Scandinavian Cottage
AMENITIES:
-Dual coffee pot for multi-cup grounds or pods/k-cups, stocked with Sweden's oldest and most loved Gevalia coffee since the 1800's
-Authentic, traditional, handcrafted Scandinavian light breakfast
-French-style countertop convection oven/toaster
-Tv/DVD
-Dish cable
-Electric fireplace for atmospheric fire with heat or without heat
-A/C-heat mini-split for climate control
OUTDOORS:
-Outdoor patio equipped with gas grill and real wood fire pit for 365-day campfire
-Covered gazebo/pavilion made from mid-1800's barn beams to sit in during rain or sun and look into the woods to watch hundreds of Cardinals, and occasional deer
-11 acres of thick oaks and hickory trees with walking paths to walk through and picnic in
-[*soon to be hot tub on side deck nook, surrounded by privacy fence; to be installed in winter 2021]
SURROUNDING ACTIVITIES:
-We're located a 45-minute drive to downtown San Antonio, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, and the trendy and historical Pearl Brewing area and Hotel Emma (for Jazz, Sternewirth bar, Bakery Lorraine, James Beard nominated Cured and other restaurants)
-20 minutes from historical Seguin, which has fantastic antique shops and trendy restaurants [A-tan, Sakura, etc] and Seguin Brewing Company which is a local craft beer brewery with creative pub food and gourmet pizzas
-45 minutes from historic Gruene for authentic German architecture dating to the 1800's, shopping and trendy 5-star restaurants [Gruene River Grill; Gristmill River Restaurant; the River House; Mozie's...]
-45 minutes from 5-star Tanger Outlet mall with hundreds of the most well-known and popular brands [Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie, American Eagle, Crocs, Eddie Bauer, Hollister, Le Creuset, Anne Taylor, Vans, Eddie Bauer, and many more] at closeout prices. Tanger also has restaurants.
-1 hour from Sea World; 1 hour from Fiesta Texas
-1.5 hours from Austin
My great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents immigrated to America from Norway and Sweden in the mid-1800's. They had heard rumors about available farming land and bigger city job opportunities in Minnesota, North Dakota. Most of them were farmers or laborers in Norway and Sweden, trying to work challenging, unproductive land, or bouncing from one available short-term job to the next to meet their large family's needs; a few of them were expert shoemakers; others were single or widowed women who needed more income opportunity. (*To learn more about their individual life-stories in Scandinavia, and once they arrived in America, click on their portraits.) The information that reached them in Sweden and Norway about wide spans of land and paying city opportunities was too promising to ignore.
BACKGROUND STORY
(click on the arrow on the images to see all of them; or click on the actual image to learn more about that person.
To see if the rumors were true, they had no choice but load up their belongings into enormous wood trunks (suitcases didn't exist yet), and bravely left behind their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who remained in Scandinavia, and kept in touch via letters, which I'm in possession of.
In this day and age of cell phones, internet, social media, Skype and Zoom for easy connection, most of us can't imagine making such a frightening and sad, life-changing decision of leaving everyone we've ever known and loved, never to see them again, to start a needed brand new life in the unknown. Today's immigration is nothing like it used to be.
Because they left home, I'm here in Texas, and have the family I have. So, I'm forever grateful to them, and don't want to ignore or fail to recognize what and who they left behind. Therefore, our Scandinavian Cottage pays homage to the heritages, homes, customs, and loved ones they said goodbye to, but very much took with them. Our cottage features every aspect and person they left behind in Norway in Sweden, as well as the immigrants themselves...so that they aren't forgotten, but are appreciated.
The journeys by sea took 2-3 weeks, and up to 4 months in the case of my 3rd-great-grandfather. Then they crossed whole states by trains or other means (no cars) to arrive in Minnesota and North Dakota. My Norwegian great-great-grandparents staked their claim to large plots of their own untouched, available farmland in North Dakota, and set up homesteads by cutting down trees to build their homes themselves...as was done in Norway; one great-grandfather dug his home 3 feet into the hill and used the surrounding sod to form the walls and roof. (The two photographs below were of two different great-great-grandfathers in front of the homes they built themselves in North Dakota.) My other great-great-grandparents settled in the towns of Minnesota, rather than choosing to be farmers. (I tell each of their individual stories in their portraits above.)
