The following extract is taken from theVilhelm Moberg novel :
"Utvandrarna"( "The Emmigrants")

Småland church

 

 

THIS IS A STORY about some people, whom from their home in Ljuder in Småland, Sweden, emmigrated to North America.

They where the first in their district who emigrated. They came from the land of small cottages and big families.

They were the people of the soil and they came from families who had for thousands of years cultivated the land they left. Through all changes the farm stayed as the home of the family.

a farm in Ljuder parish

 

 

Everything they needed was taken from the earth. 
The people depended on the Lord's weather,
which gave them good years and bad years.
They didn't depend on anyone or any other power
under the sun.
Their lives moved on slowly as the years went by.
And it stayed that way for a long time,
through many generations and centuries.

 

Swedish emmigrant ship
But in the middle of the 19th century everything was ripped apart.
Newly discovered powers were used, wagons could be driven without horses and ships could sail without sails.
The different parts of the world got closer to each other. And to new people who knew about the written word came the news of a free country far away. It stepped forward from the mist of the fairy-tale and became reality.

The new country had land without farmers and called for farmers without land. It opened itself for those who waited for a freedom that they did not have in their home districts.

Swedish ship off NZ
And in every district were there a few men and women who followed the advice and emmigrated to the New World. It was the bravest who moved first over the big sea.
Those who stayed, the sluggish and thoughtful, called them adventurers. The first emigrants didn't know much about the new country that awaited them.
And how could they know that more than a million people from their home-country would follow them. They could not know that a cultivated country, bigger than their old country, would be the fruit of the mission they began as a dangerous adventure - under the sky of uncertainty, in "the boldness sign"(a comet in the night sky- portent of sweeping change and danger for this superstitious folk).

 
Moberg's grandmother in Ljuder

The men and women, that this story is about, have long since left this life.
Some of their names can still be read on old gravestones thousands of miles from the place where they were born into this world.
Their names are forgotten in their home districts and their adventure shall soon be a part of story and legend.

 

 

 

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