{"id":2123,"date":"2015-03-08T20:27:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-08T20:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/?p=2123"},"modified":"2015-03-09T11:50:46","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T11:50:46","slug":"another-anonymous-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/?p=2123","title":{"rendered":"Another anonymous woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is International Women’s Day<\/a> 2015 and there’s been a lot of twitter traffic on it, particularly within my networks by\u00a0trying to raise awareness of women in science. So I wanted to reflect on women in the histories I’m currently writing.<\/p>\n

The problem is that, quite honestly, there aren’t any. I looked through all of the documents about the beaver reintroductions I photographed in my archival visits. All of the letters are written by men to men. Everyone who was involved in planning, catching, purchasing, moving, and writing about the beavers was male.<\/p>\n

But women were at releases. At\u00a0the first reintroduction\u00a0in 1922, there were 20 people there and one was a woman. Festin included that detail in his report of the event in the journal Jamten<\/em>. The woman, however, remains anonymous like so many women in history.<\/p>\n

\"Beaver<\/a>
Beaver reintroduction in G\u00f6rvik in 1925. Published in E. Geete, “B\u00e4vern i Sverige och Norge” (1929)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A photo of\u00a0the third Swedish beaver release in 1925, which took place near G\u00f6rvik in J\u00e4mtland, also shows that a woman was present. A\u00a0woman with the headscarf stands on the left of the box as the beaver emerges. In the Jamtli archive entry<\/a>, the woman with the headscarf is identified as Gena Br\u00e4nnholm. Here, I had a lead about a specific person!<\/p>\n

So I did some searching for Gena, who turns out to be\u00a0M\u00e4rta Eugenia Br\u00e4nnholm, born 1 June 1890 and died 15 January 1954 (she was\u00a0buried in the Hammerdals churchyard<\/a>). She was born in time to be included in the 1890 census<\/a>, so we know that her\u00a0family lived in G\u00f6rvik, her father was a foreman, her mother was named Kerstin, and she had two older brothers, Olof and Erik.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo of the teacher Gena Br\u00e4nnholm with her class at G\u00f6rvik in 1925. Photo in Jamtli archive, unknown photographer,\u00a081X549:10-11<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It turns out Gena was the teacher at the G\u00f6rvik primary school. Jamtli’s archive has a photo of Gena with her class in 1925<\/a>, the same year as the beaver reintroduction. Her last year of teaching at G\u00f6rvik was 1926 — there is a picture the students thanking her<\/a>. The old school house that she taught in burned down in 1935. I wasn’t able to find out what happened to Gena after she quit in 1926. I did find a portrait\u00a0photo that is identified as Gena<\/a> on the website of Sveriges sl\u00e4ktforskarf\u00f6rbund (Swedish genealogy).<\/p>\n

I also figured out Gena’s brother Erik Br\u00e4nnholm had been the organiser\u00a0of this particular beaver reintroduction in G\u00f6rvik. He was\u00a0identified as “an energic nature protection friend”<\/a>\u00a0and had mobilised a\u00a0small study-circle group of eight to fundraise for the beavers. It made perfect sense then that Gena would have been present when her brother’s efforts came to fruition.<\/p>\n

But it struck me that the woman in the school photo didn’t really look like the woman at the pond edge. So I did some more digging. I found\u00a0another version of the photo that shows two<\/span> women present when the beavers came out of the box. In this one, the woman with the scarf is still next to the beaver box, but there is another woman visible on the far left (the one without a hat).<\/p>\n

\"Release<\/a>
Release of the beaver pair at Harrsj\u00f6n in 1925. Photo in the Jamtli collection, by Hanna Vinberg, Ejneg7517<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With this photo, things become clearer. The woman on the far left is Gena Br\u00e4nnholm, the G\u00f6rvik school teacher. The face and hair match perfectly. So it must be that the identification of Gena had been either based on this larger photo, or someone had remembered that she was there thus\u00a0the only woman in the closer photo got identified as her. This larger photo also shows that the woman near the box is much older, which is evident in her face and arms. What we still don’t know is who she is. Another anonymous woman.<\/p>\n