Through our Scandinavian Cottage, my family is offering you a taste of the "Old-world" Norway and Sweden that my great-grandparents personally lived before immigrating to a more Americanized life surrounded by many additional cultures. We're offering you a cottage that aligns more with the homes of my great-great-grandparents, their parents, and their grandparents...and so on, who were born as early as the 1700's (and whom I've named and described their life-stories in the above portraits, and in our products that are named for them).
Today's concept of "Scandinavian"-design is extremely modern-looking...with palettes of whites and grays, creating a sparse, spacious, light and airy, simplified look, sold by IKEA. I love that modern Scandinavian look; I even shop at IKEA. I also follow actual Norwegians and Swedes on Instagram whose homes look like that... and I love the homes. But, in reality, that modern, neutral palette doesn't represent or look anything at all like the homes my immigrant grandparents grew up in and left behind. Pre-1900's and pre-1800's Norwegian and Swedish homes weren't like that at all; they were quite opposite of that design style. So, you won't find that in our Scandinavian Cottage.
Sweden and Norway copper Mining
Sweden has copper mines since 1000 A.D....around the Viking period. The first, biggest, and longest producing mine in Sweden is called Falun, located in Dalarna. (That's Falun mine in the pictures below.) Swedes first began extracting raw copper-ore rocks from the Falun mine to use for personal household needs during the years 1000-1200 A.D. By the late 1200's they exported it to Europe for money. In fact, Europe was receiving extremely large amounts of copper extracted from Falun mine...making it Sweden's largest and most important export and income for hundreds of years. Sweden's mines provided the vast majority of Europe's copper from the 1300s-1700's. For this reason, our Scandinavian Cottage features copper faucets, flatware, and copper-colored-lined pots and pans, copper curtain rods, and even an authentic 1700's copper kettle from a home in Sweden, converted to a kitchen sink pendant light.
Why does "copper mining" matter to the design-style of Old-world Sweden? The by-product of the mineral-rich raw copper-ore lodged in the earth is tinted soil in hues of red, orange, yellow and even mint green (like oxidized copper still turns). So, beginning in the 1600's and continuing throughout the 1700's-1800's, Swedes used that copper ore-tinted soil mixed with linseed oil and rye flour (to make the tinted oil pasty) to make their own anti-weathering "paint". They slathered it on their log and wood homes and buildings to better protect the wood...and to add more cheery brightness to their surroundings during the long, harsh, drab winters. This explains the vibrant, colorful buildings, and "Falun red" homes with white trim, painted from Falun mine's enormous amounts of red-tinted soil...that Sweden is so famous for. This is why we painted the shutters of Scandinavian Cottage bright red.
Here's the shoemaking shop and farm home in Stene, near Kumla (in Orebro County), Sweden of my great-great-grandfather, Johannes [called "Johan"] Larsson [born in 1832]. His son (my great-grandfather) Per Johans-son [born 1860] learned his shoemaking craft in this building. When he was 22-years old, Per immigrated in 1882, and opened a shoemaking shop of his own in St. Paul, Minnesota. (You can learn far more about his life in his biography if you click on his portrait above.). *Notice, Per's childhood home, where he left his 9 siblings, father, mother, grandparents, and extended family, was painted "Falun red" from the copper mine in Falun.
Norway has mined copper and nickel since the 1700's in Modum. The by-product of Norway's copper and nickel is cobalt blue pigment. The largest area for cobalt production was Skuterud. Europe received the vast majority of its cobalt blue pigment for glass and porcelain from Norway since the 1700's. For this reason, our Scandinavian Cottage features a cobalt blue front door, as well as cobalt blue glassware and dishes, in honor of the color's Norwegian origin.
With such bright and vivid colors originating from Norway and Sweden's chief exports from 1000-1800 A.D, it's easy to see that today's white and gray neutral tones are modern palettes only.
