The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson

by Selma Lagerlof

  ‘I cannot be held accountable for letting you fall asleep without telling you that it is unsafe here,’ he said. ‘We cannot receive overnight guests nowadays.’ Finally Akka started to understand that this was serious.

  ‘We’ll go our way, because you absolutely wish it,’ she said. ‘But won’t you first tell us what is tormenting you? We don’t know a thing. We don’t even know where we are.’

  ‘This is the island of Lilla Karlsön,’ said the ram. ‘It is located outside Gotland, and nothing but sheep and seabirds live here.’

  ‘Perhaps you are wild sheep?’ said Akka.

  ‘Not far from it,’ the ram answered. ‘We basically have nothing to do with humans. There is an old agreement between us and the farmers in a place on Gotland that they will supply us with fodder in case there is snow in the winter, and in return they get to take away those of us who are excess. The island is small, so it can’t feed all that many of us. But otherwise we take care of ourselves year-round, and we don’t live in houses with doors and locks, instead we stay in grottos like this.’

  ‘Do you stay out here in the winter too?’ Akka asked, surprised.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ the ram answered. ‘We have good grazing up here on the hill year-round.’

  ‘I think it sounds as if you have it better than other sheep,’ said Akka. ‘But what kind of misfortune has befallen you?’

  ‘There was severe cold last winter. The sea froze and then three foxes came over here on the ice and they’ve stayed here ever since. Otherwise there is not a dangerous animal here on the island.’

  ‘I see, the foxes dare to attack the likes of you?’

  ‘Oh no, not during the day, when I can probably defend myself and my flock,’ the ram said, shaking his horns. ‘But they sneak up on us at night, when we are sleeping in the grottos. We try to stay awake, but sometimes you have to sleep and then they attack us. They’ve already killed every single sheep in the other grottos and those were flocks that were just as big as mine.’

  ‘It’s not pleasant to say that we are so helpless,’ the old ewe now said. ‘We can’t take care of ourselves any better than if we were domestic sheep.’

  ‘Do you think they will come here tonight?’ said Akka.

  ‘There’s nothing to do but wait,’ the old ewe answered. ‘They were here last night and stole a lamb from us. They will probably come again, as long as any of us are still alive. That’s what they’ve done at other places.’

  ‘But if they are allowed to carry on like this, then you’ll be completely wiped out,’ said Akka.

  ‘Yes, it probably won’t be long before it’s the end of all the sheep on Lilla Karlsön,’ said the ewe.

  Akka stood there, quite uncertain. It wasn’t pleasant to head out into the storm again, and it wasn’t good to stay in a house where such guests were expected. When she had thought for a while, she turned to Thumbkin. ‘I wonder if you will help us, as you have done many times before?’ she said.

  Yes, the boy answered, of course he would.

  ‘It’s too bad for you not to get to sleep,’ the wild goose said, ‘but I wonder if you are able to keep watch until the foxes come, and then wake us so that we can fly away?’

  The boy was not overly happy about this, but anything was better than going out into the storm again, so he promised that he would stay awake.

  He went up to the grotto opening, crept down behind a stone so that he would have shelter from the storm, and sat down to keep watch.

  When the boy had been sitting there a while, the storm seemed to abate. The sky became clear and the moonlight started playing on the waves. The boy went to the grotto opening to look out. The grotto was situated quite high up on the hill. A narrow, steep trail led up to it. It was probably there that he could expect the foxes.

  He saw no foxes yet, but on the other hand something which at first he was much more afraid of. On the strip of shore below the hill stood some big giants or other stone trolls, or perhaps it was even humans. At first he thought he was dreaming, but now he was quite certain that he had not fallen asleep. He saw the big fellows so clearly that it could not be an optical illusion. Some stood out on the water’s edge and others right next to the rock, as if they intended to climb up it. Some had big, thick heads and others had none at all. Some were one-armed and some had humps both front and back. He had never seen anything so strange.

  The boy was scaring himself about these trolls, so that he almost forgot to watch out for the foxes. But now he heard a claw scraping against a stone. He saw three foxes come up the precipice, and as soon as he knew that he had something real to deal with, he became calm again and not a bit scared. It struck him that it was a shame to simply wake the geese and leave the sheep to their fate. He thought he would like to arrange things differently.

  He quickly ran into the grotto, shaking the big ram by the horn so that he woke up, and at the same time swung himself up on his back. ‘Get up, Father, let’s try to scare the foxes a little!’

  He tried to be as quiet as possible, but the foxes must have heard all the commotion. When they came to the opening of the grotto they stopped and considered. ‘There was definitely something moving in there,’ said one. ‘I wonder if they’re awake.’

  ‘Oh, just get on with it!’ said another. ‘They can’t do anything to us anyway.’

  When they came farther into the grotto, they stopped and sniffed. ‘Who shall we take tonight?’ whispered the fox who went first.

  ‘Tonight we’ll take the big ram,’ said the last one. ‘Then we’ll have an easy time with the others.’

