A Concert Trip to Minnesota
Text from Swedish Television
documentary charting the Kristina concert tour in the US in 1995.
Enormous thanks to Kaarin Goodburn for the translation of Finnish subtitles.
Björn: They were the first people to leave their home village. From the country of small houses and rich childhood. They were the people of the land. Their families had been there for thousands of years, cultivating the marsh. So told Wilhelm Moberg at the beginning of his tetrology. It’s a story about people who left Sweden to go to America. It’s Karl-Oscar’s and Kristina Nilson’s story
Björn: Our musical Kristina från Duvemåla, had its premier a year ago at the Malmö music theatre. We are travelling to Lindstrom in Minnesota in the USA. There we will present a concert version of our musical, just here in Lindstrom and Chisago City where Moberg located his story. With us are four of our soloists: Helen Sjöholm, Anders Ekbörg, Peter Jöback and Åsa Bergh.
We are presenting in the biggest hall in the community – a school hall.
Benny: This idea began Easter 1990. We began to form the musical version. It took 3 years before we dared to take it forward. I have always admired Wilhelm Moberg. Also, in the beginning, the challenge was too much – I was afraid to ruin it. It got going and the fear lessened. Now I am putting myself fully into this work.
Björn: I doubted whether I could do the text correctly. When I dared to get on with it, I was blocked in the beginning. The desire to get on with it overtook the fear. Our Kristina wasn’t the same as Moberg’s, but one thing was sure – we loved her just as much.
Philip Brunel, who decided on the venue, is the founder and conductor of the Plymouth Music Series. He practised with his choir and orchestra for weeks. The moment for us was very exciting.
We got to meet the people, see and hear them. They were from the same background as Karl-Oskar and Kristina. The story, for some of them, was the story of their families.
[English speech]
[Duvemåla Hage]
Björn: Kristina had to leave her own Duvemåla. The refugees began their journey form Karlshamn, with them was Karl-Oskar’s brother Robert. His friend Arvid and also came as did the Vestgornen village whore, Ulrika. The people of the land pressed on for weeks. There were storms and other difficulties. Kristina became terribly ill and travellers died. Karl-Oskar feared arriving in America alone with their children.
[Stanna]
Björn: Kristina lived. Of 78 travellers, 70 reached NY. Eight were buried at sea. So, the small crowd saw the land. It was their goal. After disembarking from the Charlotte [the boat on which they travelled across the Atlantic] they bought a ticket from the East River jetty on Midsummer’s Eve on 1850. They had spent 2½ months at sea. Kristina was in poor health – scurvy had taken her strength. She wanted, however, to take her first steps in America with her own strength, and so she did. All sorts of swindlers whirled around them propositioning them. People met them in Battery Park - men in top hats and women in splendid hats and skirts walked there. It was, for the peasants, certainly an extremely strange sight.
[A Sunday in Battery Park]
One of the Swedes who has his own roots is Ted Nuore. His family left Småland.
TN: My grandfather left. In Sweden it was so difficult. The family left Hummartorppi. It was so difficult and he frequently said that they would have died if there hadn’t been the sea. Nothing grew, stones were everywhere. Nothing could be cultivated. At 19 years old, he decided to leave. When he left, the home people kissed him, read the Bible, did their everything because they knew that the journey would be dangerous, they might not see him again, and he may die. He didn’t return to Sweden. They travelled by horse and cart, by train, by boat.
The beginning was bad – meat had spoiled, cholera ravished and many died, they were buried at sea. My grandfather said that the journey from Karlshamn to America lasted 5 months. They stayed on the boat, travelling bags on their laps. They carried on by foot into the forest. Grandfather found a paint shop, Karlin's Place. There was a peasant who took him in to work. My grandfather was a clog maker. If he was really diligent, he could prepare three pairs in a day. He got 35 cents a pair or $1.05 and day. Others got 50 cents a day. It went well for him. He sent money home. In Sweden, there were difficult times.
He got on here better and sent money home. People at home thanked him and thanked us when we were there. We have been to Sweden twice – 1983 and 1985. My father’s five cousins live there. We met each other a couple of times. Now they are dead. Our parents taught us Swedish. They could speak Swedish and English. Father made us speak Swedish before we went to school – we would learn English there. Then we had command of both languages. Father died two months before his 107th birthday. Grandfather died at 96. I am now 84. Let’s see how it goes!
Björn: For Karl-Oskar, Kristina and others, continue their journey from NY by boat and train almost to Chicago. They then went by riverboat up the Mississippi to Minnesota. The journey to St Croix along the river to Taylor’s Falls.
One day as Arvid was looking at the view, suddenly he shouted to Robert, come and have a look – there are wild people! Robert went to look. High on the riverbank stood strange, unmoving shapes of Indians. People on the journey had already seen Indians. Up to this point, they had just been exotic people, different people. But these were Indians in their own country.
The boys understood that they were leaving into a different land. Robert certainly wondered how his best friend was dragged there. Ulrika, from Vestergon, whose home cottage was very shabby, couldn’t return anymore – this was the beginning of a new life. She would never return.
[Aldrig]
Björn: Leonor Carlsson is a 90 year old resident of an old persons home. She remembers well how her grandparents came to America.
LIK: My grandfather came to this country in 1856. Friends had written in letters telling how good it could be in America. The fields gave grain, and yet in Sweden they raked stones. In Sweden, it was difficult to survive. The travelled to Gothenburg and from there to England. There they continued their big sea journey to NY. When they came to Cambridge county they stayed overnight at Rhum River. They spent the night in an old cottage on the riverbank. On the following day, they continued to Princeton.
