Monday June 9, 2014 – Mora, Minnesota

Monday 9th we visited Mora, Minnesota. Mora is a small town with some 3,500 inhabitants and everywhere you turn, you notice the Swedish inheritance. Wikipedia.com and Princeton.edu says that Mora got its dalecarlian name in 1872 from a suggestion made by  a man called Israel Israelson who had come from Mora, Sweden one year earlier with his family.

Giant dala horse in Mora, MN

In Mora, we reunited with three wonderful language consultants from our recordings of 2011. We met at Freddy's restaurant (Do have a look att the "Välkommen"-sign at the web site!) where we could make your interviews in a separate room, while the restaurant was filling up with guests.

School buses by the Mora water tower

One of the most important aims of our 2014 trip has been to record some dialogues, that is Swedish Americans speaking Swedish to each other. You often change the way you speak when you talk to a stranger, like for instance a Swedish guest, than when you speak to a friend. Since the Swedish speaking American Swedes are "few and far apart" – as we are often told – this is not very easy to achieve.

In Mora we got to record two childhood friends talking about food, traditions and Swedish holidays. Thank you guys!

Of course there has to be a Dala clock in Mora, MN!

After the interviews, we got to taste the delicious food att Freddie's before we left for a good night's sleep at Brainerd Lakes on our way north.

/Maia Andréasson