AT HOME IN NEW ENGLAND

WINELAND or Vinland featured in The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red (the Vinland sagas from the 11th century) was in all likelihood located in what we today call New England. In these sagas Leif Eriksson describes his landing in an area of ample pastures, grapevines and salmon. The northern limit for wild vine is in Maine and the southern limit for salmon is in Rhode Island. Unfortunately there are no archeological finds to back up any Norse settlements in New England (except for a few proven fakes that you can read about in Erik Wahlgren's The Vikings and America, Thames and Hudson, London 1986). An educated guess would locate Leifs settlement Leifsbudir to the Passamaquoddy Bay right at the USA-Canada border. Leifs brother Thorwald spent two summers at Leifsbudir and encountered a band of natives that he killed resulting in his own death in a later attack. In all, the Icelandic sagas detail six trips to Vinland, but until any archeological finds in New England can back up the obvious, most scientists weave their Vinland theories around the proven Norse settlement in L'anse aux Meadows in Labrador where no vines are known to have existed.

NEW SWEDEN and the neighbouring towns of Stockholm, and Westmanland are nestled in the northern hills of Maine at the USA-Canada border. High above the trees rises the church spirals and the cupola of "Kapitoleum", the meeting place of the early Swedish settlers who arrived here in the 1860s. The capitol now houses the New Sweden Museum and nearby there is a monument with the names of the original colonists. The man who founded the colony was William Widgery Thomas Jr of Portland, who grew to love the language and customs of Scandinavians while serving as President Abraham Lincoln's war consul in Sweden during the Civil War. Stationed in the port city of Gothenburg, he observed hundreds of Swedes embarking for new homes in the western part of the United States and he was sure these people could thrive and become worthy citizens of his own state of Maine. When he returned to Maine after the war he persuaded the legislature to grant land for settlement by Swedes. He then went back to Sweden to begin handpicking the group of colonists who were to become his "children in the woods" or as he said in Swedish, mina barn i skogen. Maine promised the settlers 100 acres of forest land and a log cabin. They had to pay their own passage to America and the state paid them a dollar a day in food and supplies for their labor in building roads and the community hall. Other Swedish settlers followed and within ten years the population in this area exceeded 500. The adjacent communities of Westmanland and Stockholm became part of the Swedish colony in 1879 and 1881 respectively. The best time to visit New Sweden is during the Midsummer weekend when visitors can join folk-costume clad residents in gathering wildflowers and greenery for the maypole and enjoying the dancing in the W.W thomas Park (For more information contact David Anderson, Timmerhuset, New Sweden, Maine 04762,207-896-3370).

ANDERS ZORN was already well-known in Sweden and Europe when he first met Bostonian art patron Isabella Steward Gardner. But it was thanks to Mrs Gardner that Zorn attained a truly international reputation and the financial freedom of Sweden's most successful painter through the times. Anders Zorn was the commissioner for the Swedish Pavilion at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 when his painting "The Omnibus" (above) caught Mrs Gardner's eyes. She asked the man overseeing the installation of the Swedish exhibit about the artist and found out that she was actually talking to him. She promptly bought "The Omnibus" for $1600 and she and Zorn became lifelong friends. Emma and Anders Zorn visited with the Gardners in Boston and in Venice where Zorn painted one of his best portraits - "Mrs Gardner in Venice" with the subject standing in a doorway with fireworks exploding in the sky behind her. Thanks to Mrs Gardner, Zorn became the most- sought after portraitist in the USA (charging $ 3 000 per portrait). The illegitimate son of a peasant mother, Anders Zorn (1860-1920) became the portraitist of the three American presidents, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, not to mention of Mrs Grover Cleveland ("so stately and beautiful, with such arms, neck and breasts worthy of kisses by a thousand warm lips") and much of the elite of the country. Mrs Gardner helped arrange an Anders Zorn show at Boston's Museum of Fine Art in 1894. A hundred years later the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2 Palace Rd., Boston, 617-566-1401) mounted a major retrospective of "Swedish Impressionist master Anders Zorn". The exhibition is now over, but "The Omnibus", "Mrs Gardner in Venice" and many other Zorn works are permanently on show in the beautiful Gardner museum.

