Princess Estelle

As you all know Swedish Princess Estelle was born in February 23, 2012.


Prince Daniel, Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Estelle.
Copyright Kungahuset.se

Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, Princess of Sweden, Duchess of Östergötland, born February 23, 2012 as the first child of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel.

Nobility and royalty is not so often related to us "ordinary" people, they tend to marry within their own circles.
But now, when we suddenly got a "man of the people" (Daniel Westling) in the royal family, there are suddenly lots of “common Swedes” who suddenly are related with the future sovereign Estelle.

And since many Americans have Swedish heritage, probably lots of people in USA are now also related with Estelle.

I am actually myself related to Prince Daniel and Princess Estelle. Not closely related but in several ways.
Our closest shared ancestor was Per Johansson Wall (also named Borg during a period of time) and his wife Kerstin Nilsdotter.

Per Wall is noted born 1730 in Ockelbo parish, he died 1806 in Hanebo parish. Kerstin was born 1726 in Arbrå parish and also died 1806 in Hanebo.

Via these ancestors there are two connections, since Daniels great grandmother, Brita Westling (1868-1965), her parents was actually 1st cousins with each other.

Daniels grandfather took the surname Westling from his wife when they got married and that was not common practice these days..

Besides Per Wall (military officer), I and Estelle also have other shared ancestors in the couple Erik Nilsson (1641-1719) and his wife Anna Svensdotter (1643-1713) who lived in Segersta parish.

Probably there are even more shared relations between us that I still have not documented (in Bollnäs).

Prince Daniel and Princess Estelle
Copyright Kungahuset.se

My grandmother Edit was 5^th cousin with Estelle´s grandfather Olle.

And my mother Agneta is 6^th cousin with Prince Daniel.

So me and Princess Estelle are 7^th cousins.

But I really don’t know if relationship with someone is to brag about, regardless if its a Prince, future Queen or a world famous Opera singer... But we genealogists do like to find relatives of all kinds.

And if we step further back in time, we end up being related to everyone.

I have noticed an increased interest from customers in USA to find out if they are related to the new princess Estelle, and depending from where in Sweden your ancestors came, the possibility is there!

Genealogy mistakes

Some people say Swedish genealogy is very easy to do, but thats not quite true...

Actually its rather tricky sometimes, mostly because of the fact that we in Sweden rarely used family surnames. So one great challenge is to avoid mixing people up when they all have almost the same names.

From my last post about Swedish surnames and family names. I have got some questions and reactions from people wanting me to share some more examples.

I often notice that americans trying to find their Swedish roots end up wrong sooner or later and one reason is that they may think that people named Andersson, Johansson or Olsson are actually carrying family surnames and that they may think they are related to all other Andersson, Johansson and Olsson...
(actually there are also Swedes making this error...)

I have studied hundreds of public and private familytrees that contains these type of mistakes.

Here is an example of how this sometimes tends to occur;

Lets start with a man named Andrew Olson that is supposed to be borned in the year 1870 in the parish Brösarp in Sweden. As a bonus in this example we know that his name before leaving Sweden was actually Anders Olsson.

We check the birth records for Brösarp 1870 and find that there are actually six Anders born there this year.

May 9: Anders : fathers name; Ola Persson
May 30: Anders : fathers name; Per Persson
June 20: Anders: fathers name; Per Olsson
July 26: Anders: fathers name; John Larsson
Oct 16: Anders: fathers name; Nils Brock
Oct 21: Anders: fathers name; Nils Andersson

Now guess which of the Anders most people pick out as to be "their" Anders Olsson here?

Yeah, most common mistake is to pick Anders born in June 20 because his fathers surname is what we are looking for; Olsson.

The correct Anders is the first one. The fathers name is Ola Persson and his children will have the name Olsson based on the fathers first name Ola.

Anders that was born in june 20 will be named Anders Persson, as his fathers first name is Per.

So thats a typical example how easy things can go wrong from the start.

From about early 1900 we changed and started to use our current surnames as normal family names.