Finnsam spring conference, interview with Anna Forsberg

Yes, now we have taken the trip to Mastila. And we have been granted the audience with Anna Forsberg, who is said to be an expert on the galaxy Gotlund, amongst others. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. We have some questions that we ask our guests. Are you a forest fiend? No, I'm not. I do have the Sami Finn DNA haplogroup, but I'm not related to any of the forest fiends, but I have that earlier in my ancestry, apparently. What triggered your interest for forest fiends and Gotlund, for example? I started working at nowadays Torsby Finskogscentrum in Rikvatnet, outside of Torsby, when it started in... It started actually in 1992, and I began working there in 1993, together with the former responsible boss, Håkan Eles, who started the Finnkulturcentrum, the Forest Fiend Culture Center in Torsby. So him and I developed the activities from the beginning, and just a year later, we employed more people, and we became more and more people working there. And I continued also working with the development of the activities there. So I was responsible for working with archives, and also taking on groups, guiding them, meeting visitors, and telling everyone who wanted to listen about the forest fiends. So that started my interest. But I am educated in culture, in literature, and also ethnology, ethnography. So it is my sort of field in my education, so it was very natural for me to start working there. So that was the beginning of my interest. And of course, I am actually from the area where we are sitting now, in the former parish of Østmark, north of Torsby, and my family is from here also, although I'm not a forest fiend. No. We have a project going on in the USA now, and Sarah Kamela, who is the leader for Forest Fiends in America, the Facebook page, they have been invited to talk about forest fiends at Fiendfest in the USA, and that is a huge event. Great. We think there are many people here, but there it will be between 5,000 and 10,000 people. I think it's fantastic. I also follow the Forest Fiends group at Facebook, and I think it's moving. I must say it's moving. I've talked to several of the people involved in that group, and I think it's very touching that they are so interested in the forest fiend history here. And as far as I see it, I suppose they are also related to the immigration, so I think it's a very beautiful initiative they have. Yes. What do you think about that they call themselves forest fiends? I think it's correct, absolutely. What is the English term? I think we have... sometimes we forget the people, I think. It's a lot about buildings and saunas and smoke cabins, and of course this is also important. But about the spirit in people, do you think there is a common spirit with the forest fiends? Yes. I think I do. I think historically it definitely was, and I think you can also see that in the relatives today. All my friends that I know are forest fiend descendants. They are very passionate about what they do, and they are very stubborn, and they know what they want. I think it's a very common thing to see among them. Another thing I think is a little cute with the Americans, that if you have a slight amount of DNA common, you are automatically a cousin. Yes, absolutely. I like this. I like this. And I think it's also very moving when you hear about genealogy that you always talk about which family you are from, and of course you have almost certainly seen the t-shirts with the family names. Yes. And that is also a very big giveaway, because often you see people that just look at each other and that has the same family name. Oh, you are also Valkoinen, yes I am, and how are we related? And then you are all of a sudden family, and you have a very big family in this. And also, even if I'm not a forest fiend by DNA, I am sort of a forest fiend in spirit, but I think it's very beautiful that we are sort of a big family, all of us. You thrive in this environment? Yes, I do, absolutely. We mentioned that you are sort of an expert on Gotland, and many of our American listeners are very fascinated by Gotland, especially Sarah Kamala, who has ordered me to speak to you, actually. I hope she will forgive me that I say this, but what meaning does Gotland have for you for the forest fiends? What does he mean for us? I think his importance really can't be overrated. He's so, so very important, because it's thanks to him that we, at least this part of the Finnish forest here in Solar Värmland, knows the names of every forest fiend he met, because he asked them, he asked which family they were from, he documented what they said, and of course he also wrote it in the parish books for the parishes. And he was also very stubborn, so he knew what he wanted, and he wanted to give them sort of an own nation, sort of parish, and he documented everything he heard and saw. And thanks to his documentation, we know so much about this area of the Finnish forest. And I think it's very, very sad, because he also traveled in northern and eastern part of Sweden, north and east of the area we are sitting in now, in Solar Värmland, but when he documented the Finnish forest there, he wrote a lot of the family names, but here he had a quest, he wanted to give them an own parish, so he needed to have a lot more documentation here. So we have a lot of documentation from him, of course, we have his documentation of family names, we have his notes in the parish books, and of course we also have his very, very vast documentation of all the forest Finns in this area, and their family name. So his documentation is sort of a starting point for everyone