WORCESTER
"The first time I saw Worcester, Massachusets was in the spring of 1949," writes Ellis Folke, editor of the now non-existent American Swedish Monthly. "I had taken a bus from Boston and after being deposited at the depot, I found I had some trouble finding my way in this maze of streets that often passes for a city plan in New England's industrial centers. So I walked up to an elderly man who was sitting on a park bench enjoying the warm April sun. I asked him for directions. He looked at me and said, in a pure Småland direct: 'Dä ä inte så långt. Gå upp till hörnan där, to första gata' to höger å sen ä det bara ett par kvarter. "'
Today there are few chances to encounter any Swedish-speaking people in Worcester, as indeed Folke remarked even in 1958 that the Swedish community was being assimilated "with a speed that is rather amazing". In 1920 Worcester was said to have one of the largest Swedish populations in the world, topped only by Stockholm, Gothenburg, Chicago and Minneapolis. Swedes had their own churches, sports clubs, musical societies, charitable organizations and the midsummer festivals drew a crowd of upto 20 000.
For all the numerous Swensons, Johnsons and Carlsons in the phone book, Swedes as a group and their surviving organizations are no longer a factor to reckon with in Worcester. However a splendid exhibition (until end of March, with book to follow) Gå till Amerika at the Worcester Historical Museum (30 Elm St., Worcester, MA 01609) is a reminder of the glorious history of the Swedes in Worcester. The history begins with 19 year-old musician and piano tuner Carl F Hanson who moved here with his young bride in 1868, possibly to avoid the not-so-pleased in-laws in Boston. Within 18 months he was running his own music store that eventually occupied several floors in a building on Mair Street. Hanson became a directOT of the Worcester chorus, established the city's first night school program to teach English to Swedish immigrants and he also managed to compose "Frithiof and Ingeborg" a grand opera and other music that has recently been performed in conjunction with "Gå till Amerika". Ten years after Hanson's arrival in Worcester, John Jeppson and three potters from Haganäs in Småland appeared on the scene and founded the Norton Co and soon another 38 from Värmland went to work at Washburn & Moen s South Works. John Jeppson was soon hiring hundreds of Swedes from his native Högänäs. Swedes were also routinely hired and promoted in Worcester in preference to the other large immigrant group, the Irish, because of their reputation for sobriety and steady habits and their resistance to labor organizers. With the onset of a recession and a rising number of non-Swedish immigrants many Worcester Swedes eventually started feeling threatened and became active in the local Ku Klux Klan revival. Today Swedish pharmaceutical grant Astra is one of the important companies in Worcester and distinguished Swedes like Alice Carlson, former Grand Master of the Vasa Order and Swedish American of the Year 1987 and John Jeppson H, ex-chairman of the Norton Co board champion the Swedish presence in the city and were active in the production of "Gå till Amerika" that depicts a history that Swedes can be proud of.
SISSELA BOK with an impressive academic career at the Sorbonne, George Washington University, Harvard and Brandeis and a score of books to her name is the most famous Swede living in New England. Sissela Bok is married to the principal of Harvard University. Two years ago she left her chair in philosophy to devote her energies to writing books and being involved in social issues (right now mostly on violence on television) in the tradition of her famous parents. Above you see her as a child arriving to the US in 1938 with her parents. Dad was economist Gunnar Myrdal who wrote An American Dilemma and An Asian Drama. He was also a professor in economics, a Minister of Trade and a UN expert. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics and more honorary degrees from American universities than any Swede before him. Mum Alva Myrdal published the much-debated "Crisis in the population issue" with her husband and then went on to become an ambassador at the UN and UNESCO, and an expert in disarmament with a Nobel Peace Prize as the crowning glory. With a burning commitment to equality and the social issues of the day, the Myrdals became the privileged "First Family" of the Social Democrats with every bourgeois trapping conceivable whether they lived in the US, India, France, Switzerland or Sweden. The happy family image was eventually shattered when Sissela's older brother Jan, a controversial socialist, author and debater in his book Min Barndom accused his parents of giving priority to their careers rather than to their children. Sissela also concedes in her biography Alva - Ett kvinnoliv (Bonniers) that all was not right in the family, but she blames her despotic dad Gunnar for forcing Alva to choose him over the three children. Eventually Alva chose a Belgian politician over Gunnar, according to Jan, but returned to the fold after Gunnar had a car accident. In a recent book De tre löven - en myrdalsk efterskrift Kaj Fölster, the youngest of the Myrdal kids, who now lives in Germany, paints a much more positive picture of her mother and throws much dirt on brother Jan. (Top) composer Leroy Anderson. (Above) Susan Forsberg Wilkieki who started the Gift Chalet in Auburn instead of going to college. The last word has probably not been said about the fascinating Myrdal family, but the interesting member of the clan to watch for is the 60-year old Sissela Bok.

SVEA was for many years the Swedish paper in Worcester with as many as fifty employees in its heyday. Eventually Svea was bought by New York's Nordstjernan that kept the name in its masthead until recently. Today there is instead SWEA-blades in Boston published by SWEA Swedish Women's Educational Association (508-263-3867, membership $ 40 per year). SWEA caters to Swedish-speaking women and arranges all sorts of interesting activities. The wellwritten Gult och Bldtt (50 Pine St., Wellesly, MA 02181617-235-6463 $10 per year) in Swedish tries to cover everything of Scandinavian interest in the region five times a year. The publication is a fifteen year-old labour of love of Sylvia Bullock, Kerstin Cotran and their committee of six that consistently reaches a much higher standards than what is common for publications with similar scope around the continent.

