Auckland to
Akrom
The provenance of this trip to Europe is complicated;
it relates initially to the journey made 136 years ago by my great grandfather
Carl Erik Nilsson, or Charles Nelson as he was known when he lived in New
Zealand.
He arrived in NZ as a crew member on the immigrant ship British Empire
in February 1880, and was promptly quarantined at Motuihe Island along with the
passengers and crew due to the presence of scarlet fever on the ship during the voyage. Secondly it has come
about thanks to the very good genealogical research done by my father George
Thomas Nelson. My father, known always as Dord by his family and friends was
motivated to chase down his family history following a comment I made to him
following a presentation I had given to Waikato Sunrise Rotary Club. This was
my introduction to club members when we moved to Hamilton in 1997 and as part
of this I talked about my personal family history and heritage. Maori call this
whakapapa, and, as we age, we realise that this is important stuff. My comment
was a fairly innocuous “I know much more about Mum’s side of the family and her forebears than
I do about yours”. That is largely due to the great work done by Alma and Brian
Aspin published in a family history called “Custodians for a Century”
My father never did things by halves, and he set about a
voyage of discovery around his antecedents. This generated large amounts of
information that was onerously gathered as both Mum and Dad poured through old
newspapers, library records, electoral roles, shipping registers, marine
department records and much more from far afield places, Sweden, Canada, UK and
closer to home museums and Government departments in NZ. This material was
laboriously gathered, nurtured and protected for Dord’s family. Most of the
material was consigned to a small trunk in the 'boys' bedroom’ at 47 Paddington
St. Unfortunately the first trunk got too small as they amassed and copied
records and related information, so he then built a second, larger trunk which
he left to my care when he died. This now resides at our house and is accessed
regularly for information, but I still struggle with the enormous amount of
material they gathered, and have yet to decide how to process it into a format that will better preserve it for posterity. The first flurry of access to it was
for our 2014 ‘Heritage Tour’ to Europe, and we started that trip in Sundsvall,
Sweden where Carl Erik, my great grandfather was born. A second flurry was required
to put together a presentation for a gathering of Carl Erik’s kinfolk, one of
whom still resides at Akrom. On this visit we will stay with Jan Olov Sellen (Janne)
and Margareta who we met briefly on our last Europe trip. At that visit, after comparing my
family tree and Janne’s family tree over the kitchen table at his house in Akrom,
we found that Janne’s great grandfather’s great grandfather and my great
grandfather’s great grandfather were brothers. So we are related.
On this visit we will meet his family and some of his cousins.
There are a couple of amazing events which got us to Akrom
in 2014 and those are stories for another time and place.
The trip
across and the Uppsala visit
It is a very short of time since we returned from our last
trip to Europe; the end of May in fact, so it was all very much déjà vu to be
back off to the other side of the world again. However in a slight change of
approach we took a mid-day flight rather than do the usual early morning
departure. So it was a pretty leisurely start from home. Duty free requirement
in Auckland was zero with a three leg trip to Stockholm. We normally have had
5-6 hours stopover in Sydney which was used to set up blog and do some of the email
stuff not completed before departure. But the leisurely departure meant a very
quick turnaround in Sydney, so just a quick 40 minutes in the Qantas lounge
before our departure on QF1 to Dubai. It’s hard to describe a 14 hour flight as
anything other than hard work, but the cabin crew were very good and very
friendly. It was a long break, about seven hours at Dubai, but there was time
for a relax, a nap and a very refreshing shower in the Emirates lounge.
Staff
there were very good helping to tidy up Qantas very poor service around the
flight designation on our tickets. Long story but briefly, when I booked the
tickets I ended up with two bookings. The Qantas website is very slow, very clunky
and in doing the initial booking I got sent back to check something and got the
“webpage unavailable” message, so went back to start again. So this all turned
out to be two (paid up) bookings! So one got cancelled, and I did notice that
they had left the booking that gave us an EK flight number from Dubai to
Stockholm not a QEK (Qantas code share flight). I queried this with the Qantas
service desk and was given the absolute assurance that yes I would have Lounge
access in Dubai. You are sure? Yes you will have access. The service desk was
wrong, we have Emirates lounge access only on a Q code share flight. It’s very
ordinary service when the customers knows more than the service desk operator.
It took an hour or so to sort, and, had it not been sorted, Qantas would have
been gone forever as our carrier! I will definitely lodge a complaint, but that
can wait till there is a bit of time available.
The time in the lounge was great so we departed on our 6
hour flight to Stockholm and arrived there on time around 1 00 pm Friday after
an easy flight.
The train station is
underground at the airport in Stockholm, so it was down and onto the train for
a 20 minute ride to Uppsala and a short walk to the Hotel Scandic Arlanda. We arrived
40 hours after leaving home and feeling OK and it was about 3 30 in the
afternoon.
The anti jet-lag strategy is to stay on NZ time until
journey’s end then take the opportunity to get through to something approaching
normal bed time for the place where we are staying. So we set off on the familiarisation walk in the city centre
and to find a cup of coffee. We’ve been here before in 2014 on the “Heritage Tour”, but then it was
just a breeze into town for lunch and a look at Uppsala Cathedral, the seat of
the Swedish Lutheran Church, on our way from Ratvik to the airport for our
flight to Manchester. Uppsala is a lovely city, about 220 000 people, picturesque and tidy with some lovely old architecture and a few areas containing lots of pretty plain apartment buildings. The main town is quite pedestrianised and centred on the River Fyris.
