Recently I wrote about “lutefisk,” and that got me thinking
about my Swedish roots.
Last year I had my DNA tested and it came out 53% Scandinavian. But growing up a Wallin in the Midwest, it
felt like much more. Looking at my hair,
my friends agree; while they are going gray in their middle age, I faded to
platinum blonde. My family tree shows
more like 62.5% Swede—five great-grandparents out of eight emigrated from
Sweden. My four grandparents’ surnames
are Wallin, Peterson, Anderson, and Erickson.
(The Erickson branch was from northern Germany.) You’ll find no offensive “-sen” endings on
these last names—that would mean Norwegian, and Grandma Wallin had no use for
Norwegians.
I’ve inherited a few things from The Old Country, but not
many. My great-grandparents all came as
young adults, with very little but the clothes on their backs. Only one of the five Swedes who came, my
great-grandmother Emelia Fryksdal Peterson, ever saw the old country again,
when she went back to Sweden with two of her daughters in 1920, shortly after Great
Grandpa died. A postcard survives from
that trip, showing the town where they stayed (Sandviken):
My Grandpa Sture Wallin was next-to-youngest of seven Wallin
children, the others (in order of age) being Isador, Inez, Iranus, Ithel,
Aurora, and Leonard. My father said that
my great-grandpa Frederick Wallin was a bit of a Swedish history buff, which
accounts for his children’s names. Sten
Sture, for instance, was a Swedish statesman who “beat up on the Danes,” which
would have put him in high favor with Great Grandpa.
In my childhood and youth, the Wallins gathered at Grandma
Sara and Grandpa Sture’s house on Christmas Eve. Besides the traditional Christmas lutefisk
and the delicious butter cookies which we called “Swedish Spritz,” there were
Swedish meatballs and rice pudding with a raisin in it. It was said that whoever ended up with the
raisin would have good luck in the coming year.
Things were a little less Swedish the rest of the year—but
compared to my middle-class Midwestern friends, this was still far more
ethnicity than most of them were exposed to!
In my younger days, I colored my hair brown. But as I have gotten older and given up that
expensive and high-maintenance habit, I have gotten in touch again with my
Inner Swede. I think my father and
grandparents would be pleased about that...
As Grandpa Wallin said to my brother one time many years ago, “Remember,
Bruce, you are a Swede. And nobody can
outthink a Swede, nobody can outwork a Swede, and nobody can outfight a Swede.”
Postscript: Recent ancestry DNA "ethnicity estimate updates" now have me as 84% Scandinavian. I'm not surprised!
Postscript: Recent ancestry DNA "ethnicity estimate updates" now have me as 84% Scandinavian. I'm not surprised!
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