The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson

by Selma Lagerlof

  With a few wing strokes he was up at the mound of stones. But there was no grey goose lying among them. ‘Downy! Downy! Where are you?’ the gander asked.

  ‘The fox has probably been here and taken her,’ the boy thought. But just then he heard a beautiful voice answer the gander, ‘I’m here, gander! I’m here! I’ve just been taking a morning bath.’ And up out of the water came the little grey goose, healthy and sound, and she explained that Thumbkin had put her wing back in its joint and that she was completely fine and ready to follow on the journey.

  The water drops were like pearls on her silky feathers and Thumbkin thought once again that she was a real little princess.

  Twelve

  The Big Butterfly

  Wednesday, 6 April

  The geese travelled along the lengthy island, which was clearly visible below them. The boy felt happy and light-hearted during the journey. He was just as content and pleased as he had been gloomy and downhearted the day before, when he had wandered around on the island looking for the gander.

  He now saw that the interior of the island consisted of a bare plateau with a broad wreath of good, fruitful land along the coasts, and he started to understand the meaning of something he had heard during the night.

  He had just sat down to rest by one of the many windmills that were erected on the plateau, when a couple of shepherds came walking along with their dogs by their sides, accompanied by a large flock of sheep. The boy had not been scared, because he was sitting well hidden under the windmill steps. But it turned out that the shepherds came and sat down on the same steps, and then there was nothing for the boy to do other than stay still.

  One of the shepherds was young and looked like most people, while the other was old and strange. His body was big and bony, but his head was little and his face had soft, gentle features. It seemed as if body and head did not fit together at all.

  He sat silently for a while and stared into the fog with an indescribably tired expression. Then he started talking with his comrade. The younger man took bread and cheese out of his bag to have his evening meal. He hardly said anything in response, but he listened very patiently, as if he were thinking, ‘I might as well give you the pleasure of letting you talk awhile.’

  ‘Now I’m going to tell you something, Erik,’ the old shepherd said. ‘I’ve figured out that in the past, when both humans and animals were much bigger than they are now, the butterflies must have been incredibly big too. And once there was a butterfly that was dozens of kilometres long and had wings as broad as lakes. Those wings were shiny blue and silver, and so magnificent that when the butterfly was out flying all the other animals stopped and stared.

  ‘The problem, of course, was that it was too big. Its wings had a hard time carrying it. But it probably would have been fine if it had been wise enough to stay over the land. But it wasn’t. Instead it took off out over the Baltic. And it did not get far before a storm came towards it and started tearing at its wings. Yes, it’s easy for you to understand, Erik, how it would turn out when a Baltic storm gets to play with delicate butterfly wings. It didn’t take long before they were torn off and whirled away, and then, of course, the poor butterfly fell down into the sea. It was tossed back and forth in the waves to start with and then it was stranded on some submerged rock outside Småland. And there it lay, as big and long as it was.

  ‘Now I’m thinking, Erik, that if the butterfly had been lying on land, soon it would have decomposed and fallen apart. But because it fell into the sea, it was imbued with lime and as hard as stone. You probably know that we’ve found stones on the shore that are nothing but hardened worms. And now I think that the same thing happened with the big butterfly body. I think it became a long, narrow rock where it lay out in the Baltic. Don’t you think so too?’

  He paused to get a response and the other man nodded at him. ‘Keep on now, so I get to hear where you’re going with this!’ he said.

  ‘And take heed now, Erik, that this Öland, on which you and I live, is nothing other than the old butterfly body. If you just think about it, then you notice that the island is a butterfly. To the north is the narrow forepart and the round head, and to the south you see the abdomen, which first spreads out and then narrows off to a sharp point.’

  Here he paused again and looked at his comrade, as if anxious as to how he would take this assertion. But the young man continued to eat calmly and nodded at him to continue.

  ‘As soon as the butterfly had been transformed into limestone, many sorts of seeds from plants and trees came travelling with the wind and wanted to take root in it. But they had difficulty getting a footing on the bare, smooth rock. It took a long time before anything other than sedge could grow there. Then came the sheep fescue and rock rose and thorn. But even today there isn’t enough vegetation on the Alvar to really cover the rock, so it shows here and there. And no one can imagine ploughing and sowing up here, where the crust is so thin.

  ‘But now if you accept that the Alvar and the sea cliffs around it are formed by the butterfly’s body, then you have the right to ask where the land that lies below the sea cliffs came from.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly right,’ said the one who was eating. ‘I’d really like to know that.’

  ‘Well, you have to remember that Öland has been in the sea for a good many years, and during that time all the sorts of things that toss around with the waves – seaweed and sand and snails – gathered around it and stayed. And then stone and gravel have slid down from both the eastern and western sea cliffs. In that way the island has gained broad beaches, where grain and flowers and trees can grow.

  ‘Up here on the hard butterfly back only sheep and cows and small horses go, only lapwings and golden plovers live here, and there are no buildings other than windmills and a few poor stone huts that we shepherds crawl into. But down on the shore are large farming villages and parsonages and fishing villages and a whole city.’

