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.
Swedish American Museum 