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| Crown Princess Victoria |
Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria, 25, will visit the Delaware Valley this April as part of a series of events celebrating the 365th Jubilee of the New Sweden Colony, according to Herbert R. Rambo, Governor of the Philadelphia-based Swedish Colonial Society.
Continuing her family's tradition of honoring the courageous pioneers of the 17th century, the princess will visit Swedish heritage sites in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. She will be accompanied on her 72-hour visit by His Excellency Jan Eliasson, Ambassador of Sweden, and Mrs. Kerstin Eliasson.
The princess's first stop will be Swedesboro, NJ's, newly restored 300-year-old Trinity Episcopal (Old Swedes') Church. Among the fourth-graders who will meet the princess are some descendants of those courageous immigrants who risked their lives at sea to seek a better one in the New World. The princess will sit in the same chair used by her father in 1976. She will also dedicate historic markers in Trinity Park explaining Trinity Church's colorful history.
In Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, the princess will visit some of our nation's most important landmarks. Sweden was the first European country not involved in the Revolutionaty War to recognize the newly independent nation.
At the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia the princess will open a new exhibit dedicated to John Ericsson, inventor of the ironclad ship U.S.S. Monitor, and meet with members of the media.
On Saturday, April 5th, the princess will stop at "the Rocks" in Fort Christina Park, Wilmington, to see the natural wharf on which the first Swedish settlers disembarked from two small ships in 1638. Her parents, His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, and Her Majesty Queen Silvia, re-enacted the landing here in 1988 as part of the 350th Jubilee.
At the nearby Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard, she will tour a 1997 replica of the ship. Captained by Peter Minuit, the original Kalmar Nyckel made four voyages to New Sweden before being lost at sea in a hurricane.
At the Hotel du Pont, Princess Victoria will meet with representatives of the Lenape Nation in recognition of the good relations between Native Americans and Swedes from colonial times to the present.
A highlight of the royal visit will be the princess's unveiling of two paintings from the New Sweden period at a gala luncheon. The portraits of a minister and his wife, done by Gustavus Hesselius around 1712, were discovered in the Nordic Museum, Stockholm, by Hans Ling of Uppsala, while researching his ancestry with the assistance of Swedish Colonial Society Historian, Dr. Peter S. Craig.
Asked about the stir his genealogical research has caused, Mr. Ling, Legal Adviser to Sweden's National Heritage Board, responded, "My first reaction was astonishment that my discovery woke such immediate enthusiasm in America. My feeling now is a great satisfaction that I have contributed to saving these paintings from disappearing into the darkness of lost memories."
One of the main goals of the Swedish Colonial Society, the oldest organization of its kind in the U.S., is to encourage people to research their family's roots, surely one of the most effective ways of breathing life into the study of our nation's history.
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| Crown Princess Victoria |
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| Crown Princess Victoria |
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| Crown Princess Victoria |
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| Crown Princess Victoria |
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