  He looked inquisitively at the other one. He had stopped eating and was in the process of tying up his food sack. ‘I wonder where you’re going with all this,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it’s just this that I want to know,’ said the shepherd, while he lowered his voice so that he almost whispered the words, looking into the fog with his small eyes, which appeared to be exhausted by looking for everything that does not exist. ‘I just want to know this: if the farmers who live in the surrounding farms down under the sea cliffs, or the fishermen who take the herring out of the sea, or the merchants in Borgholm, or the vacationers who come here every summer, or the travellers who wander around in the Borgholm castle ruins, or the hunters who come here in the autumn and hunt partridge, or the painters who sit here at the Alvar and paint the sheep and the windmills – I would like to know if any of them understand that this island was once a butterfly, which flew around with big, shiny wings.’

  ‘I see,’ the young shepherd said suddenly. ‘It must have occurred to some of them, sitting here one evening on the edge of the sea cliff and hearing the nightingales warble in the forest meadow below and looking over Kalmar Sound that this island cannot have come about like any other.’

  ‘I wanted to ask,’ the old man continued, ‘if no one has had the idea of putting wings on the windmills so big that they could reach up to the sky, so big that they would be able to lift the whole island up out of the sea and let it fly like a butterfly among butterflies.’

  ‘There may well be something in what you say,’ the young shepherd said. ‘Because on summer nights, when the sky arches high and open over the island, sometimes I’ve thought that it was as if it wanted to raise itself out of the sea and fly away.’

  But n
ow when the old man had finally got the young man to speak, he did not listen to him much. ‘I would really like to know,’ he said in a lower voice, ‘if anyone can explain why such longing lives up here on the Alvar. I’ve felt it every day of my life, and I think that it makes its way into the heart of anyone who has to be here. I’d like to know whether anyone else has realized that all that yearning comes from the fact that the whole island is a butterfly, longing for its wings.’

  Thirteen

  Lilla Karlsön

  THE STORM

  Friday, 8 April

  The wild geese had spent the night on the north cape of Öland and were now en route to the mainland. A strong southerly wind was blowing over Kalmar Sound, tossing them northwards. They still worked their way at good speed towards land. But as they were approaching the first skerry they heard a mighty rumbling, as if a large number of birds with strong wings had come flying, and the water below suddenly turned completely black. Akka pulled in her wings so quickly that she almost remained stationary in the air. After that she descended to land on the surface of the sea. But before the geese had reached the water, the western storm caught up with them. It was already chasing clouds of dust, salt foam and small birds ahead of it, and now it also tore the wild geese with it, threw them backwards and heaved them out towards the sea.

  It was a dreadful storm. Again and again the wild geese tried to turn, but they were unable to, instead being driven out towards the Baltic. The storm had already cast them past Öland, and the sea lay empty and desolate before them. They could do nothing other than run before the wind.

  When Akka noticed that they were unable to turn, she thought it was unnecessary to let the storm drive them over the entire Baltic. For that reason she descended on to the water. The seaway was already rough and growing more so every moment. The waves rolled ahead, sea-green with sputtering foam on the crests. One wave heaved up higher than the next. It was as if they were competing over which could raise itself highest and foam the wildest. But the wild geese were not afraid of the surging sea. On the contrary, it seemed to give them great enjoyment. They did not exert themselves by swimming, but instead let themselves be washed up on the crests and down in the troughs of the waves and had as much fun as children on a swing. Their only worry was that the flock would be scattered. The poor land birds, who drove past up in the storm, shouted enviously, ‘You’ve got nothing to complain about, since you can swim!’

  But the wild geese were certainly not out of all danger. For one thing the rocking made them hopelessly sleepy. They kept wanting to turn their heads backwards, stick their beaks in under their wings and sleep. Nothing can be more dangerous than falling asleep like that, and Akka called constantly, ‘Don’t fall asleep, wild geese! Anyone who falls asleep will be separated from the flock! Anyone who is separated from the flock is lost!’

  Despite all attempts to resist, one after the other fell asleep, and Akka herself was very close to slumbering when suddenly she saw something round and dark rise over the top of a wave. ‘Seals! Seals! Seals!’ Akka called in a loud, shrill voice, raising herself in the air with flapping wing strokes. It was at the very last moment. Before the last wild goose had managed to get up out of the water, the seals were so close that they were snapping at their feet.

  So the wild geese were again up in the storm, which drove them ahead of it out to sea. No rest was granted either to it or to them. And they saw no land, only desolate sea.

  They settled down on the water again as soon as they dared. But when they had rocked on the water awhile, they got sleepy again. And when they fell asleep, the seals came swimming. If old Akka had not been so watchful, not one of them would have escaped.

  The storm continued all day and it caused dreadful havoc among the masses of birds migrating at this time of year. Some were driven off course, away to distant lands where they died of starvation, others were so exhausted they sank down in the sea and drowned. Many were crushed against the cliff walls and many became prey for the seals.

