Before Fylgia
by
Birgitta Hjalmarson
When I saw the cover for the second edition of Fylgia, I was struck by a feeling of déjà vu. The image is taken from a painting by Carl Holsøe, a Danish artist. It shows a young woman, possibly his wife, sitting by a window. Something about her sent me back to my notes and the vintage photographs I collected years ago when I researched the background story for Fylgia.
What I found was a photograph of the actual Anna, sitting in front of her sister. She looks eerily like the woman in the painting. There’s the same wistfulness, and she’s in the same white dress. In both, the hair is pulled back and gathered in a bun. If only for a moment, I thought I was looking at the same woman. Going through my old research notes, much of which I had used as basis for the novel, I marked what I had kept and what I had left out. Here, under “Before Fylgia,” I’ll post installments of another version, one I’ll call nonfiction. Some of it you’ll recognize, some you won’t. Perhaps it’s true that all stories have already been told. That it’s only in the telling that they differ.
Prologue
Prologue In the mid-fifties, in the evenings, I used to walk with Hjalmar to the lake. I was a child of ten or so, sent to the country for the summer. Hjalmar was my great-uncle; he and his brother Gustav owned Torp, a farm in Kungsäter, a small village in southwest Sweden. The path led through a forest of spruce and pine mixed with birch. Down its middle ran a string of grass, scarred by horses' hooves, the ruts dug deep by cart wheels. In marshy areas, deer tracks crisscrossed as if the animals, momentarily, had lost their sense...
Chapter One
Chapter One They say when God created Sweden he began with the south, and so it became fertile and good in every way. The Devil, meanwhile, ran farther north, where he created the district of Mark. On the surface it was deceptively beautiful: rounded mountains in a bluish distance, dark forests with caves for the wild animals, deep valleys with shimmering rivers and lakes. But underneath the land was harsh and stony, designed to break the backs of those who tried to farm it. When God saw...
Chapter Two
Chapter Two Carl was not the first in line to inherit Torp. His brother August was two years older and thus the rightful heir. August, however, left for America. Thus Carl took over Torp. His sisters Mina and Augusta, as compensation, each received one of the smaller farms that had been part of BrittaLena's dowry. Inga, the third sister, had died in 1874, a year before Börje. When Carl married in 1880 he must have done so for love alone. Anna Josefina Anderson — called Fina by those...