\n

Addendum<\/strong><\/p>\n

I realised after posting this that the photographer of the wider angle photograph is also a woman, Hanna Vinberg. That means there were at least three women at the release!\u00a0The Jamtli archive has three photos of the G\u00f6rvik reintroduction by Hanna<\/a>. Hanna took over as one of the teachers in 1927<\/a> after Gena’s departure from the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is International Women’s Day 2015 and there’s been a lot of twitter traffic on it, particularly within my networks by\u00a0trying to raise awareness of women in science. So I wanted to reflect on women in the histories I’m currently writing. The problem is that, quite honestly, there aren’t any. I looked through all of the documents about the beaver reintroductions I photographed in my archival visits. All of the letters are written by men to men. Everyone who was involved in planning, catching, purchasing, moving, and writing about the beavers was male. But women were at releases. At\u00a0the first reintroduction\u00a0in 1922, there were 20 people there and one was a woman. Festin included that detail in his report of the event in the journal Jamten. The woman, however, remains anonymous like so many women in history. A photo of\u00a0the third Swedish beaver release in 1925, which took place near G\u00f6rvik in J\u00e4mtland, also shows that a woman was present. A\u00a0woman with the headscarf stands on the left of the box as the beaver emerges. In the Jamtli archive entry, the woman with the headscarf is identified as Gena Br\u00e4nnholm. Here, I had a lead about a specific person! So I did some searching for Gena, who turns out to be\u00a0M\u00e4rta Eugenia Br\u00e4nnholm, born 1 June 1890 and died 15 January 1954 (she was\u00a0buried in the Hammerdals churchyard). She was born in time to be included in the 1890 census, so we know that her\u00a0family lived in G\u00f6rvik, her father was a foreman, her mother was named Kerstin, and she had two older brothers, Olof and Erik. It turns out Gena was the teacher at the G\u00f6rvik primary school. Jamtli’s archive has a photo of Gena with her class in 1925, the same year as the beaver reintroduction. Her last year of teaching at G\u00f6rvik was 1926 — there is a picture the students thanking her. The old school house that she taught in burned down in 1935. I wasn’t able to find out what happened to Gena after she quit in 1926. I did find a portrait\u00a0photo that is identified as Gena on the website of Sveriges sl\u00e4ktforskarf\u00f6rbund (Swedish genealogy). I also figured out Gena’s brother Erik Br\u00e4nnholm had been the organiser\u00a0of this particular beaver reintroduction in G\u00f6rvik. He was\u00a0identified as “an energic nature protection friend”\u00a0and had mobilised a\u00a0small study-circle group of eight to fundraise for the beavers. It made perfect sense then that Gena would have been present when her brother’s efforts came to fruition. But it struck me that the woman in the school photo didn’t really look like the woman at the pond edge. So I did some more digging. I found\u00a0another version of the photo that shows two women present when the beavers came out of the box. In this one, the woman with the scarf is still next to the beaver box, but there is another woman visible on the far left (the one without a hat). With this photo, things become clearer. The woman on the far left is Gena Br\u00e4nnholm, the G\u00f6rvik school teacher. The face and hair match perfectly. So it must be that the identification of Gena had been either based on this larger photo, or someone had remembered that she was there thus\u00a0the only woman in the closer photo got identified as her. This larger photo also shows that the woman near the box is much older, which is evident in her face and arms. What we still don’t know is who she is. Another anonymous woman. Addendum I realised after posting this that the photographer of the wider angle photograph is also a woman, Hanna Vinberg. That means there were at least three women at the release!\u00a0The Jamtli archive has three photos of the G\u00f6rvik reintroduction by Hanna. Hanna took over as one of the teachers in 1927 after Gena’s departure from the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2133,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions\/2133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}