Wronged Women and Wretched Sinners - the Case of the Maid in Växjö

I have spoken about my love for old murder ballads before. A Swedish compilation of such old folk songs was made between 1896 and 1901 by a man called August Bondeson. If you speak Swedish, you can read the volume online here. 

If you don't... Well, I thought I'd post a few translations here. Nothing fancy; no rhymes or anything, just the basic meaning so you can compare them to their English and American counterparts.

I thought I'd start with a particularly gruesome one called Där tjänte en flicka (There served a girl). It was recorded a few years ago by Swedish artist Louise Hoffsten. Her version is quite good, but it doesn't contain all the verses – only 1-3, 5 and 9-10. It's a pity in my opinion since that leaves out some of the more horrid ones. Anyway, if you have Spotify, you can listen to it here.

I put the Swedish lyrics first and then the English translation right after each verse.And, like I said, it's not a fancy translation, but, I dare say, pretty accurate as far as content goes (but without any poetic flair like rhymes and rhythm).

And – gruesome and purple as this song is, contains at least a pinch of realism. Women being executed for infanticide is historical fact, not fancy. 

1. Där tjänte en flicka i Växjö i två år,

hon tjänte hos en köpman, en ungkarl det var,

det var väl ett stort under, att hon torde

en sådan gärning göra, som hon gjorde.

1.  There served a girl in Växjö for two years,

she was maid to a merchant, a bachelor too,

but it was a mystery how she dared

to do the deed she did

 2. Det hände sig så om en lördagskväll,

hon födde två foster, dem mördade hon själv;

hon trodde, där var ingen, som såg det,

och därför tog hon livet utav dem.

3. It happened on one Saturday night

that she bore two children, she murdered them herself

she thought there was no one who saw it

and so she took their sweet lives.

3. Så svepte hon dem uti renaste lin,

så kastade hon dem i den skarpaste ström;

hon trodde, där var ingen som såg det,

och därför tog hon livet utav dem.

3. She wrapped them in linen

and cast them into a stream

she thought there was no one who saw it

and so she took their sweet lives.

4. Sen gångar hon sig på kyrkogården in,

och tårarne runno så stritt på hennes kind.

 Ja, det var väl ett stort under, att hon torde

en sådan gärning göra, som hon gjorde,

4. Into the graveyard she went

and tears ran down her cheeks.

Yes, it was a mystery how she dared

to do the deed she did

5. "Men ett det är, som grämjer mitt hjärta allra mest,

att min allra yngste broder har mig i bojor fäst;

han fängslar och binder mig så svåra.

Gud nåde mig, syndare arma!

5. "But what grieves my heart the most,

is that my youngest brother has clasped me in irons,

he traps me and binds me so badly.

God have mercy on me, wretched sinner!"

6. Min moder lät stöpa en silverkanna ny,

med fyra förgyllande fötter däruti,

den fyllde hon med blanka riksdalrar,

hon ville själv med konungen samtala

6. My mother had made a silver jar

with four golden feet inside;

filling it with shiny shillings,

with the king she wanted plead

7. för att lösa mitt unga liv, om hon det kunde få.

Men mitt ungaste liv, det passar jag ej på:

när jag för mina synder haver lidit,

så hoppas jag, de äro mig tillgivna.

7. for my young life, if she could

but for my life I have no care;

once I have paid for my sins

I hope they are forgiven

8. I morgon så fyller jag mitt adertonde år,

då hade jag tänkt, att mitt bröllop skulle stå;

men då skall röda hjärteblodet rinna,

likt vatten uti stridaste strömmar."

8. Tomorrow I will turn eighteen,

when I had thought to be a bride

but instead the red blood of my heart 

shall stream in torrents like water." 

9. Den andra dagen ’fördes hon till spetsgården fram. 

Och fram kommer bödeln med yxan i sin hand: 

"Si, här skall detta unga liv iörrinna, 

liksom det vore blodröda strömmar!" 