LEROY ANDERSON is the Swedish New England signature behind so much of the orchestral music that has delighted us through the years. His is the "Syncopated Clock", the energetic "The Typewriter", "Fiddle Fiddle" and the most performed piece of all band music in America "The Sleigh Ride". His "Blue Tango" topped the Hit Parade for fifteen weeks and was the number one jukebox favourite and moneymaker of 1952 - until then unheard of for an orchestral piece without a single word. Leroy was born in Cambridge in 1908 by Swedish immigrant parents. He composed his first piece "A Minuet of String Quartet" at age 12 and followed in his mother's footsteps as a church organist at the age of 15. A fantasy of Harvard tunes that he arranged as a scholarship student at Harvard so impressed Boston Pops' conductor Arthur Fiedler that he asked Leroy to compose something of his own. The result was "Jazz Pizzicato" to be followed by "Jazz Legato", "Bugler's Holiday", "The Waltzing Cat" and many other Boston Pops favourites. The present conductor of the orchestra says: "Leroy Anderson is one of the great American masters of light orchestral music. Though we have performed his works countless times over the years at the Pops, his music remains forever as young and fresh as the very first day on which it was composed." Ironically the multi-talented Leroy Anderson could easily have been stuck in another career. At Harvard he was a linguistic genius, fluent in eight languages. During World War II he became chief of the Scandinavian desk of military intelligence in Washington and during the Korean War he also served as a high-ranking intelligence officer. However as soon as he became established as a composer he lived a quiet family life with his wife Eleanor and their four children in a hillside home in Connecticut that provided the inspiration for so much of the music we love - without knowing who composed it. After his death in 1975, Leroy was elected to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. Now there is a movement to honor this postal inspector's son with a "Legends in American Music" series stamps (and you can help with a letter of support addressed to the The Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, US Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW. Washington DC, 20260-6756). As one newspaper wrote "If Elvis, why not Leroy?"

GRAFFITI CONTROL in Connecticut is a fascinating story of how an idea can score big in the United States. Austrian born Ralf and Swedish wife Susanne Steinlechner ran restaurants and discotheques in the south of Sweden when graffiti started becoming a problem. It is expensive and not very environmentally sound to remove graffiti in the traditional way so Ralf tried an old Austrian method to chemically expand paint and other materials. The success of this method led to the establishment of a Swedish company specializing in graffiti removing. When Ralf and Susanne got a contract to clean a Hilton hotel they decided to go all out and move to the US - the homeland of graffiti. The breakthrough for their company came in 1988 when International Graffiti Control lended the contract to clean New York's subway and its bridges. A good emigrant story. For Ake Landstr6m it all started with an advertisement in his Swedish paper asking for "genuine" Swedish bakers for a bakery in Worcester. It was the head of Astra in the city who so longed for Swedish bread that he had set up Crown bakery. Ake and two other Swedish bakers arrived in 1960. Although Ake had made several trips as head pastry chef on the Swedish American Line "it was hard in the beginning because none of us spoke any English". Crown Bakery quickly became a success (and was in 1993 once again voted number 1 in the local press) and although Ake is semi-retired, his son Jan continues the tradition that includes almost all the baked goods Swedes long for. You can buy Crown Bakery goodies at a lot of other shops in New England as well like the recently opened Nordic Imports and Distinctively Sweden Etc in Boston. This is the "clearing house" for all things Swedish where au pairs and others come when they feel homesick. Erik Gunnar Sundman with mom from Vadstena and dad from Rådsmo graduated from college last year and start
to start Nodic Importst where you can have a coffee and find a very wide assortment of Swedish food and gifts. Located in an old farmhouse on the Farmington River it makes for a nice outing. Another entrepreneur of sorts is Margit Lassen who has opened her idyllic Clover Hill Farm in Maine for conferences and Bed and Breakfasts. For $ 60 a couple and night you can re-charge your batteries from mid-July, to mid-October and pick your own breakfast eggs directly from the hens.

ARTHUR LANDFORS worked most of his life as a house-painter in Boston, but it is as a poet, writing in Swedish about the plight of the emigrant, that he will be remembered. In his collections Från smältdegeln (1932) and Träd som bara grönskar (1962) he puts in words the feelings of every Swede in America. Today Arthur is buried in his beloved Edarne in Norrbotten where he was born in 1888 and his widow of 21 years Ingeborg 98, is the oldest resident at the Swedish Rest Home. She speaks eloquently in English and the Swedish she almost abandoned when she arrived in America at the age of 19. Now she can share her memories with the other 25 (16 are Swedish) residents over three cooked meals a day, snacks, wine tastings and other events with a Swedish touch at the idyllic Queen Anne style mansion purchased in 1917 by the Swedish Charitable Society for guests over 65. "The residents have become grandparents to me,' says young administrator Joe Corella. Ingeborg has a large, light room and loves the place "where she is not a burden to her children." There is a beautiful park-like garden with a tree planted by Gustav V Adolf. The Swedish emigrants that live here have obviously come home and the Swedish Home (206 Waltham St., West Newton, Ma 02165 617-5276566) has also become a meeting place for the Swedish organizations in Boston.