08/25/2023
Inside story: The logo of the Fredrickson Family Fitness Park was developed by a mother daughter team. The team created the logo with love for the project, yes, but mostly for the love of the man to whom the park would be dedicated and bear the family name. Julie Messmer and daughter Annika are the daughter and grand-daughter of Duane and Nancy Fredrickson. Julie and Annika were committed to developing the face of the park from the very beginning.
It was no surprise to see their Swedish heritage reflected in the finished logo. The Fredrickson children, Scott and Julie, grew up in Lindsborg, learning, celebrating and practicing Swedish tradition, authentic and Lindsborg-style. Their love and appreciation for Lindsborg and Sweden has carried into their adult lives, and those of their children.
In Julie's words, the logo "is a combination of Swedish kurbits, landscape and a person. The kurbits is designed to look like a landscape of a rolling hill, sky and sun, however, if you look at the circle it also represents the head and the blue swirl are the arms." You can see the swirls, color and movement present, representative of heritage, landscape and exercise!
Perhaps you aren't familiar with 'kurbits'. Kurbits refers to a long-bodied gourd. The poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt, wrote of the painted wall hangings of Dalarna, popularizing the term in the 1920s. In Lindsborg, one can find the broad strokes of the paint brush, the blending of muted colors, the detail of the whimsical flowers, in our churches, galleries, schools, and in the art and crafts of local artisans. Surely kurbits are the unofficial flower of Lindsborg, the botanical equivalent of the Dala horse!
