This series of SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS is published by The
American-Scandinavian Foundation in the belief that greater
familiarity with the chief literary monuments of the North will
help Americans to a better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus
serve to stimulate their sympathetic coöperation to good ends
SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS
VOLUME XIV
[Symbol: Asterism]
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
BY
JONAS LIE
[Illustration: AMERICAN SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION]
ESTABLISHED BY
NIELS POULSON
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
A DOMESTIC STORY OF THE FORTIES
BY
JONAS LIE
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY SAMUEL COFFIN EASTMAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIUS EMIL OLSON
NEW YORK
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
_Copyright, 1920, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation_
_D. B. Updike · The Merrymount Press · Boston · U.S.A._
_Preface_
To the Honorable Samuel Coffin Eastman, of Concord, New Hampshire,
belongs the credit of having given American readers an English version
of _The Family at Gilje_ while the author was still at the height of
his creative activity. Mr. Eastman, who was a lawyer by profession,
was a man of varied interests, the author of a White Mountain Guide
which has gone through numerous editions, and the translator of
Brandes's _Impressions of Russia_ and _Poland_. He was familiar with
the translations by Mrs. Ole Bull of Jonas Lie's _The Pilot and His
Wife_ and _The Good Ship Future_. _The Family at Gilje_ was called to
his attention by Miss Amalia Krohg, of Christiania, and it charmed him
so much that he rendered it into English. The translation appeared
serially in the Concord magazine, _The Granite Monthly_, in 1894, and
was illustrated with views from Valders, the mountain district where
the scene of the story is laid.
When the Committee on Publications decided to include _The Family at
Gilje_ in the SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS, their attention was called to Mr.
Eastman's excellent version, and permission was secured to reprint it.
The translator consented to a revision of his text so as to make it
conform to the general style of the CLASSICS and to interpret more
accurately some of the Norwegian idioms. His death, in 1917, prevented
his coöperation in the work of revision, to which, nevertheless, he had
given his cordial assent.
HANNA ASTRUP LARSEN
_Introduction_
The story of Jonas Lie's life, even though told in brief, will readily
yield the key to the various phases of his strange authorship. No
one of his long list of books is an adequate index of his powers.
The special character of each is the outgrowth of peculiar traits of
natural endowment in conjunction with definite facts and experiences
of his life. Some of the features of his genius seem strangely
incongruous--as different as day and night. These features are clearly
reflected in his writings. By critics he has been variously proclaimed
"the poet of Nordland," "the novelist of the sea," or "the novelist of
Norwegian homes," and is commonly classed as a realist. His reputation
and great popularity rest mainly upon his realistic novels. In this
field he ranks as one of the leading portrayers of character and social
conditions in modern Norse literature; and of his realism _The Family
at Gilje_ is possibly the best illustration.
Yet there was much more than an ingenuous realist in Lie.[1] He was
also a fascinating mystic; a teller of fantastic stories, profoundly
symbolic in character; a great myth-making _raconteur_ of grotesque
tales that have a distinct folkloristic flavor, particularly as found
in his two volumes entitled _Trold_. This part of his authorship,
though it does not bulk large, and, naturally enough, has not been
fathomed by the general reader, is nevertheless a very important part,
and is surely the most original and poetic. It appears in a definite
though restrained form as mystic romanticism in his first prose work,
_Second Sight_, and then scarcely a trace of it is seen until it bursts
forth, twenty years later, with the vigor of long-repressed passion.
It would therefore be unfair to judge Jonas Lie by the single novel
in hand--as unfair as it would be to judge Ibsen by a single one of
his social dramas--_The Pillars of Society_, for instance. In Ibsen
the imaginative power displayed in _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_ did not in
the social dramas reassert itself in anything but an adumbration of
the abandon and exuberance of the dramatic poems. In Lie, however, the
mystic and myth-maker reappeared with strength redoubled. Erik Lie,
in a book on his father's life (_Oplevelser_), says with reference to
this: "If it had been given to Jonas Lie to continue his authorship
in his last years, his Nordland nature would surely--such is my
belief--more and more have asserted itself, and he would have dived
down into the misty world of the subconscious, where his near-sighted
eyes saw so clearly, and whence his first works sprang up like
fantastic plants on the bottom of the sea." There is not a trace or
an inkling of this clairvoyant power in _The Family at Gilje_. Its
excellences are of a distinctly different nature.