The wrote that grandfather carried two pigs on his back. Grandmother walked beside the carriage with a cow. Grandfather bought land and built a house in which he lived the whole of his life. Men went to forest work to make a living. They did this for 3 years. She heard of Lincoln and the Civil War. When volunteers were sought in Minnesota Grandfather did it. He was away for 3 years. For Grandmother it was hard. Women had the worst time in the Civil War. With little children, it was really difficult. If we wanted to visit the neighbours, one left a white sheet hanging outside. The neighbour would come to coffee if she saw it.
Swedish was the first language that I learnt. I couldn’t speak English when I began school. At our church, there was a Swedish language holy school – there we learned to read Swedish. Many were unsatisfied with the state church and wanted to move to a freer church. In Chicago, they had them, which we wanted to hear of – the same Lutheran church, which we had in Sweden. But others wanted to be freer.
Björn: When a little crowd had disembarked it was time to find land. Karl-Oskar knew the area that the Indians called Chisagas. It meant ‘big beautiful lake’. The men left together. Karl-Oskar went further than the others did. He walked alone through the forest in which game and foresters had walked. The older people in Chisago remember well the Swedish writers who went around riding a bike looking from their own Duvemala. This is the place he chose. Karl-Oskar wandered through Arvino forest. He saw a shining lake from the enticing meadow and he stuck his stick in the ground. It went in at least a metre – proper, food-growing earth. He knew that he come to his destination. He marked in the oak bark 'K O Nilsson, Sweden'. Kristina never came to like it here, however much she tried. For her, America was a strange, foreign country, and Sweden home. Here she sat on the porch and looked towards the distant country in the light spring nights.
[Hemma]
[David Monson Interview in English]
Björn: Karl-Oskar and Kristina waited for the big ? [help please readers!]. One had to cut down trees, clear the land, and build a house. Everything had to be organised so the family could get through the first winter.
[Vildgras]
[English interview with Mr Monson]
[Vi Oppnar Alla Grindar]
Björn: Most emigrants didn’t clear the land and build houses. They became squatters, or they decided on a place to stay and informed the Land Office in Stillwater. Karl-Oskar and Kristina lived in the beginning in a wooden shack. One couldn’t stay there over the winter so Karl-Oskar began immediately to build a log cottage - a little like this, but not as big. A pioneer’s life was hard and tough and didn’t really suit Robert.
He didn’t find his dream of gold. He left with Arvid the first spring for the Californian Gold Rush. Immediately he expected a hard life. They changed a little gold into forged notes. Arvid died here on the journey and Robert returned 4 years afterwards with his brother.
[Guldet Blev Till Sand]
Björn: Irvin John Olsen lives here in the countryside. His forefathers left Lujed in Småland. His home is his grandfather’s log cottage.
IJO: In 1868 there was a drought. Almost a famine. Many left then. He left Lujed and was building railroads. He got money with which he got the travel ticket., He left Sweden at the beginning of August and arrived in Quebec in September. There he continued by train to Chicago.
He didn’t have the right to continue – it just happened. They wanted to go to Chisago but it was a mistake. From there they went by steamboat up the Mississippi River to Taylor’s Falls. Grandfather bought 40 acres. It was on the ridge which led to the east and the west. He cut the trees from the highest place and made the planks into a house which had one room. They moved there in spring when the weather was favourable.
My uncle remembers how crowded it always was in the room. They bought equal walls for space for the cows but only a couple of years ago since there was not enough food for the cows in the forest. Swamp, in which beavers had lived, was cleared. After a couple of cows, they got bulls. The first spring they cleared the ground to make a potato field, then they grew vegetables. The earth was productive. In a couple of years they decided to begin properly. They began to cut wood to sell for firewood.
In the autumn, using a sled, they filled the store full of wood and sold it at Taylor’s Falls. They got a good price for it. My big brother said to my grandmother that it was better here than in Sweden. Grandmother said that at home it rains quietly but here it pours and there are storms and lightning.
At home it was time to go to visiting people. But here nobody had the time to go and visit. Here there are more things to do. We are not as poor as home people are, but I haven’t found it to be good in America.
Björn: The years passed. Kristina was established in the new country. The seventh child died at birth. The doctor said to the couple that Kristina must never become pregnant again. Kristina questioned God for the first time.
[Du Måste Finnas]
Björn: The refugees were satisfied with their fate. They were the nucleus of Kristina’s battle. All those who accompanied her had the same battle. Nearly 25% of Swedes moved to North America. The new homeland prepared the refugees. They changed the land and the United States changed them. Here they lived and died.
This is Glader graveyard in which are Moberg’s ancestors’ graves which 4 inspectors authenticated – in other words, the Swedish refugees were at the shore of Ki-Chi-saga lake. The first who came to rest here was Robert, Karl-Oskar’s only 22 year old little brother. He accompanied Kristina. Karl-Oskar frequently came to the grave.
He planted the same flowers as Kristina had had at home in Korpimoen. Karl-Oskar though of Kristina every day during those 20 years which he lived alone. Kristina had said ‘ I don’t want to be alone in eternity – I know that we will meet again when we are no longer dead’. Karl-Oskar wrote on the cross ‘Until we met again’
[I Gott Bevar]
