Vaxjo

It felt as though we spent a great portion of today in Utvandrarnas Hus. It really was interesting and helpful but it reminded me of a place that Jim and I took the guys when they were little, Roadside America. The exhibits were ancient, dusty, tired and did I mention old? And yes, the archives were closed. We were afraid of that. It just so happens that after this year the museum will no longer exist. They have lost their funding; the same as what we see happen in the U.S.

Weather wise, today was absolutely gorgeous!!!! So, after spending too long inside, we decided to hop in the car and drive south to a couple of places that Mom's family is from. Thanks to Jeff Hammerberg, who compiled a very thorough genealogy map, Mom knew of some new origins of great grandparents. Ostra Torsas was one of our destination. We found it with no problem and the skirka (church) where one of her great grandfathers would have attended. Kris did a fantastic job conversing with a woman we found doing gardening at the church. She helped us find our next destination.

This area of Sweden is very rural and as I mentioned yesterday, looks very similar to Wisconsin and Minnesota. The only thing different are the color and architecture of the buildings. This is just one of the many quaint homes that we came across. There are lupine everywhere along the roadsides, in every color, along with many other wildflowers.

This is a sweet "Children at Play" sign. So far we haven't seen any reindeer, elk, moose or deer crossings but we will let you know if we do.
The churches in the parishes seem very opulent and the parsonages were the biggest homes in the little towns. We had learned that in the olden days the pastor's wife would have been the person that the other women in the parish would look to for the current fashions. I thought that was surprising.
Even though the churches seemed opulent it was neat to see little uses of nature to decorate. Here is a beautiful gnarled twig that was in one of the windows that had little glass ornaments on it. On the altar were vases with wildflowers in them.
We kept seeing this symbol on roadsigns and couldn't figure out what it represented. On the way back to Vaxjo we decided that we would follow the sign to see where it ended up.

We ended up at a ruin. It was pretty neat. The symbol is for a national heritage site. We had to walk along a pasture quite a way before we came upon a huge mound and a smaller one. These were burial mounds for a wealthy family; the burial mounds are believed to have been laid during the bronze age, 1500-500 BC. The larger one had been a burial site for Thiudhby, a village close by, during the first century AD.. The ancient people placed this rock and the carved rock next to it to mark the grave. It was really fun to come across and now we know that when we see that symbol, there might be something new to discover. Tomorrow we should be able to some castle ruins. We will leave Vaxjo and travel east to Kalmar situated along the Baltic Sea.

Picture of the day: Kris says, "Kay, put your head down by that big ancient rock so that people can see how big it is!" Was she talking about me or the rock?