The Children from Frostmo Mountain: Translated by Laura Lugnet

By Laura Fitinghoff and Vicken von Post

Winter is brutal in Northern Sweden, and famine is ravishing the mountain villages. When both their father and mother die, seven siblings have little choice but to go to the poorhouse. But instead, the eldest, Ante, honors his mother's last wish by leading his siblings south in search of somewhere they will be given not only food and shelter but

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Lugnet
• Release date: Jan 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9789152789575

Laura Fitinghoff

Laura Fitinghoff was born on March 14, 1848, in the Swedish town of Sollefteå. She and her four sisters were educated at home by their father, who was a pastor and a member of parliament. Her mother was known for her generosity during the 1860's when the family regularly fed and sheltered starving victims of the famine. Fitinghoff engaged herself in many social issues of her time, including sobriety, regional culture and dialects, animal welfare, and child-rearing. She died on August 17, 1908 in Stocksund.

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One

Seven Defenseless Little Ones

During the terrible year of need at the end of the 1860´s, a troop came wandering from Frostmo Mountain far in the North of Sweden. The troop consisted of a little flock of seven children who wandered alone through impoverished, wintery, and desolate villages. There was neither father nor mother who followed them. Seven emaciated little ones, and the one leading the troop was only in his thirteenth year. His name was Ante, short for Anders.

The children came from Frostmo Mountain, where the frost drove hardest against the farms.

Their father had, during the time of need, taken to drink. Weak and clumsy as he had become of the drink, and of the bark bread and measly provisions, he had fallen under an enormous pine which he was helping to fell in the forest. One day he was carried home dead.

His wife´s troubles multiplied so that she could no longer bear them. She simply wasted away, consumed by grief and starvation. For one can understand that what scraps she could find she would rather give to her children than take for herself.

When she was near death, her greatest worry was that the children, who she had worked and suffered for, would end up in the poorhouse or, even worse, be offered up for auction to whoever wanted to take them for the smallest sum of money the municipality wanted to pay.

Do not trouble yourself over that, Mother, said Ante, who sat by the bed and tried to force his mother to take some of the thin gruel that he had prepared on the hearth.

They will take you whether you like it or not, panted the sick woman. In such a year of need, when everyone must earn to live. And nobody will be good to you or care for you.

We will leave, Mother. We will put the little girls on the sled, and we will go from farm to farm down through the countryside like the other adult vagabonds. The schoolteacher, Kalle, says that his father said that people in the villages down south have both grain and potato, and you shall see, Mother, that that is enough for us, too.

Yes, as long as God´s blessings give bread you will never be without. You have brought such ease and light to my mind with what you have said, Ante. But Gullspira…

She can follow us, too. Don’t lie and worry, Mother!

I am not worried… it has become so calm within me. I see such bright light over you, and over the children there in the straw bed. And I heard the most beautiful singing over me, Ante, so beautiful!

With that, Ante´s mother fell back on the rags she had under her head. Ante closed her eyelids and set a psalm book under her chin so that it would not fall down. Mother had done the same with father when he was gone.

Mother was hardly in the grave before the men from the parish came to take the children to the poorhouse or auction them off.

But the day they came to the dilapidated cottage, where they expected to find the children, it was empty.

The wooden shed, where they knew the goat usually was, was also empty. Inside the cottage, it was cleaned and fixed up, as if old proper folks intended to leave it in someone else´s hands.

The children whom they had come to take had apparently left the previous day. But the men agreed that they would not need to wait long before they found the children there again, having caught a lift from one of the nearby parishes. Besides, nobody could be certain which way they had gone. There were no telephones or telegraphs there in those desolate, northern villages, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. All the horses in the village were pulling lumber wagons, and even if they were home, nobody had time to go off on a hunt for the children.

They will likely turn around and come back when hunger strikes them. It is a shame about the goat; one could have sold it for them. But, like I said, they will probably be back soon, both the children and the goat.

So, the children went on their way without having to worry about being pursued. But in the course of the day, there came crying and wailing from the little girls, Brita-Cajsa and Märta-Greta.

They did not cry because they froze so that their noses and hands became blue as ears of rye, and their toes so frozen that they could not stand on their feet. No, they cried of hunger. The hardest crust of bread, the smallest potato, they would have devoured ravenously. But the road through the vast forest was more than twelve miles long, and they had not approached a cottage door the entire day. At first, they avoided all such attempts for fear that someone would apprehend them and take them to the poorhouse. Then, out of necessity, as there was not so much as one forlorn little cottage to be found as long as the forest stretched on.

