What does an archivist do when she's on holiday?
Look through lots of papers and make sure they are properly stored if I'm to judge by Ulrika's behaviour!
I'm of course being grotesquely unfair. After Uncle Lage's funeral yesterday, it was quite a natural thing to look through some family albums and reminisce about the past.
And actually there were some quite fascinating things to look through, such as postcards that had been sent by family members to each other over 90 years ago.
Nowadays a child can scarcely throw a snowball without its loving parents recording the moment for posterity. Back in the old days a camera was quite a prized possesion and one would be photographed only a few times in one's life and this would often take place at a studio. Fascinating to see pictures of Ulrika as a tot.
Equally interesting was to see those old postcards. How ornate they were! Some of the writers were very cryptic and managed one short sentence: We have arrived in Liverpool Others wrote greetings in verse.
It was quite common in the middle of the twentieth century for the men folk from Öland to go and spend a few years in the USA, working in the fisheries or in forestry. They would leave their wives and kids at home in the old country and send back money. Both Ulrika's grandfathers went on at least one occasion.
There's one wonderful photo of a very serious looking chap, who turned out to be Grandma Stina's dad, standing next to some ridiculous plinth-like object which had been taken at a studio in the Mid West and doubtless sent to impress everyone at home.
Hello, I recognize all this. Having taken over an old family farm since generations, we have found many of these photos from America, even of relatives that moved there, built a house and never came back to Sweden. My both grandads went to America and came back to Sweden though, otherwise I would not have been born here, would I?
SvaraRaderaA problem is where to store everything, so I would probably need an "arkivarie". Had my grandparents written properly on the back side of the photos who the person in the photo is, it would have been a lot better, now I just have to guess on some of them.