The Emperor of Portugallia

The Emperor of Portugallia by Selma Lagerlof

Jan of Ruffluck Croft, a poor labourer in the Ashdales by Dove Lake, resents the coming of his child while he waits in the rain in his woodshed. When the midwife lays the baby girl in his arms, his heart begins to beat as never before, and he is changed. The family cannot agree on a name, so Jan stands on the doorstep with the infant until the sun breaks through the clouds, and he reports that a grand lady named Glory Goldie Sunnycastle has passed by. The girl is called Glory Goldie. Jan's devotion shapes her childhood. He follows her uninvited to her christening, steadies her at her vaccination, and helps his neighbour Börje finish a ditch on her birthday. At Christmas he sings a psalm to drive off the trolls he imagines in the forest. During her fever he tears up his one good wedding shirt to make her a soft bed, and he sees a little angel settle beside her. At school she answers a catechism question by saying that God is called Jan, and the room is touched by it. She befriends the starving old seine-maker Ola, who has been taking fish from her lines. She also outwits the clock-meddler Agrippa Prästberg by hiding his spectacles. At Lövdala Manor she tells the truth about stealing apples rather than let her father take the blame. In her seventeenth year a travelling merchant gives her a red dress cloth. The Dean of Bro scolds her for wearing it, then relents when Jan calls her a sunbeam of joy. Soon after, Lars Gunnarson, the new master of Falla, and a shopkeeper's clerk demand two hundred rix-dollars. Eric of Falla died after Jan was slow to reach him in the forest, and Lars has held a grudge against Jan since. Lars threatens to take the land under the hut. Glory Goldie offers to go to Stockholm to earn the money. Jan sees her on the mountain peak, arms flung wide toward the world, and understands that she wants to leave. His heart goes numb, then wakes again on the eve of her departure. At the pier he imagines her returning in a boat to join her parents' hands, and he and Katrina walk home hand in hand. Her letters stop. On the first of October she does not come home. Senator Carl Carlson of Storvik arrives with the money and says she has borrowed it from a kind lady and must stay to work off the debt. Jan collapses in grief. The seine-maker spins a story of an old lady and a gift, and Jan seizes on it as a sign. The old mistress of Falla gives him her father's silver-mounted stick and high leather cap. Gossip about the girl and satin, and Mad Ingeborg's talk of a Vale of Longings and fallen stars, only feed his hope. Engineer Boraeus sees him waiting at the pier day after day and honours his yearning. When Agrippa Prästberg insults the girl on the pier, Jan declares that Glory Goldie is the Empress of Portugallia. Pastor and gentry are told that her fortunes have ended in ruin, but Jan appears in church as Emperor Johannes of Portugallia, wearing stars and the cap. He sings a song the forest taught him, with the refrain "Austria, Portugal, Metz, Japan." He is a sensation at the Lövdala birthday party. There he mistakes a young woman in red for his daughter and flees in tears. Mad Ingeborg begs to be taken to Portugallia, and Jan refuses her. At the funeral of Björn Hindrickson he is seated at the first table when it emerges that he fetched the estranged son home to his dying father. Lars Gunnarson, who learned auctioneering by making ordinary goods seem precious, seizes Jan's cap and stick at an auction in Bergvik. He beats him with the stick, and the crowd laughs. Jan goes back to digging. At a catechetical meeting at Falla he announces that the late Eric of Falla stands outside and warns Lars to repent before the Sunday after Midsummer Day. Lars curses and calls Jan mad, and the pastor privately offers to hear Lars's confession. During a bitter winter Jan believes Glory Goldie has called him into the night forest. He and Katrina find Agrippa Prästberg frozen against the giant's stone and save his life. Agrippa then repays them by thrashing the merchant who gave Glory Goldie the red dress, which costs Jan a possible message from her. On the Sunday after Midsummer Day the seine-maker gives his yearly feast for the whole Ashdales, and his prosperous younger son notes that Lars Gunnarson is unlikely to attend.

By Selma Lagerlof · First published 1914 · Genre: Literary fiction, Rural realism, Fairy tale · 46 chapters · 71,687 words

First lines

Jan of Ruffluck Croft never tired of telling about the day when his little girl came into the world. In the early morning he had been to fetch the midwife, and other helpers; all the forenoon and a good part of the afternoon he had sat on the chopping-block, in the woodshed, with nothing to do but to wait.

Outside it rained in torrents and he came in for his share of the downpour, although he was said to be under cover. The rain reached him in the guise of dampness through cracks in the walls and as drops from a leaky roof, then all at once, through the doorless opening of the shed, the wind swept a regular deluge in upon him.

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Swedish literature · Fatherhood · Paternal love · Rural Sweden · Poverty · Peasant life · Manual labour · Childbirth · Naming a child · Christening · Christmas · Folk superstition

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The Emperor of Portugallia is listed on Textopian as a novel by Selma Lagerlof, dated 1914 CE.

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