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This years Swedish Genealogy Days the yearly conference of the Swedish Federation of Genealogical Societies was held in the city of Malmö in the province of Skåne in southern Sweden. Over 100 exibitors crowded in the convention center at Europaporten in Malmö. Everything from genealogical societies, archives to companies offering original sources online.

Erik Gustavson from the Kinship Center in Karlstad in the province of Värmland spoke about EMIWEB a new project launched by the Kinship Center the Swedish Emigrant Institute. Göteborgs Emigranten and some others.

EMIWEB is a webb-place aimed at housing some of the databases containing Swedish emigrants to USA and other countries for example databases of Swedish emigrants taken from Swedish church records and also members of Swedish-American societies.In time the databases should be searchable over the web for a subscription fee. I was lucky to get an interview with Erik Gustavson which I hope to use in a later podcast episode.

Among the exibitors was the Swedish Emigrant Institute from Växjö. They were friendly to let me go with them in their car.
Here we can see archivist Kristina Persson and Bo Björklund study some of the Institutes databases containing Swedish emigrants to USA and other places.

The second day of the Genealogy Days provided many intresting lectures. Since the theme of the conference was the
Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 when the provinces of Skåne Halland and Blekinge became Swedish (they had belonged to Denmark before that) and how that and following events impacted the people of the provinces as well as Denmark and Sweden.

Many of the lectures of the conference was on this theme. I attended one about “The terrible Swedes” given by Charlotte S H Jensen (in the middle of the picture to the left). Despite this fact she and several other friendly Danes had come as representatives of Samenslutningen af Slaegthistoriske foreninger(Danish Genealogical Societies) to give help and answer questions from people with Danish roots. For those interested in Danish genealogy here is a link to a thew web-page of Arkivalieronline (Danish archives online). I even got an interview with Charlotte which I will use in a later podcast episode.

The members Malmö Genealogical Society who organised the conference surely had a lot to do. As seen on the picture beside. they had their hands full of showing people around. Unfortunately I could not get an interview with any of them.

Peter Wallenskog former C E O of Genline
spoke of the companys goal to provide still more Swedish church records online. s well as the companys new websites familjeband.se and bygdeband.se. Familjeband (family ties) is a webased site were it should be possible to put up ones family three online. it seems interesting however it is still in BETA face. they seam to have problems with importing gedcom files.
and I do not think the site really will will take of until they have solved that problem.

Bygdeband (ties to places) is a similar website but aimed at local historical societies so they will be able to but up their materials about different locations for example photos and descriptions. It should then be possible to tie persons from Familjeband.se to places in Bygdeband.se I got an interview with Peter Wallenskog this year too which I will use in a later podcast episode.

The most far away participants I could find was Lorna Nelson and Lenora Lynam from the Mc Pherson County Old Mill Museum in Lindsborg Kansas. Linsborg was founded by swedes in the late 1860-ties and still a great part of the population has their ancestors in Sweden. It seems like the Old Mill museum has some cooperation with Genline sinc ethey were standing in the Genline conference booth.
it was very nice speaking to them and I also got an interview with Lorna.

A popular feature at the Genealogy Days was “Släktsök” (Search your family) A place in the exibition hall with a lot of computers. there any visitor to the conference could search their ancestors or relatives in genealogy databases CD-Roms or sites with scnanned images online for free (and even get a little help fom experienced genealogists). All to get a little taste if Family History was something for them.

As a whole thew Genealogy Days was very worth visiting. The entrance fee for visitors was relatively modest 40 Swedish kronor for each Day (a little over 6 American dollar).so you cold visit both conference day for about 12-13 dollar no preregistration was needed for visitors (only for exibitors). Around 3000 people attended and there were around 110 exibitors. The Swedish Federation of Genealogical societies also elected a new chairman Barbro Stålheim who succeded Ted Rosvall. Next years genealogy Days will be in the city of Falköping in the province of Västergötland!

In the meanwhile, you can still work on your profiles and upload the photos from the weekend’s family reunion.

