Home

When I started this little blog experiment of mine, it said I should have a “Home” page.  So I got to thinking: what is home?  The first thing that sprung to mind was where I last lived in Sweden, and which I still think of as my urheimat (a German word that roughly means ancient home-land).

The building is called Saltvik, and when I was living there it had been subdivided into about 8 apartments. When the picture above was taken, many MANY years before, it was a summer residence for the Young Women’s Christian Association. Like myself, the building has changed over the years.

Now, I live and work in glorious Sydney, Australia with a wonderful partner.  I’ve acclimatised too: I used to think 10 degrees Celsius was warm…  Brr!  That’s now occasion to put on my winter coat. I’m also Australian – my citizenship and passport say it’s so.  Truthfully, you can take the Swede out of Sweden, but not the Swedishness out of the Australian. Or something.

My family is about as Swedish as it gets, with ancestors from all parts of that elongated country. There’s a few odd-ball foreigners in there (a Russian soldier, and if my DNA is to be believed some Norwegians and Finns) on three of my four grandparents’ sides.  The fourth one is the exception – plenty of Swedes, for sure, but once we get back a few more generations, there are Danes, Germans, Estonians, and Dutchmen. Unsurprisingly, this is the branch where most of my medieval connections appear. From this stems the duality of my genealogical research interests.

I guess home is where I store my shoes (I don’t wear a hat), and as Peter Allen sang in the 80:s I “…call Australia home.” But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a Swede.

You can read more about the purpose of this blog, and a bit more about my research background in the post How to Make a Swedo-Medieval Genealogist.

What does home mean to you, and how does it tie in with your genealogy research? Drop me a comment and share your story!