The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson

by Selma Lagerlof

  The wild geese flew back and forth a few times over the city, so that Thumbkin could get to see everything really well. At last they descended on to the grass-covered floor in a church ruin to stay there overnight.

  When they had already settled down to sleep, Thumbkin was still awake and looked through the broken roof arches up towards the pale red evening sky. When he had been sitting there a while, he thought that he did not want to fret any more that he had not been able to save the sunken city.

  No, he did not want to, since he got to see this. If the city that he had seen did not have to sink down to the seabed again, perhaps in time it would be just as dilapidated as this one. Perhaps it would have been unable to withstand time and transiency, but soon would have stood with roofless churches and unadorned houses and deserted, empty streets like this. Then it was better that it was still there in all its magnificence down in the depths.

  ‘It was best that it happened the way it did,’ he thought. ‘If I had the power to rescue the city, I don’t think I would.’ Then he no longer grieved about it.

  And there are probably many of those who are young who think the same way. But when people get old and are used to being content with little, then they are happier about the Visby that exists than a grand Vineta at the bottom of the sea.

  Fifteen

  The Tale of Småland

  Tuesday, 12 April

  The wild geese had a good journey over the sea and landed in the county of Tjust in northern Småland. That county couldn’t seem to decide whether it was land or sea. The bays divided the land everywhere into islands and peninsulas, into promontories and spits. The sea was so intrusive that the only things that could stay above water were hills and rocky slopes. All the lowland was hidden away under the surface.

  It was evening when the wild geese came in from the sea, and the rolling country was beautifully situated between the glistening bays. Here and there on the islands the boy saw cabins and cottages, and the farther in towards land he came, the bigger and better the houses became. At last they grew into big, white manor houses. Along the shoreline there was usually a wreath of trees, beyond which were strips of fields, and up on the top of the small hills the trees took off again. He could not help but think of Blekinge. This was once again a place where land and sea met in such a beautiful, quiet way, as if trying to show each other their best and loveliest side.

  The wild geese landed on a bare islet far inside the Gåsfjärden. At first glance towards the shore they noticed that spring had made major advances while they had been away on the islands. There were no leaves yet on the big, magnificent trees, but the ground beneath them was dotted with wood anemone, yellow star of Bethlehem and blue anemone.

  When the wild geese saw the carpet of flowers, they were afraid they had lingered too long in the southern part of the country. Akka said at once that there was no time to visit any of the resting places in Småland. Already the next morning they had to head northwards over Östergötland.

  Thus the boy would not see any of Småland and this annoyed him. He had not heard any other province talked about as much as Småland and he wanted to see it with his own eyes.

  The previous summer, when he had a job as a goose-boy with a farmer in the vicinity of Jordberga, almost every day he had encountered a couple of poor Småland children, who were also tending geese. The children had teased him quite terribly about their Småland.

  Although you probably can’t really say that Åsa the Goose-girl teased him. She was much too sensible for such things. But the one who could be annoying with a vengeance was her brother, Little Mats.

  ‘Have you heard, Nils the goose-boy, what happened when Småland and Skåne were created?’ he would ask, and if Nils Holgersson said no, he started telling the old folk tale at once.

  ‘Well, it was at the time when Our Lord was creating the world. While he was busy working, St Peter came walking past. He stopped and watched, and then he asked if it was a hard job. “Oh well, it’s not so easy either,” said Our Lord. St Peter stood there a while longer, and when he noticed how easy it was to set out one land after the other, he wanted to give it a go himself. “Perhaps you need to rest a little,” St Peter said. “Then I could manage the work for you in the meantime.” But Our Lord did not want that. “I don’t know if you are so practised in the art that I can trust you to take over while I stop,” he answered. Then St Peter got angry and said that he thought he could create countries just as good as Our Lord Himself.

  ‘The fact of the matter is that just then Our Lord was in the process of creating Småland. It was not even half-finished, but it appeared to be an indescribably beautiful and fruitful country. It was hard for Our Lord to say no to St Peter, and besides he probably thought that no one could spoil what was so well begun. For that reason he said, “If you agree, then let’s test which of us is best at this sort of work. You, who are only a beginner, can continue with what I’ve started, and I will create a new country.” St Peter agreed to this at once, and then they each started working in their own place.

  ‘Our Lord moved a section southwards, and there he set about creating Skåne. It did not take long before he was done, and immediately he asked whether St Peter had finished and wanted to come and look at his work. “I had mine done long ago,” said St Peter, and his tone of voice told how satisfied he was with what he had achieved.

  ‘When St Peter saw Skåne, he had to admit that there was nothing but good to be said about that country. It was a fertile, easily cultivated land with large plains wherever he looked, and hardly a hint of hills. It seemed that Our Lord had really thought about making it so that people would thrive there. “Yes, this is a good country,” said St Peter, “but I do think that mine is better.”