Norwegian Viking design
If we rewind time back to about 793 A.D., we'd come face to face with the Vikings in Norway...very possibly some of my great-grandparents. It is a historical fact that Vikings originated in Norway. The Viking era officially began around 793 A.D., and lasted until 1066. They were farmers and raised animals when home, living in their grass and sod covered log "longhouses".
It is not known exactly when the Viking-style sod/turf ["torvtak"] roof longhouse first started to be built, or which culture initiated it, but they built hundreds or thousands of them throughout Norway over a period of over 200 years. Obviously, the last Vikings' grandchildren and great-grandchildren...and each proceeding generation of Viking descendants thereafter, were keenly aware of their heritage, and could see the log-built, sod-topped structures around them in Norway, and likely lived in one growing up. The size changed, but the overall construction didn't. This natural, unpainted log and sod roof architecture is still in Norway.
This style of all-natural architecture is what my Norwegian great-great-grandfathers were accustomed to and were raised around until their mid-20's and early 30's, prior to arriving in America and settling in the plains of North Dakota (the two black and white pictures of homes at the top of the page). Read about my 3rd-great-grandfather, Ole Lien, from Norway, to see what kind of home he built in North Dakota after leaving this kind of familiar architecture behind.
Norwegian Viking Stave Churches
Just after the Norwegian Viking era of 793-1066 A.D., famous "Stave" churches started to be built in the new Christian atmophere of Norway, but using centuries-old Viking building techniques. The oldest Stave churches that still exist date to @1000-1100 A.D.. They definitely show the mixture of the previous pagan belief system (dragons, which symbolize Satan: Revelation 12:7-9) mixed with the new Christian beliefs (crosses); the term "stave" is Norwegian for "spell"...which perfectly correlates with pagan beliefs that incorporated witchcraft practices within the structures (thus dragons from every gable).
But the term "stave" also (supposedly) refers to the construction of using vertical pine posts at each corner...which is the exact same method we used for our Scandinavian Cottage. Norwegian Stave churches were made of logs, board wood, and heavily carved wood detailing...simply because trees were abundant, and they used what they had. They layered cupola-like structures on top each other to create height (and air ventilation/heat escape), and had protruding 3-D gable dragons or other carved designs reaching into the sky. Vikings had already been using the finial carvings at both ends of their Viking ships, as well as criss-crossing over their home door and tents for years prior; it was natural to add them to their stave buildings as well. These unique Viking-inspired architectural features became Norway's trademark design for the next hundreds of years. For that reason, we incorporated this design in our Scandinavian Cottage. We traced the same fascia board detail carvings from one of the oldest Norwegian stave churches and carved our fascia trims the same way.
Norwegian Stabbur Houses
During this same time period of the Stave churches, "stabbur" houses were being built, as well. Again, they were made of logs and wood planks, with heavily carved detailing. They began as storage for food and clothing, where mice and water couldn't get in. The building was elevated on stilts that mice couldn't get up, and wind could pass under, ridding any moisture from hurting the wood floor. The stairs were separated at a distance from the door, so mice couldn't cross it. Meats and cheeses were hung from the 1st floor ceiling in the same room with the stored grains and vegetables. Clothes were in boxes in 2nd floor.
Rosemaling & Dalmalning
Beginning in the early 1700's, 500 years after Stave churches started to be built, both Norway and Sweden began using their own unique styles of multi-colored floral painting inside their homes and buildings. Norwegians called it "rosemaling" (= rose painting); Swedes called it "Dalmalning" or "Kurbits". The two country's styles look very different.
Norway had 3 regions (Telemark, Hallingdal- where my great-great-grandmother was raised- and Rogaland) that developed their own unique versions of Norwegian "rosemaling". Completely unlike today's white and gray modern-Scandinavian design concept and palette, the vibrant and highly detailed floral paintings were done on furniture, ceilings, doors, beds, and walls in both Norway and Sweden throughout the 1700s and 1800's. Sweden's cottages were covered in their own version of floral painting (Dalmalning/Kurbits). I tried to honor this centuries-long tradition of my heritage by rosemaling the shutters and bathroom ceiling of our Scandinavian Cottage, as well as filling it with family heirlooms and both rosemaled and dalmalned antiques.