Come, Gullspira, called Ante at last. I cannot suffer to hear the racket of the children. Go ahead and milk her a little again, Anna-Lisa.

Yes, but it is such a shame, so many times we have strained her teats for milk today, objected Anna-Lisa, who was in her eleventh year. "But please, hush now children. You are going to have a drop of milk again. Gullspira, lovely, fine little damsel, come now so I can milk you. The children are starving.’’

Gullspira, the, despite her apparent thinness, sturdy, golden-brown goat, whom they had named after the golden lousewort blossoms, came out from the pine brush at the side of the road, where she had found herself a good meal. She stood still beside Anna-Lisa, who squatted down and squeezed a few squirts of milk into the little bowl that had been carved from a burl, which she held with her left hand.

Give me, too! Give me, too! whined Per-Erik and Månke (Magnus).

Oh, you should be ashamed, you grown men. You, Per-Erik, are in your sixth year. And you, Månke, in your seventh.

No, I am in my sixth year. Mother said so, and she would give me milk sometimes, too.

But you will be in your seventh come Candlemass, and that is only a week from now. We, who are menfolk, had better not give ourselves over to such prattle. Go ahead and hold Gullspira´s fur so your hands do not freeze.

It was Ante who spoke and commanded, and the little boys did not know anything to do but to obey. Especially Gullspira, who had the understanding of a person, as they all believed fully and firmly, heard the command as well and squeezed herself in beside them with her fluffy, warm coat.

Bring Ujyla here, so we get warmth too! shrieked the little girls on the sled.

You must be good now. Think if Mother heard her little girls whine constantly. Have you not just had milk that was both sweet and warm?

But that was like nothing, whimpered Brita-Cajsa.

Wa nuffin, repeated Märta-Greta, sniffling, with tears in her big, sorrowful eyes.

It was two spoonsful for each of you. And now we will soon come across some big farm so you will have food. Sit on the sled you also, Maglena, so you can warm each other. So there, those are fine little girls, who are not whining anymore. Mother, she would be so pleased if she saw you.

Ante stroked his little sisters' blue, frozen cheeks, tucked their numb, red hands into the raggedy shawls that they had bound around them, and wound the old, worn sheepskin tightly around their feet.

Give the sled a push now, Anna-Lisa, so we come out of this forest. The schoolteacher, Kalle, said that when one saw the remains of the Lapp hut where Lapp-Israel died, then one was not long from the village.

Yes, but he told me that the wolf roamed here in the mountains. Kalle said I was crazy to go off with you, too.

Anna-Lisa walked bent forward and pushed the sled. Her tears dropped onto her little sisters' scarf-bound heads. She sniffled, so that it sounded as if she hiccupped.

I do not care to respond when you talk such crazy talk, shouted Ante, with his voice raised to make himself heard. He walked far out ahead and dragged the sled by a rope which he held over his shoulder.

Do you really think Kalle would have taken you in, given you food and clothes? Do they not have a cottage full of children themselves, maybe?

But there one avoided starving and freezing to death.

As if they would have wanted to have you there! You would have ended up in the poorhouse, in the company of Babba Barbara the leper and crazy Lasse.

They are not starving, and they are not freezing to death, them either.

Oh ugh, what a girl! You got to eat your fill of gruel this morning. The goat cheese and bread that Sven Påls gave us, you have eaten of just as we have. But if you don't have your belly full the whole day, you start to whine and want to go back, and to the poorhouse.

Well, where do you think we will end up now, then? I suppose you plan to take us on to the king. Hui, hui, hui, sniffled Anna-Lisa.

Yes, for that matter, and I could probably do it, too, and ask him to take you in. Then you could at least herd his goats! That would really be something worthwhile, compared to sitting in front of the stove in the poorhouse and staring.

How many goats can he have, do you suppose, the king? piped Maglena out of the opening of her shawl.

She thought that with that talk of the king, things were starting to lighten up a little. Truth be told, she had, the whole time, agreed with Anna-Lisa's talk, but she felt that it was sad that they should both tear into Ante, who, she knew well enough, had not eaten a morsel before they had all had their fill that morning before they headed off.

Oh, I do not know, said Ante, how many goats the king has…. Little cottage folk, like us, can have one goat, a peasant farmer five, six, a big farmer twenty and more.

Good Lord, then the king must have a hundred. I could never manage so many. Anna-Lisa let go of the sled handles, blew her nose into her fingers, and wiped the tears out of her eyes with the same hand, from which she had pulled her mitten.

