Selma Lagerlöf and Mårbacka

Today, Christian and Miya Christensen took me out in the Swedish countryside to take a tour through Mårbacka, the home of one of Sweden's most famous writers, Selma Lagerlöf. You can see a photo of her here.

She was a major writer of both adult and children's literature, ultimately winning a Nobel Prize for literature. But she was also controversial for the late 1800s and early 20th century, living with a couple of women companions.

She grew up with physical problems that kept her from walking easily or playing normal children's games, so she read a great deal and decided early, at age eight to be a writer.

I was struck by that. I have often wondered what my own life would have been like if I had not lived on a farm with few other kids around, turning early to books instead.

Sandy had told me about one of her more famous stories, The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgerssons, in which a boy is taken on the back of a magic goose across Sweden, giving the reader a geography lesson as he goes. She also apparently wrote some very complex stories for adults, like The Story of Gösta Berling, which I am going to try to track down in English (not quite being up to tackling it in Swedish, just yet.) Sandy reminds me that "It´s a great book. (It´s the one where the guy staves off the wolf from a sleigh in the snow with a slim volume of poetry)," which he shoves in the wolf's mouth, BTW. That is a tough choice, keeping the poetry volume, highly prized, expensive, hard to get, versus surviving an attack by wolves.

The Nobel prize committee commended her "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings," so I am quite curious.

Selma Lagerlöf grew up in a smaller version of the house, Mårbacka, shown here. Her father lost it to bankruptcy, but after winning the Nobel Prize she was able to buy it back and expand it to the larger house you see here. It is on a rise with a nice view out over the countryside, which you can see in the next photo.

She was interested in farming, too, and tried to supplement her writing with sales of her own special oatmeal, but the writing worked out better.

The house is lovely inside, too, as you can see here in this photo of her sitting room and the following one of her library. I was quite taken with the number of people who showed up, quite a ways out in the country, to take a once a week tour.

It is nice to see people honoring their national writers that well.

However, she is probably turning slowly in her grave, because in addition to the very respectful tour and the clearly loving treatment of her house and grounds, the nearest city is also trying very hard to capitalize on her with Selma spas, etc. Maybe that is just the capitalist form of sincere respect, but she did not seem like the type to appreciate it.