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| Annotated Snippet from Swedish Record Book |
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Sweden tracked its people much as the UK and US did through their censuses. However, the Swedes, as with other countries, used what they already had for that purpose. In Sweden, the most comprehensive record set is that of the "Swedish Household Examination Books," which were maintained, by law, by the Swedish parish churches. They are pretty generally in existence from about 1860 up until 1947.
Fortunately, many of these records have survived and have now been digitized and archived, though Ancestry doesn't seem to have many of the Household Examination records. Ancestry is, however, a great source for the Register summaries of various Swedish vital statistics. MyHeritage, on the other hand, seems to have a great collection of the Household records, but not so many Register summaries. Unfortunately, none of the local libraries carry "MyHeritage Library" as far as I've been able to find other than Pierce County. Luckily, I can use my Hurst, Texas card to access it even up here in Ocean Shores. On the other hand, you can sign up for a paid MyHeritage membership if you are doing serious Swedish record collection. You might even score a half-price deal which they offer now and then.
Swedish Household records, in contrast to American or English records, are not very standardized. The content varied from year to year and from parish to parish. In the late 19th Century, for example, many of the records I've looked at have a column where the recorder could indicate whether the person had been vaccinated against Smallpox.
What is almost universal, however, is that Swedish records do not record "snapshot" of people on a given day, but they rather contain an evolving history of them and their families over the entire period covered. As a result, you'll have check boxes to indicate if the person was a church member at various times, there will be dates and times where new people are added, or they will be crossed out when they left. They may reappear on other pages when they get married, or their spouses will suddenly appear. There will also be references to other pages where you can go for added details that didn't fit in the page you started on. In effect, you're looking at what is a written version of an old soap opera.
Below, there's a page of a Swedish record. Specifically, the record is for Flykälen, Laxsjö, Jämtlands, Jämtland, Sweden. Flykälen is the village, with a current population of about 23 as noted here. Laxsjö is a parish (the main unit of 19th Century Swedish Society) that collected several villages and sometimes even satellite churches/chapels. FamilySearch actually has a page on Laxsjö, here. A place like Laxsjö would be where all the various and sundry records were collected into a book. These various books would then be collected together and filed as summaries at the County or Province level. This particular book is hundreds of pages long. Some of the birth and death books that appear in FamilySearch are not indexed and are several hundred pages long. Luckily, these tend to be organized parish by parish, so things are not as difficult to find as one might imagine, though it'd be easier if the Swedes had better English skills back in the day (he says jokingly).
Provinces or Counties are used a bit differently than in England or the US. In Swedish, Jämtlands, Jämtlands län, and Jämtland are all used more or less interchangeably. However, Provinces in Sweden mostly are left over history and perform no current administrative function. Thus, a Swedish Province is sort of like "the Dakota Territory" that later became the State of North Dakota and South Dakota. Depending on the timeframe, Jämtlands might even be called Jemtland. Sweden has a long and convoluted political history. If you aren't confused yet, go to FamilySearch and try to understand their explanation, here.
Anyway, in the record, the first thing you'll notice is that most of the names are crossed out! All that means is that the people in question departed before the end of the period. In this case, I was researching the people on line 14 through 17, including Anna Karolina Johnson. Which brings up another thing you have to learn - Swedes that emigrated to the US generally changed their names as the ship passed Iceland. Anna's father, on line, 14 is called Sven Jonsson. Once he arrived in Minnesota, his name had become Swan Johnson. His wife became "Maria Christine Johnson." and even her maiden name changed from "Eriksdotter" to "Erickson." Similarly, my own wife's great grandmother's name had changed from "Brita Katarina Eriksdotter" to "Bertha Catherine Erickson."
Next, in the records, you'll see a "Född" (birth date) and birthplace column. Unlike US and England, there are LOTS of Ericksons and Petersons and Johnsons in Sweden, so the best way to distinguish them was to note their date and place of birth, right down to the individual parish. There were not a lot of Anna Karolinas born December 1, 1899 in Laxsjö Parish. Had Anna stayed in Sweden, this name and place would have been transferred with her to any future jurisdiction and knowing this is essential to track people within Sweden over time. Otherwise, you'd wind up getting her mixed up with the other dozens of identically named people. If Sweden limited itself to birth State as in the US Census, we'd never be able to follow anybody.
Not wanting to make this an entire book, I'll skip past all the niceties and get to the right hand columns, which identify why/where people left before the end of the period. Ours on lines 14 to 17 all left for North America in April 1905. This explains why they were all crossed off in a record that ran until 1909. As it turns out, from other records, they travelled as a group with Maria's family and met one of her other brothers when the ship docked in Quebec. They then went on to Minnesota where they homesteaded farms and worked their way up in America.
Sadly, the story ended for Anna Karolina when she contracted a fever and died in Minnesota in 1910. According to her death certificate, she was buried by her father "3 miles east of Hallock." Her younger brother and his own young son died in an Alaska Airlines plane crash at SeaTac in 1947.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
In my original post, I forgot to mention that some of the links in this post lead to pages that are written in Swedish. If you are using Chrome and Google is your search engine, it'll offer to translate the page for you. The Google translations are actually pretty good. One such page is http://www.flykalen.se/ . Go to this link and see if it doesn't offer to translate for you. If not, go here and enter the web site you want translated. There are lots of translator sites so simply search for "translate swedish web site into english" and try a few free ones.
Alternately, in the words of the Google translator:
"Om du kommer ihåg låten "Turning japansk" kan vi vända det och tror att vi blir svenska! Nej, jag talar inte svenska."
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
In my original post, I forgot to mention that some of the links in this post lead to pages that are written in Swedish. If you are using Chrome and Google is your search engine, it'll offer to translate the page for you. The Google translations are actually pretty good. One such page is http://www.flykalen.se/ . Go to this link and see if it doesn't offer to translate for you. If not, go here and enter the web site you want translated. There are lots of translator sites so simply search for "translate swedish web site into english" and try a few free ones.
Alternately, in the words of the Google translator:
"Om du kommer ihåg låten "Turning japansk" kan vi vända det och tror att vi blir svenska! Nej, jag talar inte svenska."
One Last UPDATE
The Google translator works pretty well for most languages that use characters you can type on your keyboard. It has more trouble with Asian languages that use characters that require a different keyboard, though you might find otherwise if you have the proper keyboard. Speak up if you have first-hand experience!
