The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson Read online

  Selma Lagerlöf

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  THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURE OF NILS HOLGERSSON

  Translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlén

  Illustrations by Bertil Lybeck

  Contents

  1. The Boy

  2. Akka from Kebnekaise

  3. Wild Bird Life

  4. Glimmingehus

  5. The Great Crane Dance at Kullaberg

  6. In Rainy Weather

  7. The Staircase with Three Steps

  8. By Ronneby River

  9. Karlskrona

  10. Journey to Öland

  11. The South Cape of Öland

  12. The Big Butterfly

  13. Lilla Karlsön

  14. Two Cities

  15. The Tale of Småland

  16. The Crows

  17. The Old Farmwoman

  18. From Taberg to Huskvarna

  19. The Great Bird Lake

  20. The Prophecy

  21. Homespun Cloth

  Follow Penguin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) was born and raised on a farm in the Swedish province of Värmland. She was a teacher in a girls’ secondary school for ten years, one of a handful of professions open to women at that time. In 1895, financial support from the royal family and the Swedish Academy encouraged her to abandon teaching altogether and write full-time. She published sixteen novels and seven volumes of short stories, including The Saga of Gösta Berling (1891), Lord Arne’s Silver (1903), The Phantom Carriage (1921) and the memoir Diary of Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf (1932). In 1909 she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, ‘in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings’. A feminist and a beacon for the suffragette movement in Sweden, Lagerlöf managed to buy back her family farm, Marbåcka, which had been sold at auction in 1885, and, from 1910 onwards, she was in charge of running the estate while also continuing to write.

  Her best-known work, The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson (1907), is a beloved children’s book in Scandinavia and has been translated into nearly fifty languages. Lagerlöf was first commissioned to write it as a geography textbook for Swedish schools, but she struggled with a more traditional structure until she came up with the idea of creating a little boy who flies around the country on the back of a gander. Throughout the book, she drew on centuries of folklore and legends from the different Swedish provinces. Lagerlöf’s work has been highly influential and she has been praised by writers such as Kenzaburo Oe, Marguerite Yourcenar and Gary Shteyngart.

  One

  The Boy

  THE GNOME

  Sunday, 20 March

  There once was a boy. He was about fourteen years old, tall and lanky and flaxen-haired. He wasn’t good for much; most of all he liked sleeping and eating, and after that he liked stirring up mischief.

  Now it was a Sunday morning and the boy’s parents were getting ready to go to church. The boy himself was sitting in shirtsleeves on the edge of the table, thinking how lucky it was that both Father and Mother were leaving, so that he would be left to himself for a couple of hours. ‘Now I can take Father’s shotgun down and shoot it without having to ask anyone’s permission,’ he said to himself.

  But it was almost as if his father must have guessed the boy’s thoughts, because just as he stood on the threshold ready to go, he stopped and turned towards him. ‘Because you don’t want to go to church with Mother and me,’ he said, ‘I think that you can at least read the sermon at home. Will you promise to do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘I suppose I can do that.’ And to himself he said, of course, that he wouldn’t read any more than he felt like.

  The boy thought that he had never seen his mother so nimble. In a flash she was over by the wall shelf, took down Luther’s book of sermons and set it on the table over by the window, open to the sermon for the day. She also opened the book of Bible readings and set it next to the collection of sermons. Finally she dragged the big armchair up to the table, the one that was bought at auction at the parsonage in Vemmenhög the year before, and which otherwise no one but Father got to sit in.

  The boy thought that Mother was going to far too much trouble with this preparation, because he did not intend to read more than a page or two. But now for the second time it was as if Father could see right through him. He went up to the boy and said in a stern voice, ‘Remember to read properly! Because when we come back I’m going to question you on every page, and if you’ve skipped anything, you’ll suffer for it.’

  ‘The sermon is fourteen and a half pages long,’ Mother said, as if to top it off. ‘You’ll have to start reading right away if you’re going to get through it.’

  With that they finally left, and when the boy stood in the door and watched them, he thought that he had been caught in a trap. ‘Now they’re probably congratulating themselves for having been so clever that I’m stuck with that sermon the whole time they’re gone,’ he thought.

  But Father and Mother were certainly not congratulating themselves about anything; in fact, they were rather distressed. They were poor farm folk and their place was not much bigger than a garden patch. When they first moved there it could not feed more than one pig and a couple of hens, but they were unusually industrious and capable people and now they had both cows and geese. Things had gone quite well for them and they could have walked content and happy to church that lovely morning if they did not have their son to think about. Father complained that he was sluggish and lazy: he did not want to learn anything in school and he was so useless that you could barely get him to tend geese. And Mother did not deny that this was true, but she was most distressed that he was wild and mean, cruel to animals and unkind to people. ‘May God break his malice and give him a different disposition,’ Mother said. ‘Otherwise he will be a misfortune both for himself and for us.’

