Month: February 2019

Tomten

Tomten

by Justin Durand

Mom asked me today if I remember the tomte’s name. No, I don’t think I knew the tomte has a name. But I’m intrigued by the question.

Back up for a bit. We have a tomte (“house elf”). Of course we do. Our ancestors came from Sweden. Honestly, if I didn’t have one I’m not sure I’d admit it.

A tomte is a guardian of the house, like the lares and penates in Roman culture except he’s an elf not a spirit. He lives somewhere nearby, maybe in a hill or a under the barn, He protects the house and the people who live there. And, he brings luck and makes the chores lighter.

When I was a kid, I had a zillion questions. Where did he come from? (From Sweden, of course.) When? (With Grandma Josephine and Grandpa Adolph.) How did he get here? (He came in their steamer trunk.) How come we got him and our relatives didn’t? (Ahh, but they did get him We all got him.)

That last bit has to remain one of life’s mysteries. I have a tomte, and he’s the same tomte my great grandparents brought from Sweden in 1891, and all my relatives have him too, but somehow we all have our own.

After all these years, my American tomte is certainly different than he was in Sweden. I know some of those differences but probably not all.

Tomtar like to have a cheerful, hardworking environment. They don’t like arguments. They don’t like sloppy housekeeping. And, they don’t like change. That part is the same.

It’s traditional to put out a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve, but I put out a saucer of milk like my mother did. And I don’t usually do it on Christmas Eve. More often at New Year’s Eve and Midsummer, or when I think something has happened to disturb our happy home.

Another difference — in Sweden, the tomte is sometimes said to have been the first person who cleared the land, or the person who built the house, or the first person who died in the house. That wouldn’t work in America, I don’t think. The poor tomtar would get attention only when there were good Swedes living in the house, then be ignored other times. If that’s the rule, then it’s pretty harsh.

And one last difference. I get the impression from my reading that the Swedish tomtar are essentially the local landvættir (“land spirits”), but I see my tomte as more an ancestral spirit, even though still definitely one of the húsvættir. It’s part of his job to coordinate with the land spirits. Particularly since I’m moving around and the local land spirits, whether Indian or American, are not often any part of my own family heritage.

So, getting back the question of his name. Maybe it’s Lars? Or Lasse? The Danes and Norwegian call their house elves nisse. Some people think the word nisse comes from Nils). If so, it seems certain the Swedes would be obstinately different. I think I’m going to start calling my tomte Lasse and see if he responds.

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Ethnicity, Nationality, Race, Identity, Culture & Heritage

Ethnicity, Nationality, Race, Identity, Culture & Heritage

by Justin Durand

I like this article as one of the clearest introductions to a complex subject I know.

Here’s a taste:
Heritage can overlap on the ethnicity and nationality a bit at times, but it generally refers to the ancestors of a person, and what they identified with. For example, a child born to naturalized U.S. citizens hailing from Venezuela could say they have a Venezuelan heritage, even if they don’t share the ethnicity (perhaps they can’t speak Spanish, and they are American as far as nationality.

Just a few minutes to read.

Identity Thieves

Identity Thieves

by Justin Durand

I ‘m not sure why the particular theme of invented identity plays out so often in the world around me. Maybe it’s that I’ve overly sensitive to it. Or maybe it’s that I’m out of touch with America.

This is not the thing where Americans confuse identity and ancestry— they’re German (or whatever) because they have German ancestry. And this is not the thing where ethnic ancestry gets garbled over the generations because there are too many pieces to remember. I’ve touched on those topics before.

No. What I’m thinking about now is the way meager pretexts lead some people to try for a kind of culture theft. I wrote just a bit about that as it relates to religion a few weeks ago.

Over on Geni, some of my chums are spinning rhapsodies because they can add Scarlett Johanson to the Danish-American project and Kyrsten Sinema to the Norwegian-American project. Objections that Scarlett Johanson’s ancestry is more accurately Swedish and that Krysten Sinema’s ancestry is more obviously Dutch are majestically swept aside. Not the point. The goal there is to create a narrative not to just explore and document complexity.

I think the first time I really understood that genealogy can be co-opted to invent a new identity was back in the early 2000s. Genetic genealogy was moving cautiously from STR analysis to SNP analysis and haplogroups.

(I got thrown out of one online group for daring to suggest SNPs might be the future—STRs are perfectly adequate for phylogenetic analysis, thank you very much. Take your SNPs and quack science somewhere else.)

So, what happened is that it took some work to determine my haplogroup. Back then my STR values might have fit with either haplogroup G or haplogroup I. Turned out I’m haplogroup G.

And that threw me into a cultural turmoil I didn’t know could exist. It was already clear haplogroup G came from the Caucasus region, and that it’s a minority (say 2 or 3 percent) in Europe. The general thought at the time was that it might have been brought to Europe by the Alans, a barbarian tribe. There were also some folks who thought it might have been spread by Roman legions. And others like Ray Banks who thought it might have been spread by Jewish Radhanite merchants.

