From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar-usefor@algonet.se)
Date: Sat Aug 17 2002 - 15:35:00 CDT
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@prodigy.com> writes:
> I think everything in Scandanavia is pretty confusing anyway, since my
> grandfather came from Sweeden and then his part of Sweeden became Norway.
> And believe it or not the US Census bureau *cares*, and has rules for
> specifying either the name of the country when you left or the current
> name of the place. If the Vikings had just stayed and colonized this
> continent we wouldn't have this confusion ;-)
[As if this subthread wasn't off-topic already.]
As far as I now, Sweden has not ceded any land to Norway, since
1660, when Norway got back Trondheims län, which Sweden had acquired
two years earlier.
Your grandfather probably lived in a country known as Sweden-Norway,
which was a union between, um, well not two peers, since the whole
union thing was something Sweden crammed down the throat on the
Norwegians when they declared independence from Denmark. But Norway
did rule quite a lot of their own business. Foreign policy, as well
as the army was run from Stockholm as I recall.
[And if you think Scandinavia is confusing; don't even consider
thinking of Central Europe. The city of Uzhgorod belonged to
four different states during the 20th century.]
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se