Scandinavian Sauna
In around the 1500's, Scandinavians used "sauna" houses to bathe. Prior to electricity and hot water heaters, they needed a way to bathe during the arctic low temperatures during the dead of winter, without the need to haul in bucket upon bucket of water to heat on a stove. So, they went outside of their homes to the sauna house ["badstue" = bath-house in Norwegian; "bastu" in Swedish], which was a simple wooden hut. They made a fire to keep warm, and ladled water from a wood bucket over hot rocks set in the fire to "steam" up the whole sauna house, forcing them to sweat, along with the use of handmade soap made from animal fats and lye.
Being in South Texas, we didn't build a sauna house for you, but we deliberately designed the bathroom of the Scandinavian Cottage to feel as though you open the door of the bathroom to go "outside"...amidst the birch trees that cover Norway and Sweden... and enter the shower which looks like the wood sauna house, equipped with pebble floor, copper detailing (which Sweden mined), and even custom-scented soaps we handcraft with nutrient-rich goat's milk, vitamin E, and more.
Scandinavian Cottage
As you can see, this "Old-world" Scandinavian heritage, which has been legitimately traced back at least to the pre-1700's in my line of ancestry, isn't anything like IKEA or today's modern Scandinavian design. This Old-world Scandinavian aesthetic and experience is something my family and I would love to share with you.
To pay my respects to my ancestors and their way of life and survival, while keeping to heritage traditions and ways, we used authentic, hand-hewn mortise & tenon timbers dating to the mid-1800s (their same time period, when they were growing up and building their own homes), to build our Scandinavian Cottage. Every "nail" that holds 2 beams together are actually hand-carved and whittled oak pegs that my husband made from scratch, and drove them through the wood. Here are pictures that show his step-by-step process making each mortise pocket and tenon; he also makes mortises and tenons on the mantel surrounds and other furniture people order from him from these same old beams.
Just like the construction of the Norwegian Stave churches, we included the gable finials and ornately cut fascia board detailing, and a replica steeple like the oldest stave churches in Ringebu, Norway, where my great-grandfather immigrated from in the 1800's, leaving my 2nd-great-grandparents and 3rd-great-grandparents behind. We furnished it with chairs, a couch, and antiques....all from the 1700s to early 1900's Sweden and Norway. The lighting is all authentic from the 1800s, but electrified.
The Scandinavian Cottage logo is loaded in symbolism. There are more moose per square mile in Sweden than anywhere else in the world. Therefore, the moose is the honorary mascot of the Scandinavian Cottage. The floral image on the moose's face represents Norway and Sweden's 300-year old floral painting [rosemaling/dalmalning] heritage. The crown/crest represents the royal monarchies of both Norway and Sweden...which both countries use as visual representations of their lands (the moose's face is a crest). And, it's all "tied" together with rope imagery to symbolize the Norwegian Viking influence of 800-1000 A.D. that my Norwegian ancestors grew up with, and perhaps even were prior to the 1700s..which I haven't traced as of yet.
So come...step back in time. Live like an authentic, early Scandinavian (unlike IKEA).
Sit in hand-carved and decorated, unique furniture that actually sat in homes in Sweden in the 1800's, surrounded by household decor that also lived in and was used in Swedish and Norwegian homes in the 1700's and 1800's. Drink from pewter, or cobalt blue glass, ornate goblets, or fill a Viking horn mug. Wrap yourselves in fur on the couch or outside by the fire while sitting in your carved Viking "high chair"...the seat of honor that the head of the longhouse sat in. Surround yourself with our quiet and private thick woods and enjoy withdrawing for a while. Cook in the Swedish and Norwegian-decorated kitchen. Step "outside" into the woods-themed bathroom and use the wood sauna-looking shower. Climb into your Nordic-inspired Viking bed with your 1800's chandelier suspended above you, exactly like the kind that still suspend in the 1800's cottages in Sweden today. Sample Scandinavian breakfast items. Let us show you genuine Old-world Scandinavian hospitality in our little corner of Texas that we fondly call Cottonwood Creek. We look forward to meeting you and helping you rest.