that works with genealogy in this area, because nowadays you always start with his material, and later, when you start to develop and you go through his material, you see also how important it is to have his documentation. Earlier on, it was said that you really couldn't rely on his details, and if he said that, well, this person is from this family, you had to find other sources for his details. But nowadays, we know that almost 90%, 95% of what is written is correct, because we can see that through our own historical documentations and research, and of course also the DNA project that has been done, which also certifies his research. So he's very, very important, he's our base for knowledge. I can add that, for my part, he was the one who wrote down my family name, Gevren, sometimes Gran-Gran-Gran-Gran, sister, she was documented through a letter to Gotlund. I have also personally to thank him, but Gotlund, was he a forest Finn himself, or just a plain Finn? He was sort of a plain Finn. He was born in the southern part of Finland, just outside Helsinki, in the Swedish-speaking area in 1796, but when he was seven years old, the family moved into the area which we know that the forest Finns originated from, and that is Savalax, and they moved to Jova parish, where his father was a clergyman, he was a priest, and there, of course, Gotlund met first of all the Savalax accent of Finnish, and he also learned Finnish properly, which he was later criticized for not speaking properly, but he knew what he was doing. Was he originally Swedish-speaking? Yes, he was, yes. So, he learned the Savalax accent there, and that was also his, what you call it, his most important skill when he came to this area, because here, people were talking that accent, so he could talk with them quite fluently in Savalax accent. So, in many ways, Gotlund is similar to you, I would say? Thank you! Yes, absolutely! And I must say, I had my lecture yesterday, talking about the influences and ideology of Gotlund, and of course, he's a child of his time, as I like to call him, because he was introduced to the Romanticism, and all the researches and ideology from his university studies, and his teachers, of course, so, at that time, you wanted to search for your origin, and for your family, and for the original culture which you belong to, and he found it here. And in a way, we are doing this now, in a way? Yes, we are definitely walking in his footsteps, and I like to think also, because I have the same value as he had, that I would like to continue his work also, and that is also why I publish his books, and manuscripts, and will continue to do that. Yes, that is a big thing, his diary. Yes. It was you and Niklas Persson in cooperation. Yes, it was. And as I understand, that was quite a big job. Yes. So you had to go through all the, and it wasn't written in today's Swedish, the books, or was it some old, I'm talking about this because when you do genealogy, and look in church books, these crow signs all over. Yes, it is. Well, the work with his diary was quite straightforward. I had the text from the older version of the diary, which was published first in 1931 to 1933, and then also again as a facsimile in 1986. I had that text, and then I ordered a copy of his original manuscript from the archive in Helsinki, and then I sat and compared the two, and slowly and very, very carefully adjusted the published text back to his original writing, because the published text is altered. You have changed the spelling of the words to modernize the Swedish text that it was written in. So I carefully brought it back to his original speech and language, very, very carefully, and then you also have his voice in it. And of course, in the earlier versions also, it is an abridged version also, so I also completed the diary by publishing the whole text, because they had removed small stories about his hunting with his dogs. I loved to hunt. And also they had removed quite a long tale about when he walked from one of the biggest Norwegian Finnish settlements in Trängsberget at Lake Røyden. He walked from there and down to the lake with a couple of men from the farm, and they walked over the ice and fell into the water, and it was freezing cold. So they almost drowned. So this is quite a long and very, very dramatic story. The whole story of this very dramatic event was never published in the earlier versions, but I published it in mine. So my and Niklas' version of the diary, that is complete. Totally complete. Do you think it will become an English translation? I'm planning to. It is a very, very long text, but I really would like to do a shorter version, but also tell about all the details, because you have to read his text to understand what he was thinking, I think. I also heard that he was a very fan of women. Yes. He was a womanizer. He was a womanizer, yes, he was. But nobody can say that they descend from him? No. He didn't get any children? No, no. And that has been researched about. We have a very, very skilled genealogist, Jan Myhrvold, who has gone through the diary and seen every woman he has been with and seen if the meeting produced any children. Every? Is it a number on how many women he was with? Yes, I think it's about, I can't remember, is it eight? Six, seven, eight? Is that normal? Yes, it's normal. But he was here only for a brief period of time. Maybe not so normal. But there was no children, so he has no descendants here in the Finnish forest. Thank you, Anna, for your nice words and good talk about the Gopjun and yourself. I think the American public will appreciate this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Pat.