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Swedish · The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Sagan om Småland

The Legend of Småland

99 sentences · 8 notes

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  1. 1

    The wild geese had made a good crossing over the sea and come down in Tjust district, in northern Småland.

    Vildgässenthe wild geesevildgässen · proper noun, nominativesubject of gjort
    hadehadha · auxiliary verb, past, indicative, activeauxiliary of gjort
    gjortdonegöra · verb, active, supinemain verb of the sentence
    enaen · determiner, common gender, singulardeterminer of resa
    godgoodgod · adjective, nominative, common gender, singularmodifies resa
    resajourneyresa · noun, nominative, common gender, singulardirect object of gjort
    överoveröver · prepositionpreposition marking havet
    havetseahav · noun, nominative, neuter, singularoblique complement of gjort
    ochandoch · conjunctionlinks the coordination
    slagitcome downslå · verb, active, supinecoordinated with gjort
    nerdownner · adverbdepends on slagit
    iini · prepositionpreposition marking Tjusts
    TjustsTjust'sTjusts · proper noun, nominativeoblique complement of slagit
    häradhundred (district)härad · adjective, nominative, common gender, singularcomplement of slagit

    'Härad' is a historical Swedish administrative district, not an adjective; mistagged by the parser.

    iini · prepositionpreposition marking Småland
    norranorthernnorra · adjective, nominative, singularmodifies Småland
    SmålandSmålandSmåland · proper noun, nominativeoblique complement of slagit

  2. That district seemed unable to decide whether it wanted to be land or sea.

  3. Everywhere the sea inlets ran in and cut the land apart into islands and peninsulas, into headlands and spits.

  4. The sea pressed in so insistently that the only things able to hold themselves up were hills and rocky slopes.

  5. All the low ground lay hidden beneath the water's surface.

  6. 2

    It was evening when the wild geese came in from the sea, and the small-hilled land lay beautiful among the glittering inlets.

  7. Here and there on the islands the boy saw huts and cottages, and the farther inland he came, the bigger and better the dwellings grew.

  8. In the end they grew into great white manor houses.

  9. Along the shores there usually stood a ring of trees, inside of which lay patches of tilled field, and up on the tops of the little hills the trees took over again.

  10. He could not help thinking of Blekinge.

  11. Here again was a place where land and sea met in that same beautiful, quiet way, as if each sought to show the other the best and fairest it had.

  12. 3

    The wild geese came down on a bare islet far in toward Gåsfjärden.

  13. At the first glance toward the shore they noticed that spring had made great progress while they had been away on the islands.

  14. The great, splendid trees were not yet in leaf, but the ground beneath them was dappled with wood anemones, spring squill, and blue anemones.

  15. 4

    When the wild geese saw the carpet of flowers, they grew afraid that they had lingered too long in the southern part of the country.

  16. Akka said at once that there was no time to seek out any of the resting places in Småland.

  17. Already the next morning they had to head north over Östergötland.

  18. 5

    The boy would thus not get to see anything of Småland, and it was not without vexation that this struck him.

  19. He had not heard so much talk about any other province as about Småland, and he had wished to see it with his own eyes.

  20. 6

    The previous summer, when he had been in service as a goose boy with a farmer near Jordberga, he had almost every day come across a couple of poor Småland children who were also tending geese.

  21. Those children had teased him something terrible about their Småland.

  22. 7

    Though it was hardly fair to say that Åsa the goose girl had teased him.

  23. She was far too sensible for that sort of thing.

  24. But the one who could truly be teasing was her brother, little Mats.

  25. 8

    "Have you heard, Nils goose boy, how it went when Småland and Skåne were created?" he would ask, and if Nils Holgersson then said no, he would straightaway begin telling the old jesting tale.

  26. 9

    "Well, it was back in the time when Our Lord was busy creating the world.

  27. While he was hard at work, Saint Peter came walking by.

  28. He stopped and watched, and then he asked whether it was a hard thing to do.

  29. 'Oh, it isn't so easy, either,' said Our Lord.

  30. Saint Peter stayed on a while longer, and when he noticed how easily one country after another was laid out, he too got the urge to try his hand at it.

  31. 'Perhaps you need to rest a little,' said Saint Peter, 'and I could tend to the work for you meanwhile.'

  32. But Our Lord did not want that.

  33. 'I don't know that you're so at home in the art that I could trust you to carry on where I leave off,' he answered.

  34. Then Saint Peter grew angry and said that he believed himself able to create just as good countries as Our Lord himself.

  35. 10

    The truth of the matter was that Our Lord was just then busy creating Småland.

  36. It was not even half finished, but it looked as though it would become an indescribably beautiful and fertile land.

  37. Our Lord found it hard to say no to Saint Peter, and besides, he supposed that what had been so well begun, no one could ruin.

  38. So he said: 'If you like, let's see which of us better understands this kind of work.

  39. You, who are only a beginner, shall carry on with this that I have begun, and I shall create a new land.'

  40. Saint Peter agreed to this at once, and so each of them set to work in his own place.

  41. 11

    Our Lord moved himself a piece to the south, and there he set about creating Skåne.

  42. It was not long before he was finished, and at once he asked whether Saint Peter had also finished and would come look at his work.

  43. 'I've had mine ready for ages,' said Saint Peter, and it could be heard in his voice how pleased he was with what he had accomplished.

  44. 12

    When Saint Peter saw Skåne, he had to admit that of that country there was nothing but good to be said.

