The Wonderful Adventures of Nils 1732 Studios

Swedish · The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Fram över Gästrikland

Onward Across Gästrikland

117 sentences · 22 notes

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  1. 1

    The eagle continued flying until he had come a good distance north of Stockholm.

    Örnenthe eagleÖrnen · noun, nominative, common gender, singularsubject of fortsatte
    fortsattecontinuedfortsatte · verb, past, indicative, activemain verb of the sentence
    atttoatt · particleintroduces the clause of flyga

    infinitive marker before a verb.

    flygaflyflyga · verb, active, infinitivecomplement of fortsatte
    tillsuntiltills · subordinating conjunctionintroduces the clause of kommit
    hanhehan · pronoun, nominative, common gender, singularsubject of kommit
    hadehadha · auxiliary verb, past, indicative, activeauxiliary of kommit
    kommitcomekomma · verb, active, supineadverbial clause on fortsatte
    ettaen · determiner, neuter, singulardeterminer of stycke
    gottgoodgod · adjective, nominative, neuter, singularmodifies stycke
    styckepiecestycke · noun, nominative, neuter, singulardirect object of kommit
    norrnorthnorr · adverbmodifies kommit
    omofom · prepositionpreposition marking Stockholm
    StockholmStockholmStockholm · proper noun, nominativeoblique complement of norr

  2. There he lowered himself into a wooded hillside and loosened the grip with which he held the boy fast.

  3. 2

    But no sooner did the boy feel himself free than he began running back toward the city, as fast as he was able.

  4. 3

    The eagle then made a long leap, caught up with the boy, and laid his foot over him.

  5. »Is it your intention to go back to the prison?» he asked.

  6. — »What business is that of yours? I suppose I may go wherever I like, for all you care,» said the boy, and tried to get away.

  7. Then the eagle gripped him firmly again with his strong talons, lifted off, and flew north once more.

  8. 4

    Now the eagle flew with the boy over the whole of Uppland and did not stop until he came to the great waterfall at Älvkarleby.

  9. He alighted on a rock that lay in the middle of the river just below the roaring falls, and once again released his captive.

  10. 5

    The boy saw at once that there was no possibility of escaping the eagle here.

  11. Above them the falls' white wall of foam came crashing down, and all around them the river surged past in a mighty torrent.

  12. He was very bitter at being made a breaker of his word in this way.

  13. He turned his back on the eagle and would not say a word to him.

  14. 6

    But once the eagle had set the boy down in a place from which he could not get away, he told him that he had been raised by Akka from Kebnekaise, and that he had fallen into enmity with his foster mother.

  15. »And now perhaps you understand, Thumbietot, why I want to bring you back to the wild geese,» he said at last. »I have heard it said that you stand high in Akka's favor, and it was my intention to ask you to make peace between us.»

  16. 7

    As soon as the boy understood that the eagle had not carried him off out of mere willfulness, he grew friendly toward him.

  17. »I would very gladly have liked to help you with what you're asking of me,» he said, »but I am, after all, bound by my promise.»

  18. And now he told the eagle in his turn how he had fallen into captivity, and that Klement Larsson had left Skansen without setting him free.

  19. 8

    But the eagle did not, in any case, want to give up his plans.

  20. »Listen to me now, Thumbietot!» he said. »My wings can carry you wherever you want to go, and my eyes can seek out whatever you wish to find. Tell me what the man looked like who took the promise from you, and I shall search him out and bring you to him! After that it will be your own affair to persuade him to set you free.»

  21. 9

    The boy thought this a good proposal.

  22. »I can well tell, Gorgo, that you have had as wise a bird as Akka for a foster mother,» he said.

  23. He then described Klement Larsson very carefully, and added that he had heard it said at Skansen that the little fiddler was supposed to be from Hälsingland.

  24. 10

    »We shall search through the whole of Hälsingland, from Lingbo to Mellansjö, from Storberget to Hornslandet,» said the eagle. »Tomorrow before evening you shall be speaking with the man.»

  25. — »Now you're certainly promising more than you can keep,» said the boy.

  26. — »I would be a poor eagle indeed if I weren't good for that much,» answered Gorgo.

  27. 11

    When Gorgo and Thumbietot left Älvkarleby, they were good friends, and the boy now settled himself to ride on the eagle's back.

  28. In this way he came once more to have the chance of seeing something of the country he was flying over.

  29. When he had been carried in the eagle's talon, he had not been able to see anything.

  30. It was almost just as well for him that he did not know very well how things stood, for if he had known that this morning he had traveled over Uppsala Hills, the great Österby ironworks, the Dannemora mine, and old Örbyhus Castle without having gotten to see any of them, he would certainly have felt quite grieved.

