The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson

by Selma Lagerlof

  He went past the post office and thought about all the newspapers that came every day with news from the four corners of the globe. He saw the pharmacy and the doctor’s house, and he thought that the power of humans was so great that they could fight against sickness and death. He came to the church and he thought that the humans had erected it so that there they could hear about a world beyond this one in which they lived, about God and resurrection and eternal life. And the farther he walked, the more he thought about humans.

  The thing about children is that they think no farther than the tip of their nose. They want to have what is closest at hand without caring what it might cost them. Nils Holgersson did not understand what he had lost when he chose to remain a gnome, but now he was terribly afraid that perhaps he would never get his right form back again.

  What in the world should he do to become human? That he would really like to know.

  He crawled up on a step and sat down there in the midst of the pouring rain and thought. He sat there for an hour, for two hours, and he thought until his forehead was furrowed. But he was none the wiser. It was as if his thoughts simply ran around in his head. The longer he sat there, the more impossible it seemed to be to find a solution.

  ‘This is surely far too difficult for someone who has learned as little as me,’ he thought at last. ‘Probably I’ll get to go back to the humans in any event. I’ll have to ask the minister and the doctor and the schoolteacher and others who are educated and may know the cure for something like this.’

  Yes, he decided that he should do that at once, and he stood up and shook himself, because he was as wet as a dog that has been in a puddle.

  Just then he saw a big owl come flying and set down in one of the trees that lined the village street. Immediately after that a tawny owl that was sitting under the cornice started moving and called, ‘Kee-vit! Kee-vit! Are you home again, short-eared owl? How was it abroad?’

  ‘Thank you very much, tawny owl! I’ve been fine,’ said the short-eared owl. ‘Has anything remarkable happened at home while I’ve been gone?’

  ‘Not here in Blekinge, short-eared owl, but in Skåne it happened that a boy was transformed by a gnome and made as small as a squirrel, and then he travelled to Lapland with a domestic goose.’

  ‘That was a strange piece of news, a strange piece of news. Can he ever be human again, tawny owl? Can he ever be human again?’

  ‘That is a secret, short-eared owl, but you will find out anyway. The gnome said that if the boy watches over the tame gander, so that he comes home unscathed and—’

  ‘What else, tawny owl? What else? What else?’

  ‘Fly with me up into the church steeple, short-eared owl, then you’ll find out everything! I’m afraid that there may be someone listening here on the village street.’

  With that the owls flew away, but the boy threw his cap high into the air. ‘If I just watch over the gander so that he comes home unscathed, then I’ll get to be human! Hurrah! Hurrah! Then I’ll get to be human!’

  He shouted hurrah so that it was strange that they did not hear him in the houses. But they did not, and he hurried out to the wild geese in the wet bog as quickly as his legs could carry him.

  Seven

  The Staircase with Three Steps

  Thursday, 31 March

  The next day the wild geese intended to travel north through Allbo County in Småland. They sent Yksi and Kaksi there to scout, but when they came back they said that all the water was frozen and the ground all covered with snow. ‘So please let us stay where we are!’ the wild geese said. ‘We can’t travel across a country where there is neither water nor pasture.’

  ‘If we stay where we are now, we may have to wait a whole lunar cycle,’ Akka then said. ‘It will be better to travel east through Blekinge and see then if we can cross Småland through Möre County, which is near the coast and where spring comes early.’

  In this way the boy came to travel over Blekinge the next day. Now, when it was light, he was in his right frame of mind again and could not understand what had got into him the night before. Now he certainly did not want to give up the journey and the wilderness life.

  There was a thick fog over Blekinge. The boy could not see what it looked like there. ‘I wonder if it’s good country or poor country that I’m riding over,’ he thought, digging in his memory for what he had learned about the province in school. But at the same time he probably knew that this would be of no use, because he never used to read the lessons.

  Suddenly the boy could picture the whole school before him. The children were sitting at the small desks raising their hands, the teacher sat at his desk looking dissatisfied, and he himself was up by the map and supposed to answer a question about Blekinge, but he did not have a word to say. The schoolteacher’s face got darker with every second that passed, and the boy thought that the teacher was more concerned that they should learn their geography than anything else. Now the teacher also came down from his desk, took the pointer from the boy and sent him back to his seat. ‘This will not end well,’ the boy had thought then.

  But the schoolteacher had gone up to a window and stood there for some time looking out, and then he whistled awhile. After that he went back to his desk and said that he would tell them something about Blekinge. And what he told them was so amusing that the boy listened. If he just thought about it, he could recall every word.

  ‘Småland is a tall house with spruce trees on the roof,’ the teacher said, ‘and in front of it there is a wide staircase with three large steps, and that staircase is called Blekinge.

  ‘This staircase is considerable in size. It reaches eighty kilometres along the front side of the Småland house, and anyone who wants to take the stairs all the way down to the Baltic has forty kilometres to go.

