H. Lawrence, translating Giovanni Verga’s Mastro Don Gesualdo in Sicily, decided that Verga’s text was “one of the genuine emotional extremes of European literature: just as Selma Lagerlöf or Knut Hamsun may be the other extreme, northwards.” Yet Verga seems “more real than these.” Voices that could have carried weight (Graves names Shaw, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf) stayed silent. In the United States, Henry Goddard Leach, for years the head of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, wrote an introduction (1918) to a reprint of Lillie Tudeer’s translation (1898), and told how, on a walking tour of Värmland, he discovered that Värmland people were “as blithe today but not so romantic” as their forebears in Gösta Berling’s time. It is profoundly to be hoped that Paul Norlen’s translation will win Selma Lagerlöf’s novel the serious critical attention it deserves.

GEORGE C. SCHOOLFIELD

NOTES

1 Fredman (“Peace-man,” a pun on Latin bellum, “war”), the prostitute Ulla Winblad, the bass-player Father Berg, the wigmaker Mow itz, Corporal Mollberg, and more.

2 Strindberg used this university-and-cathedral town as the threatening backdrop of his play Påsk (Easter, 1901).

3 In Anna Svärd, written some thirty-five years after Gösta, Marianne has died after a year of marriage to Adrian. The sometime Knight Sunshine bullies his second wife—who plays to his moods—and five plain daughters. He is drowned trying to save his ne’er-do-well brother’s perky child (from a union with a gypsy woman), and the little girl, a tow-headed charmer, also dies under the ice. (She has been kidnapped by the wrong-headed zealot Karl-Artur Ekenstedt.) Gustava Sinclaire’s affection for her vile-tempered husband, Melchior, can bloom only after he has been felled by a stroke.

4 Historically, the military men among the cavaliers, Beerencreutz, Fuchs, Kristian, Kristoffer, Örneclou, Ruster, are already discards, leftovers from Sweden’s last continental adventures, in Pomerania and at the Battle of Leipzig (1813), the “Battle of Nations,” where Swedish artillery played a small part in Napoleon’s defeat. Captain Lennart has been involved, like shady Sintram, in the futile little war with Norway of 1814. (That former half of the “Twin Kingdoms of Denmark-Norway” had been bestowed on Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, and the belligerent Norwegians wanted to be rid of their new “personal union” with the Swedish crown.) Rather ungratefully, Lagerlöf adduces no veterans from the war with Russia of 1808-9, celebrated by Johan Ludvig Runeberg.

5 Danish rule in Norway, incorporated by the councillor himself, was decaying, as was the Danish-Norwegian official class, amid gaming, drinking, and adultery.

Suggestions for Further Reading

The Northland Edition of Selma Lagerlöf ’s works (through 1914) appeared in 1917 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page). Single translations of later works, including the three volumes of memoirs, were published by Doubleday from 1924 to 1937. Most monographs on Lagerlöf in English are antiquated: Harry E. Maule’s worshipful Selma Lagerlöf: The Woman, Her Work, Her Message (Doubleday, 1917, 1926); Walter A. Berendsohn’s Selma Lagerlöf, Her Life and Work (Doubleday, 1932), adapted from the German original edition of 1927; Hanna Astrup Larsen’s Selma Lagerlöf (Doubleday, 1936); a chapter on Lagerlöf in Al rik Gustafson’s Six Scandinavian Novelists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940; New York: American Scandinavian Foundation, 1940). Vivi Edström’s Selma Lagerlöf (Boston: Twayne, 1984) is compact and dependable. “The Scandalous Selma Lagerlöf” by Nils Afzelius, Scandinavica 5 (1966), a reduction and translation of the title essay in his Selma Lagerlöf, den förargelseväckande (Lund: Glerrup, 1969), is strongly to be recommended, as are the helpful articles by Erland Lagerroth, “The Narrative Art of Selma Lagerlöf: Two Problems,” Scandinavian Studies 31 (1961) and “Selma Lagerlöf Research 1900-1964, A Survey and an Orientation,” Scandinavian Studies 37 (1965). For Lars G. Warme’s History of Swedish Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), Susan Brantly spoke of the “importance of history and tradition” in Gösta, and Selma Lagerlöf’s “acute sense of divine providence.” A full life-and-works volume on Selma Lagerlöf in English, taking her copious correspondence and recent scholarship into account, is a desideratum.

