By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
Many of Glendive and Dawson County’s residents have Scandinavian roots, but one local couple has carefully tended and nurtured those roots over the decades to build a strong, closely-knit connection to their family on the other side of the Atlantic.
Early last week, for the “fourth or fifth time” over the last few decades, Glendive residents Jim and Carol Swanson welcomed Jim’s cousins from Sweden to their Montana home. The two sides of the family actually see each other more often than that, as the Swansons noted they have been to Sweden to visit “14 or 15 times” since their first visit to the mother country back in 1968.
Brother and sister Maj Hell (pronounced like “my”) and Ambjorn Olofson (pronounced am-bee-yorn) are Jim’s second cousins, their mother being his first cousin. The duo hail from the Swanson ancestral home in the church parish of Hemsjö in the municipality of Alingsås in southwestern Sweden. Maj works for a department store. Ambjorn formerly worked for Swedish automaker Volvo and now helps run a test track where another company is experimenting with driverless, GPS-guided cars.
The Swansons met Maj and Ambjorn during their first visit to the family farm in Hemsjö in 1968, an oil painting of which hangs prominently in the Swanson’s living room. Jim noted that when they first met his cousins, “These kids were just kids.”
Carol still vividly remembers that first trip to Sweden and the intensely emotional reaction Jim had when he stood up in front of his extended Swedish family as they gathered on the ancestral family farm.
“I can still remember they were all wearing wooden shoes ... and Jim started crying and said ‘I never thought I’d get to walk in the lands of my father,’” Carol said.
Jim’s father immigrated to the United States in 1917 “not knowing a word of English,” Jim said, at the behest of his best friend, who was already working in Glendive for the Northern Pacific Railroad. As fate would have it, the woman who would become Jim’s mother was also a native Swede who had immigrated to Montana and was working as a schoolteacher when his father met her.
Jim’s father had several siblings, most of whom stayed put in Sweden. Jim noted his father regularly corresponded with his family in Sweden to maintain the familial connections. In the century since Jim’s father left Sweden for Montana, the family he left behind has grown considerably.
“There’s about 150 cousins there,” Jim noted.
Connections with those Swedish cousins have deepened over the years as Jim and Carol have swapped visits back and forth with them. Maj made her first trip to the United States a decade after meeting Jim and Carol for the first time as a child in 1968.
In 1978, she, her parents and her little sister got their first glimpse of Montana. Maj said she remembers the first thing that struck her was how immense and open the landscape is compared to Sweden.
“Much bigger ... all the roads straight ahead and long, long, long, long,” Maj said about the first thing in Montana which struck her as being different from Sweden.
“Big” is a word that seems to come up often when Maj and Ambjorn describe as what they see as the largest differences between Montana and Sweden, whether it’s the size of the landscape or the portions served up at meals. Maj said the other thing she remembers that really struck her during her first visit to America were the size of the steaks served up to them at a local restaurant.
“The other thing I remember are the two T-bone steaks, they were so big,” Maj said.
Robust steak cuts are fine by Ambjorn, who didn’t make his first trip to Montana until 2008. When asked what his favorite part about visiting Montana is, he simply responded, “steaks.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Swedish siblings think that bigger or more is always better.
Ambjorn noted that one of the major differences between the United States and Sweden he notices on every trip is how much easier it is to get around his native country without a car.
“I think the biggest difference in Sweden is we have trains and buses and we can go everywhere in Sweden by train,” he said.
Carol noted that the siblings are also taken aback by how many sugary beverages Americans consume.
“What they’ve mentioned to us is all the sugary drinks, and in Sweden everything is really natural,” she said.
“Everything has sugar in it (in the U.S.), even the coffee,” Maj chimed in.
Carol added that the difference in eating habits and health consciousness have always been evident to she and Jim during their trips to Sweden.
“I’d say it’s just a purer way of living over there,” she said. “Everything is just pristine.”
Maj and Ambjorn will spend three weeks total here visiting with the Swansons and exploring further out into the region. Carol noted that with so many trips to Montana already under their belts, there isn’t much in the way of major tourist attractions that the siblings haven’t already seen before.
With that in mind, Maj said there’s nothing special she and her brother have planned while they’re here other than visiting with Jim and Carol and other friends and extended family members from Sweden who have settled in the Mountain West, continuing the work of nurturing those cross-oceanic family ties.
“Just enjoy, I think,” Maj said when asked about their plans for this trip. “We don’t have special things we want to do, just enjoy family.”
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.