As this will be my last blog post I decided to share all that I have learned from my internship experience and the museum. during the semester not only have I learned what it is like to work at a cultural museum, but have a crash course on what it is like to do oral history.

What I Have Learned from a Cultural Museum

Before this experience I knew almost nothing about the Swedish culture and what the Swedish people are like. However, while working at the museum I had the pleasure of interviewing immigrants and meeting volunteers and interns from Sweden. Not only are the people of Sweden practical (see week five), but they are also welcoming and more than willing to share their culture.

What I Have Learned about Oral History

Oral history can be a lot harder than it looks. I think the most challenging part of the entire process was transcribing the entire interview because it is very tedious work that needs an eye for detail. While writing these interviews ever pause, conjunction, and pronunciation matter because it crucial to be as accurate as possible. I also learned that once the interview is transcribed it doesn’t necessarily mean that your work is done. For several of my interviews, having a follow up was necessary to make sure that all Swedish terms and phrases were correct and that all the information was accurate. By the end of this semester I had much more respect for those who do this professionally because the whole process could be tedious at times.

Oral history can also be challenging because it requires the interviewer to be adaptable and flexible. In order to get the most information out of each person it was critical that I adapted to each personality and story. I remember during one interview  I had trouble getting my subject to speak at length about certain topics of the US because she had little experience with this country.During the interview I decided that it would be a good idea to switch topics from the US to Sweden because she had lived her whole life in Sweden. Once I switched the topic it was clear that she became much more comfortable and started to talk more at length. On the other hand, I also had people  who can’t stop talking no matter what. During these situations it was clear that in order to do the interview in a timely matter it was best to select which question were the most important rather than ask all of them. Despite all of these challenges it was rewarding to hear the stories of these people who were clearly proud of their Swedish heritage. I will definitely come back to the museum soon, hopefully as a volunteer or a visitor

Today was my last day at the museum so instead of working on transcribing I worked on another assignment for my supervisor which was to make “short stories” of the people I interviewed to feature in our Flaggan (a Flaggan is the Swedish term for newsletter). In these short stories I feature the interviewee’s immigration process and their lives in America. One of these stories included Joan Asplund whose parents immigrated to America in the early 1920s. It was also important that I focused most of the attention away from myself and focused it on Joan. The story is featured below:

Joan Asplund was born on April 26, 1941 on the Southside of Chicago and currently works as a desk receptionist at the museum. She is a second generation American Swede who is especially proud of her parents who emigrated from Sweden to Chicago. Her father came from Ängesbyn, which is in the northern part of Sweden, in 1923. In Sweden he lived on his family’s farm making cross country skis for a living. When he came to America, he translated his work on skis to carpentry to become a contractor. While working as a contractor, Joan’s father helped build the subway system in Chicago and made beautiful homes in North Shore that can still be seen today. Joan’s mother came to Ellis Island in 1924 from Götenberg. Due to some issues, Joan’s mother was immediately married on Ellis Island to her first husband Henry. After her Ellis Island marriage, Joan’s mother was allowed to come into the country where she worked as a nanny. While growing up in Andersonville, Joan participated in several Swedish traditions such as the St. Lucia ceremony with the Vårbcomman children’s program in Lakeview. She has particularly fond memories of Andersonville during Christmas time when all the families would come to her home and enjoy a smorgasbord of Swedish foods such as syltas and risgryns gröt.

 Joan has taken several trips back to Sweden over her lifetime. Her first trip was in the late 50s when her family went on a rundtur (round tour) of Sweden visiting relatives. One of Joan’s favorite memories of this trip was when the family was staying on her father’s farm which was only fifty miles away from the Artic Circle. Since they were in this part of the country during summer, the sun never set which meant that Joan and her family enjoyed an endless amount of energy. During her round tour Joan stayed up many nights going out dancing with her female relatives. She took another trip to Sweden and Europe with a friend in 1965. One of her favorite parts of this visit was seeing the fjords of Norway. During her interview, Joan described them as the most magnificent things she had ever seen and highly recommends that anyone visiting Europe should see them. Her brother, George, also took another trip to Sweden in 1967, hoping to buy a Volvo and tour the country as an independent young man. Both Joan and her brother were both pleasantly surprised that their distant Swedish relatives were more than happy to have her brother stay with them. Joan is also trying to keep the Swedish heritage and culture alive by practicing with the Nordic folk dancers and attending events at the museum.

Joan was interviewed by Andrea Marshall who is an intern at the museum. She is a junior  at Loyola University of Chicago for the past four months and has been working on an oral history project focusing on Swedish immigration to America. For this project she interviewed various members of the museum who immigrated to America from Sweden or whose parents have immigrated to America. During the interviews she asked them about the challenges they faced during the immigration process and to compare certain aspects of American and Swedish culture.

Since it is almost time for me to leave my internship, I have mostly been wrapping up my work at the museum. My supervisor, Karin, was hoping to feature some of my work in the annual Christmas newsletter, so I have been working on writing a summary of myself and the people I have interviewed. Karin explained to me that she wants me to take the raw transcripts and turn them into stories that can be presented in the newsletter so people can understand the oral history project better.

I also had the opportunity to do some other things outside of oral history today since the museum is working on a new gallery that features Swedish folk paintings from the early 19th century. These paintings were originally donated to the Art Institute which were then passed on to the Swedish American Museum. These paintings featured two main categories which were ceremonies such as weddings and biblical scenes. These paintings were fascinating because they showed the mindset of rural Swedish people over a hundred years ago. Many of the people in the biblical scenes are not wearing ancient clothing, but clothes from the 19th century which really showed how little these people knew about ancient cultures or history in general.

I would also like to think that these paintings also show why I would like to work in a museum some day because many of the artifacts would remind me  why I studied history and why I love it so much.