Ten New Lives: Swedes in the Pacific Northwest by Lars Nordstrom

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 113, no. 2 The company played a significant role in turning salmon, a fish that had sustained life at the river for thousands of years,into a global commodity,with unlimited demand,as biologist Jim Lichatowich has written.After 1945,the CRPA was increasingly involved in the modern industrialization of the fishing industry. But that is material for a different book. This one celebrates the glory days, when salmon was king on the river, there were plenty of fish, and Astoria was a company town. Carmel Finley Oregon State University Ten New Lives: Swedes in the Pacific Northwest by Lars Nordstrom Swedish Roots in Oregon Press, Portland, Oregon, 2011. Bibliography. 270 pages. $15.00 paper. Nordstrom’s book was born out of his curiosity about why Swedes of his own generation, individuals mostly in their forties in 2000, would choose to leave a country that provided social justice, education, jobs, and health care. Pursuing the answer, Nordstrom went about interviewing Swedes who had settled in the United States after the Vietnam War. The narratives offered in Ten New Lives do not represent the full scope of Nordstrom’s project; he conducted more than ten interviews. He describes the process of selecting interviewees as one of serendipity: ask friends, colleagues, and let the rings widen. He did stipulate that subjects must have been in the United States at least ten years and that the book would include five women and five men. At the time of the interviews, only one of the nine narrators was a U.S. citizen. The original oral histories have been translated from Swedish and extensively edited,with the author’s questions and significant chunks of the interviews eliminated. Nordstrom gave participants four pages of questions to ponder before the interviews. Narrators had the final say in the version of their stories to be published. Nordstrom’s goal was to present readable narratives, and the result is a likeable and revealing portraiture. Narrators are identified by their first names only. Roger, an inveterate traveler and highly employable electrical engineer, observes how differently Swedes and Americans form and retain friendships. He notes how the United States South is a country quite unlike the Pacific Northwest. Cecilia speaks about her sojourn in the United States,first as an exchange student,with her sponsoring family asking her to speak with more of an accent so people would know she was a foreigner. She later studied textile crafts in Sweden, married an American, and came to Oregon. Emphasizing the importance of keeping one’s original language, she says it is also fun to have a “secret” language. She and her husband took her mother to an Egyptian restaurant in Portland once,however,and they were surprised when the owner spoke Swedish. Moving eventually to Gig Harbor,Washington, she asserts that Washington is not the same country as Oregon, where there is a sense of the public good and one’s responsibility to it, as in Sweden. These narrators sometimes note the naïve approach to the globe that often characterizes the friendly Americans they encounter, who ask questions such as: Where is Sweden? Actually, is it Switzerland? The speakers reveal how they negotiate the new culture in everyday ways: insurance, bringing in-laws over from Sweden, preschools, and why not nudity in the swimming pool? They are not of one mind about socialism, taxes in either country, or even about the value of retaining their mother tongue. Questions of identity arise tellingly for Cecilia, who mused that when she dies, she  Book Notes Purchase back issues of the Quarterly. Call 503.306.5230 or send an e-mail to museumstore@ohs.org. might have some of her ashes scattered at the Oregon coast, and some at the cemetery on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. Eventually, she decided one place would be better. Nordstrom provides a helpful postscript.In 2001,Sweden allowed dual citizenship.With the exception of two,the subjects of the book have become citizens of the United States. Ten New Lives presents a fascinating portrait of Swedes living in the U.S. Kay Reid Portland, Oregon book notes Oregon Historical Quarterly volunteers and staff created these Book Notes by...