  ‘“Then let’s go take a look at it,” said Our Lord.

  ‘The country was already finished in the north and east when St Peter started his work, but he got to shape the southern and western part and the whole interior alone. Now when Our Lord came up to where St Peter had worked, He was so startled that He stopped abruptly and said, “What in the world have you done to this country, St Peter?”

  ‘St Peter also stood and looked around, quite surprised. He’d had the notion that nothing could be so good for a country as a lot of heat. For that reason he had dragged together an incredible mass of stone and rock and built up a highland, and he had done this so that it would come close to the sun and get a lot of the sun’s heat. Above the heaps of stones he had spread out a thin layer of topsoil, and then he thought that everything was in good order.

  ‘But now a couple of strong rain showers had come while he was down in Skåne, and it took no more than this to show what his work was good for. When Our Lord came to inspect the country all the topsoil had been washed away and bare bedrock was sticking out everywhere. At its best there was clay and heavy gravel over the rocks, but it looked so meagre that it was obvious that scarcely anything could grow there other than spruce and juniper and moss and heather. What there was plenty of, was water. It had filled up all the crevices in the bedrock, and lakes, rivers and creeks were seen everywhere, not to mention marshes and fens, which extended over large areas. And the most mortifying thing was that while some areas had more than enough water, it was so scarce in other places that large fields were like dry moors, where sand and dirt whirled up in clouds with the slightest breeze.

  ‘“What was the idea of creating a country like this?” said Our Lord, and St Peter excused himself and said that he had wanted to build up the country so high that it would get a lot of heat from the sun. “But then it will also get a lot of cold at night,” said Our Lord, “because that too comes from the sky. I am afraid that t
he little that can grow here is going to freeze.”

  ‘Of course, St Peter had not thought about that.

  ‘“Yes, this will be a poor, frost-bound country,” said Our Lord. “It can’t be helped.”’

  When Little Mats got that far in his story, Åsa the Goose-girl interrupted him. ‘Little Mats, I can’t stand you saying that it’s so miserable in Småland,’ she said. ‘You completely forget how much good soil there is there. Just think about Möre County over by Kalmar Sound! I wonder where there is a richer district for grain. There is field upon field, just like here in Skåne. There is such good soil there that I don’t know what couldn’t grow there.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Little Mats. ‘I’m just repeating what others have said before.’

  ‘And I’ve heard many people say that a more beautiful coastland than Tjust does not exist. Think about the bays and the islets and the estates and the groves!’ said Åsa.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s true,’ Little Mats admitted.

  ‘And don’t you remember,’ Åsa continued, ‘that the schoolteacher said that such a lively and beautiful region like the bit of Småland that is south of Vättern is not to be found in all of Sweden? Think about the beautiful lake and the yellow shore rocks and about Gränna and Jönköping with the match factory, and Munksjö, and think about Huskvarna and all the big factories there!’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s true,’ Little Mats said again.

  ‘And think about Visingsö, Little Mats, with the ruins and the oak forest and the sagas! Think about the valley the Emån River runs through, with all the villages and mills and wood-pulp factories and sawmills and carpentry shops!’

  ‘Yes, that’s all true,’ Little Mats said, looking quite distressed.

  Suddenly he looked up. ‘Now we are all really dumb,’ he said. ‘All of that, of course, is in Our Lord’s Småland, in the part of the country that was already finished before St Peter went to work. It’s only right that it should be beautiful and grand there. But in St Peter’s Småland everything looks as it says in the story. And it was not strange that Our Lord became distressed when he saw it,’ Little Mats continued, as he resumed his story. ‘St Peter did not lose courage in any event. Instead he tried to console Our Lord. “Don’t get so upset about this!” he said. “Just wait until I have time to create people who can cultivate the marshes and plough up fields out of the stony hills!”

  ‘Then Our Lord’s patience had finally run out, and he said, “No. You can go down to Skåne, which I have made into a good, easily cultivated land, and create the people there, but I want to create the people of Småland myself.” And so Our Lord created the people of Småland and made them clever and contented and happy and diligent and enterprising and capable, so that they could make a livelihood for themselves in their poor country.’

  With that Little Mats fell silent, and if Nils Holgersson had also kept quiet now, everything would have gone well, but he could not possibly keep from asking how St Peter had done in creating the people of Skåne.

  ‘Yes, what do you think yourself?’ said Little Mats and looked so scornful that Nils Holgersson lunged at him to hit him. But Mats was only a little fellow and Åsa the Goose-girl, who was one year older, ran at once to help him. As good-tempered as she was, she reared up like a lioness as soon as anyone touched her brother. And Nils Holgersson did not want to fight with a girl, so instead he turned his back on them and went away and did not look at those Småland children the whole day.

