A Very Scandinavian Christmas Read online

  Edited Translations Copyright © 2019 New Vessel Press

  “Another Star/En annen sterjne,” by Ingvar Ambjørnsen, first published in the short story collection Delvis til stede Copyright © CAPPELEN DAM 2003

  “Father Christmas” from Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard,

  Copyright © 2015 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translation Copyright © 2017 by Ingvild Burkey.

  Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved.

  From Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Ingvild Burkey.

  -IPublished in the United Kingdom by Harvill Secker.

  Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. © 2017

  “Christmas Eve,” by Vigdis Hjorth, first published as “Julaften,” in the anthology Juleroser, Copyright © Det Norske Samlaget 2015

  Cover design by Liana Finck

  Book design by Beth Steidle

  LULO font © Yellow Design Studio – www.yellowdesignstudio.com

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Various

  A Very Scandinavian Christmas: The Greatest Nordic Holiday Stories of All Time / various authors.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-939931-76-4

  Library of Congress Control Number 2019934547

  Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden – Fiction

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE FUR COAT

  Hjalmar Söderberg, Sweden

  THE EMPEROR’S VISION

  Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden

  THE FIR TREE

  Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark

  ANOTHER STAR

  Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Norway

  THE STRONGER

  August Strindberg, Sweden

  THE FOREST WITCH

  Johan Krohn, Denmark

  FATHER CHRISTMAS

  Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norway

  THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL

  Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark

  THE LEGEND OF THE CHRISTMAS ROSE

  Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden

  THE BIRD CATCHERS

  Hans Aanrud, Norway

  THE BRAVE TIN SOLDIER

  Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark

  THE HOLY NIGHT

  Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  Vigdis Hjorth, Norway

  GIANTS IN THE EARTH

  O. E. Rölvaag, Norway-United States

  ROUND THE YULE LOG

  Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Norway

  THE CAT ON THE DOVREFJELL

  Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, Norway

  A LEGEND OF MERCY

  Zachris Topelius, Finland

  A CHRISTMAS GUEST

  Selma Lagerlōf, Sweden

  THE FUR COAT

  Hjalmar Söderberg

  IT WAS A COLD WINTER THAT YEAR. PEOPLE LOOKED PINCHED AND shrunken, except of course those who owned fur coats.

  Justice Richardt had a monstrous fur coat. Indeed, it was quite in keeping with his position as director in a newly formed corporation. His old friend Dr. Henck, on the contrary, had no fur coat; but he had a beautiful wife and three children.

  Dr. Henck was thin and pale; some people grow fat when they marry, others thin; Dr. Henck had grown thin.

  It was Christmas Eve.

  “I’ve had a pretty poor year this year,” said Dr. Henck to himself when, about three o’clock in the afternoon dusk, he was on his way to see his old friend John Richardt to borrow some money. “Yes, I’ve had a very poor year. My health is tottering—I might say ruined. On the other hand my patients have been remarkably well and need me seldom these days. I shall probably die soon; my wife thinks so too—I’ve seen that plainly enough; well, if it does come I wish it would be before the end of January when that damned life insurance premium is due.”

  When he had reached this point in his thoughts he found himself at the corner of Regent and Halm streets. As he was crossing to go down Regent Street he slipped on the smooth sleigh track and tumbled down. At that moment a sleigh came by at full speed; the coachman swore and the horse turned instinctively to one side; nevertheless Dr. Henck’s shoulder was struck by one of the runners and a screw or bolt caught in his coat and tore a big hole in one side.

  People gathered about him. A policeman helped him to his feet; a young girl brushed the snow off him, and an old lady’s gesticulations suggested that she would mend his torn coat if that were possible. A prince of the reigning house who happened to pass picked up the doctor’s hat and placed it on his head and everything was all right again—everything but the coat.

  “Good Lord, what’s happened to you, Gustaf?” said Justice Richardt when Henck arrived at his office.

  “I’ve been run over,” said Henck.

  “That’s just like you,” said Richardt laughing good-naturedly. “You must put on my fur coat and I’ll send a boy to my house for my overcoat.”

  “Thanks,” said Dr. Henck.

  And after he had borrowed the hundred crowns he needed he continued, “Well, we’ll expect you to dinner, of course.”

  Richardt was a bachelor and it was his custom to spend Christmas Eve with the Hencks.

  On his way home Henck was in better spirits than he had been for a long time.

  “It’s on account of the fur coat,” he told himself, “If I had been clever I’d have got a fur coat long ago on credit. It would have strengthened me in my own esteem as well as raised me in the eyes of others, People are bound to pay more respect to a doctor in a fur coat than to one in an ordinary overcoat with frayed buttonholes; it’s too bad that I didn’t think of that before; it’s too late now.”

  He took a turn through King’s Park. It was already dark and had started to snow again and the acquaintances he met did not recognize him.