9. She was brought to the scaffold on the second day

and with an axe the executioner stands:

"See, this young life shall run

in blood red torrents like water!"

10. Så talte hon till folket, som däromkring stod: 

"Ack, hör I, unga flickor, jag råder eder till, 

låten inga falska gossar er behaga, 

ty då fån I sorg i alla edra dagar!" 

10. She spoke to the people who stood all around:

"Oh, hear me, girls, I shall offer you advice,

trust not young men, fair and false, 

lest you shall grieve for all your days!"

*Picture from The Graphics Fairy . It has nothing to do with the song besides looking rather dramatic.

Anyone for Swedish murder and fin-de-siècle gloom?

Hjalmar Söderberg (source: Wikipedia)

If you are looking for some good old fin-de-siècle gloom and you happen to be in the vicinity of London, England, you really should take the opportunity to see Dr Glas, starring Swedish actor Krister Henriksson (of Wallander-renown).

Dr Glas is based on a novel, first published in 1905, by Swedish writer Hjalmar Söderberg,  considered to be one of the finest novelists this nation ever produced. It is, admittedly, not a cheerful story. On the other hand, it has murder, adultery, depression and lots and lots of good old misery. Nobody get a HEA, because that was not what Söderberg was about. He was, after all, the man who wrote the legendary phrase: "I believe in the lust of the flesh and the incurable loneliness of the soul" (from the play Gertrud), quoted by generations of Swedish teenagers suffering their first disappointment in love.

If you can't make it to the Wyndham's Theatre, I heartily recommend digging out Doctor Glas as a novel or Söderberg's other novel The Serious Game as they are both excellent and translated to English.

Reflections on the month of March

Blood, Tears and Betrayal: The Shilling Sheet Genre

The Lion's Bride, referenced below (source: Vintage Printables)

In the 19th century, song sheets could be bought most everywhere in Sweden. Mostly they contained only lyrics and reference to an already well-known or traditional melody and cost one or two Swedish shillings ("skilling" in Swedish, pronounced very close to the English word "shilling"). These little booklets appeared already in the 16th century and were very common through the 18th and 19th centuries, until about 1910 when they were replaced by more modern versions of songbooks.

In principle, they could contain any sort of songs – secular, religious, folk songs or newly written – but the most popular variety were tragic stories of death and broken hearts. Hence, in Swedish, this genre of music has become known as "Shilling Sheets" and most people still know snippets of them  You might say they're part of our pop culture heritage every bit as much as ABBA or Stieg Larsson.

One of the most famous shilling sheet songs is Elvira Madigan, written in 1889 by Johan Lindström Saxon about the tragic elopement of tightrope dancer Elvira Madigan and Lieutenant Count Sixten Sparre that I have written about before on this blog. Another example of a well-known shilling sheet song is Amanda and Herman. It tells the story of  fair Amanda who is let down by the faithless Herman and seeks her death in the waves (women betrayed by faithless men is one of the most popular themes in these songs for some reason). It's been recorded many, many times and I found this lovely version uploaded to YouTube by the talented Elina Järventaus Johansson:

 
Quite often shilling sheet songs are translations of foreign poems or songs - like Lejonbruden (The Lion's Bride) about a lion tamer's daughter who is tragically killed by the lion she loves, which was originally written in German by Adelbert von Chamisso (it can be read in original German and English translation here and you can listen to it in Swedish on YouTube).
 
As adults, we tend to laugh at the unbridled sentimentality of these songs, but most children still find them hauntingly fascinating and heartbreakingly sad. During my childhood, me and my friends would beg my mother to sing them to us over and over, and we cried and cried – for some reason singing them ourselves was not the same thing at all. We didn't want control, we wanted the tragedy to sweep over us with purposeful and unrelenting force.