  The boy sat on the old ram’s back and saw how they were sneaking up. ‘Now lunge straight ahead,’ the boy whispered. The ram lunged and the first fox was thrown headlong back towards the opening.

  ‘Lunge now to the left!’ the boy said, turning the ram’s big head in the right direction. The ram aimed a terrible blow, which struck the second fox on the side. He rolled around several times, before he got on his feet again and could flee. The boy would have liked to have shoved the third one too, but he had already taken off.

  ‘Now I think they’ve had enough for tonight,’ the boy said.

  ‘I think so too,’ said the big ram. ‘Now lie on my back and crawl down into the wool! You deserve to be nice and warm after all the wind you’ve been out in.’

  THE HELL HOLE

  Saturday, 9 April

  The next day the big ram went around with the boy on his back and showed him the island. It consisted of a single massive cliff. It was like a big house with vertical walls and a flat roof. The ram first went up on the rocky roof and showed the boy the good grazing grounds there, and the boy had to admit that the island seemed to be specially created for sheep. Not much grew on the rock other than sheep fescue and the kind of small, dry, spicy-smelling plants that sheep like.

  But to be sure, there was more besides sheep grazing to see once someone had come up the precipice. For one thing the whole sea was visible, now lying blue and sunlit and rolling along in shining swells. Only at an occasional promontory did it spray up in foam. Due east was Gotland with its even, long coast and in the south-west Stora Karlsön, which was constructed the same way as the smaller island. When the ram went all the way to the edge of the roof, so that the boy could look down the rock walls, he noticed that they were full of birds’ nests, and in the blue sea below him were velvet scoters and eider ducks and kittiwakes and guillemots and razorbills so beautiful and peaceful, busy fishing for herring.

  ‘This is really a promised land,’ said the boy. ‘You live in such a beautiful place, you sheep.’

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely
beautiful here,’ said the big ram. It was as if he wanted to add something, but he did not say anything, only sighed. ‘But if you walk here alone, you have to watch out for all the cracks that run across the rock,’ he continued after a while. And this was a good warning, because there were deep and wide cracks in several places. The biggest of them was called the Hell Hole. That crack was several fathoms deep and almost a fathom wide. ‘If someone were to fall down here, it would be all over for him,’ the big ram said. The boy thought it sounded as if he had a particular meaning in what he said.

  Then he brought the boy down to the water’s edge. He could see those giants close up that had frightened him the night before. It was nothing other than big cliff pillars. The big ram called them ‘raukar’. The boy could not stop looking at them. If trolls had ever been turned into stone, he thought, they would look just like that.

  Although it was beautiful down at the water’s edge, the boy still liked it better up on the summit. It was awful down here, because they encountered dead sheep everywhere. Here was where the foxes had their dinner. He saw skeletons completely picked clean, but also bodies that were only half-eaten, and others they had hardly tasted, but instead left untouched. It was quite heart-rending to see that the wild animals had thrown themselves over the sheep only for sport, only to get to hunt and kill.

  The big ram did not stop in front of the dead, but instead went calmly past them. But the boy could not avoid seeing all the unpleasantness in any event.

  Now the big ram went back up to the summit, but when he got there, he stopped and said, ‘If anyone who was capable and wise had to see all the misery that prevails here, he would probably not rest until those foxes got their punishment.’

  ‘Foxes have to live too,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the big ram. ‘Those who don’t kill more animals than they need for their sustenance, they may well live. But these are miscreants.’

  ‘The farmers who own the island ought to be able to come here and help you,’ the boy said.

  ‘They’ve rowed over here several times,’ the ram answered, ‘but the foxes hid in grottos and cracks, so they didn’t get a chance to shoot them.’

  ‘You can’t very well mean that a little wretch like me should be able to get the better of those that you and the farmers haven’t been able to overcome.’

  ‘Someone who is small and quick-witted can put many things right,’ said the big ram.

  They spoke no more about this, but the boy went and sat down with the wild geese, who were grazing up on the highland. Although he had not wanted to show it to the ram, he was very distressed for the sheep’s sake and he really wanted to help them. ‘I’ll at least talk with Akka and Martin Gander about it,’ he thought. ‘Perhaps they can assist me with some good advice.’

  Later the white gander took the boy on his back and went over the plateau beyond the Hell Hole.

  He wandered carefree on the open summit and did not seem to think about how white and big he was. He did not seek shelter behind grassy hillocks or other elevations, instead he walked straight ahead. It was strange that he was not more careful, because he seemed to have been badly knocked about during yesterday’s storm. He limped on his right leg and his left wing hung and dragged, as if it were broken.

  He behaved as if there was no danger, nibbling a blade of grass here and another there and not looking around in any direction. The boy was stretched out on the gander’s back, looking up towards the blue sky. He was now so used to riding that he could both stand and lie on the goose’s back.