This much, then, must be said to warn the reader against a too hasty
appraisement of Lie's genius--his power, range, and vision--on the
basis of a single novel. Let him be assured that Jonas Lie stands
worthily by the side of Ibsen and Björnson both as a creative author
and as a personality. He was of their generation, knew them both well
as young men and old, and was a loyal friend to both, as they were to
him. He even knew Björnson well enough in the early sixties to give him
pointed advice on his authorship. Though he seems never to have taken
such liberties with Ibsen,--as Björnson so categorically did during the
same decade,--he did lend him a helping hand by paying him in advance
for the dramatic poem, _Love's Comedy_, published in a periodical
owned by Lie. It is interesting to note that Ibsen, so punctilious in
later years, was aggravatingly slow in forwarding the final batch of
manuscript. As a last resource, Lie threatened to complete the drama
himself. Later in life, during summer sojourns in the Bavarian Alps,
they saw much of each other. In one of his social dramas, _An Enemy
of the People_, Ibsen used Lie, together with traits of Björnson and
Apothecary Thaulow (father of the painter) as a model for the genial
hero, Dr. Stockmann. Both Ibsen and Björnson were generous in their
praise of Lie's many fine qualities. In the sixties, before Lie had
written a single novel, Björnson, in an address at Tromsö, in Arctic
Norway, where Lie had spent several years of his boyhood, said some
striking things about Lie's creative powers. On a later occasion he
referred to him as "the great vague possibility," and after Lie's
death, in a letter to the family, he said: "I have so much to thank
him for. In the luxuriant wealth of my youth he was the purest in
heart, the richest in fancy." Björnson understood from the first the
clairvoyant mysticism in Lie, and profited by it. In other words, a
man who could interest men like Ibsen and Björnson and maintain their
admiration and respect for half a century could do so only by dint of
rare personal powers.
Although he did not begin his literary career until he was getting on
toward forty, at which age both Ibsen and Björnson had won fame, Lie,
it may fairly be said, eventually overtook them in the favor of the
Scandinavian reading public, and it is not unlikely that with this
public he will hold his own in comparison with them. This is surely
due to the realism of his social novels. Though he at times roamed
far afield from the standards of realism, as has been indicated, he
never was identified with extremists in any literary school, despite
the sweeping force of popular currents. As a realist he was a patient
plodder, following his own instincts, and in the course of long years
he hammered out a literary vehicle distinctly his own, so surcharged,
in fact, with the idiosyncrasies of his individuality as to make it
most difficult to recast in a foreign idiom.
From the above it will appear that Lie was an interesting dual
personality. Further consideration of his life will show that he was
both romanticist, or mystic, and realist by right of blood, as well as
through environment and personal experience.
Scandinavian romanticism began in Denmark with the opening of the
nineteenth century, as a revival of the past, the exploitation of
Northern antiquities for modern literary material. In Norway, a
generation or so later, romanticism grew out of an enthusiastic study
of popular ballads and folk-lore stories still found on the lips of the
peasantry. In connection with this there developed an intense interest
in rural scenery and life on the part of both artists and poets. The
movement continued for a generation, until the early seventies, and
found its best conscious literary expression in Björnson's peasant
idyls. When Jonas Lie had resolved to become an author (1870), there
was one region of romantic inspiration that had not been utilized. This
was Nordland, one of the northerly provinces of Norway, beyond the
Arctic Circle, under the glory of the midnight sun, where, however,
a long and sunless winter fostered in the minds of the inhabitants a
brooding melancholy which peopled mountain and sea, nature's every nook
and cranny, with strange and awe-inspiring creatures. In this nature
of colossal contrasts Jonas Lie spent several years of his boyhood,
and the tremendous impression left on his sensitive and poetic mind
are very evident in his first novel, _Second Sight_ (_Den Fremsynte_),
also known in English as _The Visionary_ and _The Seer_. This,
together with some lesser stories that followed, gave the Nordland
stamp to Lie's earliest fiction--the stamp of romanticism, mysticism,
and clairvoyance. The effect of this environment was accentuated by
powerful innate impulses, for his ancestral heritage reveals a double
strain, to which allusion has already been made. On his father's side
there were, for several generations, brains, energy, and good sense,
with a predilection for law and administration. The father himself
was a country magistrate of sterling uprightness. Here, then, plainly
enough, is the source of the novelist's realism, as found, for example,
in _The Family at Gilje_, but nothing whatever to indicate the poet
and romancer. These surely can be traced to the mother, who was a
most remarkable woman, born in one of the northern provinces, and, as
Lie himself believed, with either Finnish (_i.e._, Lappic) or Gypsy
blood in her veins, and possibly both. Professor Boyesen, in _Essays
on Scandinavian Literature_, says of Lie's mother: "I remember well
this black-eyed, eccentric little lady, with her queer ways and still
more extraordinary conversation. It is from her that Jonas Lie has
inherited the fantastic strain in his blood, the strange superstitious
terrors, and the luxuriant wealth of color which he lavished upon
his first novel, _The Man of Second Sight_. She was unusually gifted
intellectually, had pronounced literary interests, and revealed some
decided clairvoyant qualities." Lie himself said of her: "There was
something of a seer in her--something that reminded one of spae-women
and the like." "Imagine," says Arne Garborg,[2] in his book on Lie,
"this restless blood infused into the strong, sober, practical nature
of the Lies: what should come of such a mixture but that peculiar
combination of reality and romanticism that we know by the name
of Jonas Lie, the poet of Finnish magic and sorcery--and of plain
reality." In Nordland, where his maternal inheritance had its source,
Lie as a boy found things fit to satisfy the cravings of such an
imagination as the Finn in him possessed. In this Brobdingnagian realm
he heard tales and legends of Finnish sorcery, of shipwrecks caused by
fierce water-bogies (_draugs_), of giant trolls, and a thousand other
demoniacal creatures of morbid popular fancy, until he was chilled
with terror, the effects of which clung to him for life, made him as
a mature man afraid of the dark, and finally cropped out in tales of
weird and grotesque imagery.
