Home, Sweet Home

My extremely long journey home from Sweden was redeemed in the Philadelphia Airport: the news store had Stephanie Laurens’ latest novel Beyond Seduction. HALLELUJAH! I was ecstatic. My mother thought I was quite insane. The remaining five hour layover and five hour flight passed by quite enjoyably. I adore Stephanie Laurens! The store also had [...]

the Viking Village

Viking life was hardly the lap of luxury. The houses were quite sparse, dirty, cold, unappealing. I decided that the Viking age is really quite a bad time period for a romance novel. Maybe I should read a few viking romances and see how authors deal with the problem. Thursday we walked around the adorable [...]

Lovely Lund

The weather has been horrid. Rain, rain, go away, ciaralira wants to play… We stayed Monday and Tuesday night in Vaxjo at an odd little hotel that locked the door at 6. Tuesday was spent in the Emigrant Museum, which was short on exhibits but made up for it with an impressive research library. My [...]

Searching Kännestubba

(Kännestubba = Shan-e-stu-ba)
Internet, Hallelujah! Internet cafes and laundromats are hard to come by here in Sweden, but we make do.
From the Journal of Carl Lundblad, my Great Grandfather, 1914:
…On September 3 we went down to Småland to Hanna’s birthplace. That is in Hultsjö parish and the farm is called Kännestubba. We went by train early [...]

Uppsala Uncovered

From the Journal of Carl Lundblad, 1914:
On Wednesday evening, August 19, we left beautiful Stockholm in order to travel to Jönköping and left at midnight from Riddarsholmen on the boat Victor Rydberg through the Göta Canal. Very pleasant and interesting trip on the whole. We passed Södertälje and Vadstena, Motala and Hjo and Söderköping. Passed [...]

Stunning Stockholm

Picturesque buildings topped with mansard roofs and turrets, decorated with stone carvings and painted in peach, cream, apricot, rose, saffron, and buttercup, line the curving cobblestone streets on the small ancient island of Gamla Stan, “Old Town”. Along the waterfront float white archepelago boats, while bicyclists and pedestrians wander over bridges connecting the fourteen colorful [...]

To Capture a Viking Warrior

Giant, chiseled blond men wielding axes feature prominently in my hopeful expectations for my maiden voyage to the ancestor-land, Sweden. Fortunately we plan to visit Foteviken, the Viking living history museum near Malmö. I am sooooo pumped. The Museum is a reconstructed Viking village in which the inhabitants recreate medieval handicrafts, occupations, culture and way [...]