The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

From that day on Gösta Berling became a cavalier at Ekeby. Twice he tried to get away from there and make his own way, to live off his own labor. The first time the majoress granted him a cottage near Ekeby; he moved there, intending to live as a laborer. He succeeded for a time, but soon tired of the loneliness and the daily toil, and again became a cavalier. The second time was when he became a tutor at Borg for Count Henrik Dohna. During that time he fell in love with the young Ebba Dohna, the count’s sister, but when she died, just as he thought he was close to winning her, he gave up every thought of being anything other than a cavalier at Ekeby. It seemed to him that for a defrocked minister all roads to rehabilitation were closed.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE LANDSCAPE

  Now I must describe the long lake, the fertile plain, and the blue hills, because this was the setting where Gösta Berling and the cavaliers of Ekeby lived out their eccentric existence.

  The lake has its sources rather far up in the north, which is a splendid country for a lake. The forest and the hills never cease in gathering water for it; streams and brooks tumble down into it year-round. It has fine, white sand on which to extend itself, promontories and small islands to reflect and observe, water sprite and sea witch have free rein there, and the lake quickly grows large and lovely. Up there in the north the lake is happy and amiable: you need only see it on a summer morning, lying there drowsily under a veil of mist, to feel how merry it is. First it teases for a while, creeping slowly, slowly along out of its light covering, so bewitchingly beautiful that you hardly recognize it, but then with a jerk it throws off the covers and lies there exposed and bare and rosy, glistening in the morning light.

  But the lake is not content with this playful life; he laces himself up into a narrow sound, bursting forth through some sand dunes to the south, seeking a new realm for himself. And he finds such a domain: he grows larger and mightier, with bottomless deeps to fill and an industrious landscape to adorn. But now the water gets darker too, the shore less varied, the winds harsher, its entire character sterner. A stately, grand lake it is. Many are the vessels and log rafts that pass there, only late does he have time to go into hibernation, seldom until after Christmas. He is often in a surly mood: the lake can churn white with wrath and wreck sailboats, but he can also lie in dreamy calm, reflecting the sky.

  But the lake wishes to travel even farther out into the world, although the hills appear more and more rugged and his scope more cramped the farther down he comes, so that once again he must creep along between the sand shores as a narrow sound. Then he broadens out again for the third time, but no longer with the same beauty and majesty.

  The shorelines sink and become uniform, gentler winds blow, the lake goes into an early hibernation. He is still lovely, but he has lost the frenzy of youth and the strength of his prime—he is a lake like any other. With two arms he fumbles for the way to Lake Vänern, and when that is found, he plunges into the weakness of old age along steep precipices and goes with a final, booming exploit into rest.

  The plain is just as long as the lake, but you might think that it has difficulty emerging between lakes and hills, all the way from the basin at the northern end of the lake, where it first dares to spread out, and then onward, until victoriously it lies down in indolent repose by the shore of Vänern. It can only be that the plain would prefer to follow the lakeshore, long as it is, but the hills grant it no peace. The hills are mighty granite walls, covered by forest, full of gorges difficult to move in, rich in moss and lichen, in ancient days home to a multitude of wild animals. One often encounters a marshy bog or a tarn with dark water up among the extensive ridges. Here and there is also a charcoal stack or an open place, where timber and wood have been removed, or a burned clearing; these testify that the hills can also endure work. But normally they lie in carefree repose, content to let shadows and daylight play their eternal game across their slopes.

  And the plain, which is pious and rich and loves work, carries on a constant war with these hills, all, by the way, in a spirit of friendliness.

  “It is really quite enough,” says the plain to the hills, “if you place your walls round about me, that is security enough for me.”

  But the hills will not listen to such talk. They send out long rows of hillocks and bare plateaus all the way down to the lake. They raise grand lookout towers on every promontory and actually leave the lakeshore so seldom that the plain can roll in the soft sand of the lake bed in only a few places. But it does no good if the plain tries to complain.

  “Be glad that we are standing here,” say the hills. “Think of the time before Christmas, when, day after day, the deathly cold mists roll across Löven. We do good service, where we stand.”