Why, one might debate. Personally, I think there is something about vicarious suffering that appeals to all people, and while we may think ourselves conditioned to prefer the less melodramatic forms of storytelling that our modern culture celebrates, let us not be fooled. What is the movie Titanic, really, but one long film-version of what would have made an excellent shilling sheet song?

ETA: for those who want to hear more, I made a Spotify playlist with some of the most famous ballads, including Elvira Madigan and the other ones mentioned above:

spoti.fi/YZua2c

Policing Persia: Swedes Very far From Home

In the early 20th century, some forces in Persia were pushing to modernise the country which had, in regards to organisation and government, changed very little in the past few hundred years.

The Shah of Persia arriving in Ourmiah, 1911 (source: Library of Congress)

In July 1910, the Democrats came to power and one part of their modernisation program was the construction of a national gendarmerie - a sort of paramilitarian force that was part police force and part armed force aimed at keeping the peace by any means necessary. While events soon lead to the program being dropped, the idea of a gendarmerie survived, partly likely because it was in the interest of the two super-powers in the region - Russia and Great Britain - to ensure safe passage through the notoriously dangerous region. As an example, Mr Smart, the British Consul at Shiraz, was attacked in the neighbourhood of Kazerun in December 1912. Grazed by a bullet, and trapped under his wounded horse, he was only saved due to the efficiency of the troop of the Central India Horse that escorted him and the kind care of some of the locals, and the incident led to considerable diplomatic tension. In fact, the Gendarmerie was to be in great part funded by Britain and Russia – for example, in may 1913, the British Government advanced a sum of £100,000 to the Persian government for this purpose, following the Smart-incident.

However, in order to build such a force, Persia needed help from the outside since the country lacked officers with the relevant sort of training. The question was which country to turn to? In 1907, Russia and Great Britain had, much to the outrage of the Persians, divided the country into two speheres of influence; one Russian and one Britain. Naturally, it was unthinkable for either side to allow the other party to organise a national armed Persian force, and they also vetoed Teheran's first choice Italy, because Italy was viewed to be too much of a power in itself.

Sweden, however... Let's face it; while the Russians may once have been trounced by Swedish forces in battles such as Narva, Sweden in the early 20th century was not that impressive. In fact, she had just voluntarily granted Norway independence and was now only a small fraction of the Baltic power she had once been. Nobody needed fear the Swedes – least of all super-powers like Russia and Britain.

Hence, in August 1911, Colonel Harald O. Hjalmarson (helpful tip: 'hj' is pronounced as an English 'y', so he would be 'Yalmarson')  arrived and with the help of several other Swedish officers, began the laborious task of organising a gendarmerie, aimed at maintaining security on the highways and roads. It was called the Persian Central Governemt Gendarmerie (or in Persian, Zhandarmiri-yi Dawlati).

 General Harald Hjalmarson (source: Wikipedia)

The Swedish officers were to a large degree Swedish aristocrats, and the Persian officers were also drawn from the higher social strata and well-educated – many of them spoke French, for instance. At the end of 1912 the Gendarmerie consisted of 21 Swedes and nearly 3,000 Persian officers and men. By the end of 1913, the number of Swedish officers had risen to 36 while nearly 6,000 Persians were employed. According to an article in The Times, around 2,000 of them were mounted, and they were organised in six regiments, or more accurately, nine battalions.

The outbreak of World War I led to a distinct shift in policy. First of all, Sweden recalled all the officers who were on the roll for active duty. Second, Persia was in a very delicate position, finding itself between Germany's ally Turkey and British India. Both sides wooed the Persians, who nominally remained neutral. However, the Gendarmerie had distinct German loyalties. Not only were the Swedish officers by tradition friendly towards their bigger Germanic cousin, but nationalist Persian forces who were still outraged at Russia's and Britain's high-handedness in splitting the country between them, were also in favour of Germany. They accepted subsidiaries from Germany and covertly aided German expiditions, such as the expedition headed by Niedermayer, as well as allowing Wasserman's proslyting among local potentates in southern Persia.