Even Ante paused, so that the rope to the sled hung slack. He took off the big, motheaten leather cap, which had belonged to father, and wiped the sweat from his handsome brow. His blue eyes shone with regret when he looked back at his sister.

Maybe the king has a hundred goats, and maybe he has a thousand, as many as a Lapp can have reindeer. But surely you do not think that the king is of the mind to consider how many goats an unremarkable little thing like you is willing to herd? If he thinks you can herd a hundred, then you can, because then he must have a particular sort of easily herded goats, maybe from Jerusalem, or maybe he has some exceptional goat dogs who can keep them together.

Think how pretty and charming you will be, Anna-Lisa. Maybe you can wear Chelsea boots, and a silk scarf on your head, and a skirt with little roses on it, so you look like a field of thorn blossoms in the summer. Think, you will be so lovely! Maglena drew the shawl from her nose and turned around to regard Anna-Lisa. A dainty little child she was, Maglena, with golden-brown hair, lustrous and frizzy, and big, deep-blue eyes with a good-natured gaze. It was as if she thought Anna-Lisa, who walked behind and pushed the sled, was now dressed in Chelsea boots and rose blossom garb, with a silk scarf, just because she thought of her so.

Anna-Lisa, however, did not look at all so in that moment, with a dark grey, wool scarf wound tight around her head and knotted at her neck, with Mother's old, checkered sweater, the waistline of which hung down to her knees, and likewise Mother´s ragged, worn-out boots. The sedge grass, which had been stuffed in for warmth and padding, poked out through the tatters.

It was quite an undertaking to, one cold winter day, walk through a miles-long forest in such attire, and it was perhaps no wonder that Anna-Lisa's otherwise fair face, with her blue eyes and light hair, had a dark, grim expression.

She and her brother trudged on with the sled, Anna-Lisa muttering and puffing. Maglena, quite animated, saw before her a kingly goat herder’s wonderful presence.

Per Erik, Månke, stop, she called to her brothers. In tattered Lapp boots and father's dreadfully ill-fitting clothes, they pattered along on either side of Gullspira with their hands in her fur.

The boys both stopped and waited for the sled. They were exhausted from the endless wandering. Menfolk, and in the sixth, seventh year as much as ever, the hunger gnawed in any case at small bellies, and the cold nipped at nails and toes, and the ragged clothes weighed down more than they warmed. But one can be certain, they were man enough that they could hold in their groaning and complaining, even as the tears ran down frozen blue cheeks, and small shoulders shook, unnoticed, now and then of some short, suppressed sob.

What is it now? they asked, manly and cavalier, as they began to walk beside the sled. Shall we help you to pull? You must be getting tired, Ante.

Månke pushed the knit cap, which had belonged to Sven Påls´ grandfather, so that it hung down over his ears, back over his skull, and discreetly rubbed away any possible signs of such unmanly tears from before.

Ante spit in his hands and gripped so that the rope to the sled cut knife-deep grooves in his Wadmal shirt just over the shoulder where it, old and torn as it already was, could not handle much more in the way of ripping.

He braced himself and pulled as if the incline they were approaching was instead a downward slope. He was in no mood to answer Månke`s pitiful suggestion. It was visible anyway, in his hunched back, how deplorable he thought it was.

You could not pull all of us; anyone could see that such talk is only bravado, said Maglena, who had come into a talking mood, and was not so cold, now that her little sisters had pressed themselves in against her and become still as they had fallen asleep. But you are going to hear something fun.

Do you know, Anna-Lisa, she is going to be the goat herder for the king. He has hundreds of goats, bigger than Gullspira.

There is no other goat like Gullspira, I will have you know, said Månke, and looked threateningly at Maglena.

Is that so? Have you ever seen goats from Jerusalem? They have horns that look just like the moon when he is new and glistening so that they shine. And so, they come in the hundreds of thousands, and one sees them running over the marshlands and eating cloudberries.

If only we had some cloudberries now. I could drink a thousand jugs, whined Per-Erik.

Yes, they eat cloudberries, Maglena´s voice took on a dreamlike, longing tone. They eat cloudberries, for the whole marsh is full of them, and cream out of big troughs. The king doesn’t give a second thought about it.

Yes, if one only had a tub of cream here, whimpered Magnus.

And flatbread, as much as we could pull on the sled, added Per-Erik, with a disapproving glance towards the sorry load it now bore.

Flatbread, of course, is what the king's goats eat. Maglena continued with her description, without being deterred in the slightest by her siblings´ lack of interest in the subject and constant returning to the question of food.

