The Wonderful Adventures of Nils 1732 Studios

Swedish · The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

I Bergslagerna

In Bergslagen

77 sentences · 28 notes

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  1. 1

    The wild geese had a difficult journey.

    Vildgässenthe wild geesevildgässen · proper noun, nominativesubject of hade
    hadehadha · verb, past, indicative, activemain verb of the sentence
    enaen · determiner, common gender, singulardeterminer of färd
    besvärligdifficultbesvärlig · adjective, nominative, common gender, singularmodifies färd
    färdjourneyfärd · noun, nominative, common gender, singulardirect object of hade

  2. After they had breakfasted in the fields at Fellingsbro, it was their intention to head due north over Västmanland, but the west wind grew stronger and instead flung them eastward, all the way toward the border of Uppland.

  3. 2

    They flew high up, and the wind hurled them forward at great speed.

  4. The boy sat looking down to find out what Västmanland looked like, but he could make out little.

  5. He did notice that it was flat and even here in the eastern part of the province, but he could not make out what the furrows and lines were that ran from north to south across the plain.

  6. It looked rather peculiar, because all the stripes ran almost straight, at even intervals.

  7. 3

    “This land is as striped as mother's apron,” said the boy.

  8. “I wonder what kind of stripes these are, running across it.”

  9. 4

    “Rivers and ridges, roads and railways,” answered the wild geese.

  10. “Rivers and ridges, roads and railways.”

  11. 5

    And this was really true, for when the geese were driven eastward, they had first flown over the Hedström river, which runs between two ridges and is accompanied by a railway.

  12. Then they had come upon the Kolbäck river, which has a railway on one side and a ridge with a highway on the other.

  13. After that they had met the Svartå river, which is likewise followed by ridges and highways, then the Lillå with the Badelund ridge, and last the Sagå, which has both a highway and a railway on its right bank.

  14. 6

    “Never before have I seen so many roads, all coming from one direction,” thought the boy.

  15. “There must be a great many goods that need carrying through this country from the north.”

  16. 7

    At the same time he thought this was remarkable, for he believed that north of Västmanland, Sweden would almost be at an end.

  17. What remained of the country could surely be little more than forest and wilderness, he reckoned.

  18. 8

    When the wild geese had been driven all the way to the Sagå, Akka must have realized that they had come in quite the wrong direction from the one she wanted, for here she turned the flock around and began, against a hard headwind, to work her way back toward the west.

  19. So they flew once more over the striped plain and then continued into the western part of the province, which consisted of wooded highlands.

  20. 9

    As long as the boy had been flying over the plain, he had sat leaning forward over the goose's neck, looking down, but when the plain ended and he saw great forest tracts lying before him, he sat up straight and thought he would rest his eyes, for where the ground was covered with forest, there was not usually much to see.

  21. 10

    When they had flown on for a while over wooded ridges and small lakes, the boy heard something down on the ground that creaked and seemed almost to groan.

  22. 11

    Then he simply had to lean forward and look down.

  23. The wild geese were not flying particularly fast now, struggling as they were against the headwind, so he could see the land beneath him very clearly.

  24. The first thing he noticed was a black hole leading straight down into the ground; over the hole a hoisting rig of thick logs had been raised, and the rig was just then hauling up, with a creaking and a wailing, a tub loaded with pieces of stone.

  25. All around lay great heaps of stone, a steam engine panted in a shed, women and children sat in a ring on the ground sorting stones, along a narrow horse-track a few wagons rolled by, loaded with gray pieces of stone, and at the edge of the forest stood small workers' cottages.

  26. 12

    The boy could not make out what all this was, and he called down at the top of his voice: “What kind of place is this, where they haul up so much gray stone out of the ground?”

  27. 13

    “Listen to the fool! Listen to the fool!” twittered the sparrows, who were at home on the spot and knew well enough what was what.

  28. “He can't tell iron ore from gray stone. He can't tell iron ore from gray stone.”

  29. 14

    Then the boy understood that what he had seen was a mine.

  30. He was rather disappointed, for he had imagined that mines lay on tall mountains, but this one lay on flat ground between a couple of low ridges.

  31. 15

    Soon they had left it behind, and the boy sat once more staring straight ahead, for the spruce-covered ridges and birch groves lying beneath him, he felt he had seen many times before.

  32. Then he felt a strong heat rising up to him from the ground, and at once he had to look down to find out what was causing it.

  33. 16

    Beneath him lay great heaps of coal and ore, and in the midst of them stood a tall, eight-sided, red-painted building that sent a whole sheaf of flames up toward the sky.

  34. 17

    At first the boy could not help thinking it was a fire, but then he saw people walking about quite calmly down on the ground, not troubling themselves the least about the flames, and then he could not understand how that fit together.

  35. 18

    “What kind of place is this, where nobody cares that a house is burning in broad flame?” the boy called down toward the ground.