These, then, are the fundamental facts that are necessary for
comprehension of the duality in Lie's nature and authorship.
Jonas Lie was born in southern Norway, in 1833, and at the age of
five removed with the family to Nordland. His life as an author began
in 1870; but between these dates there was a period of very unusual
experiences. His vivid imagination, stirred by the witchery of life
in Nordland, made the prosy tasks of school seem direst punishment.
He was counted a dullard and an incorrigible mischief-maker. At the
age of thirteen it was his passion to become a sailor. The father, at
his wits' end, compromised by sending him to a naval academy. Here
he was at times thought mad by his instructors, who saw something of
his semi-somnambulistic antics. Near-sightedness, however, proved an
obstacle to his continuance in _this_ path to maritime glory, which he
was destined to win by a different route. After an awakening experience
in a Bergen school, where an eccentric poet-pedagogue thought him a
"lad of pairts," and his classmates voted him a prize liar on account
of his Nordland stories, he took a short cut to the university at
Heltberg's so-called Student Factory in Christiania, the head-master
of which--a prodigy who has been immortalized in literature by both
Björnson and Garborg--proved an inspiring and fructifying force to his
groping genius. At this institution, among a motley horde of country
bumpkins, shipwrecked city talent, and budding genius, he found
Björnson, also preparing for the university. Both were profoundly
impressed by the genius of the asthmatic head-master in his dogskin
jacket, who led his young barbarians by forced marches through the
Alpine passes of Latin syntax into the classic domain of Livy and
Horace. We shall see that he came to Lie's rescue at a later period.
Lie entered the university in 1851, and took a degree in law in 1858.
It had been a difficult task for him to decide what professional study
to pursue. He thought at first that he had leanings toward theology,
bought the necessary books, kept them a day, then exchanged them for
law books, after having paid a brief but adequate visit to the clinical
laboratory. These years at the university, when a romantic interest
in everything Norwegian filled the air with mystic expectancy of
great things to come in the way of a regenerated Norway, aroused Lie.
Association with Björnson, Ibsen, Vinje,[3] Nordraak,[4] and a score
of other gifted young men was stimulating, yet he did not become a
disciple or slavish follower of any of these more vehement natures. He
had his own ideas, and was boldly independent when occasion demanded
it, as both King Oscar and Björnson later in life ascertained to their
discomfort, each of them having tried in vain to make the "amiable"
author conform to their plans and ideas. Among the many friends that
Lie made in the capital city during his university days, Björnson
became the most intimate. He seems from the very first to have espied
the artist in Lie, and did much to help him in understanding his own
strange self. It had begun to worry Lie that his friends thought him
eccentric. And not only this: the mystic, superstitious, magic-loving
Finn in his nature often frightened him. Hence he made great efforts to
counteract his tendency to fantastic musing and to develop his paternal
heritage: the rationalist and realist in himself. For this purpose the
determination to study law was doubtless a wise step. But his legal
studies did not suppress his literary yearnings, which found expression
in verse that did not at first go beyond a circle of intimate friends.
He saw no prospect of making a living with his pen, and so entered a
government office--a decision hastily made under pressure of respect
for his stern and practical father, who had announced a visit to the
capital city. Nevertheless, he dreamed of becoming an author, and began
contributing poems to the daily press. They seemed labored and heavy,
and attracted no particular attention. On the other hand, he prepared
some well-written articles on European politics, which indicated
insight and careful thinking. These articles made such a favorable
impression on Björnson that he offered to secure him the editorship of
a Christiania daily. But Lie was unwilling. He had made arrangements to
practise law at Kongsvinger, not far from the capital. After a year's
work in the new field, he married a cousin, Thomasine Lie, to whom he
had long been betrothed. Together they had planned that he was to be an
author, and his hasty decision to become a lawyer was a severe shock to
her. From the beginning she had faith in his literary possibilities;
and it was evidently her steady hand on the rudder, throughout a long
life, that guided the bark of his genius through many dangerous reefs.
But for her good sense and loving loyalty, there would probably not
have been a Jonas Lie in Norwegian literature. He often remarked that
her name might well appear on the title-page of most of his books. In
this most interesting partnership, his was the creative spirit, hers
the practical guiding hand.
Lie's new home was in the heart of a rich timber district, which at
that time was at the high tide of a tremendous business boom. Here
he achieved immediate success as a lawyer. Moreover, through an
influential friend, he became the financial agent of two banking houses
in the capital. This gave him the opportunity--and he had the necessary
courage--to take a hand in bold business enterprises on a large scale.
He prospered; the future seemed roseate; he began to dream of such
affluence as to enable him to devote himself to literature. Meanwhile
he wrote verses for all manner of occasions, and even published a
volume of these poems (1866). Both he and his wife had unusual social
qualifications. She was a fine musician, a woman of character and much
intellectual force, and a most competent housewife. In this home of
culture many prominent men were entertained--first of all, Ole Bull,
whom Lie adored. Mighty schemes for the glorification of Mother Norway
were discussed as these two "visionaries" sat brewing their toddy.
