Längtan efter studier och en annan värld (2015, Sevéus&Co. 434 sidor)
ISBN 978-91-981817-4-6
Abstract: The Desire for Studies and a Different World
Siv Gustafsson has researched her father’s (Nils Ström 1910-1971) large left behind archive of letters, diary notations, newspaper clippings, official documents and photo albums. She interviewed in the 1990s her mother Florries Ström (1913-1999) and in 2011-12 a cousin of her father born in 1920, and a cousin of her mother born in 1930, and her own second cousins. The result is a book in Swedish of 400 pages about a young man who grew up on his father’s farm two hours driving north of Stockholm. The six years of “folkskola” in the village school of Tulka, Nils learnt in four years and school was over before he turned 12. His father, eager to keep him on the farm, did not support any further studies. He moved to Stockholm, earned his daily bread during the 1930s recession and studied nights and weekends at the distance school Hermods. He finally, at age 27, acquired his secondary school competence. This was followed by a university bachelor exam including economics, practical philosophy and political science. He became a civil servant, appointed three times by the Swedish king. In 1956 he was appointed one of 24 regional heads of the state employment and manpower planning agency “länsarbetsdirektör”. He spent one year working in Spanish as a United Nations expert on manpower planning issues in 1956-57 in Santiago de Chile. Later he held similar United Nations appointments in Teheran in 1964-65, in Taipei, Taiwan in 1966-67, and in Bagdad in 1969-70. The book was presented in Mälarsalen, Stockholm on August 30, 2015 to 150 descendants of Gustafsson’s grandparents and their siblings.
Alla dessa glada sysslingar (2017, Sevéus&Co., 120 sidor)
ISBN 978-91-981817-9-1
Abstract: All Those Happy Second Cousins
On a beautiful summer day August 30, 2015, Siv Gustafsson met for lunch with 150 people, her second cousins and their families, her own family and friends, to talk about ancestors and their lives. We met in the beautiful conference room of Mälarsalen overlooking Riddarfjärden. Old photos were shown on big screens. Siv had asked her first cousin Britt Andersson to talk about her mother Greta Eriksson, who spent her life on a little farm in Roslagen. Greta is the three year older sister of Nils Ström, Siv’s father and many letters from Nils to Greta have been kept. Three second cousins of Nils had agreed to say something about their parent who was first cousin of Nils. Ancestors of Florries Ström, Siv’s mother have much fewer descendants but one grandchild, Cathrin Wåhlén, of Florries’s first cousin Lizzie read from a book her mother had written about her life with four children and her husband, an arts professor of Turkish origin, on board the ship Hulda. The oldest participant was 95 years old and the youngest one was 3 months old. This book documents this meeting with plenty of photos. Everyone who attended is on at least one photo.