Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 12

Day 12 - Anchorage

The small, 20 by 40 foot Oscar Anderson House, 420 M Street (907-274-2336), may be the oldest wooden house in Anchorage.

Overlooking the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet, it was built by a Swedish immigrant in 1915. Anderson first settled in Seattle in 1905v and owned a restaurant. A sign in an adjacent park says he arrived in Alaska in 1915 and was later joined by his wife, Elizabeth (another Swedish immigrant), and their three children. For several months they lived in a tent on the bluff overlooking the house under construction. A friend once remarked, "Anderson provided the two things Anchorage needed most in its beginning -- food and fuel." Shortly after his arrival he went into the cold-storage business with another man, and their firm became the region's primary meat packer. In 1915 Anderson built the Ship Creek Meat Market on Fourth Avenue. He became co-owner of the Evans Jones Coal Company and its president and general manager. He was also involved in an airline and on the board of the former Anchorage Times. He lived in the house until 1969, and in 1976 his widow donated it to the city, which restored it to a near-original state. In the front room are photos of family members and a player piano bought in Seattle. The kitchen contains Anderson's butcher table from Fourth Avenue and his mother's china brought from Sweden. During December the house features a Swedish Christmas.

Another Swede who eventually settled and died in Anchorage was Charles af Forselles, the youngest son of the "Count of Alaska" that we told you about yesterday. One of the survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Charles came to Alaska in 1961 to retrace his father's footsteps. He first lived among the Eskimos in Kotzebue for over ten years, and was known as Sealskin Charlie. His book Count Of Alaska (that was published as Guldgrävarna in Sweden) was compiled from his father's diaries, stories - as well as from his father's six books, that Charles had gathered while living with his father in Sweden 1946-1947. Charles helped renew an interest for the gold rushes. He once even sent me the manuscript for his book Count Of Alaska in a Russian translation hoping that Swedish Press could help him publish it. You should read it especially if you want the Swedish side of the Gold Rush. Even Jack London who wrote the definite stories about The North, acknowledged that he had used many of the Count of Alaska's stories in his books. "The law of the pen will not let me license folk by their name in my many events, Count Forselles, but your warm intense behavior will not be untold, in this indecent, unwritten Northland."