Swedish genealogy

Swedish surnames and family names

2012-02-10T01:12:00.000+01:00

Until quite recently,Sweden have not commonly used family surnames.
Instead we have had apatronymic tradition, which means that all children got their fathersfirst name as their surname, with the suffix -son (for men) or-dotter (for women).

So if a man named LarsAndersson had children, his sons would automatically had theirsurname as Larsson and his daughters would have Larsdotter as theirsurname.

It was first in the late1800 and early 1900 that we stopped using patronymic surnames andchanged them into family names.

About the same time womenstarted to take their husbands surname as their own when gettingmarried. Before this all women kept their surname their entire life,married or not.

When the change frompatronymic surnames was completed all women that had their patronymicsurname (ending with -dotter) to become the male version, ending with-son instead.
So Elisabeth Svensdottersuddenly was changed to Elisabeth Svensson. Quite boring I think.

That is the reason that wein Sweden have so many family names ending with -son (Andersson,Svensson, Larsson, Nilsson, Olsson, Johansson, Persson, Karlsson,Gustafsson, Eriksson, and so on...)

As you probablyunderstand, there was literary hundreds of thousands of people livingin Sweden that shared the exact same name during all periods of time.
Butthere was some of them that adapted a family name instead.

Sometimes just to avoid beingmistaken to be someone else (since there often were maybe 10 LarsLarsson living in the same small village...), some started using anon-patronymic surname, sometimes this was passed on to theirchildren, sometimes not.

Most common surnames(besides the patronymic ones) are very often connected to nature andnames of places where people lived.
This gives quite many possiblecombinations, but also many of these surnames was adopted by manyunrelated people in many different locations at the same time, makingthese family names not that unique and not very helpful to determineif people with the same family name were related or not...

Some very common wordsthat are current in many Swedish surnames are to mention a few;

Berg (mountain), Gren,(branch on tree), Blad (leaf on tree), Kvist (twig on tree), Ström(stream in water), Lund (grove of trees), Ny (new), Söder (south),Nord (north), Väst (west), Öst (east), Sand (sand), Fors(rapids water), Sjö (lake)...

And often names of treesor animals are used, many times in combination with the above.
Some examples;

Flowers from a Linden tree

Lind (lime or linden), Ek,(oak), Gran (spruce, fir), Tall (pine), Hassel (hazel), Örn (eagle),Falk (falcon), Björk (birch), Asp (aspen), Äng (meadow), Lönn(maple)...

So by combining these wecan generate almost all common surnames that is in top 100 here inSweden...
My own surname Lindberg is a perfect example that is one ofthe most common surnames here.

Some people also gotspecial names if they were soldiers. These soldier names was most ofthe times only used by the soldier himself and not passed on to hischildren, but sometimes they became family names also.

Most of thesemilitary names were either directly connected to the place the soldier servedunder or some classical ones like for example;

Trygg (confident, safe),Hård (hard), Stark (strong), Grym (cruel), Dunder (thunder), Stolt(proud)...

Also noblemen, priests,merchants and some craftsmen like smiths often used a family name asa surname.

The only family names thatwas protected was the one reserved for the noblemen. No one elseoutside the family could use a registered surname used by a noblefamily.

But besides that, norules, so many people used the same surnames without being related atall.

But since early 1900 thereis strict regulations and procedures when someone want to change orcreate a new surname.
Today the name must be unique or if it existsyou must have a connection to this surname not so long ago in onesfamily.

In my family the Lindbergsurname was first used by my great great grandfather, and he took itthe year 1874 when he was 16 years of age. Before that his surnamewas Lindman, but that name came from the soldiers that served inLindö In Vallentuna parish. (all soldiers there always was namedLindman).

So he could not useLindman since he was not the soldier and he had to change.
Why hedecided for Lindberg is not sure. But maybe he wanted to keep some ofLidman and since he lived at a farm that was named Berga, he maybewas influenced by that?

The boring part is thatLindberg is so very common here in Sweden, so sometimes I wish hewould have had a little more fantasy when he made the change.

But of course I am veryproud of my family name anyway!

Genetic cousins.

2012-01-26T09:42:00.000+01:00

Not so long ago, I entered the world of DNA and this is one of the most exciting thing I have done during my 30 years in genealogy!

I have been looking for this several years, but I have not felt that it would be of any real use in my genealogical research to know about my deep ancestry that you can get from taking the Y-DNA or mtDNA tests that have been available for some years now.
Of course it is interesting to find out what haplogroup you belongs to and be able to match against others, but in short it turns out that we all are related to each other if we get way back in time.

As a genealogist I have the drive to know HOW we are related and since the timeframe that are possible to verify and do actual genealogical research is limited to the last 500 years it was not that interesting for me to get information that I match someone that share a common ancestor in say, 50 000 years ago...

But now things have drastically changed with the autosomal DNA tests that have arrived!

With an autosomal DNA-test its possible to find whats called "genetic cousins" and that means the matches you get, share an common ancestor in the range between present time and back for about 300 years, or 5-8 generations! So its absolutely within the timeframe that is possible to verify with traditional genealogical research!

Some people even call this a genealogical revolution and I tend to agree! This is really amazing and very exciting!

If this had been available when my grandparents had been alive, I had done whatever possible to have their DNA tested with an autosomal DNA-test. Because every generation some of the inherited and traceable DNA get lost...

I have already tested my fathers DNA and now I am just about to get the test done for my mother also. I use Family Tree DNA that are totally dedicated to genealogical DNA testing. Their autosomal DNA test is called Family Finder.