  The plain laments that it has little room and a poor view.

  “You are stupid,” the hills reply, “you should just feel how the wind blows down here by the lake. At the very least a granite back and a coat of spruce is needed to endure it. And furthermore, you can be content looking at us.”

  Yes, look at the hills, that is just what the plain does. It must sense all the marvelous nuances of light and shadow that traverse across them. It knows how in the illumination of midday they sink down below the horizon, low and pale light blue, and in morning and evening light rise to venerable heights, clear blue like the sky at the zenith. At times the light can fall so sharply across them that they turn green or blue-black, and every single pine, every road and gorge is visible from miles away. It does happen in certain places that the hills move aside and let the plain come up and look at the lake. But once it sees the lake in its fury, as it hisses and spits like a wildcat, or sees it covered by the cold smoke that arises when the sea witch is busy with brewing and washing, then it quickly acknowledges that the hills are right and withdraws into its cramped prison again.

  From ancient times people have cultivated the magnificent plain, and it has become a large district. Anywhere a river with its white-foaming rapids throws itself down the lakeshore slope, ironworks and mills appeared. On the light, open places where the plain comes up to the lake, churches and parsonages were built, but at the edges of the valleys, halfway up the hillside, on stone-covered ground where seeds do not thrive, are the farmyards and officers’ quarters and an occasional manor house.

  However, it must be noted that in the 1820s the area was far from as developed as it is now. There was much forest and lake and bog then that can now be cultivated. The people were not as numerous either and made their living partly through transports and day labor at the many ironworks, partly by working in other places; agriculture could not feed them. At that time the residents of the plain dressed in homespun clothing, ate oat bread, and were content with a daily wage of twelve shillings. There was great need among many of them, but that was often relieved by an easy, happy temperament and an inborn handiness and capability.

  But these three—the long lake, the fertile plain, and the blue hills—formed one of the loveliest landscapes, and still do, just as today the people are still vigorous, courageous, and talented. Now they have also made great progress both in well-being and in education.

  May all go well for those who live up there by the long lake and the blue hills! And now I wish to relate a few of their memories.

  CHAPTER 2

  CHRISTMAS NIGHT

  Sintram is the name of the malevolent mill owner at Fors, a man with long arms and clumsy, apelike body, with bald head and ugly, sneering face, he whose pleasure is in inciting mischief.

  Sintram is his name, who takes on only vagabonds and rowdies as hired hands and has only quarrelsome, mendacious maids in his service, he who inflames dogs to fury by sticking needles in their muzzles and lives happily in the midst of spiteful people and savage animals.

  Sintram is his name, whose greatest joy is to dress up in the form of the foul fiend, with horns and tail and horse’s hooves and hairy body and, suddenly emerging from dark corners, from baking oven or woodshed, to frighten timid children and super
stitious women.

  Sintram is his name, who enjoys turning old friendship into new hatred and poisoning hearts with lies.

  Sintram is his name—and one day he came to Ekeby.

  Pull the big wood sledge into the smithy, let it stand in the middle of the floor, and lay a cart bed over the stakes! Now we have a table. Cheers for the table, the table is ready!

  Bring out chairs, anything that can be used to sit on! Over here with three-legged shoemaker’s stools and empty barrels! Over here with worn-out old armchairs without backs, and out with the runnerless racing sleigh and the old coach! Ha, ha, ha, out with the old coach, it can be a platform!

  Just look at it, one wheel has been driven to bits, no, the whole wagon body! Only the driver’s seat remains; the cushion is wrecked, moss spreading over it, the leather is red with age. The ramshackle old thing is tall as a house. Prop it up, prop it up, otherwise it will fall!

  Hurrah! Hurrah! It is Christmas night at the Ekeby ironworks.

  Behind the silk curtains of the double bed the major and majoress are sleeping, sleeping in the belief that the cavaliers’ wing is sleeping. Hired hands and maids may sleep, heavy with porridge and bitter Christmas beer, but not the gentlemen in the cavaliers’ wing. How can anyone think that the cavaliers’ wing is sleeping!

