The Wonderful Adventures of Nils 1732 Studios

Swedish · The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Den stora fjärilen

The Great Butterfly

66 sentences · 17 notes

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  1. 1

    The geese flew on along the length of the long island, which lay clearly visible below them.

    Gässenthe geeseGässen · proper noun, nominativesubject of synbar
    forowentforo · noun, nominative, neuter, singularcoordinated with Gässen

    Mistagged as a noun; foro is the plural past tense of fara ("went/traveled").

    framforwardfram · adverbcoordinated with Gässen
    längsefteralonglängsefter · adverbpreposition marking ön
    denaen · determiner, common gender, singulardeterminer of ön
    långalonglång · adjective, nominative, singularmodifies ön
    önthe islandön · noun, common gendercoordinated with Gässen
    somwhichsom · pronounsubject of låg

    Three of this key's four examples ('som om far skulle...', 'för just som han stod...', 'som de är borta') are actually the conjunctive 'as'/'while' use, not the relative pronoun 'that/which' shown by 'länstolen, som blev köpt...'. The glosser's original senses list (that/who/which) omitted the dominant 'as' reading entirely.

    låglayligga · verb, past, indicative, activerelative clause on ön
    tydligtclearlytydlig · adverbmodifies synbar
    synbarvisiblesynbar · adjective, nominative, common gender, singularhead of the phrase
    underbelowunder · prepositionpreposition marking dem
    demthemde · pronoun, accusative, pluraloblique complement of synbar

  2. The boy felt glad and light of heart during the journey.

  3. He was just as content and satisfied as he had been gloomy and downcast the day before, when he had wandered about down on the island searching for the gander.

  4. 2

    He saw now that the interior of the island was a bare high plain with a broad wreath of good, fertile land along the coasts, and he began to understand the meaning of something he had heard the evening before.

  5. 3

    He had just been sitting and resting by one of the many windmills, which stood raised on the high plain, when a couple of shepherds came walking along with their dogs at their sides and a large flock of sheep in tow.

  6. The boy had not become afraid, for he had sat well hidden under the windmill steps.

  7. But it so happened that the shepherds had come and sat down on that very same step, and then there had been nothing else for the boy to do but keep himself still.

  8. 4

    One of the shepherds was young and looked the way most people do; the other was an old, peculiar fellow.

  9. His body was big and knotty, but his head was small, and his face had soft and gentle features.

  10. It seemed as though body and head did not want to match each other at all.

  11. 5

    For a while he sat silent and stared into the mist with an indescribably weary gaze.

  12. Then he began to speak to

  13. 6

    his companion.

  14. The latter then took out bread and cheese from his bag to eat his supper.

  15. He answered almost nothing, but he listened very patiently, quite as if he had thought: »I suppose I'll do you the favor of letting you talk for a while.»

  16. 7

    »Now I'm going to tell you something, Erik,» said the old shepherd.

  17. »I have worked out that long ago, when both people and animals were much bigger than they are now, the butterflies too must have grown altogether enormous.

  18. And once there was a butterfly that was many miles long and had wings as broad as lakes.

  19. Those wings were blue and shimmering silver and so splendid that when the butterfly was out flying, all the other animals stood staring after it.

  20. 8

    Of course, the trouble with it was that it was too big.

  21. Its wings had trouble carrying it.

  22. But it would probably have gone well enough, if it had been wise enough to stay over the mainland.

  23. But it was not, and instead it set off out over the Baltic Sea.

  24. And it had not gotten far before the storm came against it and began tearing at its wings.

  25. Yes, it's easy to understand, you Erik, how it would go, when a Baltic storm got to handle fragile butterfly wings.

  26. It wasn't long before they were torn away and whirled off, and then, of course, the poor butterfly fell down into the sea.

  27. It was tossed back and forth in the waves at first, and then it ran aground on some rocky shoals off Småland.

  28. And there it lay, as big and long as it was.

  29. 9

    Now I imagine, Erik, that if the butterfly had stayed lying on land, it would soon have rotted and fallen apart.

  30. But since it fell into the sea, it became thoroughly permeated with lime and as hard as stone.

  31. You surely know that we have found stones on the shore that were nothing but hardened worms.

  32. And now I believe the same thing happened with the great butterfly body.

  33. I believe it turned into a long, narrow cliff, out where it lay in the Baltic Sea.

  34. Don't you believe that too?»

  35. 10

    He paused to get an answer, and the other man nodded to him.