  ‘A good long time has also gone by since the staircase was built. Both days and years have passed since the first step was cut out of granite and set down level and smooth as a comfortable route between Småland and the Baltic.

  ‘As the staircase is so old, you can probably understand that it does not look the same now as when it was new. I don’t know how much they cared about such things at that time, but as big as it was, no way could any broom manage to keep it clean. After a few years moss and lichen started to grow on it, dry grass and dry leaves blew down over it in the autumn, and in the spring it was showered with falling stones and gravel. And when all this had to lie there and decompose, at last so much topsoil was collected on the steps that not only herbs and grass, but even bushes and large trees could take root there.

  ‘But at the same time great differences had developed among the three steps. The top one, which is closest to Småland, is mostly covered with poor soil and small stones, and there no trees will grow other than white birch and bird cherry and spruce, which tolerate the cold at that elevation and are content with little. You can best understand how barren and poor it is there when you see how small and narrow the fields are that have been cleared out of the forest, and how small the cottages are that people build for themselves, and how far it is between churches.

  ‘On the middle step again there is better soil, and it is not subject to such bitter cold either; there you see at once that the trees are both taller and of finer varieties. Maple and oak and linden, weeping birch and hazel grow there, but no conifers. And you notice even better then that there’s a lot of cultivated ground, and likewise that the people have built big, beautiful houses. There are many churches on the middle step, and large villages around them, and it seems in every way better and grander than the top step.

  ‘But the very bottom step is still the best. It is covered with good,
rich topsoil, and where it bathes in the sea, it does not have the slightest sensation of the Småland cold. Down here beech and chestnut and walnut trees thrive, and they grow so big that they reach above the church roofs. Here are also the largest fields, but the people have not only the forest and agriculture to live on, but they also have fishing and trade and navigation. For that reason the costliest homes are here and the most beautiful churches, and the villages with churches have grown into market towns and cities.

  ‘But with that not all has been said about the three steps. Because you must bear in mind that when it rains up on the roof of the large Småland house, or when the snow melts up there, the water has to go somewhere, and then of course some of it rushes down the big step. In the beginning it probably flowed down over the whole step, wide as it was, but then cracks arose in it, and gradually the water has been accustomed to flowing down it in some well-developed channels. And water is water, whatever you make of it. It never takes any rest. In one place it digs and files and carries away, and in another it deposits. Those channels it has excavated into valleys, the valley walls it has covered with topsoil, and then bushes and creepers have clung firmly to them so densely and so richly that they almost conceal the stream moving along down in the depths. But when the streams come to the landings between the steps, they have to cast themselves headlong down them, and from this the water comes at such foaming speed it has the power to drive mill wheels and machines, the likes of which have sprung up by every rapids.

  ‘But even then not all has yet been said about the country with the three steps. Instead it must also be said that up there in Småland in the big house there once lived a giant who had grown old. And it annoyed him that in his advanced age he would be forced to go down the long step to fish for salmon in the sea. It seemed to him much more suitable that the salmon should come up to him where he lived.

  ‘For that reason he went up on the roof of his big house, and from there he threw large stones down into the Baltic. He hurled them with such force that they flew over all of Blekinge and fell down in the sea. And when the stones hit, the salmon became so afraid that they came out of the sea, fled up the Blekinge streams, rushed off through the rapids, cast themselves with high leaps up waterfalls and did not stop until they were far inside Småland with the old giant.

  ‘How true this is, is shown by the many islands and skerries along the coast of Blekinge, which are none other than the many large stones that the giant threw.

  ‘Along with this you also see that the salmon still enter the Blekinge streams and work their way through rapids and calm water all the way to Småland.

  ‘But this giant deserves much gratitude and respect from the inhabitants of Blekinge, because the trout fishing in the streams and stonecutting in the archipelago is labour that feeds many of them up to this day.’

  Eight

  By Ronneby River

  Friday, 1 April

  Neither the wild geese nor Smirre Fox thought they would meet again, once they had left Skåne. But it so happened that the wild geese took the route over Blekinge, and Smirre Fox had also made his way there. So far he had stayed in the northern part of the province, and there he had not yet seen any manor parks or game preserves full of deer and tasty fawns. He was more dissatisfied than he could say.

  One afternoon, as Smirre was prowling around in a deserted woodland in the middle region, Mellanbygden, not far from Ronneby River, he happened to see a flock of wild geese flying through the air. He noticed right away that one of the geese was white, and then he knew who he was dealing with.

  Smirre started chasing after the geese at once, as much from the desire for a good meal as to get revenge on them for all the trouble they had caused him. He saw that they were travelling east until they came to Ronneby River. Then they changed direction and followed the river towards the south. He understood that they intended to find a place to sleep along the riverbank, and he thought that he could seize a couple of them without any great difficulty.

  But when Smirre finally caught sight of the place where the geese had settled down, he noticed they had chosen such a well-protected place that he could not get at them.