Björnson, too, was often there, and Sverdrup, the statesman.
Meanwhile clouds ominous of disaster appeared on the commercial
horizon. The period 1865-68 witnessed the greatest financial panic that
Norway had ever experienced. Lie had forebodings of a catastrophe,
but too late to save himself. He had been lavish with his signature,
and was tremendously involved. The crash meant more than life and
death to him. It was a matter of honor, integrity, conscience. He lost
everything, and was in debt to the extent of over $200,000. Lie, the
lawyer, was ruined. He resolved to return to literature, for instinct
urged him with "almost explosive force," to use his own phrase. As for
his financial obligations, he made a monumental resolution, as did
Walter Scott in a similar predicament, to pay every dollar through
his authorship; and for years he dropped every penny that he did not
absolutely need into that abyss of debt. Friends finally convinced
him of the hopelessness of his purpose. With what a heavy heart Lie
carried the tale of his bankruptcy to his faithful wife several of his
novels testify. Financial crashes play no small part in his writings,
and the pathetic force with which these situations are handled sounds a
distinctly personal note.
With wife and children Lie returned to Christiania in the autumn
of 1868--empty-handed. How he managed to keep his head above water
by the aid of loyal friends like Björnson, Sverdrup, whose private
secretary he was for a time, and old Heltberg, of the Student Factory,
who came to engage him as a teacher of rhetoric and composition, is
an interesting story which need not be told here. But through all
his trials one determination was fixed and inflexible: he would make
literature his life-work. It was not long before his thoughts reverted
to his early experiences in Nordland. After several years of subjection
to the stern reality of legal and commercial enterprise, the Finn
was again asserting himself. His first novel, _Second Sight_, was
the result. He read it to his wife; she thought it magnificent, but
later applied the pruning-knife drastically. Then Björnson was called
in. He concurred in the wife's opinion, and immediately wrote the
great Copenhagen publisher, Hegel, pronouncing the novel a "sea-mew"
that would fly over all the Scandinavian North, and urging hasty
publication. This was in November, 1870. By Christmas the book was
in the shops. In large part it purports to be the autobiography of
a visionary Nordlander, who tells of his beloved home, and recounts
marvellous stories of the Arctic north; but through this bead-string of
episodes and descriptions there is interwoven a pathetic tale of love,
love so tender, so delicate, that the words describing it seem to come
tripping on tiptoe. Unpromising as the novel seems in the beginning,
when one almost expects a study in the pathology of second sight, it
nevertheless develops into such beauty as to make it the _Romeo and
Juliet_ of Scandinavian literature.
Every step of Jonas Lie's development from this first novel to _The
Family at Gilje_ (1883) is of interest to the student of literature.
It was a period of hard study, careful, conscientious work, and high
resolve to master his powers and to utilize his varied experiences for
literary purposes, in order to be able to serve Mother Norway,--for one
must never forget the intense patriotic ardor of all Norway's great
writers, artists, and musicians. By the aid of a government stipend,
Lie was enabled to visit Nordland and the western coast to promote his
literary production, and soon afterward a second and larger stipend
for the purpose of foreign travel made it possible for him to visit
Rome, the Mecca of all Scandinavian artists and _literati_ of the
period. There he remained more than three years, a time of fruitful
toil and stimulating experience. In 1872 he sent home two books
relating to life on the western and northern coast, _The Good Ship
Future_, and a collection of short stories.
Lie was not content, however, to be "the poet of Nordland," as he at
once had been named. His ambition was to be more national. In the
broader realms of literary activity the giant figures of Ibsen and
Björnson towered. They were deep in the problems of the day. How could
he become national and modern? Instinct led him on in paths that
unconsciously he had already trodden. In this nation of seafarers he
was the first in modern literature to discover the coast-dwellers and
to portray their struggles on the sea. His first book contained a
description of a storm in northern waters that makes the reader hold
his breath. In the volume of short stories, which in their scenes sweep
along the western coast, and in _The Good Ship Future_ as well, there
was a distinct odor of the sea. This was natural enough: he had spent
his early years in Nordland and in Bergen, the centre of Norwegian
shipping, and he loved the sea passionately. In his next novel, _The
Pilot and his Wife_, he put to sea with sails hoisted to the top.
The critics apparently had not felt the sea-breezes in his first books;
but in the last there blew such a lusty gale that all, both critics and
public, sniffed its fresh and salty breath with keenest relish. The
book was a success, which his previous novel had not quite been, and it
marks the beginning of Lie's sane and natural realism as consciously
applied, in its main problem, to a modern social question, making the
story, in its essence, a novel of character, a psychological study of
the relation of man and wife, and not primarily a novel of adventure,
which assumption gave Lie the designation "novelist of the sea."