  The storm lasted all day, until Akka started to wonder if she and the flock would be lost. They were now dead tired and she could see nowhere they might rest. Towards evening she no longer dared settle down on the sea, because now it was suddenly filled with large ice floes which collided with each other, and she feared that they would be crushed between them. A couple of times the wild geese tried to set down on the ice floe. But one time the storm swept them into the water. Another time the merciless seals came crawling up on the ice.

  At sundown the geese were once again high in the air. They flew forwards, anxious about the night. The darkness seemed to come over them much too quickly this evening, which was so full of dangers.

  It was dreadful that they still did not see land. What would happen to them if they were forced to stay out on the sea the whole night? They would either be crushed between the ice floes or bitten to death by the seals or scattered by the storm.

  The sky was cloud-covered, the moon stayed hidden and darkness came quickly. At the same time all of nature was filled by a ghastliness that struck the bravest hearts with terror. The cries of migratory birds in distress had sounded over the sea the whole day without anyone paying them any heed, but now, when you no longer saw who was making them, they seemed dismal and frightening. Down on the sea the floes of drift ice bumped against each other with a strong rumbling. The seals struck up their wild hunting songs. It was as if sky and earth were about to collide.

  THE SHEEP

  The boy had been looking down at the sea for a while. Suddenly he thought that it started to roar more than before. He looked up. Right in front of him, only a few metres away, a rough, bare rock wall rose up. Down at its foot the waves were struck into high-spraying foam. The wild geese were flying straight towards the cliff, and the boy’s only thought was that they would be crushed against it.

  He barely had time to wonder that Akka had not seen this danger in time before they were at the rock. Then he also noticed that ahead of them the semicircular entrance to a grotto opened. The geese steered into it and the next moment they were in safety.

  The first thing the travellers thought about, before they took a moment to rejoice over their rescue, was to see whether all their comrades were also saved. Then there were Akka, Yksi, Kolme, Neljä, Viisi, Kuusi, all six goslings, the gander, Downy and Thumbkin, but Kaksi from Nuolja, the first goose on the left, was missing, and no one knew anything about her fate.

  When the wild geese noticed that no one except Kaksi had been separated from the flock, they took the matter lightly. Kaksi was old and wise. She knew all their paths and habits, and she would probably know how to find her way back to them.

  Then the wild geese started looking around inside the cavern. Enough daylight still came in through the opening that they could see that the grotto was both deep and wide. They were happy to have found themselves such a splendid lodging, when one of them caught sight of some glistening green dots that shone out of a dark corner. ‘Those are eyes!’ Akka called. ‘There are large animals in here.’ They rushed towards the exit, but Thumbkin, who saw better in the dark than the wild geese, called to them, ‘It’s nothing to flee from! It’s only some sheep lying along the grotto wall.’

  When the wild geese had got used to the dim light in the grotto, they saw the sheep very well. There might be roughly as many adults as themselves, but in addition there were some small lambs. A big ram with long, twisted horns seemed to be the leader of the flock. The wild geese went towards him with much curtsying. ‘Wilderness salutations!’ they greeted, but the big ram lay quietly and did not say a word of welcome.

  Then the wild geese thought the sheep were unhappy that they had made th
eir way into their grotto. ‘Perhaps it is not pleasing to you that we’ve come into the house here?’ said Akka. ‘But we can’t help it, because we are wind-driven. We have travelled around in the storm the whole day and it would be very good to be able to stay here tonight.’ After this it took a long while before any of the sheep answered with words, but on the other hand it was clearly heard that a couple of them let out long sighs. Akka knew that sheep are always shy and peculiar, but these did not seem to have any concept at all of how to behave. Finally an old ewe, who had a long-set, mournful face and a whining voice, said, ‘None of us will refuse to let you stay, but this is a house of mourning and we cannot receive guests like in the past.’

  ‘You don’t need to be worried about any such thing,’ Akka said. ‘If you knew what we’ve been subjected to today, you would probably realize that we will be satisfied just to get a safe spot to sleep on.’

  When Akka said this, the old ewe got up. ‘I believe that it would be better for you to fly around in the strongest storm than to stay here. But you will not leave here anyway before we’ve been able to offer you such good cheer as the house can provide.’

  She showed them to a hole in the ground, which was full of water. Beside it was a pile of husks and chaff, and she asked them to be content with that. ‘We’ve had a lot of snow this year on the island,’ she said. ‘The farmers who own us came out with hay and oat straw, so that we wouldn’t starve to death. And this rubbish is all that is left of the fodder.’

  The geese pounced on the food at once. They thought that they had been fortunate and were in a good mood. They noticed, however, that the sheep were anxious, but they knew how easily frightened sheep usually are and did not think that there was any real danger imminent. As soon as they had eaten, they intended to settle down to sleep as usual. But then the big ram got up and came over to them. The geese thought that they had never seen a sheep with such long, rough horns. He was striking in other ways too. He had a large, bulging forehead, wise eyes and good posture, as if he were a proud, courageous animal.