  45. It was a fertile and easily worked land with great plains wherever he looked, and hardly a hint of mountain.

  46. It was plain that Our Lord had truly thought to make it such that people would thrive there.

  47. 'Yes, this is a good land,' said Saint Peter, 'but I do believe mine is better.'

  48. —'Then let's go and look at it,' said Our Lord.

  49. 13

    The land had already been finished in the north and east when Saint Peter began the work, but the southern and western parts, and the whole interior, he had had to create on his own.

  50. When Our Lord now came up to where Saint Peter had worked, he was so horrified that he stopped dead and said: 'How in the world have you gone about it with this land, Saint Peter?'

  51. 14

    Saint Peter stood there too, looking around quite astonished.

  52. He had had the idea that nothing could be so good for a country as plenty of warmth.

  53. So he had hauled together an immense mass of stone and rock and built up a highland, and he had done this so that it would come close to the sun and get plenty of the sun's warmth.

  54. On top of the piles of stone he had spread a thin layer of topsoil, and so he had reckoned that everything was well arranged.

  55. 15

    But now a couple of heavy rain showers had come while he was down in Skåne, and no more than that had been needed to show what his work was worth.

  56. When Our Lord came to look at the land, all the topsoil was washed away, and the bare bedrock stuck out everywhere.

  57. Where it was best, there lay clay and heavy gravel over the rock slabs, but it looked so lean that it was easy to see that hardly anything could grow there but spruce and juniper and moss and heather.

  58. What there was plenty of was water.

  59. It had filled up every cleft in the bedrock; and lakes, rivers, and brooks were to be seen everywhere, not to mention the bogs and marshes that spread over great stretches.

  60. And the most vexing thing was that while some tracts had more than enough water, it was so scarce in other places that great fields lay like dry heaths, where sand and soil whirled up in clouds at the least breath of wind.

  61. 16

    'What can you have meant by creating a land like this?' said Our Lord, and Saint Peter excused himself and said that he had wanted to build the land up so high that it would get plenty of the sun's warmth.

  62. 'But then it also gets plenty of the night cold,' said Our Lord, 'for that too comes from the sky.

  63. I'm quite afraid that the little that can grow here will freeze away.'

  64. 17

    That, of course, Saint Peter had not thought of.

  65. 18

    'Yes, this will be a lean and frostbound land,' said Our Lord, 'there's no help for it.'"

  66. 19

    When little Mats had got that far in the story, Åsa the goose girl broke in on him.

  67. "I can't bear it, little Mats, when you say Småland is so wretched," she said.

  68. "You clean forget how much good soil there is there.

  69. Just think of Möre district, over by Kalmar Sound!

  70. I wonder where there's a richer grain country.

  71. There, field lies beside field just as here in Skåne.

  72. The soil is so good there that I don't know what couldn't grow."

  73. 20

    "I can't help that," said little Mats.

  74. "I'm only telling it the way others have told it before."

  75. 21

    "And I've heard many say that a more beautiful coastal country than Tjust doesn't exist.

  76. Think of the bays and the islets and the manor houses and the groves!" said Åsa.

  77. —"Yes, that's true enough," admitted little Mats.

  78. —"And don't you remember," Åsa went on, "that the schoolmistress said there isn't so lively and lovely a district in all of Sweden as that piece of Småland lying south of Vättern?

  79. Think of the beautiful lake and the yellow shore cliffs, and of Grenna and Jönköping with the match factory and Munksjö, and think of Huskvarna and all the great works there!"

  80. —"Yes, that's true enough," said little Mats once more.

  81. —"And think of Visingsö, little Mats, with its ruins and its oak forest and its legends!

  82. Think of the valley where the Emån flows, with all its villages and mills and pulp mills and sawmills and joineries!"

  83. —"Yes, all of that is true," said little Mats, looking quite troubled.

  84. 22

    Quite suddenly he had brightened up.

  85. "Now we're being quite silly," he said.

  86. "All of this lies in Our Lord's Småland, in the part of the country that was finished already before Saint Peter came to the work.

  87. It's only right that it should be beautiful and splendid there.

  88. But in Saint Peter's Småland it all looks just as it says in the tale.

  89. And it was no wonder that Our Lord was grieved when he saw it," little Mats went on, taking up his story again.

  90. "Saint Peter did not lose heart, in any case, but tried to comfort Our Lord.

  91. 'Don't take it so hard!' he said.

  92. 'Just wait until I get around to creating people who can cultivate the bogs and clear fields out of the stony hills!'

  93. 23

    Then Our Lord's patience finally ran out, and he said: 'No, you may go down to Skåne, which I have made into a good and easily managed land, and create the Scanian, but the Smålander I will create myself.'

  94. And so Our Lord created the Smålander, and made him quick-witted and content and cheerful and industrious and enterprising and capable, so that he could earn his keep in his poor land."

  95. 24

    With that little Mats fell silent, and if Nils Holgersson too had held his tongue, all would have gone well, but he could not possibly help asking how Saint Peter had managed to create the Scanian.

  96. 25

    "Well, what do you think yourself?" said little Mats, looking so scornful that Nils Holgersson flung himself at him to strike him.

  97. But Mats was only a little fellow, and Åsa the goose girl, who was a year older, at once sprang forward to help him.

  98. Good-natured as she was, she flared up like a lion the moment anyone touched her brother.

  99. And Nils Holgersson had no wish to fight with a girl, so he turned his back on them and went his way, and did not look at those Småland children again for the rest of the day.

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.