Novel
Singoalla
Viktor Rydberg · 1865
Opening lines
På en holme i en av Smålands insjöar har legat ett slott, som länge tillhörde släkten Månesköld.
On an islet in one of the lakes of Småland there once stood a castle that long belonged to the Månesköld family.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the Småland of the 1340s, the young Erland Månesköld, son of a knight, lives in the family castle built on an island in a lake. On the bank of the stream that runs through the forest, he meets Singoalla, daughter of a band of nomadic Roma camped near the castle; her people leave that same evening, but he cannot forget her. A year later, the band returns and is allowed to settle in the neighbouring forest, and a love begins between the two young people that neither the castle nor the camp can accept.
Context
The tale first appeared in 1857 in the almanac Aurora, with the subtitle “a romantic tale”; the author, then a journalist in Gothenburg, revised it for the first edition in volume form, in 1865, changing the ending, then again for the editions of 1876 and 1894, the latter illustrated by Carl Larsson. It was his favourite book. It was translated into Danish as early as 1866, then into German, into Finnish by Juhani Aho, into Dutch and, in 1904, into English by Josef Fredbärj; Swedish cinema has brought it to the screen twice. A study on the reception of Swedish letters in French-speaking Europe contrasts its author, with Almqvist, with the women novelists Bremer and Flygare-Carlén, whom that market welcomed far better.
Who it is for
A short novel, in Swedish; the text changed from one edition to the next, and the reference version is the fourth, that of 1894.
Prizes and reception
The first great success of its author and one of his most popular novels, now a Swedish classic.
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