Hestra

We arrived at Hestra in the rain, good thing the bike rental idea had fallen through. When we got out of the taxi we saw some people down by the cow barn so started heading in that direction.

We introduced ourselves to Bjorn, the current owner of Hestra. Bjorn’s parents, Helge and Sonja Stensson, had purchased the farm from my great-uncle, Johan Huvudsson back in the 1950’s. (I think I mentioned in an earlier post that only one of my grandfather’s brothers and a sister had remained on the farm with their parents and neither of them had married.)

It was interesting to look around at the outbuildings. With the exception of the new barn, the farm looked much like the pictures I’d seen of it.

Bjorn had limited English, mostly he was just self-conscious about it, and my Swedish was limited to what I could look up in the pocket Swedish-English dictionary I had purchased in Gothenburg - so needless to say, our conversation was limited. He had tried to arrange for some relatives to act as a buffer but no one was available so we just had to muddle through it ourselves. He actually could speak better than he thought so we didn’t have to resort to too much pantomime.

The rain had let up enough for us to tour some of the farmyard but when it started to come down again, Sonja came to the door of the farmhouse and called to Bjorn to bring us in.

We had planned to have the taxi wait because I didn’t want to impose on Sonja and Bjorn’s generosity and take up too much of their time. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that they had planned to have coffee with us and that Bjorn was willing to transport us back to Fristad afterwards.

Sonja is a delightful lady. She’s in her 90’s but, similar to my mom’s cousin Karin, is so full of life. One of the first things she did when we sat down to the table for coffee was to bring out a guest book for me to look through and identify my relatives. This book was amazing - it dated back to the 1960’s. I found many entries written by my relatives, including a few different ones by my parents (Dad once and Mom twice). It was fun to see how often the Hedlin name cropped up, and interesting to see some unfamiliar relatives, obviously some of the U.S. branch of the family had also made this pilgrimage.

After we had perused the guest book and added our own entry, Sonja was off on the search through various photo albums and once again I was called upon to identify pictures of my relatives. It was great to see the old photos, always taken with Sonja and her husband. Before we left we had our picture taken with Sonja, and I intend to send a print to her to be added to her photo album. It was also interesting to me to see pictures of my great-uncle Johan’s funeral and a picture of my great-aunt Ida, taken on her 85th birthday. Community events were apparently very meaningful to Sonja.

Sonja didn’t speak any English so a few times we did have to resort to a form of sign language to communicate. I had to laugh to myself when she showed us that she could count to ten in English, which was certainly more than I could manage in Swedish. However, I did attempt to write a thank you note in Swedish, with the help of my little dictionary. (I included an English translation just in case I wasn’t actually saying what I thought I was.)

A few times during the process of getting to Hestra, I had been tempted to just cancel the whole expedition. It seemed like there were so many roadblocks, that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. After visiting with Sonja and Bjorn, I was so thankful that Dennis had been willing to persevere. We had such a nice visit and it was very meaningful for me to see where my grandfather grew up. Sonja welcomed us so graciously, it really was a joy to be in her house.