  36. »Go on, so I can hear where you're headed!» he said.

  37. 11

    »And now note, Erik, that this Öland, which you and I live on, is nothing other than the old butterfly's body.

  38. If you just think it over, you'll notice that the island is a butterfly.

  39. To the north you can see the narrow foreparts and the round head, and to the south you see the hind body, which first spreads itself out and then narrows down to a sharp point.»

  40. 12

    Here he paused once more and looked at his companion, as if anxious about how the other would take this claim.

  41. But the young one went on eating in perfect calm and nodded to him to continue.

  42. 13

    »As soon as the butterfly had been turned into a limestone cliff, all manner of seeds of herbs and trees came flying with the wind and wanted to take root on it.

  43. But they all had a hard time getting a foothold on the bare, smooth rock.

  44. It was a long time before anything but sedge could grow there.

  45. Then came the sheep's fescue, the rock-rose, and the thornbushes.

  46. But even to this day there isn't so much vegetation on the Alvar that the rock is properly covered; it shows through here and there instead.

  47. And no one can think of plowing and sowing up here, where the crust of soil is so thin.

  48. 14

    But if you now grant that the Alvar and the coastal cliffs standing around it are formed from the butterfly's body, then you may well have the right to ask where the land lying below the cliffs has come from.»

  49. — »Yes, that's just it,» said the one who was eating.

  50. »That I would indeed like to know.»

  51. 15

    »Well, you must remember that Öland has lain in the sea for a good many years, and meanwhile everything that drifts about with the waves — seaweed and sand and shells — has gathered around it and settled there.

  52. And so stone and gravel have tumbled down from both the eastern and the western cliffs.

  53. In that way the island has gotten broad shores, where grain and flowers and trees can grow.

  54. 16

    Up here on the butterfly's hard back only sheep and cattle and small horses graze; only lapwings and stone-curlews live here, and no buildings stand here but windmills and a few poor stone huts, where we shepherds creep in.

  55. But down on the shore lie big farming villages and churches and parsonages and fishing hamlets and a whole town.»

  56. 17

    He looked questioningly at the other.

  57. The latter had stopped eating and was tying up his food bag.

  58. »I wonder where you're going with all this,» he said.

  59. 18

    »Well, it's only this that I wanted to know,» said the shepherd, while he lowered his voice, so that he almost whispered the words, and looked into the mist with his small eyes, which seemed worn out from searching for all that does not exist, »this alone I wanted to know: whether the farmers who live in the clustered farms down below the cliffs, or the fishermen who haul the herring up out of the sea, or the merchants in Borgholm, or the summer visitors who come here every summer, or the travelers who wander about in Borgholm Castle ruin, or the hunters who come here in the autumn and hunt partridge, or the painters who sit here on the Alvar and paint the sheep and the windmills — I would like to know whether any of them understands that this island has been a butterfly that once flew about with great, gleaming wings.»

  60. 19

    »Oh yes,» said the young shepherd suddenly, »surely it ought to have dawned on one of those who has sat some evening on the edge of the cliff and heard the nightingales trilling in the leafy meadow below and looked out over the Kalmar Sound, that this island cannot have come into being like all the others.»

  61. 20

    »I wanted to ask,» the old one went on, »whether not a single one has had the wish to give the windmills wings so big that they could reach up to the sky, so big that they would be able to lift the whole island up out of the sea and let it fly like a butterfly among butterflies.»

  62. 21

    »It may well be that there is something to what you say,» said the young one, »for on summer nights, when the sky arches high and open over the island, I have sometimes felt as though it wanted to rise up out of the sea and fly away.»

  63. 22

    But now that the old man had finally gotten the young one to speak, he did not listen much to him.

  64. »I really wanted to know,» he said in a still lower voice, »whether anyone could explain why such a longing dwells up here on the Alvar.

  65. I have felt it every day of my life, and I think it gnaws into the breast of everyone who must walk here.

  66. I wanted to know if no one else has understood that all that yearning comes from the fact that the whole island is a butterfly longing for its wings.»

The particulars

The text
Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige, Selma Lagerlöf. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.
Translation
Public-domain Swedish (Lagerlöf, d. 1940; published 1906–07). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Words
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.