A "FINBUL WINTER" AT THE FORSGREN HOME IN GAVLE

     We have a wonderful new friend!   Meet Charlotta Cederlof (sorry, I don't know how to add the correct Swedish diacritical marks over the o in her surname!).  Charlotta is a journalist who has lived most of her life in Gavle.  She is working with a radio show about sculptures in Gavle.  When she found the blog she contacted me with a wonderful offer to send photos.    I told her that I have seen many pictures of the front and sides of the old Forsgren home which is now a shop called Konstra in larger Gavle Old Town.   What I would like to see are pictures of the back and interior yards.   She shared the following pictures with me and gave permission for them to be published on the blog.

This picture was taken during the long winter of 2009-2010.  Charlotta called it the "finbul" winter - a mythical winter from the days of the Vikings which was said to last three years without any summer.  It must have seemed like that to the residents of Gavle.  The snows reached 7 feet high (2.2 meters)!  This photo is taken across "Snus majas Tomt" - the name of the park and surrounding houses.  Tomt means yard or garden.  Maja is a woman's name and the word "snusmajas" can be roughly translated to mean "chewing tobacco Maja."  She was a lady who was known to sell tobacco and sometimes gin to the sailors.

That is the Forsgren home in the background. It is now a lovely arts & crafts shop.  The memorial bust of John Erik is just out of sight on the left side of the photo.

Here we find John Erik once again braving the long, cold winters!  His home is to the left in the photo.

How wonderful that these ancient little buildings can withstand this kind of weather!  It freezes me just to look at it!

 Can a bicycle even navigate these winters???   Photo taken right next to the Forsgren home looking down the street.  (Compare the image to the first one taken across the park).

This is Charlotta's friend Ina enjoying lunch in the back of the Forsgren house (on a much nicer day!)  Notice two things:  the lovely stained glass window which is between the main house and the second building of the
Forsgren property.  Also, the two young men are looking from the house out onto the snusmajas tomt and the sculpture of John Forsgren.

     This photo was taken at Majas - the tea room next door to Konstra (the Forsgren home, now antique shop). Charlotta made an interesting comment in her last email to me:
"The really weird thing is - and it has happened to a lot of people - and I am not the kind of person who usually believes in this stuff - that when you enter the main house you suddenly get a very strong feeling that you have traveled in time back to the 19th century... "
     We Forsgrens are glad to hear that.  Maybe the spirits of our fine ancestors are hovering near to help bless and preserve this place for many more generations!   Thank you, Charlotta, and thank you to all the people of Konstra and Old Town who take such good care of the buildings, grounds and John Erik.  Charlotta assured me that John is cleaned up and back to normal after someone threw paint at the sculpture last year.

THE GAVLE FIRE

     The conversion stories of  John Erik,  Peter Adolph, and Christena Erika Forsgren often mention the incident of John E's arrest & appearance before a magistrate who asked him for a photo of Joseph Smith, who then snatched the photo and burned it.  John Erik is quoted as prophesying that the city of Gavle would in like manner be burned because of this action.    I have always had uncomfortable feelings about the story - for two reasons:

• Photographs were not a common thing yet in the 1850's.  Historian's tell us that there is only one known photograph of Joseph Smith which is the property of the Library of Congress.   That, of course, does not prove that John E did not have a print from that daguerreotype or that he might have had a portrait sketch of the Prophet.  I just don't know what he had, if anything, and if that part of the story is true.
• I wanted to know if the city really had suffered such a fire.   It did.  Quoting from the on-line Wikipedia:

     "Over the last 300 years Gävle has been ablaze on three different occasions. After the fire of 1776 the      town was rebuilt with straight streets and rectangular city blocks. The number of stone and brick houses also started to increase. The biggest town fire occurred 1869, when out of a population of around 10,000 approximately 8,000 inhabitants lost their homes, and about 350 farms were destroyed. Almost the whole town north of Gavleån was burnt down. All the buildings south of Gavleån were saved. An area of the old town between the museum and the library has been preserved to this day as a historic reserve."

     THAT, my friends, is what you can find in an instant through modern technology!   I first had my curiosity put to rest in Mar 1977 when I addressed a personal letter (with a typewriter, carbon paper and a stamp and using snail mail!) to Stads-och Lansbibliotek i Gavle  P.O.B. 801, S. Strandgatan 6, Gavle Sweden.    I quote:
    "Dear Sirs:
        I have family who emigrated from Gavle in the early part of the 1850's.  A story has been passed down from them that some nineteen years after they left the area, the town of Gefle was almost totally destroyed by fire.
        Since I have no immediate access to the "Gefle Posten" or any other newspaper that might have given an account of this fire, I would like very much to know if you can be of some help in proving or disproving this family tradition.
        Was there, in fact, such a fire about the year 1870 or 1871?  If so, what was the extent of the fire and can it be ascertained where it might have started and why? ...... "