The success of the book brought the author, in 1874, by vote of the
Storting, a life stipend known as a "poet's salary," which recognition
put him in a class with Ibsen and Björnson. The great honor seems to
have had a depressing effect, for Lie now scored four failures in
succession. He was back in Norway, trying to portray social phenomena
of the capital city. The reviewers were most irritating and offensive,
and he felt obliged temporarily to desert the field. With the novel
_Rutland_ (1881), he returned to the sea. This story surpasses _The
Pilot_ in every respect. The sea is described with the fondness of
a lover. Like _The Pilot_, it also deals with a problem of the home,
but what chiefly impressed the public in reading the book was that the
seamen, that important element of the Norwegian people, had found an
adequate interpreter.
His next book, _Forward (Gaa Paa)_ (1882), was likewise a maritime
novel, with panoramas in the life of the fisher folk on the western
coast. At the same time it forecast the new age of industrial
development, and revealed growing sympathy and increased understanding
in matters of national import. The author seems to have become
convinced that a novelist, too, might be able to lend a hand in paving
the way for progress. In this book he had by his vivid portrayal
attacked stagnation, superstition, sluggishness, and had proclaimed the
new gospel of work, activity, enterprise. It had been begun during the
latter part of a three years' sojourn in Germany. It was completed in
Norway during the autumn of 1882, after which Lie took up his abode in
Paris, where he made his home for many years.
For his next work, _A Life Prisoner_ (1883), Lie found his theme in
the slums of Christiania. The treatment was not naturalistic enough
to satisfy the critics. Lie was of course not unmindful of the new
literary movement, but he possessed then, as always, sufficient
individual momentum to carry him through the ephemeral phases of
literary fads. His novels are not barometers of the prevailing literary
atmosphere. He believed in a realism of true naturalism, which has
stood the test of time. In this last work he brings a waif of modern
society close to the hearts of his readers, and needs no explosions of
pent-up indignation, no spirit of class hatred, to make his readers
understand this unfortunate product of a bad environment. In his reply
to the critics, Lie spoke forcibly on the new literary method, summing
up his views in these words: "The main thing is to picture life so that
the reader sees, hears, feels, comprehends it; by what esthetic means
this is accomplished must be the author's own affair in each individual
case. But experience has shown that of all methods direct ones are
often the least effective. A single deft touch may save a dozen pages
of detailed description." Lie was not a student of the base; he did not
even have an artistic liking for evil. There are few bad characters in
his works.
It was immediately after his controversy with the critics, in 1883,
that _The Family at Gilje_ appeared--a superb illustration of Lie's
realism of naturalness. An American critic has said of good realistic
writing that it does not so much arouse the pleasure of surprise as
that of recognition. To intelligent Norwegian readers of the day
that was strikingly true of _The Family at Gilje_. To many readers
it seemed like living their lives over again. This may not be a very
severe test of the greatness of a novel. Greatness will depend upon
other things--the breadth and depth of its humanity. Another point:
"The right understanding of men and women leads to the right relations
of men and women, and in this way a novel may do good" (F. Marion
Crawford). Most of Lie's novels seem to have been written with this
object in view. It is evident that in an attempt to portray life for
this purpose, social and other questions are sure to appear--not thrust
into the reader's face as a problem demanding that he take sides, but
brought to his attention naturally, as such things ordinarily come in
life. Discreetly done, as Lie surely could do it, this may be a most
effective way of revolutionizing conscience. In this artistic manner
Lie was, and no doubt consciously, a reformer. To be sure, this is not
art for art's sake; it is something more human: art engaged in the
pursuit of stimulating noble and healthful thought for the purpose of
raising the average of human happiness.
It was this calm and restrained realistic method that Lie now applied
in a series of novels which succeeded _The Family at Gilje_. As in this
work, the scenes are usually laid in a preceding generation, preferably
among the official class in the country. In these homes, which Lie
knew so well, we feel that we are with real and natural people among
whom problems are not discussed, but experienced. Yet these novels
were not so conservative as they seemed. They had persuasive power
in behalf of modern ideas with respect to such fundamental things as
marriage, home, and children. There was even something of the essence
of social dynamite in some of them. _The Family at Gilje_ gave the
champions of women new arguments, but they could not approve of the
author's advanced sympathies in _The Commodore's Daughters_, one
of the realistic novels which now flowed from Lie's pen and which
included: _A Maelstrom_ (1884), _The Commodore's Daughters_ (1885), _A
Wedded Life_ (1887), _Maisa Jons_ (1888), and _Evil Powers_ (1890).
Suddenly there came a change in his literary method, seemingly induced
by some unpleasant experience with good friends. He had learned that
the conduct of the best of men is often swayed by primal instinct
rather than by disciplined reason. In this mood he reverted to the
trusty Finn of his bosom who so long had lain dormant, and let him
discourse on life and human nature. He proved voluble, resourceful,
and original. The result was published in two volumes (1891 and 1892),
entitled _Trold_. They are, in part, phantasmagorias charged with the
symbolism of Norse legendary lore, where trolls are the personified
manifestation of evil forces in nature. The opening sentence of the
illuminating introduction says: "That there are trolls in human beings
every one knows who has an eye for that sort of thing."
In the most characteristic of these stories, of which there are a dozen
in each volume, Lie has personified primal instincts,--allegorized some
of the strange facts and mystic forces of nature, man, and society.
