Some Challenges of Oral History
Doing oral history can be a lot harder than it sounds sometimes . Whenever I describe what I’m doing at the museum, it sounds fairly straight forward. I interview the person, then write down what they what. But what if you don’t understand what the interviewee is saying? I found this happened several times during the semester especially because sometimes my interviewees would use Swedish words or phrases during the interview. Since I am not fluent in Swedish this became a pretty big problem. In order to solve this problem, it was imperative that I had a follow up interview asking the interviewee what the phrase meant and how it was supposed to be spelled. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the words and phrases I learned how to pronounce and spell. They are sorted into certain categories.
FOOD
Sylta- a specific course in Christmas Eve smorgasbord. There are two types of syltas, pres sylta and kalv sylta.
Filbunke- a type of Swedish yogurt that is similar to Greek yogurt
Risgrynsgrot- rice porridge
SWEDISH TOWNS
Fiskelbackskil
Lulea
Angesbyn
Danderyd
Boden
I hope you had fun trying to pronounce some of those words. With all of these challenging words to figure out, I thought I would pick up a treat form the Swedish Bakery down the street as a reward.
Swedish American Museum 