Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

Korpamoen was at first hardly more than a cotter’s place, but Nils developed his inheritance into a farm. The soil was sandy, strewn with stones. It looked as if it had rained stones from heaven here during all the six days of the creation. But Nils searched out every patch of soil that could be cultivated and attacked the stones with his iron bar and lever — the latter a long pole with a horseshoe nailed to the heavy end. His best tools, however, were his hands; with these he went after the stones deep in their holes, wrestled with them, turned them, finally rolled them away. And when Nils encountered a stone which he couldn’t manage with his hands or his tools, he called for his wife. Märta was almost as strong as her husband; she hung on to the small end of the lever while Nils used the iron bar.

It was a silent struggle between Nils and the stone, a fight between an inert mass and the living muscles and sinews of a patient, persevering man.

This fight continued during all of Nils’ farming years; each year he broke a new quarter of an acre, until at last there were more stone piles in Korpamoen than on any other farm in the parish. When Nils turned his field the plow circled stone piles; he used to say he became giddy from the ring-around-the-rosy dance in his fields.

Nils Jakob’s Son was also handy with wood, and worked sometimes as a timberman in the neighborhood. He had built his own house. Even as a boy he had started to follow the woodmen and before he was grown he could join the corner timbers of a house, that most difficult task in carpentry. He was also a cabinetmaker and a smith. Throughout the winters he stood at his workbench and made all kinds of farming tools.

When he had moved to Korpamoen he had been forced to mortgage the farm, so that his brothers and sisters might receive their inheritance share in cash; the yearly interest on this loan required that he work as timberman and carpenter.

Of the marriage between Nils and Märta three children were born: two sons, Karl Oskar and Robert, and a daughter, Lydia. Twice Märta’s pregnancy had ended in miscarriage; once on the same day she had been in the field helping her husband dig up a boulder.

Karl Johan, the new King of Sweden and Norway, had ascended the throne the year before Nils and Märta were married; their first-born son was named after him; the child’s second name was for the new Crown Prince, Oskar. It was thought to be good luck to name one’s children after people of high station — kings, princes, queens, princesses; even the poorest squatter could afford royal names for his offspring.

The first-born son, Karl Oskar, was also born with the lucky big nose of the Nilsa family.

Karl Oskar grew up strong of limb and body. Soon he helped his father at building and stone breaking. But early the boy showed a mind of his own; in work he would not do as his father told him, but rather followed his own way, though eating his parents’ bread. No chastisement improved the stubborn child; Nils was many times angered over his son’s independent ways.

One day when Karl Oskar was fourteen years old he was asked by his father to make slats for a new hayrick; they should be five feet long. Karl Oskar thought the hayrick would be too low with such short slats; he made them six feet, instead.

Nils measured the slats and said: “Do as I tell you, or go!”

Karl Oskar kept silent for a while, then haughtily answered: “I shall go.”

The same day he hired himself as farmhand to a man in Idemo, where he was to remain seven years.

Taken at his word, Nils regretted it; his son had been a help to him. But he could not retract: a boy who had not yet received Holy Communion could not rule his father in his work. On the whole, however, all went well for Nils and Märta in Korpamoen for some twenty-five years.

Then, one day in the early spring of 1844, Nils Jakob’s Son was alone in an outlying glade, breaking new land. Here he encountered a stone which caused him much trouble. It was smaller than many a one he had removed alone, but it lay deep in earth and was round as a globe so that neither bar nor lever got hold of it. Nils used all his tricks and soon the stone was halfway up. He now wedged it with the iron bar, intending to roll it away with his hands; but as he bent down to get a good hold for the final battle the earth slid away from under his foot and he fell on his face. In the fall he moved the iron bar that held the stone, which rolled back into its hole — over one of his thighs.

Nils lay where he fell. When he didn’t come home for his afternoon meal, Märta went out to look for him. She found her husband in the hole next to the stone, and lifted him onto her back and carried him home. Berta in Idemo, whose aid was solicited for hurts and ailments, was sent for, and she told him that the hipbone was broken and the joint injured.

Nils remained in bed for several months while Berta attended him with her herb concoctions and salves. The bone healed and he could again stand on his feet, but some injury was left in the joint and it remained incurable; he could not move without crutches; from now on he could do chores with his hands only, while seated.

Nils Jakob’s Son was a cripple. His farmer’s life was over. For twenty-five years he had fought the stones, and in the last battle the stones had won.

Korpamoen was no longer a cotter’s place. The size of the manure pile tells the size of the farm: it was not a mean dunghill outside the stable barns at Korpamoen. The farm now had seven arable acres; it could feed seven head of cattle through summer and winter. Nils and Märta had more than doubled the plot they first occupied twenty-five years before. Now they must cede it.

The farm was too small to divide; a one-sixteenth could not be split. And Nils did not wish to sell it to an outsider; one of his children must reap the benefit of his many years of clearing. Karl Oskar was still in service in Idemo, and barely of age. Robert, their second son, was only eleven, and the daughter Lydia fourteen years old. Even the oldest son was rather young to become his own master, but Nils offered Korpamoen to him, nevertheless. The father by now had more respect for the headstrong boy who had left home at fourteen because he couldn’t have his way about a few hayrick slats.

After seven years as a farmhand Karl Oskar was weary of working for others, and would rather be master of the homestead; he was ready to buy.

“If you become a farmer, you’ll need a wench,” said Nils.

“I’ll find one,” said Karl Oskar, sure of himself.

“Braggart!”

A few days later, however, Karl Oskar announced that the banns would be read for him the following Sunday. The parents were so much astonished they could not say a word: the son had even arranged his marriage without their advice! Indeed, the boy did have a will of his own. But they were also concerned; in the long run such a headstrong son would succeed only with difficulty.

— 2—

On an autumn day a few years earlier Karl Oskar had brought a load of his master’s firewood to Berta, the Idemo woman with healing knowledge. Berta offered him a dram in the kitchen, and there sat a young girl, unknown to him, spooling yarn. She had thick, light yellow hair, and a pair of mild eyes — green, blue, or perhaps both. Her face, with its soft, pink skin, pleased him, in spite of a few freckles on her nose. The girl sat quietly at the spooling wheel while Karl Oskar was in the kitchen, and none of them spoke. But when he was ready to leave he turned to her and said: “My name is Karl Oskar.”

“Mine is Kristina,” she answered

Then she sat silent, and spooled as before. But she had given him her name, she who was to become his wife.

Kristina was a farmer’s daughter from Duvemåla, in Algutsboda Parish, and she was only seventeen when they first met. But her body was well developed, with the first marks of womanhood; her hips showed well-rounded curves and her maidenly breasts were cramped inside the blouse which she had long ago outgrown. In her mind, however, she was still a child. She loved to swing. A few weeks before she met Karl Oskar she had taken the ox-thong and set up a swing in the barn at Duvemåla. During her play she had fallen out of the swing and broken her kneecap. The injury was poorly looked after, and gangrene set in. Her parents had then sent her to Berta in Idemo, who was known through many parishes for her healing ability, and Kristina was staying with the old woman while the gangrene mended.