  36. 19

    “Listen to him, afraid of fire!” twittered the chaffinches, who lived at the edge of the forest and knew well enough what was going on in the neighborhood.

  37. “He doesn't know how the iron is smelted out of the ore. He can't tell a blast-furnace flame from a house fire.”

  38. 20

    Soon they had left the furnace behind, and the boy sat once again looking straight ahead, for he supposed there would not be much to see in this stretch of forest.

  39. But he had not flown far before he heard a terrible din and uproar coming up from the ground.

  40. 21

    When he looked down, the first thing he noticed was a little stream rushing in a strong torrent down a rock face.

  41. Beside the falls stood a large building with a black roof and a tall chimney, which sent out thick smoke mixed with sparks.

  42. Outside the building lay lumps and bars of iron, and veritable small mountains of coal.

  43. The ground was black far around, and black roads ran out in every direction.

  44. From the building came an indescribable din.

  45. It boomed and hissed.

  46. It sounded as though someone, with heavy blows, were trying to defend himself against a hissing wild beast.

  47. But the odd thing was that nobody paid any attention to what was happening.

  48. A little way off stood workers' cottages beneath green trees, and further off still rose a large, white manor house.

  49. But on the steps of the cottages the children played quite unconcerned, and in the manor avenue people strolled about at their ease.

  50. 22

    “What kind of place is this, where no one cares that they're killing each other inside that building?” the boy shrieked down toward the ground.

  51. 23

    “Hack, ack, ack, ack! There goes one who really knows what's what. Hack, ack, ack, ack!” laughed a magpie.

  52. “It's nobody being torn to pieces. It's the iron, crackling and hissing when it's laid under the hammer.”

  53. 24

    Soon they had left the ironworks behind, and the boy sat once more looking straight ahead, for he believed there could not be much more to see in this stretch of forest.

  54. 25

    When they had traveled on for a while, he heard a bell ring, and once again he had to look down to find out where the sound was coming from.

  55. 26

    Then the boy saw below him a farm the like of which he had never seen.

  56. The dwelling house was a long, red-painted, single-story building, and it was not especially large, but what astonished him was to see all the great, well-built outbuildings standing alongside it.

  57. The boy roughly knew how many outbuildings a farm needed, but here they must have had double and triple of everything.

  58. Such an abundance of buildings he had never imagined.

  59. Nor could he work out what was to be kept in them, for there were almost no fields near the farm.

  60. He saw a few patches of field within the woodland, but partly they were so small that he hardly wanted to call them fields, and partly there already stood a barn on each one of them to store whatever might be harvested there.

  61. 27

    On the roof of the stable sat the porridge bell under a hood, and that was where the ringing came from.

  62. The farmer was walking toward the kitchen with his farmhands, and the boy saw that he had many fine-looking people working for him.

  63. 28

    “What kind of people build such great farms in the middle of the forest, where there's no field at all?” the boy called down toward the ground.

  64. 29

    The rooster was walking on the dung heap and answered him at once.

  65. 30

    “Old ironmaster's farm. Old ironmaster's farm,” he crowed.

  66. “The fields lie underground. The fields lie underground.”

  67. 31

    Now the boy began to understand that this was not the kind of forest tract one could travel over without looking at it.

  68. There were forests and hills everywhere, to be sure, but it was astonishing how many remarkable places lay hidden among them.

  69. 32

    There were mining fields where the hoist frames were on the point of falling down and where the ground was pierced through with mine shafts, and there were mining fields where the work still went on, where the dull blasts from the mines could be heard all the way up to the wild geese, and where whole villages of workers' cottages rose at the edge of the forest.

  70. There were old, abandoned forges where the boy, through the collapsed roof, could look down at enormous, iron-banded hammer shafts and clumsily built-up furnaces, and there were great, newly established ironworks where they worked and hammered so hard that the ground shook.

  71. There were small towns in there in the wilderness that lay quiet and seemed to know nothing of all the noise around them.

  72. Cableways ran through the air, along which baskets, loaded with ore, slowly traveled.

  73. In every rapid, wheels turned, electric wires ran through the silent forest, and immensely long railway trains came rolling by with sixty, seventy cars, loaded now with ore and coal, now with iron bars, sheet metal, and steel wire.

  74. 33

    When the boy had sat for a while looking at all this, he could not keep silent any longer.

  75. “What is this country called, where nothing but iron seems to grow?” he asked, even though he knew the birds down on the ground would make fun of him for it.

  76. 34

    Then an old owl, who sat sleeping inside an abandoned smelting hut, started up out of its sleep.

  77. He stretched out his round head and called in his dreadful voice: “Oohoo, oohoo, oohoo. This land is called Bergslagen. If iron had not grown here, nothing but owls and bears would still be living here today.”

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.