Gerda in Sweden

It was the middle of June. School was over and vacation had begun. Gerda and Birger were on their way to Rättvik, taking Karen with them so that she might see the great midsumme...

Of course he knew that his ancestors had lived in Lapland for hundreds of years; but before he went to the Djurgård that day with Birger and Gerda, he had never heard himself ca...

It was a sunny morning in late June. The waters of the Saltsjö rippled and sparkled around the islands of Stockholm, and little steamers puffed briskly about in the harbor. The...

All day long the gentle breezes blowing through the city streets, and the bright sun shining on the sparkling water of Lake Mälar, called to the children that spring had come in...

"What do you think of a girl who goes off on two journeys in one summer?" and Gerda leaned over the railing of the canal-boat to look at her friends on the quay below.

"Rida, rida, ranka! The horse's name is Blanka. Little rider, dear and sweet, Now no spurs are on your feet; When you've grown and won them, Childhood's bliss is done then.

But no one did stop to think of it. Everyone was far too busy to think about the clock and what it was saying, for over in the corner beside the tall stove stood a wooden cradle...

"Look, Gerda," said Lieutenant Ekman, as their launch steamed the next morning toward a barren island off the east coast of Sweden, "do you see a child on those rocks below the...

"Abroad is good but home is better," quoted Birger, as the railroad train whizzed across the country, bearing the twins toward home once more after four happy days of sight-seei...

"This is the best part of our trip," Gerda said, two days later, as she was standing in the shade of some fir trees at one of the posting-stations a few miles from Gellivare, wa...

"What time is it, Father?" asked Gerda, as they reached the top of Mount Dundret, and Lieutenant Ekman took the key out of his pocket to open the door of the Tourists' Hut.

It was the day before Christmas,--such a busy day in the Ekman household. In fact, it had been a busy week in every household in Sweden, for before the tree is lighted on Christ...

The brief thunder-storm was over, the high noonday sun was shining down into the clearing, and the rumble of Thor's hammer could be heard only faintly in the distance. In the tr...

"How would you like to spend a whole summer here in the forest, watching the reindeer?" Lieutenant Ekman asked Gerda, after the milking was over and the Lapp mother had gone bac...

The twins, their faces smeared with vaseline and veiled in mosquito netting, hurried out of the car and looked around them. Close beside the station rose a great pile of stones,...