  Ronneby River is, of course, no great or mighty waterway, but nevertheless it is much talked about for its beautiful beaches. In several places it advances through steep rock walls, which stand vertically out of the water and are completely overgrown with honeysuckle and bird cherry, with hawthorn and alder, with mountain ash and willow, and there are few things more agreeable on a lovely summer day than rowing on the dark little river and looking up at all the tender greenery that clings firmly to the rough rock walls.

  But now, when the wild geese and Smirre came to the river, it was cold and raw late winter, all the trees were bare and there was probably no one who had the slightest thought of whether the sandy beaches were ugly or beautiful. The wild geese praised their good fortune that under such a steep rock wall they had found a strip of sand big enough that there was room for them. In front of them roared the river, which was swift and strong now as the snow was melting, behind them they had an unscalable cliff, and hanging branches hid them. They could not have done better.

  The geese fell asleep at once, but the boy could not sleep a wink. As soon as the sun was gone, he felt fear of the dark and terror of the wilderness and longed for humans. Where he was tucked in under the goose wing, he could not see anything and could hear only poorly, and he thought that if something bad happened to the gander, he would not be in a position to rescue him. He heard rustling and stirring from all directions, and he got so restless that he had to crawl out from under the wing and get on the ground alongside the goose.

  Disappointed, Smirre stood on the crown of the hill and looked down on the wild geese. ‘You can just as well abandon this pursuit at once,’ he said to himself. ‘You can’t climb down such a steep hill, you can’t swim in such a wild current, and there isn’t the slightest strip of land below the rock that leads up to their sleeping place. Those geese are too smart for you. Don’t bother hunting them any more!’

  But Smirre, like other foxes, had a hard time abandoning an enterprise once started, and therefore he lay down on the far edge of the hill and did not take his eyes off the wild geese. While he lay there, observing them, he thought about all the evil they had done him. Yes, it was on their account that he had been exiled from Skåne and had to flee to impoverished Blekinge. He worked himself up so much while he was lying there that he wished the wild geese were dead, even if he would not get to eat them himself.

  When Smirre’s indignation had reached such a height, he heard a rasping sound in a large pine tree growing close beside him, and saw a squirrel come down out of the tree, fiercely pursued by a marten. Neither of them noticed Smirre, and he sat quietly and observed the chase, which went from tree to tree. He watched the squirrel, who moved among the branches as easily as if he could fly. He watched the marten, who was not nearly as skilful a climber as the squirrel, but nonetheless ran up and down the tree trunks as securely as if they were smooth paths in the forest. ‘If I could only climb half as well as either of them,’ the fox thought, ‘those geese down here wouldn’t get to sleep peacefully for long.’

  As soon as the squirrel had been captured and the hunt was over, Smirre went up to the marten, but stopped two paces away, as a sign that he did not want to rob him of his prey. He greeted the marten in a very friendly way and congratulated him on his catch. Smirre chose his words well, as foxes always do. The marten, on the other hand, who, with his long, narrow body, his fine head, his soft skin and the light-brown patch on his neck looked like a minor marvel of beauty, was in reality only a crude forest-dweller and he barely ans
wered him. ‘It surprises me anyway,’ said Smirre, ‘that a hunter like you is content to hunt squirrels, when there is much better game within reach.’ Here he stopped, but when the marten only sneered at him quite shamelessly, he continued. ‘Can it be possible that you haven’t seen the wild geese that are here under the rock wall? Or aren’t you a good enough climber to get down to them?’

  This time he did not need to wait for an answer. The marten rushed towards him with his back arched and every hair on end. ‘Have you seen wild geese?’ he hissed. ‘Where are they? Speak up at once, otherwise I’ll bite off your neck!’

  ‘No, you have to remember that I’m twice as big as you, and be a bit respectful. I’m asking nothing more than to be able to show you the wild geese.’

  The next moment the marten was on his way down the steep, and while Smirre sat and watched him swing his snake-thin body from branch to branch, he thought, ‘That beautiful tree-hunter has the cruellest heart in the whole forest. I think the wild geese will have me to thank for a bloody awakening.’

  But just as Smirre waited to hear the death cries of the geese, he saw the marten fall from a branch and splash down in the river, so that the water sprayed up high. Right after that there was a strong slap of hard wings and all the geese took off in urgent flight.

  Smirre intended to hurry after the geese at once, but he was so curious to find out how they had been rescued that he stayed seated until the marten came climbing up. The poor thing was soaking wet and stopped now and then to rub his head with his front paws. ‘I didn’t expect you to be a clumsy oaf that would fall in the river,’ Smirre said contemptuously.

  ‘I’m not clumsy. You don’t need to scold me,’ said the marten. ‘I was already on one of the lowest branches, thinking about how I was going to get a chance to tear a whole lot of geese apart, when a little imp, no bigger than a squirrel, rushed up and threw a rock at my head with such force that I fell into the water, and before I had time to crawl out—’