Others are in lighter vein and have a more human cast, being mere
playful satires on social phenomena. They form a marvellous medley.
At first it seems quite impossible to believe that the author of
_The Family at Gilje_ can be the begetter of things so fantastic and
grotesque. But when the reader thinks of the early Nordland stories, he
understands, and then feels inclined to regret, that the Finn had so
long lain dormant. One is tempted to believe that a little of the troll
element could easily have been used to give a tinge of terror to his
calm realism; and this is in fact what he has done most effectively in
the novel _Dyre Rein_ (1896), which in other respects much resembles
_The Family at Gilje_.
After the publication of _Trold_, Lie, even where he does not introduce
troll effects, is not hesitant about using more tragic methods and
more dramatic scenes than during the period of the strictly realistic
novels. There is, moreover, a decided trend toward a wider scope and
more cosmopolitan aims, as in _When the Iron Curtain Falls_ (1901), a
bolder symbolism, as in _Niobe_ (1893) and in his last work, _East of
the Sun, West of the Moon, and Beyond the Towers of Babylon_ (1905),
in which, however, as the title indicates, the story is top-heavy with
symbolism. It runs parallel with the main narrative as an introduction
to each chapter. The whole is the tale of a genius, hampered and
harassed by malicious trolls in human guise--evidently an adumbration
of the author's own personal experience. But he is, as always,
charitable: "Human nature is so complex!"
In other words: the last fifteen years of Lie's authorship reveal him
in full possession of the realistic powers of the preceding period,
illuminated by a profound comprehension of the mystic forces of life
that so often determine human fates.
Like Ibsen, Lie lived abroad for many years, mainly in Paris, but
usually spending his summers in the Bavarian Alps, where most of his
writing was done. There were too many distractions in Paris, where his
home was a centre of the colony of Scandinavian artists and literary
workers. In the summer of 1893, after an absence of ten years, he felt
the need of visiting Norway again. An intense feeling of homesickness
had seized him, as the following incident will indicate. He had called
on a Norwegian family in Paris who had just received a plant from
Norway in Norwegian earth. "Thinking himself unobserved," one of his
daughters tells, "I saw him turn from the company, take a pinch of that
earth and put it to his mouth. Whether he kissed it or ate it I do not
know. But he looked very solemn."
In Norway he was received most cordially. On the occasion of his
sixtieth birthday, Brandes proclaimed him "the most amiable of
geniuses." He was interviewed, banqueted, and serenaded almost to
distraction, and was glad to get back to Paris, happy, however, in
having experienced the touching devotion of his countrymen. A decade of
arduous toil followed, after which he began to make plans for returning
to Norway to spend the last years of his life. A cozy home was built
at Fredriksværn, on the southern coast, and in 1906 the family took
possession of it. The next year, however, his faithful wife, the
guardian of his genius, passed away. Dependent upon her companionship
and solicitous care, he did not long survive her. He died July 5, 1908.
The Norwegian Storting took fitting cognizance of his death, and, as
had been done at Ibsen's demise, decreed that interment should be made
at the expense of the State.
"Blessed are the merciful," said the pastor at his bier.
"Be merciful!" is the sentiment that echoes and reëchoes throughout
Jonas Lie's pages.
JULIUS E. OLSON
_The University of Wisconsin
February, 1920_
[Footnote 1: Pronounced as Lee in English.]
[Footnote 2: Arne Garborg is one of Norway's greatest novelists. He is
also a gifted lyric poet, and an exceedingly clever controversialist.
Most of his works are written in _Landsmaal_, a composite of the
peasant dialects. His biography of Lie is a classic.]
[Footnote 3: A peasant poet, kindred in spirit to both Burns and Heine.]
[Footnote 4: The composer of, among other notable things, the melody
to Björnson's well-known national song. Before his death, at the age
of twenty-four, he had given Edvard Grieg an electric spark from the
dynamo of his Norse enthusiasm, which fired Grieg's imagination, and
made him _par excellence_ the representative of Norse melody.]
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
_Chapter I_
It was a clear, cold afternoon in the mountain region. The air lay
blue with the frost, with light rose tints over all the sharp crests,
ravines, and peaks, which, like a series of gigantic drifts, tower
above tower, floated up towards the horizon. Below, hills and wooded
mountain slopes shut the region in with white walls, constantly
narrower and narrower, nearer and nearer, always more contracting.
The snow was late this year, but in return, now that the Christmas
season had come, lay so heavy on fir and spruce that it bent down both
needles and twigs. The groves of birches stood up to their waists
in snow; the small clusters of tile-roofed houses of the district
were half buried, with snow-drifts pressing down over the roofs. The
entrances to the farmyards were deeply dug paths, from which the gate
and fence posts stuck up here and there like the masts of sunken boats.
The snow-plough had recently gone through the highway, and on the steep
red-tiled roof of the captain's house men were busy shovelling down the
great frozen snow-drifts, which hung threatening over the ends of the
roof.
The captain's house was specially prominent in the district. It was
unpainted and built of square logs, like the greater part of that kind
of houses a generation ago.
