Short stories
The Charles Men
Karolinerna
Verner von Heidenstam · 1898
Opening lines
På slottsvinden, där brandmästaren sålde brännvin och öl, hade en lång, smalaxlad kund blifvit nedskuffad i trappan, och det tomma tennstopet kastades efter honom, så att det rullade mellan skorna.
In the castle loft, where the fire-master sold brandy and beer, a tall, narrow-shouldered customer had been pushed down the stairs, and the empty pewter tankard was thrown after him, so that it rolled between his shoes.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from litteraturbanken.se
Synopsis
A series of stories and portraits about the fall of the Swedish empire in the time of Charles XII. Each story has its own characters and places, from the Swedish countryside to Stockholm, and as far as Bender and Istanbul, where the defeated king found refuge among the Ottomans; only the king and a few great men return from one story to the next. Around him pass his soldiers and officers, the Carolines, in war, exile and the suffering of a people gathered around its sovereign.
Context
The book grew out of a journey made in 1896 to Eastern Europe in the footsteps of Charles XII, combined with a reading of Anders Fryxell's history of Sweden; the author wrote it in 1897 at Noor Castle, whose late seventeenth-century atmosphere he had praised. It appeared in two volumes, in 1897 and 1898, was a great success and entered the curriculum of Swedish primary schools. Translated into English as The Charles Men for the American-Scandinavian Foundation, it appeared in French as Les Carolins from Rombaldi in 1961.
Who it is for
Two volumes of stories, in Swedish, which can be read separately; there are French and English translations. It helps to know the broad outline of the Great Northern War.
Prizes and reception
The high point of its author's career in the 1890s, it became required reading in Swedish schools.
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The pages consulted to check this page.