  When the gander and the boy were so carefree, they did not notice, of course, that the three foxes had come up on the plateau. And the foxes, who knew that it is almost impossible to get close to a goose on open ground, did not think about chasing the gander at all to start with. But as they had nothing else to do, they finally went down into one of the long cracks anyway and tried to sneak up on him. They set about it so carefully that the gander could not catch a glimpse of them.

  They were not far away when the gander made an attempt to raise himself in the air. He flapped his wings, but he was unable to take off. When the foxes thought this meant that he could not fly, they hurried ahead with greater eagerness than before. They no longer kept themselves hidden in the crevice, but instead went out on the plateau. They concealed themselves as best they could behind tussocks and rocks and got ever closer to the gander, without him seeming to notice that he was being hunted. At last the foxes were so close that they could take a run for the final leap. All three threw themselves at one time at the gander in a long leap.

  At the last moment the gander must have noticed something anyway, because he ran away, so that the foxes missed him. This did not mean that much in any case, because the gander’s head start was only a couple of fathoms, and he was limping besides. The poor thing ran off anyway, as quickly as he was able.

  The boy was sitting backwards on the gander’s back and called and shouted at the foxes, ‘You’ve got too fat on mutton, foxes! You can’t even catch up with a goose!’ He made fun of them, so that they were crazed with fury and only thought about rushing ahead.

  The white one ran towards the big crevice. When he came up to it, he made a flap with his wings so that he went over. Just then the foxes were right behind him.

  The gander hurried ahead at the same speed as before, even after he had crossed over the Hell Hole. But he had only run a couple of metres before the boy tapped him on the neck and said, ‘Now you can stop, gander.’

  At the same moment they heard behind them some wild howls and scraping with claws and heavy falls. But they saw no more of the foxes.

  The next morning the lighthouse keeper at Stora Karlsön found a piece of bark stuck under the front door, and on it was carved in crooked, block letters: ‘The foxes on the small island fell down into the Hell Hole. Take care of them!’

  And the lighthouse keeper did that too.

  Fourteen

  Two Cities

  THE CITY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

  Saturday, 9 April

  It turned out to be a calm, clear night. The wild geese did not bother to seek shelter in any of the grottos. Instead they slept up on the summit, and the boy settled down in the short, dry grass alongside the geese.

  There was bright moonlight that night, so bright that the boy had a hard time falling asleep. He lay there thinking about how long he had been away from home, and he worked out that it was three weeks since he had started the journey. At the same time he remembered that it was Easter Eve that night.

  ‘Tonight is when all the witches come home from Blåkulla,’ he thought, laughing to himself. Because he was a bit afraid of both the water sprite and the gnome, but he did not have the slightest belief in witches.

  If there had been witches out that evening, he would have seen them. There was such bright light up in the sky that the smallest black dot could not move in the air without him noticing it.

  While he was lying there with his nose in the air, thinking about this, he caught sight of something beautiful. The disc of the moon stood whole and round rather high up, and in front of it a large bird came flying. It was not flying past the moon, but it was approaching as if it could have flown out of it. The bird appeared black against the light backdrop, and its wings extended from one edge of the disc to the other. It flew so evenly ahead in the same direction that the boy thought it was drawn on the moon. Its body was small, its neck long and slender, its legs hung down, long and thin. It could be nothing other than a stork.

  A few moments later Herr Ermenrich, the stork, set down beside him. He bent over the boy and bumped him with his beak to get him awake
.

  The boy sat up at once. ‘I’m not sleeping, Herr Ermenrich,’ he said. ‘Why are you out in the middle of the night and how are things at Glimmingehus? Do you want to speak with Mother Akka?’

  ‘It’s too light to sleep tonight,’ Herr Ermenrich answered. ‘For that reason I decided to make the journey over here to Karlsön and call on you, my friend Thumbkin. I found out from a gull that you were here tonight. I haven’t flown over to Glimmingehus yet, I’m still staying in Pomerania.’

  The boy was incredibly happy that Herr Ermenrich had sought him out. They talked about everything imaginable like old friends. At last the stork asked if the boy didn’t want to go out and ride for a while in the beautiful night.

  Yes, the boy would like that very much, if the stork only arranged it so that he came back to the wild geese before sunrise. He promised to, and then they were off.

  Herr Ermenrich again flew right towards the moon. They climbed and climbed, the sea sank down deep, but the flight was so strangely easy that it seemed almost as if they were lying still in the air.

  The boy thought that the flight had lasted an incredibly short time when Herr Ermenrich descended to set down.

  They landed on a deserted beach that was covered with even, fine sand. Along the coast was a long row of sand dunes with lyme grass on the top. They were not very high, but they prevented the boy from seeing any of the inland.

  Herr Ermenrich positioned himself on a sand hill, pulled up one leg and bent his neck backwards to stick his beak under his wing. ‘You can wander around here on the beach a while, while I rest,’ he said to Thumbkin. ‘But don’t go too far, so you can find your way back to me!’