  Sixteen

  The Crows

  THE CLAY POT

  In the south-west corner of Småland is a county called Sunnerbo. It is a rather flat and level area, and anyone who sees it in the winter, when it is covered with snow, would simply assume that under the snow is an expanse of ploughed, fallow ground, green rye fields and mown clover fields, the way it usually is in a flat country. But when the snow finally melts away in Sunnerbo in early April, it turns out that what lies hidden beneath it is nothing but dry sand moors, bare rocks and large, swampy marshes. There are no doubt fields here and there, but they are so insignificant that you hardly notice them, and there are small grey or red peasant cottages too, but they are usually set back on some birch-covered hill, almost as if they were afraid to show themselves.

  Where Sunnerbo County bumps against the border with the province of Halland, there is a sandy moor so extensive that anyone standing at its edge cannot see over to the opposite side. Nothing but heather grows on the whole moor, and it would be difficult to get other plants to thrive there. The very first thing then would be to root out the heather, because the fact is that although it only has a small stunted trunk, small stunted branches and dry, stunted leaves, it imagines that it is a tree. For that reason it behaves the same way as real trees, spreading out in forests over wide stretches, keeping faithfully together and causing all foreign plants that want to intrude on its area to die out.

  The only place on the moor where the heather is not all-powerful is a low, stony ridge that sweeps across it. There one finds juniper bushes, mountain ash and some large, beautiful birches. At the time when Nils Holgersson was travelling around with the wild geese there was also a cottage with a little bit of cleared ground around it, but the people who once lived there had moved away for some reason or other. The little cottage stood empty and the field was untilled.

  When the people left the cottage, they closed the damper, put on the window catches and locked the door. But they had not thought that a pane in the window was broken and only stopped up with a rag. After a couple of summer rain showers that rag had decayed and crumpled up, and at last a crow managed to peck it away.

  The ridge on the heather moor was not as deserted as you might think; it was populated by a large group of crows. Naturally the crows did not live there all year round. They moved abroad in the winter; in the autumn they swept across one field after the next all over the Götaland region and picked grain; in the summer they dispersed to the farms in Sunnerbo County and lived off eggs, berries and chicks; but every spring when they were going to build nests and lay eggs, they came back to the heather moor.

  The one who plucked the rag out of the window was a male crow whose name was Garm White-Feather, although he was never called anything but Fumle or Drumle or even Fumle-Drumle, because he always acted stupid and awkward and was not good for anything but being made fun of. Fumle-Drumle was bigger and stronger than any of the other crows, but that did not help him in the least; instead he was and remained an object of ridicule. It was of little avail to him either that he was from a very good family. If everything had gone right, he should even have been leader of the whole flock, because that dignity had since time immemorial belonged to the oldest of the White-Feathers. But long before Fumle-Drumle was born, the power had gone from his family and was now held by a cruel and wild crow, whose name was Wind-Ile.

  That transfer of power happened because the crows on Kråkåsen felt like changing their way of life. Many believe that all crows live the same way, but this is completely incorrect. There are entire groups of crows that lead an honourable life, that is, they eat only seeds, worms, larvae and already dead animals, and there are others who lead a real robbers’ life, who swoop down on young hares and small birds and plunder every bird’s nest they catch sight of.

  The old White-Feathers had been strict and moderate, and as long as they led the flock, they had forced the crows to conduct themselves such that other birds did not have anything bad to say about them. But the crows were numerous and there was great poverty among them. In the long run they could not stand leading such a strict life and instead revolted against the White-Feathers and gave the power to Win
d-Ile, who was the worst nest-plunderer and robber that could be imagined, if his wife, Wind-Kåra, weren’t worse. Under their control the crows started to lead such a life that they were now more feared than goshawks and great horned owls.

  Fumle-Drumle naturally had no say in the flock. Everyone was in agreement that he did not resemble his ancestors in the slightest, and that he was not cut out to be the leader. No one would have talked about him if he had not constantly made new blunders. A few who were really wise sometimes said that perhaps it was good fortune for Fumle-Drumle that he was such a clumsy wretch, otherwise Wind-Ile and Wind-Kåra probably would not have let him, who was of the old chieftain clan, remain with the flock.

  Now on the contrary they were quite friendly towards him and happily took him along on their hunts. There everyone could see how much more skilful and bold they were than him.

  None of the crows knew that it was Fumle-Drumle who had plucked the rag out of the window, and if they had known this they would have been incredibly surprised. Such boldness – to approach a human dwelling – they would not have believed of him. He himself carefully concealed the matter and had his good reasons for it. Wind-Ile and Kåra always treated him well during the day and when the others were present, but one very dark night, when their comrades were already sitting on the night perch, he had been attacked by a pair of crows and almost murdered. After this, every evening after it had become dark he moved from his usual sleeping place into the empty cottage.