  No bare-legged smiths are turning the molten pieces of iron, no soot-covered boys are pushing coal barrows; the great hammer hangs from the ceiling like an arm with a clenched fist, the anvil stands empty, the furnaces do not have their red maws open to devour coal, the bellows are not creaking. It is Christmas. The smithy is sleeping.

  Sleep, sleep! Oh, you human children, sleep while the cavaliers are awake. The long tongs stand upright on the floor with tallow in their claws. From the shining copper ten-pot kettle, the blue flames of the brulot flare high up against the darkness of the ceiling. Beerencreutz’s horn lantern is hanging up on the tilt hammer. The yellow punsch glistens in the bowl like a bright sun. There are tables, there are benches. The cavaliers are celebrating Christmas night in the smithy.

  There is merriment and clamor, music and song. But the din of the midnight feast awakens no one. All the noise from the smithy dies away in the powerful roar of the rapids just outside.

  There is merriment and clamor. Imagine, if the majoress were to see them!

  What of it? She would certainly seat herself among them and empty a goblet. A capable woman she is; she does not turn away from a thunderous drinking song or a game of kille. The richest woman in Värmland, plucky as a man, proud as a queen. She loves song and sounding fiddles and hunting horns. Wine and card playing she likes, and tables, wreathed with happy guests, are her joy. She likes to see the storehouses being used, dancing and merriment in chamber and hall, and the cavaliers’ wing filled with cavaliers.

  Look at them round the bowl, cavalier by cavalier! There are twelve of them, twelve men. No mayflies, no dandies, but men whose reputation will long live on in Värmland, courageous men, strong men.

  No dried-up parchments, no tied-up money pouches, poor men. Carefree men, cavaliers all day long.

  No mama’s boys, no sleepy gentlemen on their own estate. Wayfaring men, merry men, knights of a hundred adventures.

  For many years now the cavaliers’ wing has stood empty. Ekeby is no longer the chosen refuge of homeless cavaliers. Retired officers and poor nobles no longer drift around Värmland in rickety one-horse carriages. But let the dead live, let them rise again, those happy, carefree, eternally young ones!

  All of these celebrated men can play one or more instruments. All of them are as full of peculiarities and proverbs and flashes of wit and songs as an anthill is full of ants, but each one, however, has his particular great singularity, his highly treasured cavalier virtue, which separates him from the rest.

  Foremost of all of them who are sitting round the bowl, I will mention Beerencreutz, the colonel with the great white mustaches, kille player, singer of Bellman songs, and along with him his friend and war comrade, the taciturn major, the great bear hunter Anders Fuchs, and as the third in the company little Ruster, the drummer, who had long been the colonel’s servant, but won the rank of cavalier by skillfulness in punsch feats and singing bass. Then old second-lieutenant Rutger von Örneclou, ladies’ man, dressed in cravat and wig, decked out in ruffles and made up like a woman, must be mentioned. He was one of the finest cavaliers, and likewise Kristian Bergh, the strong captain, who was a comical hero, but as easy to fool as a giant in a fairy tale. Short, pear-shaped Squire Julius, witty, amusing, and well talented, was often in the company of these two: orator, painter, singer of songs, and teller of anecdotes. He would gladly practice his wit on the gouty second-lieutenant and the stupid giant.

  There was also the big German, Kevenhüller, inventor of the self-propelled wagon and the flying machine, whose name still resounds in these murmuring forests. A knight he was by birth and in appearance as well, with great, twirling mustaches, pointed full beard, aquiline nose, and narrow, slanting eyes in a net of crisscrossed wrinkles. There sat the great warrior, cousin Kristoffer, who never went outside the walls of the cavaliers’ wing except when a bear hunt or a daring adventure was waiting, and next to him uncle Eberhard, the philosopher, who had not drifted to Ekeby for pleasure and games but rather to be able, undisturbed by the worries of making a living, to fulfill his great work in the science of sciences.

