Genealogy - the employment of older nerds?

I must admit one thing that certainly leads many to stop reading here. I have always thought of genealogy as an employment of older, predominantly male, nerds. At the same time, I have been quite fascinated by these people who travel from parish to parish on the country, preferably on a bicycle or moped, and sit for days and go through old dusty books in search of ancestors. Another bias I have had for genealogists is that they always find the counts, barons and kings among their ancestors. If such is not to be found they might find at least a condemned person long back in time. It may be easy as outsiders to sense that the entire Swedish population consisting of descendants of the nobles and bandits - often in the same person.

When I learned more, I realized that the geek factor is actually quite high and that I am becoming a geek myself. My admiration for old-time genealogist, has however also increased. I can imagine how heroic it must have been to do family research before Genline, DIS and Anbytarforum existed. See, I have already become one of those who throws concepts around that a beginner thinks is tools in transplantation medicine, or a database for the genetic manipulation of our food. Relax, I will return to this later!

Back to the Ancient genealogists! Imagine a person who found a relative in any church register for example Järnboås Parish and managed to follow the person until the upper teens, which states that he moved to Ljusnarsbergs. Up on the bike and off to Kopparberg to track him in the church regiter of Ljusnarsberg Parish. (There are bad connections from Järnboås to Kopparberg). Well, in Kopparberg he will discover that his ancestor only after a few years moved back home again, but now he was registered in Nora Parish. It is only to jump up on the bike again and off to Nora to search for him among immigrants in order to find out which village he moved to. His new home is actually just two hundred meters from his childhood home, but on the other side of the parish boundary. Imagine what a heroic efforts in the search for his roots! Just the physical hardship has been one of the reasons that I never even considered to begin genealogy research. Another contributing factor is that I have not had a family to do research on because my father was illegitimate of unknown father and, I have understood, that research on other than the direct descendants, ie. on Fathers side is not quite as good as any other branch. Above you can however see my parents Nils Erik and Britt Maywor G.

/This text was first published in January 2007/