NEW SWEDEN, Maine – Carole Ostlund Ringer fondly remembers visiting her paternal grandmother, Esther Ostlund, at the 2-story Swedish log house where Esther and husband George raised nine children, including Ringer’s father, Ralph, in New Sweden.
It was not until adulthood that Ringer, who now lives in Portland, fully realized the historic significance of The Ostlund House, named for her father’s family, who purchased the home in 1910.
In 1871, blacksmith Noak Larrson was one of the first settlers in Maine’s original Swedish Colony, which started with New Sweden. He built a 2-story log house in the traditional Swedish style. Unlike American-style log cabins of that era, Swedish settlers built theirs to be permanent and large rather than small, temporary structures. Builders used the Scandinavian tradition of stacking logs so that they would overlap at the corners, providing robust insulation in cold months.
Today, Larsson’s house is the only 2-story Swedish log house in Maine that is still standing, according to the New Sweden Historical Society. Members of the Ostlund family and local volunteers are determined to preserve what they can of the aging, 153-year-old structure.
“We’re all getting older and the younger generations are so far removed that now really is the time to keep it going,” said Ringer, now 69. “It’s a chance for people to understand how our ancestors lived.”
Ralph Ostlund, the seventh child of George and Esther, died in 2015. The Ostlund family grew potatoes in a field behind their house that is now heavily forested.
Life on the farm was both hard and rewarding, Ringer said. Her father and his siblings got up before sunrise every day, even during the school year, to help George milk the cows and feed the chickens. After their chores, everyone sat down to a hearty breakfast that Esther began cooking early in the morning.
Just beyond the family’s potato field was a pond where the children would swim in the summer months and ice skate in the winter. The family cut ice from the river and kept it frozen with sawdust, later selling ice cubes to local people and preserving some to refrigerate their own food.
Though George passed away before Ringer was born in 1955, she grew up visiting her grandmother Esther every Sunday. Esther often served rusk, a hard, dry biscuit that the children would dip into their version of “coffee”: milk and sugar with a hint of coffee.
“My dad used to say that his mother was a great cook,” Ringer said. “There was family there all the time and we visited every Sunday even if we had been somewhere else.”
Ralph’s brother Gilbert purchased the family home in 1974 after Esther’s passing and lived there until 1989. At that time, both the family and local community became interested in preserving the home, which Gilbert had struggled to maintain as he got older.
restorations in the county
The all-volunteer nonprofit organization Maine’s Swedish Colony, now the New Sweden Historical Society, bought The Ostlund House in 1995. Initial repairs, funded through the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and other grants, included restoring the home’s foundation, replacing rotted exterior logs and interior floorboards and installing a new water drainage system around the property.
But like many older homes, age has not been kind to the house, prompting volunteers to keep up with both minor and major repairs before things get worse.
In September, a local contractor finished replacing and painting the house’s original cedar front siding and installing new windows. The house received a new roof several years ago, with funds for those projects coming from donations that the historical society receives. The cedar siding received a fresh coat of white paint.
Once inside the front entryway, visitors can see some of the original logs, wallpaper and unique evidence of the home’s historic origins.
“You can see the newspapers from Sweden that [the Larssons] used to give the house more insulation,” Ringer said. “The dates on the newspapers helped establish when the house was built.”
Still, challenges remain. The sloped nature of the property has caused the house and its foundation to shift considerably, near the interior chimney especially, and many floorboards have rotted again. The back side of the house also needs a fresh coat of paint, said Debbie Blanchette, a member of New Sweden Historical Society.
The volunteers want to find a solution for those issues and reopen the house for New Sweden’s annual Midsommar events and special exhibits. The home’s 11 rooms total feature heirlooms that the Ostlund family left behind, including an early 1900s-era cast-iron kitchen stove, washing machine, beds, the original ice house, a 1911 coal stove and a 1930s-era weaving loom.
The Ostlund House has not been open to the public since the 2022 Midsommar but remains a valuable community resource.
“It’s part of our history and heritage,” Blanchette said. “Hopefully we can get it open by next year.”
Ringer and other family members are exploring how they might set up a foundation that would allow people to donate to the Ostlund House restoration project.
“It’s a good feeling to know that they [at the historical society] want to keep up these historic buildings,” Ringer said. “I try to make it back for every Midsommar and it always feels like I’m going home again.”
In the meantime, anyone wishing to donate to restoration efforts can send contributions to the New Sweden Historical Society, P.O. Box 33, New Sweden, ME, 04762.
