WHAT SHE WANTED, I CAN’T SAY
In 1919, as the peace treaty took shape in Versailles, Swedish export flourished. Employment at the factories was high and wages rose. Farmers, too, were expanding, borrowing against their land to buy expensive new machinery. The total acreage of cultivated land was larger than ever. Horses and cattle counted record numbers. The number of savings banks also reached an all-time high; from 1919 to 1920 no less than 485 such banks set up 1,370 offices all over the country.
In Kungsäter the bank was housed at the inn. Thanks to Carl Börjesson’s connections, Anna was in charge of the day-to-day operations. Though her schooling had been limited, she quickly gained her customers’ respect. At ten o’clock, when the bank opened, she was always in place. The set-up was unimpressive as far as bank offices went. The front room had no heating and the one behind it had a tiled stove which was erratic and insufficient best. In the winter Anna wrapped blankets around her legs. Mrs. Jönsson, the wife of Harry Jönsson, who now ran the inn, brought her cups of steaming coffee, which warmed her fingers as well as her insides. As the wall clock measured the time, she approved loans, cleared vouchers, and neatly entered column after column in large black ledgers. At larger offices the clerks used typewriters, but Anna wrote with a steel pen dipped in ink and carefully blotted the surface afterwards. Her days were long; even with the assistance of the schoolmaster’s daughter, she often stayed late. Everything about the bank appealed to her. She liked the discipline, the rationality, the interpretation of paragraphs, and the contact with the outside world. Her loyalty to the bank was complete, and her dealings with the public were impeccable.
Fredrik Lundgren, at the time, was recovering from the Spanish flu which had raged through Sweden, killing more than 20,000. A photograph taken at the sanitarium where Fredrik was convalescing shows him standing in the snow. Next to him stands another patient, Erik Bergenheim, brother of Gottfried and owner of Grytegården, a large farm in Kungsäter. Fredrik wears his usual sturdy dark overcoat and wide-brimmed hat. The much taller Bergenheim, also in dark overcoat, wears a fur hat and carries a walking stick with inlaid silver. They look like men of character, equal to each other in all but wealth (Erik Bergenheim never fully recovered and died a year or two later).
In 1921 Fredrik bought Torsberg, a farm in the province of Bohuslän. It was a large farm, almost twice as large as Torp, with a new barn and stable added only the year before. The bill of sale reveals that Fredrik acquired it by assuming the previous owner’s debts which amounted to 110,000 crowns. Fredrik’s relationship with Anna was by now no longer a secret. Everyone — perhaps even the family at Torp — assumed that Fredrik, once he had himself settled, would marry Anna and make her the mistress of Torsberg.
For the next couple of years, Fredrik traveled back and forth between Torsberg and Prästgården, working at both farms. One of his men traveled in the train car with a group of heifers destined for Torsberg. The man returned with news about some three hundred loads of hay already safely under roof. Over supper in the kitchen at Prästgården, the other men were quizzing him about Fredrik’s activities. Among them was Gunnar, Fredrik’s crofter, who at the time was a mere boy and swears he was just listening. Ellen, Fredrik’s housekeeper, was carving up meat over at the counter. One man wanted to know if Fredrik’s said activities as yet included women. A knife shot across the room, where it stuck in the wall with great force. “That’s enough!” hissed Ellen. “Another word and I’ll cut your throats.” Apparently the meal was finished in silence.
Shortly thereafter Fredrik’s situation changed. At some point he had co-signed a large loan for his friend Folke Bergenheim, another Bergenheim brother. Folke owned Brännared, a manor house and farm in a village near Kungsäter. Like almost everyone, Folke had gone into debt to increase the yield of his land. In the summer of 1921, it became obvious that he was having financial difficulties. To keep up payments on his debts, he sold off his clover, still in the field, and later some of his animals. In 1922 he declared bankruptcy and lost his farm. The man appointed by the court to administer the property showed little sympathy: “If Bergenheim had been a competent farmer and a sensible manager, he ought to have made yearly profits and at the present time be out of debt.”
Fredrik went down with Folke Bergenheim. In March 1923 he sold Torsberg for 108,000 crowns. As part of the payment, the buyer assumed the debts which Fredrik had reduced from 110,000 crowns to less than 90,000. The rest was paid in cash.
Meanwhile, everything else had changed as well. After the brief boom following the war, depression struck as foreign trade declined and unemployment rose. Many banks and industries failed. The market for agricultural products shrank and prices plummeted. By the end of 1922, as prices kept going down, they barely covered the cost of production.
The year of 1923 offered little relief. Across the country went a trail of bankruptcies, as more and more farmers were caught with heavy liabilities and not enough assets. “The past year has been difficult for farmers, with a late, cold, and rainy spring, a wet summer and fall, and an early winter,” wrote Fredrik in a newspaper article printed in January 1924. “Farmers, upon whose shoulders rests the welfare of the entire country, have suffered great losses, in many cases devastating. Energy and hope for better times have sustained us in an often desperate battle.”
Fredrik dug in. He remodeled the house at Prästgården and sent samples of curtains and furniture covers to the bank for Anna to choose from. The villagers rallied behind him. Economic hardship, they said, at least the kind that had befallen Fredrik, could happen to the best of them. It was not caused by his own mismanagement; he had only tried to help a friend. Besides, he was a man in his prime, and a hard worker. With Anna at his side, he should have no problems getting back on his feet.
Anna appeared less optimistic. She stayed at Torp, and at the bank. “Why did they not marry?” I ask Bertil, Fredrik’s hired man and successor. “Well, that’s what Lundgren wanted,” he says, “but what she wanted, I can’t say ….”
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