Interesting theories but no sense getting too invested in any of them. The evidence would keep accumulating. We’d get closer and closer to the truth. Because science. (The experts, like Spencer Wells, were already saying G2 came to Europe with the spread of farming in the Neolithic. The other stuff was just romantic nonsense. As indeed it turned out.)

But some people in our group took it further. The U.S. was right then in the middle of betraying the Kurds (as we do every so often and we’re doing now under Mr. Trump). Because we were all Haplogroup G, which originated down there somewhere, and the Kurds have a concentration of G, they were taking up a collection to send money to help our Kurdish cousins.

Wow. Just wow. A quirky correlation DNA with culture. Creating a new identity.

It wasn’t an isolated case. Since that first time, I’ve watched it happen over and over and over. The guy on the commercial goes from being German to being Scottish. He turns in his Lederhosen for a kilt. Because of a DNA test. And it doesn’t even have to be a strong result. Over and over on Geni, someone’s DNA test tells them they’re 1 percent American Indian or Jewish, and suddenly they have a new ethnic identity.

And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the Melungeons, or the newly created fake Indian nations in the U.S., or the many other pretendian fantasies.

The way I explain it to people is this. My ancestry is Swedish but I am not Swedish. I have a Swedish last name. I have some Swedish DNA. And I keep up some Swedish customs (like the tomte). But I’m not a Swedish citizen. I don’t have a Swedish passport. I would not go to Sweden and expect anyone to take me seriously if I decided to tell Swedes I’m Swedish.

Yet, that’s exactly the situation of many Americans who seize on bits and pieces of science and perhaps also tradition to invent a new ethnic identity for themselves. It’s just another form of cultural appropriation.

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Some Anniversaries

Some Anniversaries

by Justin Durand

February 8th is one of those days that stands out in the calendar of my family history. For me it has become Genealogy Day, a day to do something special about my interest in family history. Like Christmas but for me not Baby Jesus. And it helps a bit that Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is right around this time of year.

It’s the anniversary of my grandfather’s death. Harry William Swanstrom (1903-1957). By coincidence it’s also the anniversary of his sister’s death. Ellen Sophie (Swanstrom) Hinkle (1895-1949). She was the first of the kids to pass away.

That’s on the Swanstrom side. Then on the Howery side, today is the anniversary of the earliest surviving mention of the surname Hauri in history. A Conrad Hauri (Chuondradus dictus Hovri) was mentioned on 8 February 1282 as owing 9 shillings annually for his land at Steffisburg (Bern, No. 334), when Werner von Steffisburg leased certain lands to Kloster Interlaken. The taxes Conrad owed for his lands were in line with amounts throughout the region for larger peasant holdings. He was probably our ancestor but there’s no way to prove it.

For my Genealogy Day last year I started the process for getting a grave marker for my grandmother’s two babies that died at birth. Charles Edward Swanstrom (1932) and Harvey William Swanstrom (1934). It took nearly a year start to finish, which is part of the reason I’m just writing about it now.

My grandmother always intended to have a marker made for them and place it in Eden Valley Cemetery. It was one of the last things she mentioned to me just before she died. Actually, the babies are buried in Rock Springs but the funeral home has said there would not be enough left of their bodies to move them to Eden. And, we could mark the graves where they’re buried but then they would end up being disconnected from the family story.

So. We got the gravestone, and we had it placed between my grandparents’ graves. Also this year we did a memorial brick for my grandparents and another for my sister Evonne in the Peace Walk at the Amitabha Stupa in Sedona. But that’s a story for another time.

Grandpa Luce’s 3rd Marriage

Grandpa Luce’s 3rd Marriage

by Justin Durand

I ‘ve always known Wilford Luce, Jr. married three times. He divorced his first wife Dorothy Sharp. His second wife Essie Wilson died. (She was my great grandmother.) And his third wife Amanda Sizemore survived him by many, many years.

What I didn’t know until the past few years was that he married his third wife right here in Denver. That was a surprise. They had a ranch at Big Piney (Wyoming). Why not get married there? Or in town?

Maybe they were here for the Stock Show? But no. That would be in January, and this was in March.

That got me wondering. What church were they married in? He was Episcopalian. She was Mormon. Maybe they were married in one of the churches I’ve attended over the years. Wouldn’t it be cool if they got married at St. John’s or St. Andrew’s? And even if they were married somewhere else, it would be fun to drive by and see .

So, I ordered their marriage record. (I love Colorado’s state archives. They made it very easy.)

No surprises. They weren’t married in a church after all. They were married by a justice of the peace. (And her son Russell Short was one of the witnesses. Somehow that makes it seem less like a romantic trip and more like something they did while they were in Denver on business anyway.)

I suppose if they were married by a justice of the peace probably they were married at our beautiful City and County Building. Not as much fun as a church, but it means I’ll think about them every time I’m there.

Luce Wilford 1930 MarriageDownload