SWEA's president Inger Skogström (top left). Lena Birch (top right) having lunch at Linde's vineyard Ulla Reilly (bottom) at SWEA's crayfish party.
Many of the Swedish women in SWEA came to San Francisco and were supposed to stay for a short period of time, but then ended up never leaving. 1966 seams to be the year when a lot of them entered the country. One was the current president of SWEA, Ingrid Skogström, who came to San Francisco with her husband after hearing that it was a nice city. “It was around the same time as the Summer of Love,” her husband explains. They found it just as nice as expected and have stayed since.
Another woman who came in 1966 was Lena Birch. She and a friend were planning on going to the U.S. to work as nurses and it took more than one year for them to get a green card. The plan was to stay only for one year, but Birch stayed and got married in 1970. She now has two daughters and three grandchildren. “But they do not speak Swedish,” Birch says. “One of my daughters was also a member of SWEA for a while but she did not really have time to participate in activities.” Birch herself first heard of SWEA from two nurses at the hospital where she worked and she joined the organization when it was new in San Francisco, in the beginning of the 1980s. She thinks neither country is better or worse than the other. “There are just differences, just as there are differences between different parts within the U.S.,” she says. When asked upon if she will ever go back home she says, “This is home! I have left my family once and I will not do that again."
Ulla Reilly moved to San Francisco in 1966 to work at the Swedish consulate as part of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and was supposed to stay for three to five years. After four years, however, she married an American and has stayed here since. “I was supposed to travel the world but that never happened,” she says. ”I never had the intention of moving here.” Reilly ended up staying as an employee at the Swedish consulate until three years ago. That was when she started being an active member of SWEA. “But I have actually been a member ever since the establishing of the organization here in San Francisco in 1982.” She is now vice president of the SWEA San Francisco committee, consisting of 12 women.
When asked upon what she misses about Sweden, Reilly says it must be the friends and the nature. “But not the weather, I like the weather here! And I like the easy-going company and the access to culture such as opera and theater in San Francisco.” Reilly’s answer to why people from the same country tend to cluster together abroad is that there is solidarity and intellectual fellowship between these women on a totally different level than you can get with an American friend here.
Something remarkable about SWEA is that the city in the world with most members actually is Stockholm, Sweden. Those are the women who lived abroad and now are back home. They help each other in understanding the complexity of problems and complications consisting in returning to a home country. As Reilly explains it, no one else will listen to what you have been through more than once, and they will probably not fully understand you. Besides, a lot of things will of course have changed at home, and it can feel like coming back to a new country. “When in Sweden, you look and talk like you fit in, but somehow you have a different way of behaving than other people,” Reilly states.
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