The secondary literature in Swedish is enormous: Vivi Edström’s Gothenburg dissertation of 1960, Livets stigar: Tiden, handlingen och livskänslan i Gösta Berlings saga (The Paths of Life: Time, Action, and Life-Feeling in Gösta Berling’s Saga, with English summary; Stockholm: Norstedt, 1960) is basic, as is her Selma Lagerlöf: Livets vågspel (Life’s Daring Game; Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2002). Henrik Wivel’s Snödrottningen: En bok om Selma Lagerlöf och kärleken (The Snow Queen: A Book about Selma Lagerlöf and Love; Copenhagen: Gad, 1988; Stockholm: Bonniers, 1990), is fascinating because of its effort to uncover “the hidden Selma Lagerlöf.” Two recent and important studies concern themselves with the Swedish reception of Selma Lagerlöf: Lisbeth Stenberg’s En genialisk lek: Kritik och överskridande i Selma Lagerlöfs tidiga författarskap (Genius at Play: Criticism and Transcendence in Selma Lagerlöf’s Early Texts; Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet, 2001), and Anna Nord lund’s Selma Lagerlöfs underbara resa genom den svenska litteraturhistorien 1891-1996 (The Wonderful Adventures of Selma Lagerlöf Through Swedish Literary History 1891-1996; Stockholm: Östling, 2005), both with English summary.

Peter Graves’s “The Reception of Selma Lagerlöf in Britain” appeared in Selma Lagerlöf Seen from Abroad / Selma Lagerlöf i utlandsperspektiv, edited by Louise Vinge (Stockholm: Royal Academy of Letters, 1998). Unfortunately, the symposium’s papers included neither a survey of Selma Lagerlöf’s reception in America, nor a thorough exploration of Selma Lagerlöf’s overwhelming popularity in German-speaking countries. (Sibylle Schweitzer’s Selma Lagerlöf: Eine Bibliographie [Marburg: Schriften der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, 1900], provided a necessary tool for such an investigation.)

GEORGE C. SCHOOLFIELD

A Note on the Translation

Not one but two English translations of The Saga of Gösta Berling appeared soon after it was first published in Sweden in 1891: a British version by Lillie Tudeer (1898) and an American version by Pauline Bancroft Flach (1898). Both versions have been criticized for omissions large and small, while Tudeer occasionally adds material not found in the original. The eight chapters omitted in Tudeer’s version were reinstated (translated by Velma Swanston Howard) in a 1918 edition of the Tudeer translation published by the American Scandinavian Foundation. Since then, however, no one has attempted a complete, new translation into English. (In 1962 the American poet Robert Bly published an edited version of Flach’s translation.) Among the many challenges in translating Lagerlöf is capturing the various registers in her narrative voice (from deceptively simple to passionately lyrical, with more than an occasional touch of unabashed melodrama). The present translator has tried to convey the author’s distinctive voice in English and produce a narrative that is a pleasure to read—as it is in Swedish.

I wish to thank Tracey Sands and Sonia Wichmann for reading and commenting on draft versions of the translation; Linnea Donnen for help with weaving terminology; and Tiina Nunnally, Lori Ann Reinhall, and Linda Schenck for helpful suggestions.

This translation is dedicated to the memory of Göran Tun ström (1937-2000), a fine novelist and a stalwart champion of the works of Selma Lagerlöf.

PAUL NORLEN

PROLOGUE

I. THE MINISTER

At long last the minister stood in the pulpit.

The congregation raised their heads.