Vilhelm Moberg - Unto A Good Land

“Do you remember, Kristina? Tomorrow is an important day to remember.”

“No. Isn’t it a usual workday?”

“It is the fourteenth of April. The day we went on board ship in Karlshamn.”

Tomorrow, a year would have passed since they had tramped their homeland soil for the last time. Tomorrow they would put the plow into American soil for the first time.

Karl Oskar immediately fell into deep sleep, but Kristina lay awake yet a while. She listened to the sounds from the bed at the opposite corner of the cabin — short, quick breaths, the light rustle of children’s breathing in sleep. It reminded her of Karl Oskar’s words tonight: their children would be grateful to the parents for having emigrated with them while they still were little and had their lives ahead of them.

It might be so, perhaps he was right. But one couldn’t say for sure, no human could know this for sure — it would be better not to predict anything in advance.

What she could predict, what she did know for sure, was that her children would never have to go through the pain of longing which she now went through. They carried no memories from the homeland, her longing would never afflict them, no vivid memories from a past life in another country would plague them. Once they were grown they would never know any other life than the one lived here. And their grandchildren in turn would know even less of another way of life. Her children and her children’s children would never, as she did, remember trees and bushes they had planted in a far-off land, they would not ask, Do they still bud and bloom in spring, do they carry their fruit in fall? They would never, as she did, lie awake nights and gaze into the dark for that land where spring evenings are light.

The ones she had borne into the world, and the ones they in turn would bear, would from the beginning of their lives say what her own tongue was unable to say: At home here in America— back there in Sweden. With this thought, listening to her children’s breathing, Kristina went to sleep.

Duvemåla at Taylors Falls Postoffce in

Minnesota Teritory Northamerica

June 4 1851.

Dearly Beloved Parents

May all be well with you is my daily Wish

Father’s letter came some time ago, I thank you for it. I have not written to you because of great oversight, it was a joy to learn you are alive and in good health, the same good holds true for your son and Family in Northamerica.

It has been a struggle right along but all things turn out well for us, I plowed a five acres field on my land last spring, I have seeded the earth with three bushels of rye and two bushels of barley. Besides I have planted four bushels of potatoes, the american bushel is half time larger than the Swedish. All crops in the field grow and thrive it is a joy for the eye to behold.

I wonder if you will ask Kristina’s parents to send us seeds from the Astrakan apple in Duvemåla, we wish to plant a new astrakan apple tree here in Minnesota then we can have the same sort of apples, they were so fresh in eating as we well remember, and then we will have moved something from there over here. Sweden has good apple seeds and here is good soil to sprout and grow in, so it might grow to be a large tree in time, with many blooms.

As you see from this letter our abode now carries the name Duvemåla, Kristina holds that name dear I suppose, here it will soon be for her like in her childhood home, we have already full summer and warm weather, I sweat on my hands while I write this the sweat drops upon the paper, I have not much to write about, nothing has happened to us.

Our children are well and healthy, there is long space between my letters but they will not stop, I live far away but no day has come to its end without my thoughts on my dear Home and You my kind parents, your son never forgets his home.

Kindly overlook my poor writing written

down hastely by your devoted Son

Karl Oskar Nilsson

Unto a Good Land is the second volume in a planned trilogy,

of which The Emigrants was the first volume.

Carmel, California, August 1953

V.M.