Exploring Broberg roots in Småland (June 12, 2008)

We programmed key Broberg family historical sights into the GPS and set out to explore the locations today. We had good success and were able to verify the locations by local signs in every case.


This region of Småland is heavily forested and it seems the main industry here is logging. I guess we must have some lumberjack blood. The farms in the area are few and often very small and simply cut out of a forest. The ground is very rocky and includes moss-covered boulders ranging from watermelon-size to volkswagon-size. Most of the farms are divided by ancient stone walls apparently made from clearing these stones from fields.

The Bridge in Bro Sweden (bro=bridge)

We visited two farms of the Magnus Magnusson family in the Älmeboda area. Recall the son who emigrated was named Magnus Magnusson and changed it to Broberg and his father was named Magnus Nilsson. We also explored the local family church in nearby Rävemåla and saw many grave stones with Magnusson indicated, some of which were simply marked as “familjegrav”.

The present day home at the farm of Boamala Ostergard (Magnus Broberg's birthplace)

We explored other sites including Gustaf Collin’s mill (Källerström), and the Gustaf Bloom & Carl Bloom farms at Askeberga. I embarrassed myself several times and knocked on the doors of the homes in these places to see if anyone spoke English or knew of the history, but in most cases no one answered the doors, even though sometimes we saw faces in the windows as we departed. The few people I did speak to, who knew English were knew to the area themselves and did not know much of any local history.

A primary industry of this area is the glasricket or crystal making and glass-blowing. While we didn’t see any banjos today, we did see some glass trumpets at the Kosta glass works. We had a great time watching the craftsman (and ladies) blowing glass and making spectacular crystal items. After a few hours exploring all the offerings we settled on a few pieces and arranged to have them shipped home.

At Kosta Glass Factory Store

Everyone is still well and tomorrow we move on again to our next location, further north.

The Småland photos are located here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbroberg/sets/72157605575599412/show/

The most recent photos have also been geotagged, so they will show up on the Flickr Map located here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbroberg/map/