About Swedish Homecoming
About My Resources
Through Swedish Homecoming, I maintain subscriptions with ArkivDigital, EmiWeb, and SVAR at the Swedish National Archives. Together, these services allow me access to dozens of online databases relevant to Swedish genealogy, including ones covering church books, estate evaluations, court records, national censuses, tax lists, prison records, army muster rolls, ship manifests, and more. To trace Swedes who emigrated to America, I make use of an Ancestry World Explorer subscription plus a full range of state-based resources. When studying Swedish families that have connections to other Scandinavian countries, I tap into the online resources of the Danish and Norwegian National Archives.
My research is also supported by a reference collection that includes dozens of CD databases and research handbooks relevant to Swedish genealogy and hundreds of books about Scandinavian history and culture.
Swedish Homecoming is located in Uppsala, near Stockholm. This location facilitates my work at repositories such as the National Library, the Stockholm units of the National Archives, and Stockholm's City Archive. From Uppsala I can reach most other archives in Sweden within a few hours, including the numerous Landsarkiv and various regional and local archives.
Swedish Homecoming's office in Uppsala is full of the witty artwork of Henrik Dybdahl, a Dane who describes himself as a heritage adventurer. The image shown here is used with his permission. To see more of Henrik's brilliant creations related to heritage, museums, and libraries, go to https://www.thedybdahl.com/collections/heritage-rock-n-roll.
About Me
I am a Swedish American. My morfar was a Swede from Småland, who emigrated in 1900. I was born and educated in the United States but then married a Swedish scientist and moved to Sweden. My academic degrees include a B.A. (Wellesley College), a Ph.D. (UNC-Chapel Hill), and a University Diploma in Librarianship that I earned in Sweden. I have lived here for almost 35 years, hold dual citizenship, and am fluent in Swedish; I can also read Norwegian and Danish.
After doing genealogical research for intellectual pleasure for two decades, I became a full-time professional in the field in 2014. Since then I have carried out about a hundred research projects, many of them dealing with Swedes who supposedly disappeared in America. Some of the "disappearing Swedes" stories have been published as a long article series in the Swedish American Genealogist. I have primarily done commissioned work for private clients, but I have also been involved in collaborative historical research with academic colleagues in both Sweden and the United States, my role being to solve the genealogical puzzles.
Genealogy is not my first career. Earlier I worked in biology, science education, and international development and held positions at the University of North Carolina and the Institute for 21st Century Studies in Arlington, Virginia. After moving to Sweden I became an expert in online information resources for professionals in various disciplines, including medicine and nursing, physics and mathematics, law, and the social sciences. Over a period of 25 years, I was on the faculties of the University of Gothenburg and Uppsala University and lectured in over three dozen nations around the world. Although my primary field was information, I also taught courses for master's and doctoral students about research design, data analysis, research ethics, and academic communication, including scholarly writing.
I have extensive experience as a speaker, writer, and editor. My publications outside of genealogy include numerous research articles in international refereed journals, as well as several books, two of which were published by the World Health Organization and UNESCO.