28. Rune and Irene Elofsson

Rune and Irene Elofsson

It is time for me to acknowledge the co-authors of this blog of Swedish letters.  Let me introduce Rune and Irene Elofsson of Eksjo, Sweden.  Irene is a great granddaughter of Anna Sofia Svensdotter who was the sister of Greta Lovisa  and the Swenson brothers you have been reading about.  This is my favorite picture of them, taken when we had lunch at a place near a waterfall they had visited when they were courting many years ago!

Rune and Irene at Home

Rune and Irene have spent years carefully translating the Letters to Spakarp.  We saw some of the letters in their computer room where they picked up the old faded letters at random and used a dictionary to translate the archaic Swedish script into English.

Our daughter, Susan and I  spent nearly two weeks with them in late summer of 2006.  We had the whole upstairs, and it was lovely.  We slept soundly every night, after a day of touring.  They drove us all around, visiting places the Swensons had lived, churches they attended, and were baptized, and treating us like Royalty all the time with wonderful Swedish breakfasts in their cheerful kitchen.   We ate with the dictionary nearby to use when there was a word we did not understand.

Of course, every morning Irene filled a thermos with hot coffee that we enjoyed with her rolls for coffee stops during our visits around the area.   We also enjoyed visits to the homes of Irene's sister Gun-Britt Fritzon and her husband Sigvard and her brother Gunvar Grevstig and his wife Mona.  As I said, it was the trip of a lifetime, and I was sad when it was time to leave.

The reason we can read these letters is because of the work of Rune and Irene.  Rune is very active in the Genealogy Society of Sweden and has spent a lot of time tracing our families and recording the information for us to have.


Thank you again, Rune and Irene!