Jerusalem | Page 2

home.
They, too, have their dancing festivals at Midsummer Eve, and their
dress is the most gorgeous in Sweden, but one thinks of them rather as
a serious and solid community given to the plow and conservative
habits of thought. They were good Catholics once; now they are
stalwart defenders of Lutheranism, a community not easily persuaded
but, once aroused, resolute to act and carry through to the uttermost.
One thinks of them as the people who at first gave a deaf ear to Gustaf
Vasa's appeal to drive out the Danes, but who eventually followed him
shoulder to shoulder through the very gates of Stockholm, to help him

lay the foundations of modern Sweden. Titles of nobility have never
prospered in Dalecarlia; these stalwart landed peasants are a nobility
unto themselves. The Swedish people regard their Dalecarlians as a
reserve upon whom to draw in times of crisis.
"Jerusalem" begins with the history of a wealthy and powerful farmer
family, the Ingmarssons of Ingmar Farm, and develops to include the
whole parish life with its varied farmer types, its pastor, schoolmaster,
shopkeeper, and innkeeper. The romance portrays the religious revival
introduced by a practical mystic from Chicago which leads many
families to sell their ancestral homesteads and--in the last chapter of
this volume--to emigrate in a body to the Holy Land.
Truth is stranger than fiction. "Jerusalem" is founded upon the historic
event of a religious pilgrimage from Dalecarlia in the last century. The
writer of this introduction had opportunity to confirm this fact some
years ago when he visited the parish in question, and saw the
abandoned farmsteads as well as homes to which some of the
Jerusalem-farers had returned. And more than this, I had an experience
of my own which seemed to reflect this spirit of religious ecstasy. On
my way to the inn toward midnight I met a cyclist wearing a blue jersey,
and on the breast, instead of a college letter, was woven a yellow cross.
On meeting me the cyclist dismounted and insisted on shouting me the
way. When we came to the inn I offered him a krona. My guide smiled
as though he was possessed by a beatific vision. "No! I will not take the
money, but the gentleman will buy my bicycle!" As I expressed my
astonishment at this request, he smiled again confidently and replied.
"In a vision last night the Lord appeared unto me and said that I should
meet at midnight a stranger at the cross-roads speaking an unknown
tongue and 'the stranger will buy thy bicycle!'"
The novel is opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerlöf, the
monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her characters,
in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm. Ingmar's
monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic battle between
the forces of conscience and desire. Although this prelude may be too
subjective and involved to be readily digested by readers unfamiliar
with the Swedish author's method they will soon follow with intent
interest into those pages that describe how Ingmar met at the prison
door the girl for whose infanticide he was ethically responsible. He

brings her back apparently to face disgrace and to blot the fair
scutcheon of the Ingmarssons, but actually to earn the respect of the
whole community voiced in the declaration of the Dean: "Now, Mother
Martha, you can be proud of Ingmar! It's plain now he belongs to the
old stock; so we must begin to call him 'Big Ingmar.'"
In the course of the book we are introduced to two generations of
Ingmars, and their love stories are quite as compelling as the religious
motives of the book. Forever unforgettable is the scene of the auction
where Ingmar's son renounces his beloved Gertrude and betroths
himself to another in order to keep the old estate from passing out of
the hands of the Ingmars. Thus both of these heroes in our eyes "play
yellow." On the other hand they have our sympathy, and the reader is
tossed about by the alternate undertow of the strong currents which
control the conduct of this farming folk. Sometimes they obey only
their own unerring instincts, as in that vivid situation of the shy,
departing suitor when Karin Ingmarsson suddenly breaks through
convention and publicly over the coffee cups declares herself betrothed.
The book is a succession of these brilliantly portrayed situations that
clutch at the heartstrings--the meetings in the mission house, the
reconciliation scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man
he felt on his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the
"wild hunt," the shipwreck, Gertrude's renunciation of her lover for her
religion, the brother who buys the old farmstead so that his