Novel
The Emigrants
Utvandrarna
Vilhelm Moberg · 1949
Synopsis
On a grey April morning in 1850, sixteen people from the parish of Ljuder, in Småland, set out for North America. Karl Oskar and Kristina flee the poverty and hunger of a land of stones; Danjel, Kristina's uncle, flees the persecution of his dissenting faith, and has taken as his disciple Ulrika of Västergöhl, the parish's former fallen woman; Robert, the younger brother, and his friend the farmhand Arvid dream of finding gold; a neighbour wants to escape his wife. The novel tells what drives them to leave, then the crossing aboard the brig Charlotta.
Context
First volume of a series of four published by Bonnier from 1949 to 1959. The project took shape in the late 1930s; having left for the United States on 2 June 1948, the author questioned the descendants of the settlers there, after reading the letters from America kept in his family, and dated the completion of the book from Monterey, in August 1949. Around one million three hundred thousand Swedes emigrated from the 1830s to the 1930s, nearly a fifth of the population. When it appeared, a line spoken by Ulrika caused a scandal, and a member of parliament called for the author to be imprisoned. Jan Troell made two films from it, in 1971 and 1972; the documents gathered by the author are kept in Växjö, at the House of Emigrants.
Who it is for
The first of the four volumes, a long novel full of secondary stories and peasant legends; it can be read in Swedish, French or English.
Prizes and reception
Translated into some thirty languages, the novel entered the Swedish cultural canon in 2025; the sequel has sold more than two million copies in Sweden.
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