Reading 1001 discussion

Just Finished this one last week. The titular Gosta Berling is defrocked from being a Lutheran priest in the first chapter, is saved by the eccentric Mistress Ekeby who seems to adopt wayward reveler dudes, until she gives them so much pension they lock her out of her own estate while they have wild times.

The defrocking that opens the book definitely includes booze, as does the many of the adventures the revelers of Mistress Ekeby get into (they are often referred to as the 'Cavaliers'). This aspect of the book was somewhat amusing, but admittedly I don't tend to get invested in what I call "historical f***boy" stories. Like where layabouts just do shallow things the whole time.

For me, what really enriched the book was how the author imbedded this ambiance of an older Swedish Epic with the almost supernatural imagery of the snow, the wolves, the scenery, and the night around the Ekeby estate. Also, it does go well in the end. I gave it 3 stars.

3 Stars

This is a series of interconnected vignettes featuring a lot of the same characters and not a cohesive narrative for that reason I felt disconnected from the story and minutes after putting the book down can remember little about it. What I do remember is the weaving in of folklore, fairy tales and legends.

The best bits for me were the descriptions of nature they really brought rural Sweden to life. The cold, the trees and the isolation.

Read it for the locations unless you like unlikeable character in which case you can read it for them.

This collection of interrelated tales from Sweden grew on me as I came to know the characters and the depth of feeling they had for their comrades, their lovers, and their land. Each individual vignette often felt complete in and of itself and then we would visit it again later with additional information. Other times a vignette would feel incomplete and would remain so. There was beauty in the descriptions of the landscapes and the gloom of the forest or the coldness of the snow. Many of the relationships reflected the complex nature of human beings in any century, while others seemed to come directly from a gloomy romantic fairytale. I appreciated that the author did slowly lead us to a tempered but nevertheless happy ending.

I struggled with this at first. I'm glad I stuck with it but it is certainly not for everyone. The book is a series of what seem at first to be almost random tales, many involving the titular Gösta Berling. Despite the fact that he is a defrocked minister and general layabout, everyone loves him, especially the women. The stories eventually take us through one difficult year in the life of a small town. Most have little lessons/morals, kind of like fairy tales, and most are concerned with "the difficult riddle, the question of how a man could be both happy and good." The best thing about the book is the sense of community and landscape that gradually accumulates. You get such a good impression of a place and a people that no longer exist.

A series of vignettes describing events in a small area of rural Sweden in the early 19th century, linked by the doings of the defrocked priest turned cavalier Gosta Berling, his friends and his loves.

I was charmed by this. I enjoyed the linked stories and the threads running through them, and I loved the strong sense of place.

Reason read: January 2024 botm Reading 1001. Author is winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, in fact she is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. This work was a collection of sagas, or folktales. I think sagas might be a common form of literature in the Scandinavian countries. Iceland is famous for their sagas. This one is Swedish. Gosta Berling is a defrock clergy. He got into drink and then he became a cavalier which sounds like a bunch of men who drink and carouse but in general mean no harm. The stories are interconnected and that is what makes it a novel but it really does have a plot. It may have symbols, motifs, etc, but no real plot, no rising action, etc. The land is a part of the story. The culture is interesting. I enjoyed listening to the reader on Librovox because he had that Scandinavian accent. Fund to hear the words but also funny when I heard him pronounce “fatigue” as fa-ta-gue. The whole book was read by the same reader. Something that doesn’t always happen with Librovox. It was a so so read for me. Took up way too much time.

read Jan. 2024

I enjoyed the ‘saga’ storytelling format that Lagerlof used here. I found many of the stories amusing, especially in the first third of the book. The middle third of the book dragged a bit for me, the adventures of the wastrels (aka the Cavaliers) just seemed to be more of the same. It picked up in the last third where many of the characters seemed to make better choices, some of them were recognized for being genuinely good people. The heavy-handed moralizing in the last couple of chapters was a little disappointing. 3.5*

Saga implies a dramatic and often complicated series of events, and that is exactly what Selma Lagerlof has created. She wrote a series of vignettes about rural life in Sweden circa 1820. The book was published n 1891 and she was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909. Characters appear in a story, then may or may not appear in others. Gradually a picture is drawn of life in an isolated area. None of the characters leave their environs, but live lives intertwined wth the natural world and the confronations that are inevitable in human intercouse.

***

A defrocked pastor joins a bunch of Cavaliers and signs a pact with the devil that will have interesting consequences a year later. During that year, we witness a number of stories where magical realism (the earlier version, not the 20th century type) mixes with depictions of Sweden's hinterland, some romance and characters that are larger (or smaller) than life. I can understand how this garnered a lot of success when this was published more than 125 years ago, but it failed to entertain me. Perhaps it will remain part of the Swedish folklore for years to come, who knows.

Evocative novel that reads more like a collection of linked short stories or folk tales, hence the ‘saga’ title. Gösta Berling is a defrocked minister, handsome and charming, who finds shelter at an ironworks estate. He joins a band of ‘cavaliers’ - many of them ex-soldiers - who come to believe their patroness is a witch and drive her from the estate.

The strength of this novel is the beautiful descriptions of the scenery of rural Sweden, and the way nature is personified to match the moods and actions of the characters. Although the book is set around the beginning of the 19th century, there is often a medieval feel to the stories as myth and legend add their symbolism to the tales of love, greed and renunciation. Witches and trolls appear, Death has its own chapter as a character, and sinning women practise penance and pilgrimage.

I enjoyed the beautiful lyrical writing and found some of the stories charming. The eccentric cavaliers added some variety and interest to events, although Gösta himself is pretty much a caricature for much of the novel. Lagerlöf was a gifted and skilful storyteller and this was an impressive work of art.