SWEDEN: Where does Carola come from?

That may sound like an odd question. As you know, Carola Häggkvist has participated three times, finishing third, first and fifth in those appearances, the first when she was only 16 years old.

Contest sponsor MyHeritage has been researching Carola’s family history. It appears she is very Nordic.

It turns out, Carola was not the first person in her family to make history.

The earliest ancestor of Carola’s MyHeritage found is Hans Månsson Visslander. He’s her 7th great-grandfather — that’s 9 generations back!

Hans’s brother, Magnus Huss — Carola’s eight-greats uncle — was born in 1755 in Boda, in the Torps parish in Medelpad. He was also known as Vildhussen, or Wild Huss. When he was 38, King Gustav III of Sweden approved a project to dig a bypass canal from Lake Ragunda to create a smooth channel for transporting logs and lower the water level of the lake. Vildhussen was employed to manage the project.

The following year, Vildhussen drowned in the river Indalsälven, which used to flow into Lake Ragunda. His body was discovered in Liden. Every year, local residents stage a play commemorating the events of 1796, and a statue to Magnus Huss stands on the dried-up bed of Lake Ragunda. Swedish myths and legends include many stories about Vildhussen that keep his name alive.

Here’s Carola in her first appearance, at the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest in Munich.

Author: Eurovision Ireland

Source: MyHeritage, Eurovision Ireland