I am a week late, a dollar short, and a few bricks shy of a full load … Lina Sandell’s birthday was last week, October 3rd, but I got side-tracked by cowboys and the West.
Lina Who?
Caroline Wilhelmina Sandell Berg was born in Froderyd, Sweden in 1832. She is often known as the “Fanny Crosby of Sweden.” (OK, you can look up Fanny Crosby if that doesn’t help). In her lifetime, Lina wrote over 600 hymns, many of which filtered to the States, courtesy of the massive emigration from Sweden in the late 1800s; in my own High Plains era, we grew up singing English versions of the most well-known of these hymns. (and a few in the original Swedish. Ref Dryland Lament, P. 148 and 156)
Sandell’s father was a Lutheran minister at Fröderyd parish in Småland, Sweden, the land of rock farmers, from whence my wife Ella’s ancestors derive. There’s not a big market for rocks, the crop which grew best in Småland, which certainly helps explain why Ella’s ancestors decided to try their luck in America.
When we visited Sweden as college students on a choir tour in 1993, it was a bit of a homecoming for Ella; her industrious grandmothers notified their family branches in the old country of our impending visit, and after our concerts, second or third cousins came out of the woodwork to introduce themselves to Ella.
When in Sweden any self-respecting descendent will make the pilgrimage to Sandell’s childhood home. We were no exception. I snapped this picture of Lina’s statue at the rectory of Fröderyd (yes with actual film … ask your parents). We remarked to our Swedish guide, “We have a replica of that same statue on the quad back at North Park University in Chicago.”
“Oh, I think no,” was his response. “I believe yours in Chicago is the original. This is a copy of that one.” Awesome, I tucked that one away as a fun-fact over the decades. It served as a physical reminder of the back-and-forth nature of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It wasn’t always a one-way trip, many immigrants returned to Sweden, either to stay or visit family, certainly a contributing factor to the relative long-endurance of Swedish cultures and customs amongst immigrants and their descendants in America.
But alas, my research revealed that Sweden owns bragging rights to Lina’s statue; yes my friends, Sweden has the original. Cast by artist Axel Wallenberg in 1953, it was not until two decades later that a replica was commissioned and dedicated on the grounds of our little campus on the north side of Chicago. Oh well, it does not change the remarkable nature of the interactions between immigrant and home-country–communities, churches, families, and histories.
An obscure hymn writer, an even more obscure statue….these are the things of personal tradition and history. It is good and proper to remember our ancestors. In such a spirit, today our church here in Virginia celebrated International Communion Sunday. We are blessed with diversity and heritage, but we were reminded of the key to all of this; we are united in Christ. Our bonds come not from cultural heritage nor statues of dead hymn writers–it is in Him all our other differences fade away. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28.