So my search for my genetic cousins have started and I have already got some very interesting matches that we started to figure out how we are related, and thats genealogy!

Some people are thinking that taking a DNA-test would "spoil the fun" from doing traditional research, but they are strongly mistaken since working with DNA in your genealogy is NOT presenting you with a complete family tree. It only gives you a new dimension to your genealogy and without traditional genealogical research its quite useless.

As a professional genealogist, I have also included DNA in my "toolbox" and I am following the technical progress with great interest.

Bearhunting in Hälsingland...

2012-01-21T01:52:00.000+01:00

I have researched a lot on my grandmother's ancestry in Hälsingland and there are many interesting lifestories and exciting moments to get out from the church books.

Some of these ancestors are originally from Finland and in the late 1600's, they arrived to clear and occupy unsettled land in Hanebo (X) parish.
I noticed that some places, speciallyTönsen and Raman seems to be populated mostly of people of Finnish origin.

But in these days,Finland of course was just another part of Sweden.

My grandmother's grandmother's great-grandmother's name was Cecilia Henriksdotter (1703-1784) and she had a nephew named Olof Andersson and he was born December 7, 1744 actually in the place Raman.

A week after that Olof celebrated his 34th birthday, he and some others went out in the forests of Hälsingland to hunt for bear...

How common it was to hunt bear, I really do not know, but I guess there was a little more bear in the woods at the time.

Anyway, this story does not end so well for Olof ... Apparently something goes wrong in the hunt, and he died December 20, 1778, after being severely injured during that hunt.

Here's how the somewhat odd death notice looked like in the death records;
The text reads;

“Biten och illa sargad i hufvudet af en Björn, som han i följe med andra ämnade skjuta, hwarefter han lefde, allsomst 4 dygn.”

Translated it would be;
Bitten and badly wounded in his head by a Bear, that he had, in company with others, the intention to shoot. He lived for four days after the accident happened before he finally died.

I'm not an expert on bears, but I guess that time of year, the bears should be doing their winter-sleep and perhaps this hunt actually really was poaching?

What happened to the bear the story does not tell.

“Best not to wake the bear that sleeps...”

When the technology causes trouble...

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

We have become quite dependent ontechnology to be able to do genealogy effectively today. Firstly, itdepends on that our computers are working properly, and that thebroadband connections is working and is fast enough.

Secondly,we become also dependent that the suppliers of the sources, thechurch-book material, are functioning properly. And it isunfortunately not unusual that either of these fails, which leads tothat the genealogical research will suffer.

This kind ofhassle is a pain even for the amateur researcher who may have a fewhours off and will try to keep up with the genealogy for a moment andnotice that you can not access the service provider.
To me, whohas genealogy as a profession, it is obviously very annoying when I am unable to work. Because even if I do have all the providers of theSwedish church book material (Genline, SVAR and AD), they are notidentical.

Was it better in the past? I can remember how itwas to do genealogy for 30 years ago when I had to visit thearchives, standing in line, order up books (only a few at a time) andthen wait until the archives staff arrived and delivered the book tothe researchdesk.

It was not dependent on the technology... Writingwas done with a pencil in the notebook I had brought.

On theother hand, I remember that sometimes it was archival staff who weresick and we genealogists had to sit back and waitconsiderably longer time than usual in order to let the decimated staffdeliver. This is perhaps equivalent today when we have networkproblems or the computer is malfunctioning?..

Today I still visit the archives onoccasional times. I don’t really do that because I miss being there,waiting for the staff to bring up the books I ordered or waiting inline to get a place to sit, no its of course because there are stilllots of books that are not digitalized (yet) and that quite often Ineed to check things that are still considered private (70-yearsecrecy-rules).

But I must admit that in a strange way I do like to wear these goofy gloves and also there is the smell of "old books" that you get for free when visiting an archive...

Swedish genealogy

2012-01-17T09:17:00.000+01:00

My first post...

Welcome to my genealogy blog!

My intention is to write about genealogy as a hobby and a science in general, but most of all it will be about my own thoughts and experiences in genealogy and my own findings in my family history and ancestry.

I have been into genealogy for 30 years now and since 2010 I am also working as a professional genealogist in my own company named Trosa Anverk.
I am a specialist in Swedish genealogy and even if my customers often are from USA or other countries, they do have a Swedish heritage.

Did you know that almost a quarter (1/4) of the whole Swedish population emigrated to USA in the late 1800 and beginning of 1900? This means that today there are actually more people with Swedish heritage living in USA than there is in Sweden itself! Amazing!

I do not write or publish anything that are related to my customers, so personal details and stories will only be from my own family tree or something I stumbled upon in general.

Do you have Swedish roots?

I hope that maybe someone will get inspiration or find something that I write here to be of interest. Besides traditionall genealogy I am also very involved in DNA genealogy.
I am really a very sporadic blogger, not writing that often as I would like to do, but try to post something now and then.

As you all probably already have noticed, English is not my first language... But I do hope that at least you can understand what I am trying to say here.

I also have a blog in Swedish with similar context as this one. I have been blogging there for a year now and I like it. I hope that this blog in English also will be found and appreciated by many readers all over the world and is of course grateful for any help with sharing or linking to this blog.

Genealogy is very popular here in Sweden. Many people do it and today its quite possible to do almost everything from home with your computer and an Internet connection.

As this is my first post I would like to mention that you may also find me on other social media as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. But I have dedicated Google+ as my English platform besides this blog.