Over the garden fence and almost up under the window-frames lay the
snow-drifts with tracks of sleds and skis in their icy crust, which
smoked a little in the frosty north wind under the sun.
It was the same cold, disagreeable north wind which, every time the
outer door was opened, blew against the kitchen door until that opened
too, and, if it was not closed again, soon after, one or another door
on the next floor,--and that made the captain come down from his
office, flushed and passionate, to make inquiries and fret and fume
over the whole house as to who had gone there first and who had gone
last. He could never understand why they did not keep the door shut,
though the matter was most easily to be understood,--for the latch was
old and loose, and the captain would never spend any money on the smith
for a new one.
In the common room below, between the sofa and the stove, the captain's
wife, in an old brown linsey-woolsey dress, sat sewing. She had a
tall, stiff figure, and a strong, but gaunt, dried-up face, and had
the appearance of being anxiously occupied at present by an intricate
problem--the possibility of again being able to put a new durable patch
on the seat of Jörgen's trousers; they were always bottomless--almost
to desperation.
She had just seized the opportunity for this, while Jäger was up in his
office, and the children were gone to the post-office; for she went
about all day long like a horse grinding clay in a brickyard.
The mahogany sewing-table inlaid with mother-of-pearl and several
different kinds of wood, which stood open before her, must have been a
family heirloom; in its condition of faded antiquity, it reminded one
not a little of her, and in any event did not at all correspond either
with the high-backed, rickety, leather armchair, studded with brass
nails, in which she sat, nor with the long birchen sofa covered with
green linsey-woolsey, which stood like a solitary deserted land against
the wall, and seemed to look longingly over to the brown, narrow
folding-table, which, with its leaves let down, stood equally solitary
and abandoned between the two windows.
The brown case with the four straight legs against the farther wall,
with a heap of papers, books, hats, and the spy-glass upon it, was an
old clavichord, which, with great trouble, she had had transported up
into the mountain region, out of the effects of her home, and on which
she had faithfully practised with her children the same pieces which
she herself had learned.
The immense every-day room, with the bare timber walls, the unpainted
sanded floor, and the small panes with short curtains fastened up in
the middle, was in its whole extent extremely scantily furnished;
it was half a mile from chair to chair, and everything had a rural
meagreness such as one could often see in the homes of officials in the
mountain districts in the forties. In the middle of the inner wall,
before the great white fire-wall, the antique stove with the Naes
iron-works stamp and the knotty wooden logs under it jutted out into
the room like a mighty giant. Indeed, nothing less than such a mass of
iron was needed to succeed in warming up the room; and in the woods of
the captain's farm there was plenty of fuel.
Finally abandoning all more delicate expedients for the trousers, she
had laid on a great patch covering everything, and was now sewing
zealously. The afternoon sun was still shedding a pale yellow light
in the window-frames; it was so still in the room that her movements
in sewing were almost audible, and a spool of thread which fell down
caused a kind of echo.
All at once she raised herself like a soldier at an order and gave
attention. She heard her husband's quick, heavy step creaking on the
stairs.
Was it the outside door again?
Captain Jäger, a red, round, and stout man in a threadbare uniform
coat, came hastily in, puffing, with the still wet quill-pen in his
mouth; he went straight to the window.
His wife merely sewed more rapidly; she wished to use the time, and
also prudently to assume the defensive against what might come.
He breathed on the frosty pane in order to enlarge the part that could
be seen through. "You will see there is something by the mail. The
children are running a race down there in the road,--they are running
away from Jörgen with the sled."
The needle only flew still faster.
"Ah, how they run!--Thinka and Thea. But Inger-Johanna! Come here, Ma,
and see how she puts down her feet--isn't it as if she was dancing?
Now she means to be the first in, and so she will be the first, that I
promise you. It is no story when I tell you that the lass is handsome,
Ma; that they all see. Ah, come and look how she gets ahead of Thinka!
Just come now, Ma!"
But "Ma" did not stir. The needle moved with forced nervous haste. The
captain's wife was sewing a race with what was coming; it was even
possible that she might get the last of the patch finished before they
entered, and just now the sun disappeared behind the mountain crest;
they were short days it gave them up there.
The steps outside were taken in two or three leaps, and the door flew
open.
Quite right--Inger-Johanna.
She rushed in with her cloak unfastened and covered with snow. She had
untied the strings of her hood on the way up the steps, so that her
black hair fell down in confusion over her hot face. Breathless, she
threw her flowered Valders mittens on a chair. She stood a moment to
get her breath, brushed her hair under her hood, and shouted out:
"An order for post-horses at the station, for Captain Rönnow and
Lieutenant Mein. The horses are to be here at Gilje at six o'clock
to-morrow morning. They are coming here."
"Rönnow, Ma!" roared the captain, surprised; it was one of the comrades
of his youth.
Now the others also came storming in with the details.
The mother's pale face, with its marked features and smooth black hair
in loops down over her cheeks in front of her cap, assumed a somewhat
thoughtful, anxious expression. Should the veal roast be sacrificed
which she had reserved for the dean, or the pig? The latter had been
bought from the north district, and was fearfully poor.