  31. 12

    The eagle now carried him at good speed away over Gästrikland.

  32. In the southern part there was not much to catch the eye.

  33. There a plain spread out, almost everywhere covered with spruce forest.

  34. But farther north there stretched across the province, from the Dalarna border to the Gulf of Bothnia, a beautiful tract with hills clad in deciduous trees, gleaming lakes, and rushing streams.

  35. Here lay populous parishes around their white churches, roads and railways crossed one another, the houses lay prettily nestled in greenery, and blossoming gardens sent lovely scents up into the air.

  36. 13

    Along the watercourses there were several large ironworks, of the kind the boy had already seen in Bergslagen.

  37. They lay at fairly even intervals in a row all the way toward the sea, where a great city spread out its masses of white houses.

  38. North of this rich district dark forests began again, but the land there did not lie flat beneath them; instead it rose into ridges and sank into valleys like a stormy sea.

  39. 14

    »This land is dressed in a jacket of spruce twigs and a shirt of gray stone,» thought the boy to himself. »But around its waist it wears a belt with no equal in costliness, for it is embroidered with gleaming blue lakes and blossoming meadows; the great ironworks adorn it like a row of noble gems, and for a buckle it has a whole city with castles and churches and great clusters of houses.»

  40. 15

    When the travelers had journeyed a way up into the northern forest tract, Gorgo came down onto the topmost peak of a bare hill, and once the boy had jumped down to the ground, the eagle said: »There is game to be had in this forest, and I don't think I can forget my captivity and truly feel free until I have gone hunting. You won't be afraid, will you, if I go off and leave you?»

  41. — »Oh no, I don't suppose I will,» said the boy.

  42. — »You may go wherever you like, so long as you are here when it draws toward sunset,» said the eagle, and flew off on his way.

  43. 16

    The boy felt quite lonely and forsaken now, sitting on a stone and looking out over the bare mountain ground and the great forests that lay all around it.

  44. But he had not sat there long before he heard singing from down in the forest and saw something bright moving among the trees.

  45. He soon saw that it was a blue and yellow banner, and he understood from the singing and the merry clamor he heard that the banner was being carried at the head of a whole procession of people, though it was a long while before he could make out who they were.

  46. The banner was carried along winding paths, and he sat wondering where it, and those following after it, meant to go.

  47. He could hardly believe that they would come all the way up to this ugly, desolate mountain height, where he sat.

  48. But that is just what they did.

  49. There the banner came out at the edge of the forest, and after it came all the swarming crowd it had shown the way.

  50. There was life and stir over the whole height, and that day the boy had so much to look at that he was not bored for a single moment.

  51. 17

    THE FOREST'S DAY.

  52. 18

    On the broad mountain ridge where Gorgo had left Thumbietot, a forest fire had swept through some ten years before.

  53. The charred trees had been felled and carried away, and the great burned field had begun to be clothed with vegetation at its edges, where it bordered the untouched forest.

  54. But most of the height showed itself bare and dreadfully desolate.

  55. Black stumps still stood among the rocky slabs as a witness that a great and splendid forest had once stood here, but no young saplings shot up out of the ground.

  56. 19

    People wondered why it went so slowly for the mountain height to be clothed again with forest, but they did not consider that when the forest fire had swept through, the ground had been without moisture after a long drought.

  57. Therefore it was not enough that the trees had burned, and that everything growing on the ground — the heather and the wild rosemary and the moss and the lingonberry heath — had perished too; the very topsoil covering the bedrock had, after the fire, become dry and loose as ash.

  58. It whirled up into the air with every gust of wind, and since the height lay exposed to the wind, one rock slab after another had been swept bare.

  59. The rainwater naturally helped carry the soil away too, and now that wind and water had been scouring the mountain clean for a full ten years, it lay so bare that one might well have believed it would remain a wasteland until the world's last hour.

  60. 20

    But one day at the beginning of summer, all the children of the parish where the burned mountain lay gathered in front of one of the schoolhouses.

  61. Every single one of the children had a hoe or a spade over his shoulder and a food-bundle in his hand.

  62. As soon as everyone had arrived, they set off in a long procession up toward the forest.

  63. The banner was carried at the head, teachers walked alongside, and behind followed a couple of forest rangers and a horse pulling a load of pine seedlings and spruce seed.

  64. 21

    That procession did not stop in any of the birch groves lying nearest the settlement — no, it made its way far into the forest with it.

  65. It followed old summer-pasture paths, and the foxes poked their startled heads out of their dens, wondering what sort of pasture-folk this was.

  66. It marched past old charcoal-burning grounds, where the charcoal piles used to be raised in the autumns, and the crossbills turned their crooked beaks and asked one another what kind of charcoal-burners these were, now pressing into the forest.

