The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf (i can read book club TXT) 📕

the ruins and the oak forests and the legends! Think of the valley through which Emån flows, with all the villages and flour-mills and sawmills, and the carpenter shops!”

“Yes, that is true enough,” said little Mats, and looked troubled.

All of a sudden he had looked up. “Now we are pretty stupid,” said he. “All this, of course, lies in our Lord’s Småland, in that part of the land which was already finished when Saint Peter undertook the job. It’s only natural that it should be pretty and fine there. But in Saint Peter’s Småland it looks as it says in the legend. And it wasn’t surprising that our Lord was distressed when he saw it,” continued little Mats, as he took up the thread of his story again. “Saint Peter didn’t lose his courage, at all events, but tried to comfort our Lord. ‘Don’t be so grieved over this!’ said he. ‘Only wait until I have created people who can till the swamps and break up fields from the stone hills.’

“That was the end of our Lord’s patience⁠—and he said: ‘No! you can go down to Skåne and make the Skåninge, but the Smålander I will create myself.’ And so our Lord created the Smålander, and made him quick-witted and contented and happy and thrifty and enterprising and capable, that he might be able to get his livelihood in his poor country.”

Then little Mats was silent; and if Nils Holgersson had also kept still, all would have gone well; but he couldn’t possibly refrain from asking how Saint Peter had succeeded in creating the Skåninge.

“Well, what do you think yourself?” said little Mats, and looked so scornful that Nils Holgersson threw himself upon him, to thrash him. But Mats was only a little tot, and Osa, the goose-girl, who was a year older than he, ran forward instantly to help him. Good-natured though she was, she sprang like a lion as soon as anyone touched her brother. And Nils Holgersson did not care to fight a girl, but turned his back, and didn’t look at those Småland children for the rest of the day.

The Crows The Earthen Crock

In the southwest corner of Småland lies a township called Sonnerbo. It is a rather smooth and even country. And one who sees it in winter, when it is covered with snow, cannot imagine that there is anything under the snow but garden-plots, rye-fields and clover-meadows, as is generally the case in flat countries. But, in the beginning of April when the snow finally melts away in Sonnerbo, it is apparent that that which lies hidden under it is only dry, sandy heaths, bare rocks, and big, marshy swamps. There are fields here and there, to be sure, but they are so small that they are scarcely worth mentioning; and one also finds a few little red or gray farmhouses hidden away in some beech-coppice⁠—almost as if they were afraid to show themselves.

Where Sonnerbo township touches the boundaries of Halland, there is a sandy heath which is so far-reaching that he who stands upon one edge of it cannot look across to the other. Nothing except heather grows on the heath, and it wouldn’t be easy either to coax other growths to thrive there. To start with one would have to uproot the heather; for it is thus with heather: although it has only a little shrunken root, small shrunken branches, and dry, shrunken leaves it fancies that it’s a tree. Therefore it acts just like real trees⁠—spreads itself out in forest fashion over wide areas; holds together faithfully, and causes all foreign growths that wish to crowd in upon its territory to die out.

The only place on the heath where the heather is not all-powerful, is a low, stony ridge which passes over it. There you’ll find juniper bushes, mountain ash, and a few large, fine oaks. At the time when Nils Holgersson travelled around with the wild geese, a little cabin stood there, with a bit of cleared ground around it. But the people who had lived there at one time, had, for some reason or other, moved away. The little cabin was empty, and the ground lay unused.

When the tenants left the cabin they closed the damper, fastened the window-hooks, and locked the door. But no one had thought of the broken windowpane which was only stuffed with a rag. After the showers of a couple of summers, the rag had moulded and shrunk, and, finally, a crow had succeeded in poking it out.

The ridge on the heather-heath was really not as desolate as one might think, for it was inhabited by a large crow-folk. Naturally, the crows did not live there all the year round. They moved to foreign lands in the winter; in the autumn they travelled from one grainfield to another all over Götaland, and picked grain; during the summer, they spread themselves over the farms in Sonnerbo township, and lived upon eggs and berries and birdlings; but every spring, when nesting time came, they came back to the heather-heath.

The one who had poked the rag from the window was a crow-cock named Garm Whitefeather; but he was never called anything but Fumle or Drumle, or out and out Fumle-Drumle, because he always acted awkwardly and stupidly, and wasn’t good for anything except to make fun of. Fumle-Drumle was bigger and stronger than any of the other crows, but that didn’t help him in the least; he was⁠—and remained⁠—a butt for ridicule. And it didn’t profit him, either, that he came from very good stock. If everything had gone smoothly, he should have been leader for the whole flock, because this honour had, from time immemorial, belonged to the oldest Whitefeather. But long before Fumle-Drumle was born, the power had gone from his family, and was now wielded by a cruel wild crow, named Wind-Rush.

This transference of power was due to the fact that the crows on crow-ridge desired to