"Well, well, I bet he is going to Stockholm," continued the captain,
meditatively drumming on the window-frame. "Adjutant, perhaps; they
would not let that fellow stay out there in the West. Do you know, Ma,
I have thought of something of this sort ever since the prince had so
much to do with him at the drill-ground. I often said to him, 'Your
stories, Rönnow, will make your fortune,--but look out for the general,
he knows a thing or two.' 'Pooh! that goes down like hot cakes,' said
he. And it looks like it--the youngest captain!"
"The prince--" The captain's wife was just through with the trousers,
and rose hastily. Her meagre, yellowish face, with its Roman nose,
assumed a resolute expression: she decided on the fatted calf.
"Inger-Johanna, see to it that your father has his Sunday wig on," she
exclaimed hurriedly, and hastened out into the kitchen.
The stove in the best room was soon packed full, and glowing. It had
not been used since it had been rubbed up and polished with blacking
last spring, and smoked now so that they were obliged to open door and
windows to the cold, though it was below zero.
Great-Ola, the farm-hand, had been busy carrying large armfuls of long
wood into the kitchen, and afterwards with brushing the captain's old
uniform coat with snow out on the porch; it must not look as if he had
dressed up.
The guest-chamber was made ready, with the beds turned down, and the
fire started, so that the thin stove snapped, and the flies suddenly
woke up and buzzed under the ceiling, while the wainscot was browned
outside of the fire-wall and smelled of paint. Jörgen's hair was wet
and combed; the girls changed their aprons to be ready to go down and
greet the guests, and were set to work rolling up pipe-lighters for the
card-table.
They kept looking out as long as the twilight lasted, both from the
first and second story windows, while Great-Ola, with his red peaked
cap, made a path in the snow to the carriage-road and the steps.
And now, when it was dark, the children listened with beating hearts
for the slightest sound from the road. All their thoughts and longings
went out towards the strange, distant world which so rarely visited
them, but of which they heard so much that sounded grand and marvellous.
There are the bells!
But, no; Thinka was entirely wrong.
They had all agreed to that fact, when Inger-Johanna, who stood in the
dark by a window which she held a little open, exclaimed, "But there
they are!"
Quite right. They could hear the sleigh-bells, as the horse, moving by
fits and starts, laboriously made his way up the Gilje hills.
The outside door was opened, and Great-Ola stood at the stairs, holding
the stable lantern with a tallow candle in it, ready to receive them.
A little waiting, and the bells suddenly sounded plainly in the road
behind the wood-shed. Now you could hear the snow creaking under the
runners.
The captain placed the candlestick on the table in the hall, the floor
of which had been freshly scoured, washed, and strewn with juniper. He
went out on the stairs, while the children, head to head, peeped out of
the kitchen door, and kept Pasop, who growled and fretted behind them,
from rushing out and barking.
"Good-evening, Rönnow! Good-evening, Lieutenant! Welcome to Gilje!"
said the captain with his strong, cheerful voice, while the vehicle,
which at the last post-house was honored with the name of double
sleigh, swung into the yard and up to the steps. "You are elegantly
equipped, I see."
"Beastly cold, Peter,--beastly cold, Peter," came the answer from the
tall figure wrapped in furs, as he threw down the reins, and, now a
little stiff in his movements, stepped out of the sleigh, while the
steaming horse shook himself in his harness so that the bells rang
loudly. "I believe we are frozen stiff. And then this little rat we
have for a horse would not go. It is a badger dog they have harnessed
in order to dig our way through the snow-drifts. How are you, Peter? It
will be pleasant to get into your house. How goes it?" he concluded,
upon the steps, shaking the captain's hand. "Bring in the case of
bottles, Lieutenant."
While the two gentlemen took off their furs and travelling-boots in
the hall and paid for the horse, and Great-Ola carried the trunk up to
the guest-chamber, an odor of incense diffused itself from the large
room, which at once roused Captain Rönnow's cavalier instinct to a
recollection of the lady, whom, in the joy of seeing his old comrade
once more, he had forgotten. His large, stately figure stopped before
the door, and he adjusted his stock.
"Do I look tolerably well, Peter, so I can properly appear before your
wife?" he said, running his hand through his black curly hair.
"Yes, yes, fine enough--devilish fine-looking fellow, Lieutenant.--If
you please, gentlemen. Captain Rönnow and Lieutenant Mein, Ma," he
said, as he opened the door.
The mistress of the house rose from her place at the table, where she
was now sitting with fine white knitting-work. She greeted Captain
Rönnow as heartily as her stiff figure would allow, and the lieutenant
somewhat critically. It was the governor's sister to whom the salaam
was made, as Captain Rönnow afterwards expressed it--an old, great
family.
She disappeared a little later into domestic affairs, to "get them
something for supper."
Captain Rönnow rubbed his hands from the cold, wheeled around on one
leg on the floor, and thus placed himself with his back to the stove.
"I tell you we are frozen stiff, Peter,--but--Oh, Lieutenant, bring in
the case of bottles."
When Lieutenant Mein came in again, Rönnow took a sealed bottle with a
label, and held it, swinging by the neck, before the captain.