  The boy stood a long time and wondered whether or not he should read the sermon. But then he told himself that this time it was best to be obedient. He sat down in the parsonage armchair and started to read. But when he had been rattling off words half out loud for a while, it was as if that mumbling was making him drowsy and he noticed that he was nodding off.

  Outside it was the most beautiful spring day. It was only the twentieth of March, but the boy lived in Västra Vemmenhög parish far down in south Skåne, and there spring was already well under way. It was not green yet, but it was fresh and budding. There was water in all the ditches and at their edges the coltsfoot was in bloom. All the scrubby brush growing on the stone wall had become brown and shiny. The beech forest far away seemed to swell and become denser with every moment. The sky was high and clear blue. The cottage door was ajar, so that the warbling of the larks was heard in the room. The hens and geese were in the yard, and sometimes the cows, who felt the spring air all the way into the stall, started mooing.

  The boy read and nodded and struggled against sleep. ‘No, I don’t want to fall asleep,’ he thought. ‘Because then it will take me all morning to get through this.’

  But no matter what, he fell asleep.

  He did not know if he had slept a little or a long time, but he woke up when he heard a soft noise behind him.

  On the windowsill itself rig
ht in front of the boy was a little mirror, and in it almost the whole room was visible. Just as the boy now raised his head, he happened to look in the mirror, and then he saw that the lid to his mother’s chest had been opened.

  It happened that his mother owned a big, heavy oak chest with iron fittings, which no one but her was allowed to open. There, Mother stored everything that she had inherited from her mother and about which she took particular care. There were a couple of old-time, farm-wife outfits of red cloth with short waist and pleated skirt and pearl-studded bib. There were starched, white, head-kerchiefs and heavy silver buckles and chains. People didn’t want to wear such things nowadays, and many times Mother had thought about getting rid of the old objects, but then she didn’t have the heart to do it.

  Now the boy saw in the mirror quite clearly that the lid to the chest stood open. He could not understand how this had come about, because Mother had closed the chest before she left. Mother never would have left the chest open when he was home alone.

  He suddenly felt scared. He was afraid that a thief had sneaked into the cottage. He did not dare move, but instead sat still and stared into the mirror.

  While he sat like that, waiting for the thief to show himself, he started wondering what the black shadow was that fell across the edge of the chest. He looked and looked and did not want to believe his eyes. But what was there, which to start with was shadowy, became clearer and clearer, and soon he noticed that it was something real. It was none other than a gnome sitting astride the edge of the chest.

  The boy had certainly heard of gnomes, but he had never imagined that they could be so small. The one sitting on the edge of the chest was no more than a hand’s breadth tall. He had an old, wrinkled, beardless face and was dressed in black gabardine, knee breeches and a broad-brimmed, black hat. He was very dapper and fine with white lace around his neck and wrists, buckles on his shoes and garters tied in bows. He had taken an embroidered cap out of the chest and sat and looked at the old-fashioned work with such solemnity that he did not notice that the boy had wakened.

  The boy was very surprised to see the gnome, but on the other hand he was not particularly afraid. It was impossible to be afraid of someone who was so little. And because the gnome sat there so preoccupied that he neither saw nor heard, the boy thought it would be funny to play a trick on him: knock him down into the chest and close the lid on him or something along those lines.

  But the boy was still not so brave that he dared to touch the gnome with his hands, but instead he looked around the cottage for something he could nudge him with. He let his gaze wander from the sofa bed to the drop-leaf table and from the drop-leaf table to the stove. He looked at the saucepans and the coffeepot, which were on a shelf alongside the stove, at the water bucket by the door and at ladles and knives and forks and saucers and plates, which were visible through the half-open cupboard door. He looked up at Father’s shotgun, which was hanging on the wall beside the portrait of the Danish royal family, and at the geraniums and fuchsias blooming in the window. Last of all his eyes fell on an old butterfly net that was hanging on the windowsill.

  As soon as he caught sight of the butterfly net he grabbed it and ran up and swung it along the edge of the chest. And he surprised himself at the kind of luck he had. He was not quite sure how he had done it, but he had truly caught the gnome. The poor thing was at the bottom of the long net with his head downwards and could not get out.

  At first the boy had no idea what he should do with his catch. He was just careful to swing the net back and forth, so that the gnome would not have a chance to climb up.

  The gnome started talking and pleaded fervently to be released. He had done them good for many years, he said, and deserved better treatment. If the boy released him now, he would give him an old speciedaler, a silver spoon and a gold coin that was as big as the case on his father’s silver watch.

