The parents in Lugnviksstrand
Carl Gustaf and Jenny Grönstedt
1890–1962 · 1889–1968
He was an accordion-playing dock worker; she held the home together on the Ångerman River. Together they had five children – and two of their sons, Karl and Erling, became some of Sweden’s best-known accordionists.
Jenny and Carl Gustaf Grönstedt.
Carl Gustaf
Born February 13, 1890, on Sandö; died August 14, 1962
Jenny
Born August 13, 1889; died October 28, 1968
Home
Lugnviksstrand, Bjärtrå
The children
Karl, Ture, Gösta, Margot and Erling
Origins
From the glassworks to Lugnviksstrand
Carl Gustaf’s mother came from a family of glassblowers who moved wherever the work was. The church records let us follow the family from works to works – across the Gulf of Bothnia and through Småland – before it finally settled on the Ångerman River.
1819
Carl Wilhelm Ditzler is born at Johannisholm glassworks in Venjan, Dalarna. The Ditzlers had moved from one glassworks to the next for generations – the earliest known was born in Norway in 1764. Carl Wilhelm becomes a glassblower at the Sandö glassworks.
1863
Dorotea Carolina is born on Sandö in Nora parish, the second youngest of eleven children. She goes into service as a maid, moving to Frånö and Torsåker as a young woman before returning to Sandö.
1890
Carl Gustaf is born on Sandö on February 13. The birth register names no father. During the 1890s Dorotea and her children live at Lugnviks udde, and the glassworker Carl August Grönstedt becomes Carl Gustaf’s stepfather.
1899
Work takes the family to Finland. On June 20, 1899, Dorotea and Carl August marry in Kontiolahti in North Karelia.
1900–1903
The glassworks of Småland: first Hofgård glassworks in Älghult, then Villköl in Hälleberga, where their son Alfred is born on New Year’s Day 1903.
1906
In Ytterlännäs their daughter Astrid Linnéa is born in February. Three weeks later her four-year-old sister, also named Astrid, drowns. That summer the family moves back to Lugnviks udde – and stays.
1912
In February Carl Gustaf and Jenny have their first son, Karl, and on April 11 they marry. Ture, Gösta, Margot and Erling follow.
1929
Dorotea dies in Lugnviksstrand on August 28. Carl August lives until 1941.
Jenny, too, had her roots across the Gulf of Bothnia. Her family came from Vörå in Ostrobothnia, in Swedish-speaking Finland, but worked in Ångermanland from time to time – Jenny herself was born in Anundsjö in 1889. Several Appelbergs from Vörå, probably her siblings, settled in Klocke in Nora parish, a few kilometres from Lugnviksstrand, and her parents came there in their old age. Both Carl Gustaf’s mother and his wife thus had ties to Finland.
And so Lugnviksstrand became home – and the place where the Accordion Kings grew up.
Sources: Swedish National Archives, Demographic Database (birth, marriage and death registers); Ulf Wiklander’s register of Nora parish (noray.se).
See the whole family in the family treeThe father
Carl Gustaf – the musician with the knitting needle
Carl Gustaf Grönstedt was born on February 13, 1890, on Sandö in Bjärtrå, the son of Dorothea Carolina Ditzler. The glassworker Carl August Grönstedt became his stepfather, and it was his name Carl Gustaf came to bear. He grew up on the Ångerman River, where there was music “everywhere, in every single cottage.”
The family was accordion-crazy. Carl Gustaf won a diatonic accordion in a penny raffle, and the gramophone horn at home played the “Norwegian Waltz” – the record he himself learned to play from. When Karl was learning the accordion, his father sat beside him at the kitchen table and pointed with a knitting needle at the buttons his son should press.
He remained a musician himself well into old age – with a love of the instrument like few others.
Carl Gustaf played all around Ådalen and far beyond the province’s borders, and he also composed a number of his own melodies. He made his living as a dock worker in the harbor, and in his last years he did some work as a peddler.
When he died on August 14, 1962, the newspaper wrote that he was the father of two of the country’s best-known accordion virtuosos, Karl and Erling.
