The only unclaimed quarter of Karl Oskar Nilsson’s section — the northeast corner — was taken in the spring by an immigrant from Småland. Their neighbor to the north was Johan Kron from Algutsboda, Kristina’s home parish. Kron was the village soldier but had retired from the service and emigrated with his large family, his wife and eight children. The family had brought along two cradles, one for each of the smallest children, who were twins. So the last homestead suddenly had ten inhabitants.
Section 35 of Chisago Township, the new name for Ki-Chi-Saga, where Karl Oskar had been the first settler, was now entirely claimed and occupied.
Axes ringing in the forest — no longer were these unfamiliar sounds. This spring when Karl Oskar walked over his land he could hear echoes from all directions. Here Swedish axes went after the trees, here trunks fell all around, here logs were piled on logs for new homes. Who could have imagined that so many would have followed him from Sweden? Farmers from his own parish were felling trees for log houses, farmers from Algutsboda, Linneryd, Elmeboda, and Hovmantorp, all neighbor parishes of Ljuder. As yet he had not run into anyone he knew from home but he expected to do so any day.
The ring of the axes was a joyous sound to Kristina’s ears; it brought her the message of new neighbors building their houses; it told her of new people who would live close to her. It rang out the end of the great loneliness. Living here would no longer be so drab. Already enough people had arrived to make up a good-sized village, even though the houses weren’t as close together as in the old country. If the emigration continued, perhaps eventually there would be enough people to make up a large parish. And with each family’s arrival she felt the same wonder: why had they come so far to settle in a corner of the world so remote?
Karl Oskar said that it looked as though all the people in the old country were following their example and moving to the Territory. And there was plenty of space out here — there was room for the whole Kingdom of Sweden. But the upper classes would probably remain where they were; those useless creatures lived well and in comfort in Sweden.
Yes, it seemed as if the homeland was coming to America. And in a way it did come to the immigrants that spring — in the form of a newspaper.
It came about through Pastor Törner; Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had begun to print a paper in Swedish, Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya (The Homeland, the Old and the New), and he asked his colleague to spread the word in the Swedish settlements. As Pastor Törner traveled about he wrote down the names of those who wanted to subscribe. The paper would describe the most important happenings in both Sweden and America and would appear fortnightly. The price was only a dollar a year, but the publisher appealed to the better-off among his countrymen for an extra fifty cents in order to purchase Swedish type. His press did not have all of the Swedish letters, and since they were difficult to obtain in America, he must order them from Sweden.
Karl Oskar felt it would be worth a dollar (plus fifty cents for the Swedish type) to obtain news from Sweden twice a month; he subscribed to Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya, and from then on, picked up his paper every second week in Mr. Abbott’s store in Taylors Falls. Algot Svensson, his neighbor to the west, was also a subscriber, and they decided to pick up the paper in turn so they need not go to the post office more than once a month.
And Hemlandet was received in the settler’s home as a dear and welcome guest. They held the paper with cautious hands as if afraid it might fall to pieces in the handling.
The news sheet had four pages, and five columns to each page, all printed in Swedish. Karl Oskar and Kristina read and discussed almost every word in Hemlandet. After supper he would read to her while she finished her chores. On Sunday afternoons, when she was free for a few hours, they would sit down at the table, with the paper spread before them, and go through paragraph after paragraph systematically.
Through Hemlandet they learned that a great war had broken out in Europe a few months earlier: on March 28 war had been declared between Russia on one side and England and France on the other. Besides, the Russians and the Turks had been fighting since last fall, because the Russians were not allowed to protect the Turkish subjects of Christian belief. It was assumed that Sweden would join in the war against Russia to retrieve Finland. But Kristina felt Sweden shouldn’t bother with this; she had two brothers of military age and she did not like to think of them participating in human slaughter. Only people who wanted to should take part in wars. Karl Oskar had no close relatives who need go — only his sister, Lydia, was left in Sweden of his generation — but he too hoped the old country would remain at peace. War was an amusement for lords and kings but no plaything for farmers, who had more important things to do. All this warring would probably in the end destroy the Old World.
Another amazing piece of news was that the Swedes were thinking of building railroads here and there in the country, beginning with the provinces of Vårmland and Skåne. It was not easy to imagine that perhaps one day a steam wagon might come rolling through Ljuder parish. As yet, Karl Oskar thought, they and the other emigrants were the only Swedes who had traveled in that way.
Telegraphy was the newest contraption. Messages were sent along steel wire with the speed of lightning. This invention too had reached Sweden: a wire had recently been strung all the distance between Stockholm and Gothenburg. “A Simple Explanation of Telegraphy” was the title of the article in Hemlandet:
A Telegraph is the name of an instrument through which people can make signs to each other over great distances. It carries tidings from one end of the Union to the other, speedier than a wink of the eye. It has been agreed that certain signs represent certain letters in the alphabet and in this way a conversation can be carried on. It is unimportant if the two communicants are a mile or a thousand miles apart; the conversation goes on with equal speed and what is said with signs arrives on the moment.
In almost every issue of the paper there was a description of some new, amazing invention which the clever Americans had made. There was Pitt’s threshing machine, which threshed a bushel of wheat in a minute; the reaper, which was constructed in such a way that it cut the crop with steel arms; the sewing machine, which could baste and sew when tramped by a human foot. From now on one could sew garments with one’s feet instead of one’s hands. Kristina had just finished her first weaving of last year’s flax, and she could have used this tramping apparatus now that she was ready to make clothes for all of them.
They read about the broad city streets with railroads in the middle, about illumination from a vapor called gas, about the iron pipes which led water under the ground and at any moment squirted a stream if one needed water. But the strangest discovery was a new, secret power called electricity. It gave heat and light, it could be used to pull vehicles, it could heal sickness, like lameness, fever, epilepsy. Electricity returned hearing to deaf people, taught the mute to use their tongues. Hemlandet had a clarifying article about electricity:
The cause of lightning is a peculiar power called Electricity. Lightning emanates from clouds up in the sky which have become electric. How the clouds have become such is not known. But if a lightning-cloud comes close to an object on earth, an electric spark passes with lightning and thunder from the cloud to the object, and then we say that lightning strikes. It is entirely unfounded, as some people say, that a wedge hits the earth when lightning strikes.
Lightning had once struck and burned a hay-filled barn belonging to Karl Oskar and he therefore felt great respect for electricity. When it was loosed it was much more dangerous than fire: in a single second it could shake a person to death. The paper related that a farmer in Indiana had brought suit against his wife for attempted murder with the new discovery: she had put electricity in her husband’s underwear so that it had shot into his body and almost killed him.