: SUPERSTAR: Taylor Swift believed to have Swedish roots
Photo credit: Flickr/Chad Davis
All-American Taylor Swift has possible Swedish roots linking her to a small mountain town called Offerdal.
The 35-year-old singer-songwriter and global superstar is connected to the American poet Emily Dickinson via a 17th century English immigrant, according to the US genealogy site Ancestry. Another site, My Heritage, maintains that Swift is a descendant of King Louis XIV of France and related to actor Johnny Depp.
Earlier in 2014, unreferenced sources had linked her to Offerdal and when Swift announced that her Eras Tour would visit Sweden between May 17 and 19, Sara Swedenmark, chairwoman of the Offerdal Community Association, decided to start hunting for local ties.
She and the group have now settled on two possible Offerdal ancestors, one of whom was named Olof Thorsson. He sailed with his family to New Sweden – a former colony occupying parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania  aboard the Kalmr Nyckel in 1641. He was apparently deported after committing a crime in Sweden.
“We could see there were people connecting them, but the line was broken as one man married several times,” Swedenmark told the media. “We haven t found a direct line of descent, but we re not saying it doesn t exist. We’re talking about around 1,200 people over four centuries so there could be other possibilities.”
Jons the Blacksmith Andersson, who reached New Sweden with his wife Maria and daughter Brita in 1654, is another possible Swift ancestor.
With so few solid links, Swedenmark has now asked anyone with even tenuous information to contact her, as she and the Offerdal Community Association continue to investigate Taylor Swift’s Swedish lineage.
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Originally from the UK, Linda is based in Valenca and is a reporter for The Euro Weekly News covering local news. Got a news story you want to share?
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