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330 VII. TIME OF FREEDOM AND NEOLOGY.
exercised an abiding influence.21
Although he died at
the age of only twenty-eight, he had made an immense
impression on the people, especially in Kalmar and Skane,
and legends of him, like the legends of the saints, were
still current a short time back in places where he worked.
For instance, it is said that a servant in his household
determined to find out whom Elfving had to help him in
preparing his sermons, inasmuch as he spoke so much
better than other priests. One Saturday night this man
laid himself under Elfving s bed, knowing that his master
had been so much occupied during the week as to have
been unable to prepare his sermon. When Elfving came
into the room he sat down to write like anyone else, but
he was not satisfied with what he had written. He then
knelt down and began to pray aloud, at first in a faltering
voice, but in the end with such a burning torrent of words
that his auditor under the bed was deeply moved. When
all was still, he crept out and saw an angel standing by his
master s side, and whispering to him what he was to
write.
22
It is also a happy thing to notice that mission work
among the Lapps was carried on vigorously and affection
ately by Per Fjellstrom (1697 1764) and Per Hogstrom
(1714 1784). The former produced a grammar and
dictionary of their language as well as school books and
Church books ;
the latter was a great traveller and observer,
as well as a translator of useful books, and a benefactor in
many ways to the people of the North, especially in the
town of Skelleftea in Vesterbotten, where he worked as a
pastor for nearly forty years.
Although on the whole the so-called period of freedom
may have been favourable to the progress of the Church,
it witnessed certain irregularities which are accounted for
by the weakness of the crown. The most important of
21
There is a sketch of Elfving s life in Hjalmar Lyth s
Ropande Roster, Stockholm, 1908, which also contains sketches
of P. Murbeck, Lars Linderot, and P. L. Sellergren.
22
Ropande Roster, p. 42.
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