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gentlemen of Värmland forget their poverty; how
for years she experimented silently with these tales,
put them into verse, tried dramatic form, and failing
to find an audience for romantic prose, essayed
in vain the popular realistic then style. At last a
prize contest brought the romance to the light of
day in its present form. The unfrocked clergyman,
Gösta Berling, became chief and hero among the
twelve uncertain gentlemen to whom the efficient
Major’s wife gave shelter under her generous roof
at Ekeby.
Gösta Berling’s Saga, in the Swedish original, was
my introduction to the life and temperament of
modern Sweden. Like many another, after reading
it, I was overtaken by a consuming desire to see
the children of the people whom this romance
presented, a longing which impelled me, when occasion
offered, to visit Värmland and that Lake Fryken
whose name the author has changed and whose
shores she has made immortal. While on my
pilgrimage I sat for a time in the seat of the scornful,
among a group of realists and disciples of Strindberg
in Copenhagen. By them I was told that no
such people existed in reality as those day-dreamers
of the novel. But the Värmlanders of to-day are true
to their forebears, as I found on a walking trip which
I have described elsewhere. I well recall, as I drew
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