Arne; Early Tales and Sketches Patriots Edition

Lars moved about in the large rooms at Högstad, without speaking a word. His wife, who loved him, but always in fear and trembling, dared not come into his presence. The managem...

It was a Sunday evening in midsummer; the priest had returned from church, and Margit had been sitting with him until it was nearly seven o'clock. Now she took her leave, and ha...

Love and woman were beginning to play a prominent part in his thoughts; in the ancient ballads and stories of the olden times such themes were reflected as in a magic mirror, ju...

In the course of a year Lars had become chairman of the parish board of supervisors, president of the savings-bank, and leading commissioner in the court of reconciliation; in s...

To talk with the mother was more easily thought than done. Arne alluded to Kristian and the letter that never came; but the mother went away from him, and for whole days after h...

Knud Aakre belonged to an old family in the parish, where it had always been renowned for its intelligence and its devotion to the public welfare. His father had worked his way...

It was in the autumn, as before stated. A week after Nils the tailor was borne into Margit Kampen's home, there came word to him from the Americans that he must hold himself in...

Spring comes late in the mountains. The mail that passed along the highway during the winter three times a week, in April only passes once, and the inhabitants know then that in...

Up on the hill-top it was that Arne was born. His mother's name was Margit, and she was the only child at the houseman's place,--Kampen.[2] Once, in her eighteenth year, she sta...

A day later Arne came in and announced that he had just heard on the gard that the priest's daughter Mathilde had that very moment started for the town, as she thought, for a fe...

From the day that Arne tried with his whole heart to live closer to his mother his relations with other people were entirely changed. He looked on them more with the mother's mi...

Kampen was a beautiful gard. It lay in the midst of a plain, bordered below by the Kamp gorge, and above by the parish road; on the opposite side of the road was a thick wood, a...

Some days after this, mother and son, who of late had been more together, agreed to be present at the wedding of some relatives at a neighboring gard. The mother had not been to...

When the time came to take the herds up into the woods, Arne wanted to tend them. His father objected; the boy had never tended cattle, and he was now in his fifteenth year. But...

Eli was very weak after her illness; the mother sat over her night and day, and was never down-stairs; the father made his usual visits up to the sick-room in his stocking feet,...

Arne became habitually silent and shy. He tended cattle and made songs. He passed his nineteenth birthday, and still he kept on tending cattle. He borrowed books from the priest...

It was the next day, in the barn of the same gard. Arne had been drunk for the first time in his life, was ill in consequence of it, and had been lying in the barn almost twenty...

It was late in the autumn; the harvesters were at work housing the grain. The day was clear, it had rained during the night; and in the morning, therefore, the air was as mild a...

There was a deep gorge between two mountains; through this gorge a large, full stream flowed heavily over a rough and stony bottom. Both sides were high and steep, and so one si...

"Arne" was written in 1858, one year later than "Synnöve Solbakken," and is thought by many to be Björnson's best story, though it is, in my opinion, surpassed in simplicity of...