Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

Kristina still limped, and that was why she didn’t rise from the spooling wheel while Karl Oskar was in the kitchen.

But he found excuses for calling on Berta to see the girl again, and next time he found her standing outside on the porch. He noticed then that she was a tall girl, as tall as he. She was lithe and slender around the waist. Her eyes were bashful and tempting.

They met now and then while Kristina remained in Idemo. Her knee healed and she limped no more; no longer was she ashamed to walk about when Karl Oskar saw her.

The evening before she was to return home they met and sat outside Berta’s cellar on an upturned potato basket. He said he liked her and asked if she liked him. She did. He then asked if she would marry him. She answered that she thought both of them too young, that at least he ought to be of age. He said he could write to the King and get permission to marry. Then she said they had no place to live, nor did she know how they could feed and clothe themselves. To this he had no answer, for it was true. He had nothing to promise her, therefore he kept still; a spoken word and a promise carried weight; one had to answer for it, it could never be taken back.

They had since met at the Klintakrogen fair three times, two springs and one autumn, and each time Karl Oskar had said that he still liked her and no one else was in his thoughts.

Karl Oskar was sure of what he wanted. As soon as he had been offered Korpamoen by his father, he went to Kristina’s parents in Duvemåla. They were much surprised by this visit from an unknown youth who asked leave to speak with their daughter alone.

Karl Oskar and Kristina stood under the gable of her home and talked to each other for twenty minutes.

Karl Oskar thought:

Their hour to get married had now arrived; he was of age, he was to take over his father’s farmstead, they had house and home and means to earn food and clothing.

Kristina thought:

As they had met only a half-score times, they had hardly had opportunity to get to know each other. At nineteen she was still too young to become a farm wife; he must ask her parents if they wanted him for a son-in-law.

It turned out as Karl Oskar had thought it would. He was accepted into the family when her parents learned that his suit was earnest and that he owned a farm. He stayed in their house overnight and slept with his wife-to-be, fully dressed, in all honor. Six weeks later the wedding was held in Duvemåla between Karl Oskar Nilsson and Kristina Johansdotter.

Karl Oskar said to his young wife: There was no person in the whole world he liked as well as her, because she never criticized him or pointed out his shortcomings as others did. He was sure he would be happy with her through his whole life.

— 3—

King Oskar I ascended the throne of Sweden and Norway in 1844, and the same year Karl Oskar Nilsson (the old-fashioned spelling of Nils’ Son was discarded by Karl Oskar, who had learned to write) took possession of “one-sixteenth of one homestead, Korpamoen.” He still carried the names of the King and the Crown Prince, but now the order of the names was reversed: the new King’s name was Oskar and the Crown Prince was Karl.

The price agreed upon for Korpamoen, with cattle and farming equipment, was seventeen hundred riksdaler. This sum (amounting to a little less than five hundred dollars in American money today) included the mortgage of eight hundred riksdaler. Nils and Märta also kept their “reserved rights” to the end of their days: living quarters in the spare room, winter and summer fodder for one cow and one sheep, three-quarters of an acre of arable land for their own sowing, with use of the owner’s team, and twelve bushels of grain yearly, half rye and half barley. In the preserved deed it can still be read: “The reserved rights to begin July 1, 1844, this agreement entered into with sound mind and ripe consideration has taken place in Korpamoen, June nineteenth of this year, in the presence of witnesses.” The deed bears the cross marks of Nils and Märta, who had never learned to write.

As was usual when parents ceded their farm with reserved rights, a division of inheritance was now undertaken. Each of the children received two hundred and ten riksdaler and twenty-four shillings. Robert and Lydia, not yet of age, let their shares remain as claims against their brother.

Karl Oskar had got what he wanted; and how was it with him as a beginner? During his seven years in service he had saved one hundred and fifty riksdaler; with his wife he had received as dowry two hundred riksdaler; his inheritance was two hundred and ten riksdaler. But this money amounted to only one-quarter of the sales price. The other three-quarters remained as debt, debt which carried interest. He must pay fifty riksdaler a year in interest on the mortgage. And his greatest debt was the reserved rights to his parents. Indeed, the reserved rights were heavy for so small a farm — but they must be sufficient for the parents’ maintenance. Karl Oskar’s obligation to them was a debt on the farm which he must continue to pay as long as they lived; and Nils was only fifty-one years of age, Märta forty-eight. It was hardly a farm that Karl Oskar had taken over — it was debts to pay, with interest. But debt could be blotted out through work, and so he did not worry: he knew how to work.

Thus life continued in Korpamoen: Nils and Märta moved into the little spare room where they were to live out their years; Kristina arrived with her dowry chest and took Märta’s place. It was a young farm wife who moved in. But with her own hands she had stitched the bridal cover which she now, the first evening, spread over the nuptial bed. It was the blue of cornflowers, and Märta had said it was nice; Kristina was proud.

Karl Oskar was pleased that his mother and wife could live in harmony; otherwise they might have caused each other great irritation. The contract stated that his mother had the right to cook in the kitchen and bake in the big bake oven; had they been unfriendly they could have been in each other’s way in every corner.

But one day Kristina was discovered by her mother-in-law in the threshing barn, where she was playing in a swing which she had secretly hung from the rafters. Märta excused it and said nothing; Kristina was still a child in her ways, with a desire for play still in her body. It was peculiar, however, that Kristina would want to play with a swing since she had once fallen from one, injuring her knee. Besides, the wild play did not suit a married woman. Luckily no outsider saw her in the barn, hence no rumors spread in the neighborhood.

There was, however, something in regard to Kristina which Nils and Märta did not like: on her mother’s side she was related to descendants of Åke Svensson, the founder of the Åkian sect. Her mother was Åke’s niece. And her uncle, Danjel Andreasson, was owner of Kärragärde, the meeting place for the Åkians in Ljuder. Of course, more than fifty years had elapsed since the instigator of this heresy, the troublemaker from Östergöhl, had died in Danvik’s asylum. As far as was generally known, nothing had survived in Kärragärde of the horrible Åkianist contagion. But the original ill feeling toward the founder had been so deeply rooted among a great many of the parishioners that it still survived — kinfolk of Åke Svensson did not brag about their relationship.

Nils and Märta said nothing to their daughter-in-law, but one day they did broach the question to Karl Oskar: “Do you know your wife is related to Åke of Östergöhl?”

“I’m aware of it — and I defy anyone to hold it against her.”

There was nothing more to be said. Märta and Nils only hoped that Kristina’s kinship with the Åkian founder wasn’t generally known in the village. In Korpamoen it was never mentioned again.