered us full credit of the tour cost toward another of his tours in the future.   We also obtained full refund of our air fare from Scandinavian Airlines.

   A year later, at 11:50 a.m. on June 21, 2010, our neighbor picked us up in her red Jeep Cherokee and drove us to the Manzanita bus stop where we caught the Marin Airporter shuttle bus to San Francisco International airport.  There, we boarded a Boeing 777 (KLM flight 606) to Amsterdam  where we will transfer to a flight to Stockholm.  Thus we began a visit to Sweden where, as previously intended, we will first join the “Highlights of Sweden Tour” and then we will spend some time in Karlstad and Värmland.

    To read a short, illustrated account of our time in Karlstad and Värmland, please click on the title below.  While in this area, we were overnight guests at the farm of Håkan Bergström and his family, saw several farms on which my ancestors were born or had lived, visited the churches where they were baptized and married, visited the Swedish American Center in Karlstad, and visited the Värmland Museum.

“A Visit to the Old Country”  An account of our visit to Karlstad and Värmland.

Sweden

Värmland, ancestral home of Gustaf and Emma (Larsdotter) Jansson/Johnson.