On April 5, 1977 I received the following reply from Anna-Lisa Hillbom, 1st librarian at the Stadsbiblioteket of Gavle:
 "Dear Madam
        I write this to let you know immediately that there was in fact a great fire in Gavle 10-11 July 1869.  It destroyed the entire Northern part of the town, i.e. north of the river Gavlean.  Only the parish church was saved, and, miraculously, a big wooden building owned by the family Berggren.  This house was surrounded by trees and bushes that the fire could not get through.
        There are, of course, newspaper accounts of this disaster, and I will translate and send you a summary of what was written immediately and later on about the great fire. . . "

I never did hear any more from Ms. Hillbom as it turned out, but my curiosity on the matter was satisfied.  The fire did not reach the Forsgren family home which still stands among other structures of the era and is part of a historical district or artist's colony.   I find it interesting that the parish church was also preserved, probably allowing for the saving of  important vital record books for the town.

MONUMENT TO JOHN ERIK IN GAVLE, SWEDEN

This is the clay bust rendering displayed at the Forsgren Reunion in the year 2000, created by sisters Brenda Hansen and Trudy Iverson, direct descendants of John Erik Forsgren.

Trudy Iverson (left) and Brenda Hansen (right)

The following is the write-up about the monument placement that appeared in the Church News, May 26, 2001 (written by R. Scott Lloyd)

     A year after Church members in Sweden celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first baptism in that country, a monument is being erected to the first missionary in Sweden, John Erik Forsgren; featuring a bust sculpted by two of his direct-line descendants.

     The monument is scheduled to be unveiled and dedicated July 26 in Gavle (pronounced "YEV-la") Sweden, on city-owned property next to Elder Forsgren's family home, which still stands.  That will be 151 years to the day since Elder Forsgren baptized his brother, Peter, the first baptism in Sweden.

The bronze sculpture is the work of Brenda Forsgren Hansen and Trudy Forsgren Iverson, great-great-granddaughters of Elder Forsgren.

     "My parents attended the sesquicentennial celebration a year ago in July," Sister Hansen said, "and some of the local Church leaders were talking about erecting a monument and approached my father with the suggestion of getting the family to donate funds.  He told them he had daughters who are sculptors, and they kind of liked the idea of having descendants do it.  So when he told us about it, we didn't really wait for any further permission from anybody."

     Working from a single photograph of Elder Forsgren, the sisters had a clay bust ready to display at a Forsgren family reunion in Utah within three weeks.  That very day, the Forsgren descendants donated enough money to pay for the bust to be bronzed.

     Meanwhile, in Sweden, two public affairs missionaries from Utah, Alf and Betty Bostrom, combined their efforts with local Church leaders under the direction of President Gosta Lorlof of the Stockholm Sweden Stake to obtain approval from city officials to place the monument on the city property.  It was providential, Elder Bostrom said, that the lot adjacent to the Forsgren home happened to be vacant and  happened to be owned by the city.  The home itself is under private ownership.

     The project was helped along by the donation in Utah of [a large slab] of granite for a pedestal on which the bust will rest.  A plaque on the pedestal will contain the following account, written in Swedish:

     "John Erik Forsgren was born Nov. 7, 1816, on Ovre Bergsgatan 6 in Gavle.  In 1825 he left Gavle as a ship's boy.  In Boston USA, in 1843 he came in contact with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Forsgren joined the Church.  As the first missionary in Sweden he returned to Gavle in July 1850, where he baptized his brother Peter Adolph.  He became the first member of the Church in Scandinavia.  Many more were converted and baptized, among them his sister Kristina Erika.  In Gavle John organized the first branch in Sweden.  John Forsgren died in 1890 in Utah, USA.  Today there are thousands of descendants of the Forsgren family active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  This monument is a gift from them to the City of Gavle.  Gavle, 26 July 2001."

The bust, now bronzed and ready to be shipped to Sweden

 

The bust as it appeared early in 2010 - still standing strong and unvandelized, thank goodness!!  There was a little local controversy before it was placed about whether it would be "good enough" or an eyesore, etc.  Apparently it is being respected.

This is a postcard showing the old part of Gavle which now serves as an artist's colony.  The Forsgren home is in the lower right and the park where the monument was placed is in the foreground to the right of the building.

 

This shot was taken earlier this year (2010) by a couple serving a mission in Sweden and posted to their blog.

This is the Forsgren Family home as it appeared in 1912 when Elias Peter Forsgren (son of Peter Adolph Forsgren) was there as a missionary.  The handwritten note about the tree concerns Peter A, who planted the tree.  According to the most recent photo, the tree is no more!  Elias Peter kept a branch of the tree and had a few artifacts made from it that are in the possession of his daughter LeJune Forsgren Maughan and her family.