“It is sufficient,” says the plain to the hills, “if you raise your walls around me; then I shall be amply protected.” 💚💚💚

Selma Lagerlof | First Woman to Win the Nobel for Literature

#onherbirthdaytoday

20 November

Selma Lagerlof has a lot of towering firsts to her credit.

A path-breaking and pioneering Swedish author, Selma has the unique honour of being the first woman and the first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (in 1909)

Her writing style foregrounds a Romantic revival, and a bold rejection of the prevailing realism and naturalism of her time.

Her stories are mostly set in her native Varmland province in Sweden.

Especially her debut novel - Gosta Berling’s Saga (1891), captures the wild beauty of the Varmland landscape, drawing heavily on the legends, myths, and stories she had heard as a child in Varmland.

And like Charlotte Bronte, and many other writers of her time, Selma uses the apostrophe (direct address to the reader) thus creating an intimate, storytelling tone!

One unique feature that we find in this debut novel is the agency given to Nature. In other words, Nature becomes an active character in the novel.

Sample this –

(Especially those of us who love to specialise in Bioregional Literary Studies, this one’s for you, folks!)

The Lofven has its source far in the north, which is a glorious land for a lake, for the forests and hills gather water for it unceasingly, and streams and brooklets pour into it all the year round.

Up in the north it is friendly and gay. You should see it on an early summer morning, when it lies wide awake under its veil of mist, to understand how happy it can seem.

But the Lofven is not content with a life of pleasure alone.

It pushes its way through the sand-hills on the south; it contracts to a narrow strait, and seeks a new kingdom for itself. It soon finds one, and here again grows strong and mighty; it falls a bottomless depth, and adorns a cultivated landscape.

It is often in angry mood, and, turning white with sudden fury, wrecks the sailing boats, but it can also lie in dreamy quiet and reflect the sky.

The plain would have unquestionably preferred to follow the lake shores, but the hills give it no peace.

And the plain, which is good and fertile and loves cultivation, wages constant war against the hills—in all friendliness, be it understood.

“It is sufficient,” says the plain to the hills, “if you raise your walls around me; then I shall be amply protected.”

But the hills cannot be persuaded. They send out long stretches of tableland to the lake; they make lovely points from which to get a view; and, in fact, it is so seldom that they will leave the shore that the plain hardly ever has a chance of rolling itself down to the soft sand of the lake shore.

But it is useless to complain.

“Be thankful we are here,” answer the hills.

“Remember the time before Christmas, when day after day the icy mists roll over the Löfven. We are doing you a good turn by standing here.”

The plain laments its want of room and that it has no view.

“You are stupid,” reply the hills.

“You should feel how it blows here near the water. At the least, it requires a granite back and a pine tree covering to bear it all. Besides which, you should be content with looking at us.”

And that is what the plain does. You know what wonderful changes of light and shade and color pass over the hills. You have seen them in the mid-day light sinking to the horizon, pale blue and low, and at morning and evening rising in majestic height, as deep a blue as the zenith of heaven.

For many, many generations the plain has been cultivated, and great things have been done there. Wherever a stream, in its rapid course, has flung itself over the sloping shores, mills and foundries have sprung up.

On the light, open places, where the plain comes down to the lake, churches and parsonages have been built; and in the corners of the valleys, half way up the hillsides, on the stony ground where the corn will not grow, stand the peasants’ huts and the officers’ buildings and here and there a gentleman’s mansion.

But it must be remembered that in 1820–30 the land was not nearly so cultivated nor so populated as it now is.

Much was forest and lake and marsh which is now reclaimed. The population was scanty, and the people made their living partly by carting and day work at the many foundries; while many left their homes to find work at a distance, for agriculture alone would not pay them.

In those days they dressed in homespun, ate oat cakes, and were content with a daily wage of a krona.

The poverty was great, but it was mitigated by an easy-going temperament and an inborn aptitude for handicrafts, which greatly developed when those people had to make their way among strangers.

And as these—the lake, the fertile plain, and the blue hills— make a most beautiful landscape, so these people, even to-day, are strong, courageous, and talented.

Great progress has been made in their well-being and education.

May they greatly prosper, the dwellers near the lake and the blue hills! It is some of their stories I will now tell you,

signs off Selma on this chapter titled, “Landscape”.