Update: Now everything is fixed! It was the database acting a bit weird but Stephen has done a great job to fix it. (Let’s buy him a lunch now!) Thanks everyone for the patience!

Just as the squirrels and different kinds of birds collect nuts and seeds, someone in the Kindo office seems to be doing some really solid forward planning.

Judging from this picture - it’s going to be a looong winter.

So Kindo - thanks! //CJ

Thanks yourself CJ!

However, this makes me think of one of my family’s stories - you know, that kind of stories that all families have and are told over and over again.

As I said, partial eclipses happen every now and then, but the total are really rare. My grandmother was a primary school teacher in the northern part of Sweden back in the 1950’s. For a long time, newspapers had written about the astronomical sensation that would occur and my grandma had pedagogically prepared her class and told them to bring sooted glass to look through from the school yard.

The other class in the little school had a more old school (ok, sorry for that one) teacher. My grandma, aged 32, tried without any progress to convince her to also let her kids have the chance to observe the phenomenon. It could maybe be regarded as a field study in nature science? The old woman refused - the kids should have their grammary class as normal, there’s a curriculum to follow, right?

- Why would we give them extra break just for something stupid as a total solar eclipse, they can see it next time!

Well, maybe not - the next similar event in Sweden won’t come until the year 2126! In other words, something that makes Halley’s comet look like a yo-yo! Maybe it’s these poor kids that moved to Greenland!

By the way… we hope you have wireless internet back home so you can sit in the sun while building your family tree…

Subject: A wonderful website!

Oh my, how happy I was to find this page

I have for a long time wanted to make my family tree, but on paper it’s so cumbersome.

I’m so happy sitting here all days

Once again, THANKS - now I’ve finally got started with my genealogy!!!!!!

Best Regards //KL in Sweden

New faces today are the golfer Tiger Woods (just announced that a wounded knee will make him miss the rest of the season), the tennis champ Roger Federer (now playing in Wimbledon) and the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
We encourage all of you to drop a comment here if you would like to see a special celebrity’s family tree.

In Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve, is celebrated on the Friday between June 19-25, this year June 20, a bank holiday. Most Swedes would argue that this is one of the most important holidays of the year and we celebrate it in a unique way. People find their way out to the country side or the archipelago where they traditionally raise a huge maypole covered in green leaves and flowers. Summer dressed Swedes then perform ring-dances around the pole with singing and folk music in the background. Typical is the frog dance

Maybe even more important is the food: The year’s first potatoes, herring, maybe raw spiced salmon and strawberry cake is on the menu on many tables. Drinking songs together with this is popular. Maybe too popular.

Starting as a Pre-Christian ceremony to celebrate the longest day of the year, magic was believed to be extra strong. Still, many girls pick a bouquet of seven different flowers which they place under their pillow. The tradition say that they now will dream of their future husband to add to their Kindo tree

This is it for me, now I’m off for the west-coast!

After Italian league-wins in Juventus, Zlatan now plays in Inter, his favourite team as a boy, where he is very succesful. At the moment though he is very busy taking Sweden to the final in the European Championships and scored in the first game against Greece. Even though the Swedes call him Zlatan, the Italian nick-name is “Ibra”. Outside the pitch, Zlatan is the father of two - Kindo has his family tree!

• More celebrity trees can be found here!

One enthusiast is Anna-Karin, a Swedish lady who regularly during the last years has broadcasted Anna-Karins Genealogical Podcast, a podcast on genealogy from an emigrant perspective! Her program contains interviews, tips on genealogy sources and material and genealogy news. The interesting thing is that the program is in English, which makes it possible for her to reach out all over the globe. The Kindo family likes her podcast and recommends it for everyone interested to learn more. - The next episode will come shortly, she promises!

By the way, if you like her podcast, it has now been nominated to the Swedish “Podcast of the year“-award - a competition held by the web-agency Daytona. Vote here! Participating in the competition is also the Web 2.0 podcast What’s Next, which in November hosted Kindo! (only in Swedish)