This edition of Hjalmar Söderberg’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “The Chimney Sweeper’s Wife,” “Bloom,” “The Fur Coat,” “The Blue Anchor,” “The Kiss,” “The Dream of Eternity,”...

This is a grim and sad story. I heard it told more than once in my childhood, and it made me wonder and shudder. In a side street stands an old middle-class house with a smooth gray façade. Through a ...

On a brilliant August morning at eight o’clock precisely the gates of the establishment of Långholm were opened for three boarders of the establishment, who had come there for various causes and sojou...

It was a cold winter that year. People shrank up in the chill and grew smaller, all except those who had furs. Judge Richardt had a big fur coat. It almost belonged, moreover, to his official position...

There was dancing in the salon, but in the darkened smoking-room sat several men who did not dance. The younger ones had white flowers in their buttonholes, the older ones had decorations. In the corn...

There was dancing in the salon, but in the darkened smoking-room sat several men who did not dance. The younger ones had white flowers in their buttonholes, the older ones had decorations. In the corn...

He sauntered back and forth through the rooms. He went out into the corridor. A couple of Knights of Vasa were sitting on the wood-box talking about business while they gesticulated with two big cigar...

Years passed, and one day Richard Fant said to his wife as they were dressing to go out to dinner, “Do you know, I think the blue anchor is beginning to fade. Perhaps it’s on the way to vanish entirel...

There was a dance after the dinner, but Fant remained sitting in a sofa corner of the smoking-room. By his side sat the man whom he had formerly annoyed by staring at his foreign decoration, but he wa...

The coffin stood in the middle of the room. The black-clad woman walked back and forth, back and forth. “No, he’s not coming⁠—” When he finally did come, he said, “Pardon me, beloved. I was delayed by...

There was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and wa...

While I was still very young I believed with entire certainty that I had an immortal soul. I regarded this as a holy and precious gift and was both happy and proud over it. I often said to myself: “Th...

Autumn is here again with its dismal days, and the sun is hiding himself in the darkest corner of the heavens so that no one shall see how pale and aged and worn he has grown in this latter time. But ...

One day in April many years ago, in the time when I still wondered about the meaning of life, I went into a little cigar booth on a back street to buy a cigar. I selected a dark and angular El Zelo, s...

This is the story of a young girl and an apothecary with a white vest. She was young and slim, she smelled of pine woods and heather, and her complexion was sunburned and a trifle freckled. So she was...

It happened when I was hardly more than a boy. It was on a blustering autumn evening on board a coast steamer. We had not yet come in from the country, and I had to go in and out of town to school. I ...

Yesterday a familiar face flitted by me on the street. It was pale and had a tired expression, but the features were sharp and strongly marked. I did not recall his name. I was sure I had seen him som...

Signy was a little girl about as old as I, with a pink dress and a pink ribbon in her hair. Her hair was dark, with curly locks, and she had dark blue starry eyes with long lashes. She was not at all ...

A man died, and after he was dead no one looked after his black dog. The dog mourned him long and bitterly. He did not, however, lie down to die on his master’s grave; possibly because he did not know...

This little village is the most conventional in the world. When, as it sometimes happens, an artist in presenting to the world the product of his imagination ventures to overstep the prescribed bounds...

I had known Paul Herbst over a year before I learned accidentally that he had been married and that his wife had been dead long since. We used to meet at one place or another with common friends, and ...

Through the two windows with their bright lattice-figured curtains the level sunlight of the winter morning falls in two slanting oblong quadrilaterals on the soft green carpet, and in the warm sunny ...

I once knew a little street arab. He was the same age as I and lived in the same square. But he was superior to me in everything, not only in experience and courage but also in accomplishments; for wi...

I had not seen my old student comrade, Pastor Torelius of Lerkila, for ten years when, on a fine warm summer evening just a little while ago, we ran into each other on the corner of the sidewalk in fr...

I had not seen my old student comrade, Pastor Torelius of Lerkila, for ten years when, on a fine warm summer evening just a little while ago, we ran into each other on the corner of the sidewalk in fr...

“You may, perhaps, remember that it was very warm last summer, especially just before midsummer. One day I was going the rounds of my place as usual. I went out along the ditches in the full sunlight,...

“It is, however, luckily a fact that a violent emotion is seldom long-lived, at least not with animals. After a while the luscious grass began to distract their attention, and I hid myself in the leav...

“That afternoon I fortunately met the girl first. She was standing by a bush in the orchard eating gooseberries. Her father, I should mention, had a fine place with an excellent orchard; he had been b...