The Ancestral Tapestry

I spent decades of my life feeling separated from what I thought was the home of my soul. It was the countryside where I was born and raised. I moved away once I graduated from college, and at the time, I felt like I was leaving part of myself behind. Staying there just wasn’t a possibility given my chosen career field, and I was forced to turn the page and start a new chapter of life across the state. I would manage to return maybe once every two to three years to visit my parents, each time observing that the city and surrounding countryside had changed a little; the trees were a little taller, there were buildings where playfields or parking lots used to be–just inevitable change asserting itself. It still felt like home, though. A visit there was like recharging a spiritual battery; I reconnected with the space where so many of my formative memories had been formed so long ago. It continued to hold a special place in my heart. 

That was until a year ago, when that connection was irreparably severed. 

Both of my parents died last spring, within three weeks of each other; it was like the thread that connected me to my childhood home was cut. As I stood in the cemetery last summer on the day of their joint memorial service, I looked down at the gravestones of my parents, side by side forever, and said goodbye to them, knowing somewhere deep inside me that I would likely never come back again. The call to return home that I had heard in my soul for so many years fell silent, and I then knew it for the false siren it had always been. The yearning to return, to recharge my spirit, winked out like a guttering candle. Exactly why is difficult to articulate, but I know that when my parents died, part of me died too–the part that connected me to the place that sheltered me as a kid. It wasn’t like I was a farmer who felt an intimate connection to the land itself; it wasn’t like I was deeply connected to the fabric of that community and all of its members. I’ve been gone for decades. All I have are fading memories and a now banished, misguided desire to resurrect an era long gone.  I carry my parents, and all they taught and meant to me, with me to this day. It’s like the line in the Taylor Swift song “Marjorie”: “What died didn’t stay dead/ what died didn’t stay dead/ you’re alive, you’re alive in my… head” (Swift). I brought them with me when I left. There’s no reason to go back now. 

So, does that mean my soul is homeless? Not at all. Another candle was kindled by the flame of the old, guttering one, and I have since connected (reconnected?) with my soul’s ancestral, maternal home. This connection feels somehow stronger and more authentic than the one I spent so many years pretending to feel. The connection is to Sweden, home of my maternal grandparents. So how can I feel a connection to a place I have never been to? Well, as the Norns (the Scandinavian version of the Greek Fates) would have it, the opportunity to visit Sweden presented itself just this last month. My daughter is there, engaged in a study abroad program in Stockholm for six months, so my wife, son, and I took the opportunity to visit her there. We only had ten days there, but every aspect of who I am was utterly transformed forever by that experience. It was like hitting my soul’s refresh button. I have a new spiritual home now, and part of me is still there, and will always be. The part that was calling to me over all those decades to “come home again” just got awakened and transplanted. So how is it that a 10 day visit to a place would be powerful enough to supplant the formative power of 22 years in my childhood home? I’ll try to explain. 

When I was a child, I always knew when my grandmother was on the phone. Being originally from Sweden, she pronounced her “j’s” like “y’s.” My dad’s name, my mother’s name, and my name all started with “J,” so whenever I would answer the phone and hear “Hi, Yeffy! Is Yoanne or Yerry there?” I knew who was calling. Unfortunately, her accent was the only aspect of Swedish heritage that my grandmother ever shared with us. When she came to America with her husband, a grandfather I never knew, they cast their connections to Sweden aside; they were “Americans,” so that part of who they were got locked in a cedar chest along with any material evidence of the country from which they had originally come. As a result, my mother also knew very little about the country of her own parents, having been born after they came here. 

My mother must have at one point opened up that cedar chest. Small items from Sweden sat on shelves, were visible inside cabinets, or were sometimes even used for something all throughout my formative years. We had unique Christmas ornaments and cookie cutters unlike any I had seen anywhere else, but the items I remember most, and even played with on occasion, were the Dala Horses; two old pieces of hand-carved Swedish folk art, one blue and one black, each adorned with ornate and colorful harness and saddle patterns painted in the traditional Swedish style. To this day I have no idea why my mom let me just play with them! Had I known how special those must have been to my grandparents to have been brought all the way over from Sweden, I would have treated them with much greater reverence. Fortunately, I never broke one. 

Never a word of background or explanation was ever offered about any of those Swedish objects, or about our family’s Swedish connection. I deeply regret never having enough curiosity to ask my mother or grandmother about our Scandinavian heritage while I had the chance. Both of them are gone now, and whatever stories they might have shared went with them. I do remember when my daughter was very young and we were visiting my parents, my clever wife, who was aware of our Swedish ancestry, had purchased a pair of Dala Horse pajamas for my daughter to wear. I’ll not forget how my mother’s face lit up when she saw the colorful horses on my daughter’s PJ’s, and she ran and took the horses I had played with down off a shelf and showed them to my little girl. I’m not sure if my mother even knew their full story, but she kept them on display for decades, so they had to mean something to her. She never got to see Sweden herself; my mom and dad weren’t travelers. 

Last year, when my daughter first secured her study abroad appointment to Sweden, my mother was still alive. She was 93 and suffering from dementia, but as soon as she heard the news, she delved into that old chest, and out poured a plethora of items I had never seen in my life: a folded Swedish flag, a visitor’s guide to Malmo (the city my grandparents lived in), and a newspaper article in Swedish about my grandparents and their journey to America. My daughter and I pored over the materials with great interest, and the fascination with Sweden and our connection to it was fully kindled. 