  The boy did not think this was much to offer, but since he had got the gnome in his power, he had started to be afraid of him. He realized that he was mixed up in something that was alien and awful and did not belong to his world, and he was simply happy to get rid of the nuisance.

  For that reason he went along with the bargain and held the net still, so that the gnome could crawl out. But when the gnome was almost out of the net, the boy began to think that he should have demanded great wealth and every possible good thing. At least he should have made it a condition that the gnome would conjure the sermon into his head. ‘I was so stupid to set him free!’ he thought and started shaking the net, so that the gnome would fall down again.

  But just as the boy did this, he got such a dreadful box on the ears that he thought his head would break into pieces. He fell first against one wall, then against the other, until finally he sank down on the floor and remained lying there, unconscious.

  When he woke up again he was alone in the cottage. He did not see a trace of the gnome. The lid of the chest was closed and the butterfly net was hanging in its usual place by the window. If he had not felt how his right cheek was burning after the slap, he would have been tempted to believe that the whole thing had been a dream. ‘In any event Father and Mother will probably say that it wasn’t anything,’ he thought. ‘They probably won’t make any allowance in the sermon on account of the gnome. I’d better sit down to read again.’

  But now when he went towards the table, he noticed something peculiar. It could not be the case that the cottage had expanded. But why did he have to take so many more steps than he usually did to reach the table? And what had happened to the chair? It did not appear to be larger now than just before, but he had to first climb up on the crossbars between the chair legs and then clamber up to reach the seat. And it was the same way with the table. He could not see over the tabletop without getting up on the armrest.

  ‘What in the world is this?’ said the boy. ‘I think the gnome has ruined the armchair and the table and the whole cottage.’

  The collection of sermons was on the table, and apparently it was the same, but there must have been something crazy about it too, because he could not read a word without actually standing in the book itself.

  He read a couple of lines, but then happened to look up. His gaze fell on the mirror and then he shouted right out loud, ‘Look, there’s another one!’

  Because in the mirror he clearly saw a tiny, tiny imp, who was dressed in a knitted cap and leather breeches.

  ‘He’s dressed just like me!’ the boy said, slapping his hands together in astonishment. But then he saw that the imp in the mirror did the same.

  Then he started to pull on his hair and pinch himself on the arms and turn around, and instantaneously the one in the mirror imitated it.

  The boy ran around the mirror a couple of times to see whether there was some little fellow hidden behind it. But he found no one there, and then he started to shiver with terror. For now he understood that the gnome had enchanted him, and that the imp, whose image he saw in the mirror, was himself.

  THE WILD GEESE

  The boy simply could not believe that he had been transformed into a gnome. ‘It’s probably just a dream and my imagination,’ he thought. ‘If I wait a few moments, I’m sure I’ll be human again.’

  He placed himself in front of the mirror and closed his eyes. He did not open them for several minutes, and then he expected that it would have passed. But it had not; he was still just as little. Otherwise he was just the way he had been before. The white flaxen hair and the freckles across his nose and the patches on his leather breeches and the darn on his sock, everything was the same, with the exception that it had been reduced in size.

  No, it was no use to stand quie
tly and wait, he realized that. He would have to try something else. And the wisest thing he could do, he thought, was to search for the gnome and be reconciled with him.

  He jumped down on the floor and started searching. He looked behind chairs and cupboards and under the sofa bed and in the baking oven. He even crawled down into a couple of rat holes, but he was unable to find the gnome.

  While he was searching, he wept and pleaded and promised everything imaginable. Never again would he break his word to anyone, never again would he be mean, never again would he fall asleep over the sermon. If he only got to be human again, then there would be such a decent and nice and obedient boy of him. But no matter what he promised, it did not help in the least.

  Suddenly he remembered that he had heard Mother say that the little people used to live in the cow stall, and he decided to go there at once and see if he could find the gnome. It was fortunate that the cottage door was ajar, because he would not have been able to reach the lock and open it, but now he got out with no difficulty.

  When he came out on the landing, he looked around for his wooden shoes, because inside the cottage of course he had been in his stocking feet. He wondered how he would manage with the big, clumsy wooden shoes, but just then he saw a pair of small shoes on the threshold. When he noticed that the gnome had been so considerate that he had also transformed the wooden shoes, he became even more anxious. It seemed as if the idea was that this affliction would last a long time.

  On the old oak board in front of the door, a grey sparrow was hopping. As soon as he caught sight of the boy he called, ‘Tweet-tweet! Tweet-tweet! Look at Nils the goose-boy! Look at Thumbkin! Look at Nils Holgersson Thumbkin!’

  At once the geese and hens all turned their gazes towards the boy, and there was a dreadful cackling. ‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ the rooster crowed. ‘It serves him right! Cock-a-doodle-do! He tugged on my comb!’