In 1916, the force split; some siding with the nationalists, actively fighting the Russians, while parts of the first and second regiments in Teheran remained neutral along with their Swedish officers. The troops who had remained neutral would later form the nucleus for the reconstructed Gendarmerie, which took part in the campaigns against the Bolsheviks in the Caspian provinces and the Kurdish rebellion in Azerbaijan, as well as keeping up its police duties of guarding the roads.

After the coup d'état in 1921, the Gendarmerie formed the core for the new national Iranian army together with the the Iranian Cossack Division and the remaining Swedish officers returned home. Harald O. Hjalmarson would later head the Swedish Brigade in the Finnish Civil War, and died in 1919, only 51 years old.

And that is how, bizarrely, a few Swedish officers actively aided Germany's overtures to the Muslim World during World War I.

Sources:

"The Unrest In Southern Persia." Times [London, England] 5 Apr. 1912: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"British Officer Killed In Persia." Times [London, England] 12 Dec. 1912: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"Policing Persia." Times [London, England] 27 Dec. 1913: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"Indian Soldiers Attacked in Dangerous Pass: The Consul Smart Incident." The Straits Times, 26 January 1912, Page 2

Cronin, Stephanie, Gendarmerie, Encyclopaedia Iranica www.iranica.com, online edition, 28 July 2012 (available at http://www.iranica.com/articles/gendarmerie)

Hopkirk, Peter, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: the plot to bring down the British empire, J. Murray, London, 1994

Wikipedia; entry on Swedish Gendarmerie in English, and on Harald Hjalmarson in Swedish.

(This post was originally posted on my old blog)

Tragic Romance: The Story of Elvira Madigan

Elvira Madigan (Wikipedia

In 1888, the Madigan Circus visited the small Swedish town of Kristianstad. There, the young tightrope walker Elvira Madigan, the step-daughter of the circus' owner, met and fell in love with the considerably older Lieutenant Count Sixten Sparre.  Since he was already married and had two children, it was inappropriate to say the least, and during the exchange of passionate letters that followed the meeting, Elvira's mother and step-father did their best to dissuade her.

Love, however, isn't just blind, but infinitely stupid as well, and so, in 1889, when Sixten asked her to, she ran away and joined him. They travelled together to Elvira's home-country Denmark (her real name was Hedvig Olsen) where they lived together until they ran out of funds.

Lieutenant Count Sixten Sparre (Wikipedia)

By then, their situation was desperate; Sixten's family refused to help him and he was wanted for deserting his regiment. Faced with financial ruin, disgrace and without any recourse from friends or family, the future was beyond bleak.

On 20 July, 1889, the couple packed a picnic bag and declared they were going on an outing to Norreskøv. There, they had a final meal, after which Sixten shot Elvira, and then killed himself with his service revolver.

The story naturally caused a scandal when it became public knowledge. A penny-sheet ballad was written about the affair, and I think to this day most Swedes know at least the first verse of it – it was one of those horribly moving songs that made me cry as a child (I loved those). The story has also been filmed on several occasions. The most famous version is the heart-breakingly beautiful film by Bo Widerberg from 1967. It rather famously used  Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 as a theme song – the piece is sometimes referred to as "Elvira Madigan" today though I'm sure many people have no idea why.

Tommy Berggren as Sixten Sparre and Pia Degermark as Elvira Madigan in the 1967 film

If you haven't seen it, I heartily recommend it – it's available on Amazon among other places.

(this is a modified version of a post that first appeared on my old blog)

A Visit to Lapland, 1868

Today is the international Sami Day. If you don't know the word, the Sami are the indigenous people inhabiting the far northern region of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsular of Russia that is sometimes called "Sàpmi" or "Sami land". The Sami are traditionally hunters, gatherers and reindeer herders and were continually pushed north from part of their traditional lands by settlers, and their way of life, religion and language has been under threat for hundreds of years. The old Swedish word for the Sami is "Lapps", which is now considered derogatory and no longer in use. The word "Lappland" derives from that, and it is still used for parts of northern Sweden and Finland.