  “Who knows,” continued Henck to himself, “perhaps it isn’t too late. I’m not old yet and I may be mistaken about my health. I’m as poor as a fox in the woods but so was John Richardt not so very long ago. My wife has been cold and indifferent to me lately; perhaps she would care for me again if I could earn more money—and if I were dressed in a fur coat. It has occurred to me that she likes John more since he has owned a fur coat. She was quite taken with him as a young girl, but he never courted her. He used to say to her and to everyone that he would never dare marry on less than ten thousand a year—but I dared!

  “Ellen was a poor girl and glad to be married. I don’t think she was deeply in love with me, but I’m sure she cared for me during the first years of our marriage—one is never mistaken in such matters. Why shouldn’t she care for me again then? When we were first married, she used to say mean little things to John whenever they met but then when he formed this corporation and took us to the theater and bought a fur coat, of course she grew tired of being hateful to him as time went on.”

  Henck had a few errands to do before dinner.

  It was half past five when he reached home laden with packages. His left shoulder was very lame, but otherwise there was nothing that reminded him of the accident—except the fur coat.

  “It’ll be fun to see my wife’s expression when she sees me in a fur coat,” said Henck to himself.
The hall was dark, as the lamp was never lighted until dinner time.

  “I hear her in the sitting room; she trips as lightly as a little bird,” thought Dr. Henck. “It’s strange how my heart warms whenever I hear her step in the next room.”

  Dr. Henck was right when he thought his wife would give him a more loving greeting when he was dressed in a fur coat than she did ordinarily.

  She nestled close to him in the darkest corner of the hall and put her arms around his neck and kissed him warmly. Then she buried her face in his collar and whispered, “Gustaf isn’t at home.”

  “Yes,” answered Dr. Henck in a somewhat fluttering voice while he stroked her hair with both hands, “Yes, he is at home.”

  A cheerful fire crackled in Dr. Henck’s library. On the table stood whiskey and water. Justice Richardt was stretched in a large leather chair smoking a cigar. Dr. Henck was huddled up at one end of the sofa. The door to the parlor stood open where Mrs. Henck and the children were lighting the Christmas tree. The dinner had been silent except for the happy chirping and prattle of the children.

  “Why don’t you say something, old man?” said Richardt. “Are you sitting there thinking about your torn coat?”

  “No,” answered Henck, “rather about the fur coat.”

  There was a silence and then he continued:

  “I’m thinking of something else too—I’m thinking that this is the last Christmas we shall ever celebrate together. I am a physician and I know that my days are numbered. I have thought that for some time and I’m sure of it now. So I want to thank you for all the kindnesses you have shown me—and my wife.”

  “Oh, you’re mistaken,” mumbled Richardt looking away.

  “No,” answered Henck, “I am not mistaken. And I want to thank you also for lending me your fur coat. It brought me the last happy moments I shall know in life.”

  1923

  THE EMPEROR’S VISION

  Selma Lagerlöf

  IT HAPPENED AT THE TIME WHEN AUGUSTUS WAS EMPEROR IN ROME and Herod was king in Jerusalem.

  It was then that a very great and holy night sank down over the earth. It was the darkest night that anyone had ever seen. One could have believed that the whole earth had fallen into a cellar vault. It was impossible to distinguish water from land, and one could not find one’s way on the most familiar road. And it couldn’t be otherwise, for not a ray of light came from heaven. All the stars stayed at home in their own houses, and the fair moon held her face averted.

  The silence and the stillness were as profound as the darkness. The rivers stood still in their courses, the wind did not stir, and even the aspen leaves had ceased to quiver. Had anyone walked along the seashore, he would have found that the waves no longer dashed upon the sands; and had one wandered in the desert, the sand would not have crunched under one’s feet. Everything was as motionless as if turned to stone, so as not to disturb the holy night. The grass was afraid to grow, the dew could not fall, and the flowers dared not exhale their perfume.

  On this night the wild beasts did not seek their prey, the serpents did not sting, and the dogs did not bark. And what was even more glorious, inanimate things would have been unwilling to disturb the night’s sanctity by lending themselves to an evil deed. No false key could have picked a lock, and no knife could possibly have drawn a drop of blood.

  In Rome, during this very night, a small company of people came from the emperor’s palace at the Palatine and took the path across the Forum which led to the Capitol. During the day just ended the senators had asked the emperor if he had any objections to their erecting a temple to him on Rome’s sacred hill. But Augustus had not immediately given his consent. He did not know if it would be agreeable to the gods that he should own a temple next to theirs, and he had replied that first he wished to ascertain their will in the matter by offering a nocturnal sacrifice to his genius. It was he who, accompanied by a few trusted friends, was on his way to perform this sacrifice.

  Augustus let them carry him in his litter, for he was old, and it was an effort for him to climb the long stairs leading to the Capitol. He himself held the cage with the doves for the sacrifice. No priests or soldiers or senators accompanied him, only his nearest friends. Torchbearers walked in front of him in order to light the way in the night darkness and behind him followed the slaves, who carried the tripod, the knives, the charcoal, the sacred fire, and all the other things needed for the sacrifice.

  On the way the emperor chatted gaily with his faithful followers, and therefore none of them noticed the infinite silence and stillness of the night. Only when they had reached the highest point of the Capitol Hill and the vacant spot upon which they contemplated erecting the temple, did it dawn upon them that something unusual was taking place.