  Last of all I will now mention the best of the group, modest Lövenborg, that pious man, who was too good for this world and understood little of its ways, and Lilliecrona, the great musician, who had a good home and always longed for it, but nonetheless must remain at Ekeby, for his spirit required richness and variety to be able to endure life.

  These eleven had all left youth behind them, and several had entered old age, but in the midst of them there was one who was no more than thirty years old and still possessed all the powers of soul and body unbroken. This was Gösta Berling, the cavalier of cavaliers, who all by himself was a greater orator, singer, musician, hunter, drinking champion, and player than all the others. He possessed all the cavalier virtues. What a man the majoress had made of him!

  Look at him now, standing up on the rostrum. The darkness settles down over him from the black ceiling in heavy festoons. His fair head glistens out of that darkness like one of the young gods, the young bearers of light, who organized chaos. There he stands, slender, beautiful, adventurous.

  But he speaks with deep gravity.

  “Cavaliers and brothers, it is almost midnight, the feast is far advanced, it is time to drink a toast to the thirteenth at the table!”

  “Dear brother Gösta,” calls out Squire Julius, “there is no thirteenth here, there are only twelve of us.”

  “At Ekeby a man dies every year,” Gösta continues in an ever gloomier voice. “One of the guests of the cavaliers’ wing dies, one of the happy, the carefree, the eternally young dies. What of it? Cavaliers must not grow old. If our trembling hands cannot lift the glass, our dimming eyes not discern the cards, what then is life to us, and what are we to life? Of the thirteen who celebrate Christmas night in the smithy at Ekeby, one must die, but every year a new one comes to complete our number. A man skilled in the handiwork of joy, a man who can handle fiddle and cards, must come and make our group complete in number. Old butterflies should have the sense to die while the summer sun is shining. Cheers to the thirteenth!”

  “But, Gösta, there are only twelve of us,” the cavaliers object, not touching their glasses.

  Gösta Berling, whom they called the poet, although he never wrote verse, continues with unperturbed calm.

  “Cavaliers and brethren! Have you forgotten who you are? You are the ones who uphold pleasure in Värmland. You are the ones who put the strings in motion, keep the dance going, let song and play resound through the land. You know to keep your hearts away from gold, your hands from work. If you did not exist, then the dance would die out, summer would die out, the roses die out, card playin
g die out, song die out, and in all of this blessed land there would be nothing but iron and mill owners. Pleasure will live as long as you do. For six years now I have celebrated Christmas night in the smithy at Ekeby, and never before has anyone refused to drink to the thirteenth.”

  “But, Gösta,” they then shout, “since there are only twelve of us, how can we drink to the thirteenth?”

  Deep concern shows itself on Gösta’s face.

  “Are there only twelve of us?” he says. “Why is that, shall we die out from the earth? Shall there be only eleven of us next year, and the following year only ten? Shall our name become legend, our group annihilated? I call him, the thirteenth, for I have stood up to drink his health. From the depths of the sea, from the inner domains of the earth, from the heavens, from hell I call him who shall complete the cavaliers’ company.”

  Then there is a rattling in the chimney, then the cover of the smelting furnace is thrown open, then the thirteenth arrives.

  Hairy he comes, with tail and horse’s hoof, with horn and pointed Vandyke beard, and at the sight of him the cavaliers spring up with a shout.

  But with unbridled merriment Gösta Berling cries out, “The thirteenth has arrived—skoal to the thirteenth!”

  So he has arrived, the ancient enemy of mankind, come to the bold ones who disturb the peace of the holy night. Friend of broom-riding witches, who signs his contracts in blood on coal-black paper, he who danced with the countess at Ivarsnäs for seven days and could not be driven away by seven ministers, he has arrived.

  Thoughts are flying at frantic speed through the heads of the old adventurers at the sight of him. They wonder for whose sake he is out this night.

  Many of them were ready to hurry off in terror, but they soon realized that the horned one had not come to fetch them down to his dark realm, but rather that the clinking of beakers and drinking songs had enticed him. He wanted to delight in the joys of men during the sacred Christmas night and throw off the burden of rule during this time of joy.