  67. 22

    So the procession came at last up onto the great, burned-over mountain height.

  68. There the stones lay bare without the delicate twinflower vines that had once clothed them; the rock slabs had been stripped of the lovely silver moss and the white, pleasant reindeer lichen.

  69. Around the black water that had gathered in clefts and hollows, there was not a single wood sorrel or bog-arum leaf to be found.

  70. The small patches of soil still lying in crevices and among the stones were bare of ferns, of starflowers, of white pyrola, of all the green and red and light and soft and delicate things that usually clothe the forest floor.

  71. 23

    It was as though a brightening had passed over the gray mountain height when all the parish's children spread out across it.

  72. There was once more something glad and fine, fresh and rosy, there.

  73. It was young and growing.

  74. Perhaps these would help the abandoned wretch of a mountain to a little life again.

  75. 24

    When the children had rested and eaten, they took up their hoes and spades and began to work.

  76. The forest rangers showed them how to go about it, and they set down plant after plant in every little patch of soil they managed to discover.

  77. 25

    While the children were planting, they went about quite wise and knowing, talking to one another about how the little saplings they set down in the earth would come to bind the topsoil, so that it could not blow away.

  78. And that was not all, for new topsoil would form beneath the trees as well.

  79. And into that soil seeds would fall, and in a few years they would be able to pick both raspberries and blueberries here, where now there was nothing but bare rock.

  80. And the little plants they were setting would, of course, in time grow into tall trees.

  81. Perhaps great houses or fine ships would someday be built of them.

  82. 26

    But if the children had not come here and planted while there was still a little soil left in the crevices, then all the topsoil would have been carried off by wind and water, and the mountain could never again have grown forest.

  83. 27

    »Yes, it's a good thing we came here,» said the children. »It was in the very last hour.»

  84. And they felt themselves tremendously important.

  85. 28

    While the children worked up on the mountain, father and mother went about at home, and after a while they began to wonder how the children were managing.

  86. It was of course only make-believe, that such little ones should be planting a forest, but it might still be amusing to see how they were getting on.

  87. Before long, both father and mother were on their way up to the forest.

  88. When they came onto the summer-pasture path, they met several of their neighbors.

  89. »Are you going up to the burned field?»

  90. — »We are indeed.»

  91. — »Up to see the children?»

  92. — »Yes, up to see how they're managing.»

  93. — »I suppose it'll all just come to play?»

  94. — »I doubt many forest trees will come of that sort of thing.»

  95. — »We've brought the coffeepot along, so they can have something warm, seeing as they'll be living on their food-bundles the whole day.»

  96. 29

    So father and mother came up onto the mountain, and at first they thought only of how pretty it looked with all the little rosy cheeks scattered over the gray rock slabs.

  97. But then they noticed how the children were working — how some were setting out plants, others were drawing furrows and sowing seed, and some were tearing away heather so it would not smother the little trees.

  98. And they saw that the children took the work seriously and were so eager that they scarcely had time to look up.

  99. 30

    Father stood for a while and watched, and then he began pulling up heather.

  100. Just for fun, as it were.

  101. The children were the masters, for they were already skilled in the craft, and it fell to them to show father and mother how to go about it.

  102. 31

    It happened that all the grown-ups who had come to watch the children ended up taking part in the work.

  103. Then, of course, it became much more fun than it had been before.

  104. And after a while the children got even more help.

  105. 32

    More tools were needed up there, and a couple of long-legged boys were sent down to the village for hoes and spades.

  106. When they came running past the cottages, those at home came out and asked: »What's going on? Has some accident happened?»

  107. — »Oh no, but the whole parish is up at the burned field planting a forest.»

  108. — »If the whole parish is there, then surely we shouldn't sit at home.»

  109. 33

    So the people came streaming up to the burned mountain.

  110. At first they stood still for a while and watched, but then they could not help joining in among those at work.

  111. For it can be pleasant enough to go out and sow one's field in spring and think of the grain that will come up out of the earth, but this was something even more enticing.

  112. 34

    It was not only weak stalks that were to come up from this sowing, but strong trees with tall trunks and mighty branches.

  113. It was to give rise not merely to a single summer's crop, but to many years of growth.

  114. It was to awaken the hum of insects and the song of thrushes and the drumming of wood grouse, and every kind of life on the desolate height.

  115. And it was, in a way, a monument that they were raising for generations to come.

  116. One could have given them a bare, naked height as their inheritance, and now they would have a proud forest instead.

  117. And when those who came after considered this, they would understand that their forefathers had been a good and wise people, and they would think of them with reverence and gratitude.

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
Every word of the text, by letter.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.