I started exploring the culture more deeply in preparation for visiting my daughter in Sweden during spring break of this year. I came across Jonna Jinton, a content creator and jewelry maker who gave up life in the city to live on the shores of Lake Storsjon, from where she films You Tube videos about her life in the Swedish countryside. She has a music album called “Songs and Callings,” a beautiful and haunting collection of songs sung in her native language. Her second album, called “The Singing Ice of Storsjon,” is a solid hour of the sounds produced by the cracking and shifting ice on the lake, recorded with a hydrophone. It is truly otherworldly, like the ice itself is alive and calling out any who will listen. I meditate listening to it each morning, imagining that the call of the ice, eerily reminiscent of the songs of humpback whales, represents the voices of my ancient ancestors, calling me home. 

One of my all time favorite TV series is the History Channel’s “Vikings.” The main characters of that series at one point make a holy pilgrimage to Uppsala, the one-time spiritual center of the Viking people in Sweden and beyond. Though the filming location for the series was actually in Ireland and Uppsala’s appearance in the show was highly romanticized (picture a beautiful temple atop a cliff, surrounded by lush forests and an adjacent waterfall), the episodes featuring Uppsala captured my imagination. Imagine how excited I was to discover that Uppsala itself was only about an hour long train ride from where my daughter would be living in Stockholm. 

As the Norns would have it, my wife’s cousin lives in Sweden, and his son is currently in college, living in…Uppsala! On our next to last day of our visit, we were treated to a tour of the city itself by my wife’s cousin and his son, as well as a trip just outside the city limits to Gamla Uppsala, or “Old Uppsala,” the ancient Viking burial mounds that inspired the sacred site featured in the “Vikings” series. The topography was vastly different than the show suggested, but that did little to dim the deep, reverential connection I had walking among the ancient mounds of the site. There are places in the world that possess such a sense of spiritual resonance that you get full-body chills just knowing that you are in contact with a landscape once sacred to those with whom you share an ancestral connection. Gamla Uppsala was such a place for me. 

There were so many other experiences during those 10 days in Sweden that helped reweave the ancestral tapestry of the heritage that had been kept secret from me for so long. We saw countless museums celebrating Swedish history and culture (yes, even the ABBA museum–my wife and daughter insisted on that!), learned about the joys and flavors of “fika” (think English tea time, but with coffee and pastries), and just explored the cobblestone streets of Scandinavia’s most populous city (the first major city I have ever visited where my brain thought “You know, I could actually live here”). We toured the Stockholm City Hall, which hosts the Nobel Prize banquet. We visited Skansen, the world’s oldest open air museum, purchasing new, authentic Dala Horses of the same colors as those I played with as a child; the old generation now stands beside the old on the very table where I write this essay. 

One morning as I gazed out of our Air BnB window in downtown Stockholm, coffee in hand, I noticed that almost every one of the apartment windows across the alley from us had a lamp in the window. I found that interesting enough to mention it to Geoff, my wife’s cousin, who told me how it was a Swedish cultural practice to help them combat the long, dark winters, while at the same time creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere for those outside. By leaving blinds open and lights on, Swedes turn dark, isolated winter nights into a shared, cheerful, and communal display, symbolizing a warm welcome to passersby. That warm welcome was more than a symbol; everyone we met there was friendly and outgoing, able to switch from Swedish to English without hesitation. I may need to learn their language myself before returning one day; Geoff says it is one of the more difficult languages in the world, but hey, he managed it. He only had to live there for decades. Well, nothing worth doing is easy. 

One day my daughter took us on a walk through a Stockholm park she had discovered, leading us to a kind of nursery/garden store with an attached restaurant where we were able to enjoy our fika of the day. As I sat there enjoying the delicious food and listening to the pleasant sounds of joyful Swedish conversation all around us, I felt a pang of sorrow that my mom and grandmother weren’t there with me. I would have given anything for them to be there to share in that special connection. My mother had an angel collection, and when she died, I kept one of her favorites which now sits on my own bookshelf and finds a place of honor out in the living room at Christmas time, like my mom is there, still sharing the holiday with us. After fika, when we continued walking through the park, my wife pointed out a huge, white sculpture of an angel off the side of the trail. It had to be twenty feet tall. “See,” my wife said, “your mom is here with you.” I cried the rest of the walk. 

I also cried when our plane left Swedish ground and we started the long journey home after 10 incredible days. In Viking spirituality, the soul has multiple parts; I left part of mine there, and one day, I’ll return and continue to weave the tapestry, adding new experiential threads to the pattern as it grows. 

I hope that you too have a place that is the home of your soul. I hope that you honor it, revere it, and visit it often to rekindle your spiritual batteries; perhaps you already live in it. Perhaps you haven’t even discovered it yet. Research your own ancestry. Travel to the places where your ancient forebears once walked the Earth. Connect with the traditions and customs of your people. Just don’t lock them in a cedar chest and hide them from your kids and grandkids. One day, they will want to know your stories, and weave their own tapestries to pass on. 

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Works Cited:
Swift, Taylor. “marjorie.” evermore, Republic Records, 2020, track 13.