My grandma's grandma
Anna was a Swedish pioneer, and while we didn't make it to the western town she came from (Tegneby, about an hour's drive north of Gothenburg), she was on my mind when we visited Stockholm. We happened to be there on Midsummer's Day, an important holiday in Scandinavia. We were happy to be able to spend some time at Skansen, a living history open-air museum, and there, as I thought about Anna being an herbalist, I learned an interesting thing in the bakery. The man who was making the traditional flatbread explained that anything baked at the time of the summer or winter solstice was known to have particular healing properties. (I experienced that myself as I was suffering from a bad cold and felt better the next day after having partaken of his offerings.) This explanation helped me understand why the story of Anna's delivery of a Christmas fruitcake to her ill, imprisoned husband
John Cottam was such a meaningful event in her personal history: she likely baked it with the winter solstice's healing powers in mind.
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| midsummer maypole |
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| healing herbs in Sweden |
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| Skansen, Sweden, a place to step back into history |
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