Upcoming trip to Sweden... with side trip and a stop in Iceland!

Just a quick post (HA!... my posts always take longer than I intend) to share an upcoming journey itinerary. I'll not worry about my house/home while I'm away because someone will be in residence there to keep an eye on things. :-)

At a family reunion in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada 25 years ago, I met Swedish second cousins Sture and Inger Johansson and their son Örjan. Sture and I are doubly related through our Swedish grandparents because our grandfathers were brothers and our grandmothers were half-sisters. When we met in 1986, I promised to come visit them in Sweden and now I am finally going to do just that.

This trip will be a family trip with my brother, his partner and my sister who is the serious genealogist in the family. We will be staying first in Göteborg to visit with Örjan, his wife and their four children who live in a nearby suburb.

We will also visit with Sture and his wife Inger while staying up north in Lycksele. Sture and Inger live on the property that has been in my Swedish family since 1640. Family records for that area of Sweden were lost in a fire in 1640 when the church in Umeå where they were stored burned. So we don't know anything about our family prior to that year.

Part of our visit with Sture and Inger will be in the mountains close to the Norwegian border where they have a cabin near Tärnaby. After our stay there, we will cross the border into Norway and drive south through the mountains before crossing back into Sweden.

In between visiting with family, we will spend time in Stockholm, the High Coast, Umeå and Österund. On our return trip, my brother, his partner and myself will be stopping in Iceland for a few days. My sister will be returning to the US from Österund through Stockholm after our overnight in Österund.

Our itinerary and a map of our route follow... if things go according to plan, I will be posting a few photos and stories along the way. However, I do not know how well the plan will work since I will be attempting to blog via iPad on a wireless connection whenever possible and will not have my computer with me! (trying to travel light)

Letters represented on the map above correspond to locations indicated on the itinerary below in parens (A, B, C, etc); we are not staying in Norway at the junctions indicated by letters G and H on the map. (large view of map)

1. June 17th for Göteborg, Sweden via Icelandair; arrive in Göteborg at 3:00 PM June 18 local time
2. June 18-19 in Göteborg (A); drive to Stockholm on the 20th
3. June 20-22 in Stockholm (B); drive to Härnösand on the 23rd
4. June 23 in Härnösand (C; High Coast region); drive to Umeå on the 24th
5. June 24- in Umeå (D); drive to Lycksele on the 25th
6. June 25 -26 in Lycksele (E); drive to Tärnaby on the 27th
7. June 27-28 near Tärnaby (F) at Sture and Inger’s cabin; drive to Östersund on the 29th
8. June 29 in Östersund (I) overnight; drive to Stockholm on the 30th (Val flies home from Östersund on June 30)
9. June 30-July 1- Brother Lukas, partner Tom and myself in Stockholm (B) two more nights
10. July 2- flight to Reykjavik where we stay July 2-4.
11. July 5- depart Reykjavik for home