Driving back from a short ski trip to Dalarna, about 300 km northwest of Stockhom, I came to think of an old map I once got from my grandmother Edna. She had kept it as it was a record of how grandfather's relatives had moved around in Sweden, from the 17th century onward. As I... Continue Reading →
What we are experiencing in Europe today is on everyone's mind. No one knows how this will end, how many lifes will be affected or what will happen to our world. WWII is not that far away in the past, and even though my own generation did not have to live through it, our parents... Continue Reading →
As we're finally leaving the dark, cold and poor January behind us in Scandinavia, the Chinese are about to enter their big festivity of the New Year. In 2022 the year of the Tiger starts on the 1st of February. In 1905, the newly baked missionary Olga spent her first Chinese New Year celebrating the... Continue Reading →
... and I have not been writing or researching for such a long time. This autumn has been pretty intense. I have had to make some priority changes - mainly focusing on seeing friends and family when I have not been travelling with work. We've had a short window of social possibilities in Sweden, which... Continue Reading →
This year, September is a month of celebration in Sweden. A hundred years ago women could finally vote in the Swedish election of 1921. On the 17th of December 1918, the Swedish parliament decided in favour of voting rights for both men and women. This was the first procedural decision that paved the way for... Continue Reading →
My great grandmothers Olga and Dagny were both alone when they travelled back to Sweden after having spent their entire adult lives in China being missionaries together with their husbands. Olga’s husband Nils passed in ileus, in 1942 (age 61) and Dagny’s husband Robert died from heart disease in 1930 (age 62). They were both... Continue Reading →
From the stories my grandmother used to tell me when I was little, there is one I often think about come Christmas. It was 1895 and my grandfather's parents, Dagny and Robert, were newlyweds. They lived in a small Chinese mountain village called Hancheng in the northwest. There were no other Europeans there, and it... Continue Reading →
"We had two scout troops. One for the boys and one for the girls." My grandmother Edna always told her childhood stories in a very soft voice. Her life stories were my bedtime fairytales, and perhaps that is why I remember them so vividly. "When we had days off, we went on hikes down to... Continue Reading →
Staycation can be a way of discovering your own environment. In this post my grandparents staycation in the 1950's is a backdrop to my own staycation in 2020.
Her name was Li-Niang. She worked with Olga and Nils at the station in Dali/Tungchowfu in China. Li-Niang was a hard-working woman, who helped my great grandparents take care of their children. My grandmother Edna loved Li-Niang. It was Li-Niang who taught her Chinese, who made sure she got bathed and hid Edna when bandits... Continue Reading →
China missionary Olga turns up again - this time in an influencial old nurses' dictionary by Honnor Morten.
Since I have been looking into my family history and reading letters from the past, I have become increasingly interested in the context my relatives lived in. They were born in the 19th century and passed into the 20th, with everything that happened and was invented at the time. Just as I find it hard... Continue Reading →
Photography is the art of preserving what we do not want to forget. Through photography we can see the world both as it is, and discover new interpretations of that same reality. Back in the days, when photos didn’t lie – when retouching and editing photos was non-existing – photography was something very special. People... Continue Reading →
Reading letters from my great grandmother I slowly unveil her history and piece together the puzzle that is our familys' legacy
Going for what you want out of life is not always easy, but it all comes down to taking those first steps and overcoming your fears. Olga, is an example of that.
Thérèse Amnéus 