The Story of Gösta Berling was published in Sweden in 1894 and immediately brought its author into prominence. The tales are founded on actual occurrences and depict the life in the province of Värmla...

At last the minister stood in the pulpit. The heads of the congregation were lifted. Well, there he finally was. There would be no default this Sunday, as on the last and on many other Sundays before....

At last the minister stood in the pulpit. The heads of the congregation were lifted. Well, there he finally was. There would be no default this Sunday, as on the last and on many other Sundays before....

One cold December day a beggar came wandering up the slopes of Broby. He was dressed in the most miserable rags, and his shoes were so worn that the cold snow wet his feet. Löfven is a long, narrow la...

I must now describe the long lake, the rich plains and the blue mountains, since they were the scene where Gösta Berling and the other knights of Ekeby passed their joyous existence. The lake has its ...

I must now describe the long lake, the rich plains and the blue mountains, since they were the scene where Gösta Berling and the other knights of Ekeby passed their joyous existence. The lake has its ...

Sintram is the name of the wicked master of the works at Fors, with his clumsy ape-body, and his long arms, with his bald head and ugly, grinning face⁠—he whose delight is to make mischief. Sintram it...

On Christmas day the major’s wife gives a great dinner at Ekeby. She sits as hostess at a table laid for fifty guests. She sits there in splendor and magnificence; here her short sheepskin jacket, her...

It was Christmas, and there was to be a ball at Borg. At that time, and it is soon sixty years ago, a young Count Dohna lived at Borg; he was newly married, and he had a young, beautiful countess. It ...

Warhorse! warhorse! Old friend, who now stand tethered in the pasture, do you remember your youth? Do you remember the day of the battle? You sprang forward, as if you had been borne on wings, your ma...

Ah, women of the olden times! To speak of you is to speak of the kingdom of heaven; you were all beauties, ever bright, ever young, ever lovely and gentle as a mother’s eyes when she looks down on her...

If it should happen to you that you are sitting or lying and reading this at night, as I am writing it during the silent hours, then do not draw a sigh of relief here and think that the good pensioner...

In the darkness of the forests dwell unholy creatures, whose jaws are armed with horrible, glittering teeth or sharp beaks, whose feet have pointed claws, which long to sink themselves in a blood-fill...

We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them. “Was life then one long adventure?” “Were all young wo...

The young countess sleeps till ten o’clock in the morning, and wants fresh bread on the breakfast-table every day. The young countess embroiders, and reads poetry. She knows nothing of weaving and coo...

Oh, children of the present day! I have nothing new to tell you, only what is old and almost forgotten. I have legends from the nursery, where the little ones sat on low stools about the old nurse wit...

The beautiful point on Löfven’s eastern shore, about which the bay glides with lapping waves, the proud point where the manor of Borg lies, beware of approaching. Löfven never looks more glorious than...

There is a buzzing over my head. It must be a bumblebee. And such a perfume! As true as I live, it is sweet marjoram and lavender and hawthorn and lilacs and Easter lilies. It is glorious to feel it o...

They had an old bird of prey up in the pensioners’ wing. He always sat in the corner by the fire and saw that it did not go out. He was rough and gray. His little head with the big nose and the sunken...

They had an old bird of prey up in the pensioners’ wing. He always sat in the corner by the fire and saw that it did not go out. He was rough and gray. His little head with the big nose and the sunken...

Weary are the ways which men have to follow here on earth. Paths through the desert, paths through the marshes, paths over the mountains. Why is so much sorrow allowed to go undisturbed, until it lose...

Dear friends, if it should ever happen that you meet a pitiful wretch on your way, a little distressed creature, who lets his hat hang on his back and holds his shoes in his hand, so as not to have an...

Spring had come, and the iron from all the mines in Värmland was to be sent to Gothenburg. But at Ekeby they had no iron to send. In the autumn there had been a scarcity of water, in the spring the pe...

Among the pensioners was one whom I have often mentioned as a great musician. He was a tall, heavily built man, with a big head and bushy, black hair. He was certainly not more than forty years old at...

The witch of Dovre walks on Löfven’s shores. People have seen her there, little and bent, in a leather skirt and a belt of silver plates. Why has she come out of the wolf-holes to a human world? What ...

Midsummer was hot then as now when I am writing. It was the most beautiful season of the year. It was the season when Sintram, the wicked ironmaster at Fors, fretted and grieved. He resented the sun’s...

When nothing could make Gösta Berling glad, after he had helped the young countess to escape, the pensioners decided to seek help of the good Madame Musica, who is a powerful fairy and consoles many w...

Eros, all-powerful god, you know well that it often seems as if a man should have freed himself from your might. All the tender feelings which unite mankind seem dead in his heart. Madness stretches i...

Patron Julius carried down his red painted wooden chest from the pensioners’ wing. He filled with fragrant brandy a green keg, which had followed him on many journeys, and in the big carved luncheon-b...

Svartsjö church is white both outside and in: the walls are white, the pulpit, the seats, the galleries, the roof, the window-sashes, the altar-cloth⁠—everything is white. In Svartsjö church are no de...

God’s wayfarer, Captain Lennart, came one afternoon in August wandering up to the Broby inn and walked into the kitchen there. He was on his way to his home, Helgesäter, which lies a couple of miles n...

It was a beautiful evening in August. The Löfven lay like a mirror, haze veiled the mountains, it was the cool of the evening. There came Beerencreutz, the colonel with the white moustaches, short, st...

Marianne Sinclair sat one quiet afternoon at the end of August in her room and arranged her old letters and other papers. Round about her was disorder. Great leather trunks and iron bound boxes had be...

My pale friend, Death the deliverer, came in August, when the nights were white with moonlight, to the house of Captain Uggla. But he did not dare to go direct into that hospitable home, for they are ...

If dead things love, if earth and water distinguish friends from enemies, I should like to possess their love. I should like the green earth not to feel my step as a heavy burden. I should like her to...

The child was born in a peasant’s house east of the Klar river. The child’s mother had come seeking employment one day in early June. She had been unfortunate, she had said to the master and mistress,...

Under the stairs to the gallery in the Svartsjö church is a lumber-room filled with the gravediggers’ worn-out shovels, with broken benches, with rejected tin labels and other rubbish. There, where th...

No one knows the place in the lee of the mountain where the pines grow thickest and deep layers of moss cover the ground. How should anyone know it? No man’s foot has ever trodden it before; no man’s ...

In the year 1770, in Germany, the afterwards learned and accomplished Kevenhüller was born. He was the son of a count, and could have lived in lofty palaces and ridden at the Emperor’s side if he had ...

On the first Friday in October the big Broby Fair begins, and lasts one week. It is the festival of the autumn. There is slaughtering and baking in every house; the new winter clothes are then worn fo...

It was many years before the pensioners’ reign at Ekeby. The shepherd’s boy and girl played together in the wood, built houses with flat stones, and picked cloudberries. They were both born in the woo...

A few days before Christmas the major’s wife started on her journey down to the Löfsjö district; but it was not till Christmas Eve that she came to Ekeby. During the whole journey she was ill. Yet, in...

A Swedish game of cards. ↩ Terms used in weaving. ↩ In the country, in Sweden, they wash twice a year, in spring and autumn. ↩...