  It could not be a night like all others, for up on the very edge of the cliff they saw the most remarkable being! At first they thought it was an old, distorted olive trunk; later they imagined that an ancient stone figure from the temple of Jupiter had wandered out on the cliff. Finally it was apparent to them that it could be only the old sibyl.

  Anything so aged, so weather-beaten, and so giant like in stature they had never seen. This old woman was awe-inspiring! If the emperor had not been present, they would all have fled to their homes.

  “It is she,” they whispered to one another, “who has lived as many years as there are sand grains on her native shores. Why has she come out from her cave just tonight? What does she foretell for the emperor and the empire—she, who writes her prophecies on the leaves of the trees and knows that the wind will carry the words of the oracle to the person for whom they are intended?”

  They were so terrified that they would have dropped on their knees with their foreheads pressed against the earth, had the sibyl stirred. But she sat as still as though she were lifeless. Crouching upon the outermost edge of the cliff, and shading her eyes with her hand, she peered out into the night. She sat there as if she had gone up on the hill that she might see more clearly something that was happening far away. She could see things on a night like this!

  At that moment the emperor and all his retinue marked how profound the darkness was. None of them could see a hand’s breadth in front of him. And what stillness! What silence! Not even the Tiber’s hollow murmur could they hear. The air seemed to suffocate them, cold sweat broke out on their foreheads, and their hands were numb and powerless. They feared that some dreadful disaster was impending.

  But no one dared to show that he was afraid, and everyone told the emperor that this was a good omen. All nature held its breath to greet a new god.

  They counseled Augustus to hurry with the sacrifice, and said that the old sibyl had evidently come out of her cave to greet his genius.

  But the truth was that the old sibyl was so absorbed in a vision that she did not even know Augustus had come up to the Capitol. She was transported in spirit to a far-distant land, where she imagined that she was wandering over a great plain. In the darkness she stubbed her foot continually against something, which she believed to be grass tufts. She stooped down and felt with her hand. No, it was not grass, but sheep. She was walking between great sleeping flocks of sheep.

  Then she noticed the shepherds’ fire. It burned in the middle of the field, and she groped her way to it. The shepherds lay asleep by the fire, and beside them were the long, spiked staves with which they defended their flocks from wild beasts. But the little animals with the glittering eyes and the bushy tails that stole up to the fire, were they not jackals? And yet the shepherds did not fling their staves at them, the dogs continued to sleep, the sheep did not flee, and the wild animals lay down to rest beside the human beings.

  This the sibyl saw, but she knew nothing of what was being enacted on the hill in back of her. She did not know that there they were raising an altar, lighting charcoal and strewing incense, and that the emperor took one of the doves from the cage to sacrifice it. But his hands were so benumbed that he could not hold the bird. With on
e stroke of the wing, it freed itself and disappeared in the night darkness.

  When this happened, the courtiers glanced suspiciously at the old sibyl. They believed that it was she who caused the misfortune.

  Could they know that all the while the sibyl thought herself standing beside the shepherds’ fire, and that she listened to a faint sound that came trembling through the dead-still night? She heard it long before she marked that it did not come from the earth, but from the sky. At last she raised her head; then she saw light, shimmering forms glide forward in the darkness. They were little flocks of angels, who, singing joyously, and apparently searching, flew back and forth above the wide plain.

  While the sibyl was listening to the angel song, the emperor was making preparations for a new sacrifice. He washed his hands, cleansed the altar, and took up the other dove. And although he exerted his full strength to hold it fast, the dove’s slippery body slid from his hand, and the bird swung itself up into the impenetrable night.

  The emperor was appalled! He fell upon his knees and prayed to his genius. He implored him for strength to avert the disasters that this night seemed to foreshadow.

  Nor did the sibyl hear any of this either. She was listening with her whole soul to the angel song, which grew louder and louder. At last it became so powerful that it wakened the shepherds. They raised themselves on their elbows and saw shining hosts of silver-white angels move in the darkness in long, swaying lines, like migratory birds. Some held lutes and cymbals in their hands; others held zithers and harps, and their song rang out as merry as child-laughter, and as carefree as the lark’s trill. When the shepherds heard this, they rose up to go to the mountain city, where they lived, to tell of the miracle.

  They groped their way forward on a narrow, winding path, and the sibyl followed them. Suddenly it grew light up there on the mountain: a big, clear star kindled right over it, and the city on the mountain summit glittered like silver in the starlight. All the fluttering angel throngs hastened thither, shouting for joy, and the shepherds hurried so that they almost ran. When they reached the city, they found that the angels had assembled over a low stable near the city gate. It was a wretched structure, with a roof of straw and the naked cliff for a back wall. Over it hung the star, and hither flocked more and more angels. Some seated themselves on the straw roof or alighted upon the steep mountain wall back of the house; others, again, held themselves in the air on outspread wings, and hovered over it. High, high up, the air was illuminated by the shining wings.