It is a beautiful, late-summer Sunday. The Wester family at Loddby has attended church and listened to Pastor Mobeck’s sermon about the importance of rest and of keeping the Sabbath. Now they are back at Loddby and that is what they are doing. At least the women, resting. The three young men have decided to go fishing. The matriarch, widow, and owner of Loddby, Carolina […]
Last week, Kerstin shared the travel diary of 10-year old Ernst Salomon. In the summer of 1841, Ernst and his family were visiting Särö, a fashionable spa on the Swedish west coast. In his diary, he describes the activities at the spa. Besides the bathing, they went for walks, picked seashells, and went horseback riding. In the evenings, the guests took turns hosting dinners and […]
There are some entries in Augusta’s diary from 1847 that made an unforgettable impression on me as a teenager: “At 5 o’clock in the morning, we started our walk in the loveliest surroundings up to Kuhstall, three hours from Schandau. Through a vaulted gateway, which nature itself has formed, one arrives on a terrace where the view is like the most inviting and, at the […]
Last summer, I wrote about Augusta’s first love. In the summer of 1845, Augusta turned 18. She had just finished her schooling in Stockholm and maybe her mother Anna thought it was time for her to meet a suitable young man. Why not at the most fashionable seaside resort on the Swedish west coast, Gustafsberg? Well, did Augusta meet someone at Gustafsberg? Yes, she did […]
Last week, I was reading the Swedish newspaper, Bohusläns Tidning, from 1845 and found an announcement listing the guests who had arrived at Gustafsberg’s Spa. The list included Augusta, her mother, and her brother. I got curious about the other spa guests. What could I find out about them? I decided to start with what seemed to be an important family, the family of Krigsrådet […]
In our family, we now have a “Zoom Room”. We have always Skyped with family members and had professional conference calls using a variety of platforms. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom has become the popular way to connect. And with Zoom, one needs a room with the right lighting and some decent background. No more kitchen table conference calls with family members walking in […]
In June last year, Kerstin and I were busy making 1850s swimwear for our summer sejour on the Swedish west coast. We tested that we could actually swim in the knee-long dresses and wide-legged pants without getting tangled in all the fabric. It was fine. Once I overcame the shock of the cold seawater and started swimming, I felt like a jelly-fish with the fabric […]
Lübeck, October 2017 Dressed in the fashion of 1847, Kerstin and I enter the breakfast parlor at Hotel Anno 1216. The early morning sun lights up the room. The décor of the room is exquisite. The table settings are elegant and on each table is a fresh cut tea rose. We get a warm welcome from the staff who shows us to our table and […]
May God Preserve our Silk Worms Father told us last Monday when he was here, that the kind pastor, Mr. Lindström, who my sister and I have recently been acquainted with, had visited father at the palace that same day in order to ask if he could give us some silkworms that he couldn’t keep as he will spend the summer in Uppsala. Father had […]
Imagine a canvas that is over 4 miles (or 6.4 km) long! In the mid-1800s, a few artists painted landscapes on such long canvases. Of course, if you wanted to do an accurate painting of the Mississippi River for example – or at least 1,000 miles of it – you probably needed a few miles of canvas. Panoramas depicting landscapes and famous battles were already […]