Sources: Bjärtrå birth register 1890 (Swedish National Archives); obituary 1962; Söndagsextra 1977 and 1982.
Carl Gustaf with Erling’s accordion marked ERLING.
Father and sons: Karl, Carl Gustaf and Erling.
Carl Gustaf and Jenny out for a walk by the sea.
Carl Gustaf and Jenny at the laid table on the veranda.
Jenny Grönstedt, aged 77, 1967.
Jenny with her sons Erling, Karl, Gösta and Ture.
The mother
Jenny – made of sterner stuff
Jenny Grönstedt was born on August 13, 1889, in Anundsjö in Ångermanland, where her parents – the labourer Johan Appelberg and his wife Anna Lisa from Vörå in Ostrobothnia – were staying at the time. She grew up in Vörå. On April 11, 1912, she married Carl Gustaf, and in May that year she was registered in Bjärtrå as moving in from Vörå. They had five children: Karl (1912), Ture (1913), Gösta (1916), Margot (1919) and Erling (1923). Margot died as early as 1949, only 29 years old.
Jenny loved the old-time dances just as her husband did, and the house in Lugnviksstrand was always full of music. After Carl Gustaf died in 1962 she stayed on – and at 77 she was still climbing the steep hill up to the E4 highway on foot.
“It would be nice if the council folks would help us.”
Jenny Grönstedt died on October 28, 1968. Her funeral was held at Bjärtrå Church on November 3, and the death notice was signed by her four sons and their wives: Kalle and Karin, Ture and Martha, Gösta and Ann-Marie, Erling and Birgit.
Sources: death notice, October 1968; Västernorrlands Allehanda 1967; Anundsjö birth register 1889 and Bjärtrå parish register 1910–1920, p. 583 (Swedish National Archives).
The death notice, October 1968.
Jenny with a large bouquet of flowers.
Jenny at the coffee table.
Home
The house in Lugnviksstrand
The family home was in Lugnviksstrand on the Ångerman River. Children and grandchildren gathered here for family dinners, and this is where Jenny lived when she passed away in the fall of 1968.
The Grönstedt family’s house in Lugnviksstrand.
Family dinner at home in Lugnviksstrand.
A game of cards at the kitchen table – Jenny, Carl Gustaf, Birgit and Erling.
Jenny and Birgit at their needlework.
Marta, little Britt-Marie and Jenny, around 1953.
Ture and his family below the steep hill at Lugnviksstrand – the hill Jenny had to struggle up.
Jenny holding her newborn grandson, Erling Jr.
The house in Lugnviksstrand today, with the Ångermanälven river below. Erling Jr in the yard.
Birgit and Erling outside the house in Lugnviksstrand.
Festive days and everyday life
Carl Gustaf and Jenny in their finest.
Carl Gustaf and Jenny, cheek to cheek.
Carl Gustaf’s big day – flowers and cards in the parlour.
Carl Gustaf on his big day – with a dressed-up doll for company.
Jenny’s big day.
Jenny at the coffee table.
Their son Gösta and Ann-Mari on their wedding day.
Moving pictures
Winter in Lugnviksstrand
One winter the family brought out the home movie camera at home in Lugnviksstrand. Carl Gustaf shovels snow on the slope below the house with Benny Bladh and then laughs straight into the camera, Birgit looks out through the porch door and Jenny stands smiling in the doorway. We don’t know the exact year, but the film was shot while Carl Gustaf was still alive.
The family’s home movie from Lugnviksstrand, 1 min 44 s.
Carl Gustaf laughs into the camera.
Jenny smiles at the camera.
Birgit on the porch.
Jenny in the doorway.
Karin, Kalle’s wife, and Birgit.
Birgit out walking in the snow.
Stills from the family’s home movie. The last two are from the first part of the film, shot in Stockholm.
In memory
The family grave in Bjärtrå
Carl Gustaf and Jenny rest in Bjärtrå churchyard. On the stone they are Karl and Jenny – in everyday life Carl Gustaf was called Karl.
In the same grave rest their daughter Margot, who died in 1949, and their son Erling with his wife Birgit – the singer Birgit Bruno.
The family grave in Bjärtrå churchyard.