Yes, they eat flatbread out of little mangers.

They were just out in the marshes a moment ago. Surely the goats do not stay inside that time of summer, observed Ante, who, to be able to hear Maglena´s, however crazy it was, amusing talk, had pushed his cap askew up from his ears so that it was flapping away from his head.

They must come in for the night, on account of the mosquitos, and insects, and bears. Even the king is surely not without them.

And who would be out to herd the whole night, for that matter? Anna-Lisa inserted herself amiably in the discussion. Go out and herd, when one is to sit inside and eat pork, like they fry at the king's, so the juices run and it smells like… yes, like…. Anna-Lisa could not find the words to express how delightful the smell of pan-fried pork would be.

And potatoes, whole sacks of them, added Magnus eagerly.

That have cracked open in the peels, and that one can eat by the potful, said Per-Erik.

Yes, after the goats have eaten. You will get to hear. They come over the marsh and have eaten until they are so full that they are as round as the sow they slaughtered at Sven Påls' in the autumn.

Then they could not manage to wander so terribly far either, so one could easily keep up with them, said Anna-Lisa approvingly.

No, they walk just like the sow did, just as lumbering. Then they climb the mountain. It shines like the rooster on top of the church at the king´s summer pasture. And so, the goats come there, you understand; it becomes so bright from all those hundreds of thousands of horns that are just like the waxing crescent moon.

Oh, how they would give milk, such goats, said Månke, with longing in his voice. As much as one cared to drink.

And make cheeses so one could burst, one would get so full, thought Per-Erik.

Yes, but the king would become satisfied first, you understand, and all his farmhands and servant girls, insisted Maglena.

By the way, do you know, children, that the king can have that which is even finer than pork, and potatoes, and goat cheese? He can have fresh salmon if he likes, said Ante precociously.

Not in the winter, though, when the salmon creeps along the river bottom out to the sea; he is not tasty then, remarked Anna-Lisa.

In the winter he eats well in any case, persisted Ante, not to let himself be outdone. Then he eats the finest food, and every day is like husförhörskalas, when the priest comes to quiz people about the bible and a party is held.

So he gets to eat meatballs, and lutfisk, and plum compote? asked Maglena. Her eyes twinkled with fellow feeling in such an existence.

Yes, and rice porridge, as much as he can manage.

And coffee, of course, Anna-Lisa chimed in. And never does he drink a drop without dunking most anything he likes. And how the coffee would be strong and salty!

Yes, if one was king, he’d have all those things, cried Magnus out of the depth of his heart.

And he has a big, big cottage, where it is finer than the parsonage, indeed, like a house of gold, and so he knows where he is going to lie. It is not like a rubbish cottage, like ours was, babbled Anna-Lisa.

Like ours! Is she not good enough? If things were so good that we owned her. With the little herb garden and the big, lovely hedge. If things were so good that we could go there again, Gullspira and the rest of us, then I should think that we had it just as good as the king, Ante, who spoke, looked with a serious gaze at his siblings. You see, the thing is that Mother was there and died there, and never again will we have such a cottage.

Two

With Wolf Tracks in Sight

It appeared as if evening was beginning to fall, and the children were still in the forest. Ante became more inclined to pause and listen to their chatter, even if it also consisted of so much grumbling and moaning that it cut like nails in his conscious. But he was so hungry and tired himself, and also so dreadfully gloomy.

But it was still Ante who had partly encouraged and partly forced his siblings to leave their familiar village so very rashly.

But he had not been able to suffer the thought that the little girls, for whom Mother had been so worried, should come to wanton folk. He was afraid that the municipality would offer them up for auction so that any wretch, in that year of need, would be able to take them, as long as he got a small sum of money from the municipality.

If the little girls and boys should at least be given food at the place they came to, there was no telling whether they should also get to hear a good word or be taught in the way that Mother had taken such care to teach them. She had strictly held to the standard that they were to speak the truth, be honorable, and conduct themselves properly, in whatever circumstances they might find themselves. She had taught them not to whine needlessly, but rather to know and understand that they, when they were left alone without father or mother, had someone nevertheless to look after them: the good, powerful Father in heaven.

Ante had therefore thought that it was good and right that he, when they became so alone, should hold the siblings together. Food and that which they needed he believed that they would receive when they took off towards people and villages who had not suffered so greatly from the frost, and who therefore must always have something left over for them.

But already now, on the first day, he felt how hard the position he had put them all in was. The worst thing was that he also became tired himself, as he had eaten sparingly of the gruel, goat milk,