This time we are meeting up with Sara, Janne and Margareta’s
youngest daughter, and her husband Ludde and children Laban (21 03 09), Irma (29 10 10)
and Ines (16 01 15). They are moving to NZ in October where Ludde will be working
for Fisher and Paykel Healthcare in Auckland.
Our stroll took us down to the river which runs through the
town centre and while it’s summer here and many look summery in their dress
there’s actually a bit of a cool breeze. The 'coffee' morphed into a craft beer
and a cider……..you need always to retain a flexible approach…..so we sat and
took in the atmosphere for an hour or so.
We’d spied a couple of options for dinner and booked for an early meal with views across the river.
The Swedes like their classic 50’s American cars, highlighted by the
passing of a big Pontiac Laurentian, and a Chevy Corvette and a few others
tweaking our memories of last time. It was 'hit the wall time' by 7 30 so we paid the bill and
staggered home to bed. Decided it was pretty cheap eating as we ambled home, but
worked out the next day that it’s actually divide SWK by 6 to get an NZD
equivalent. So relax, Sweden hasn’t become cheap to travel in, and don’t do any
financial calculations after you haven’t been to bed for 45 hours or so. The
meal was fine and about on a par pricewise with NZ.
Eight hours sleep is a good start, but when you go to bed at
8 00 pm, it’s still a pretty early start at 4 00 am the next morning. So we were
a couple of diligent possums for the next few hours.
We had arranged to meet with Sara and Ludde at 1 00 pm, so
we had a morning around the city centre and took a few pictures. Uppsala is a
lovely compact place, with a large University campus, around 20,000 students, a
very large hospital and lots of institutions associated with learning and
research. There are heaps of buildings designated for a region of Sweden where the students can find accommodation, support and party times.
Bicycles are the preferred way to travel, there's a huge bike ‘carpark’
outside the rail station and bikes in large numbers parked all over the city.
Yes there are cars around, but nothing you’d call traffic congestion in a city
about the size of Hamilton.
Ludde, Sara and Ines turned up, Sara and Ines on bike and baby buggy and Ludde by car! So it is great to put faces to the names and to
meet some of Janne and Margareta’s family. We had the guided tour of the city
and its history and had an opportunity to chat as we walked. We went around the
city centre, past the only wooden house left standing when the city burned in
1702, Uppsala Cathedral, Rune Stones, King St Erik’s memorial, the university
library, the uncompleted (ran out of money) castle, past the Botannical Gardens,
the hospital and had a good view over
the whole city from the castle hill.
Uppsala also prides itself on environmental friendliness, as with the Biobuss transport!
.
We had a lovely meal with Sara and Ludde and family,
starting to get to know them all as we will be a point of call and contact we
hope when they arrive in NZ in October. They’ll be starting NZ residence in a
house organised by F&P as a temporary place to start looking for rental
accommodation in the Bucklands Beach area.
We had an early-ish night again and managed another
reasonable eight hours so we are pretty much acclimatised and getting on with
our touring around. Sunday morning was the Botannical Gardens, a revisit to the
tourist office for postcards and stamps for the first of the postings to
Georgia, Abi, Sam and Fred, and Megan! The gardens are very well-manicured and
very formally set out.
They have a few kiwis in residence, we found Astelia and Fivefinger, derived from some of the stock brought back to Europe by one Joseph
Banks who visited NZ with Captain Cook, another name we are all familiar with.
Mid afternoon, Ludde and Laban picked us up and took us to
Gamla Uppsala, the old town site which features some very large burial mounds
and about 3000 small ones scattered around.
The museum guided walk filled us in
on all the details, including the traditional “ship” burials which also
occurred here in the Viking tradition. There is lots more to be discovered
about who is actually buried in the large mounds “the Kings’ mounds”. the three main mounds took about 1000 man hours to build, centred on the cremated remains of one or more person in an urn, with their worldly goods alongside to help them in the next world: Valhalla.
There was
much disappointment when the first mound was excavated around 1840, no King in
residence, but perhaps a Queen or certainly a very wealthy lady of around 20
years of age and a boy of around 12. The mounds date to around 500-700AD and not
a great deal is known, so there obviously wasn’t a great written tradition, and
also not a great oral tradition either. Archaeological work is ongoing and
while more is being learnt, plenty more questions are coming to light. Like
what is the purpose or meaning of 144 huge poles sunk into the ground and
anchored by large rocks in a straight line from Gamla towards one of the
adjacent villages. My theory was the tide was in, back in those days and they
were the mooring poles for the sailing vessels.
While we did our tour, Ludde coffee’d and Laban Pokémon’d and
got 25 of the critters in places varying from the graveyard to the café food
bar.
So then on back to Chez Frigell and another lovely meal and
a bit of time with the soon-to-be kiwis. It has been great getting to know them
and we have experienced great hospitality. Tack, Sara and Ludde
Monday I’m off to find Avis and pick up the car for the next
short hop to Sundsvall and Akrom, about three hours away
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