Counter-Finn

When I set out to write a story about sauna renovation a few years ago, I struck upon a very convenient fact: my great grandfather, known as Charles Erickson (1877-1964) to his fellow Two Harborites, had been born Karl Hagberg of seemingly Finnish ancestry in a remote corner of Sweden. He must have desired to blend in: the Minnesota Historical Society lists five late Charles Ericksons for Lake County alone, and well over 1,500 for the entire state. As many Charles Ericksons have drawn their last breath in Minnesota as would fill a small arena. But the improbable family legend was that he changed his name because there were too many Hagbergs. Erickson is listed on the death certificate as his mother's maiden name, so that reveals the source. While I thought he might have changed his name to shake a trail of finnophobes, the reason remains a mystery.

The fortunate event behind my discovery of his hidden ethnicity dates back to 1928, when a local group in the Swedish province of Värmland purchased the Hagberg farmhouse from Karl's brother Johan and moved it to a local homestead museum--Gräsmarks Hembygdsgård--dedicated to preserving the Finnish imprint in the mountainous borderlands near Norway. When I visited relatives in the region as a teenager in 1982, they took me to visit the home, but they spoke no English and my Danish companion was little interested in the yokels.

I was recently pleased to find pictures of the house on the museum's website while revisiting my research. I also found much more information: the house dates to 1832, and the Hagbergs were relatively prosperous and probably not Finnish. When I wrote the story, I corresponded with a local Swede who confirmed that the buildings at the museum were all of Finnish origin. But my recent painstaking (i.e., Swedish language) review of newly posted information about Gräsmark suggests that the museum is a bit more ecumenical. The Hagberg farm, Asphagen ("aspen meadow"), occupied the western shore of Lake Rottnen, the Swedish bygd, or district, of Gräsmark. Its farmhouse appears to have been moved to the museum grounds to represent Swedish farm life. I've often thought that my incipient finnishness made the sauna story work on a separate level, and so this is perhaps my James Frey moment, however unintentional. Thus I've rushed this correction to self-publication, where its obscurity is assured.

The house seems larger than I remember: two full stories and a gable roof, a plain and respectable dwelling. A house affording a little room to ramble, not a backcountry stuga. Not that there's any shame in resuming this Swedish quarter of my selfhood: life in Värmland around the time of Karl Hagberg's youth is detailed in several of the books of the great Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf (Gösta Berlings Saga), who grew up on and later reacquired her family estate at Mårbacka, a few miles east of Gräsmark. My recent discovery inspired me to read Lagerlöf's memoirs, named for the farm. She was an earnest supporter of her Finnish neighbors and Sweden's--the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature, she donated her medal to the Finnish resistance against the Russians during the Winter War. I'm eager to someday again explore this part of the world with more curiosity and attention than I showed the first time around.



© 2006 Michael Nordskog