I'm part Sami, and in the 19th century, my family all lived in the traditionally way. They were nomads and reindeer herders and they lived in materially very poor conditions, in lands that were covered in snow and ice for 9 months a year and where there was no daylight at all in December.

In the 19th century, anthropological studies were gaining in popularity, and in 1868 Swedish physician and anthropologist Gustaf von Düben organized the first of two expeditions to Swedish Lapland in order to study the Sami people. He brought his wife Lotten, who helped document the Sami way of life using the still relatively new tool of photography. Her photographs are now in the care of Nordiska Museet of Stockholm, Sweden, who has kindly made them available on Flickr Commons.

Portrait of Maria Persdotter Länta, aged 45, from Sirkas Sami village (from Flickr Commons)

Inga Pantsi, a widow from Tuorpon Sami village, and her granddaughter (from Flickr Commons)

A Sami man carrying a spear (from Flickr Commons)

Portrait of Lars Anders Baggi, aged 25, from Jokkmokk (from Flickr Commons)

Portrait of Karin Savalo, a widow from Tuorpon Sami village, and her daughter Inga (from Flickr Commons)

Please feel free to have a look at the entire collection (which is really rather remarkable), and if you are interested in more facts about the Sami, you can of course find an article on Wikipedia.

On the Importance of Being Organised

In one of my lovely (Swedish) books on householding there is an essay called "Cleaning and Laundry" ("Städning och tvätt"), written by a Mrs Gertrud Norden. It's found in The Housewife's Golden Book (Husmoderns gyllene bok), a series of books containing everything that a woman was deemed to have to know in 1925, from legal rules on inheritence and marriage to cooking and etiquette.

The date, 1925, puts it slightly later than the time frame for this blog, but it reads as fairly conservative. The essay in question instructs the housewife on how to organise her household work in a very precise manner; not only what is to be done, but how and when. It's obviously primarily written for a household where the mother or wife of the family either does all work on her own, or where she does so with the help of a single maid.

A picture of Mrs Norden from the book

Firstly, Mrs Norden recommends setting of a fixed schedule, consisting of both both daily and weekly tasks.

"It is best if one can separate and fit in both the daily and weekly chores so that they are accomplished little by little without upsetting the smooth course of the day. This is unequivocally to be preferred if one can choose. But at many times one has no choice; one simply must deal with them in an irregular manner.

/.../

From that should not be deduced that it is pointless to plan a daily schedule and to systematically organise the one's work. On the contrary, just because it might at times be impossible to follow a certain schedule, one should, insofar one can, predict and organise the work by evaluating one's normal day, week or month and try to fit the chores which may be predicted into the time slots usually at your disposal."

So how should one go about organising the work? Mrs Norden recommends using the meals as fixed points and planning around them. You then make a list of the chores that must be performed daily, and another one of the chores that must be accomplished every week or with greater intervalls. Thus, you get a list that looks something like this:

   Daily chores                            Weekly chores
Polish shoes                            Weekly shopping
Daily shopping                       Washing children's clothing and wool
Cleaning bedroom                 Ironing 
   >>        nursery                      Mending
   >>        dining room            Cleaning suits
   >>        drawing room         Baking
   >>        kitchen                     Weekly cleaning of all rooms
Washing up                             Cleaning of the hall and stairs
and so forth                             and so forth

Now you find out how much time you have at your disposal for cleaning and other necessary chores between each meal after deducting the time necessary for cooking and fit in all th tasks you listed above. Ideally, you should avoid cramming all the cleaning into a single day. It only turns the whole house topsy-turvy and you end up exhausted. Instead, you should plan each day so that you manage both the necessary daily chores plus one or two weekly chores.

To illustrate this idea, Mrs Norden presents a very basic example of a house schedule based on those principles:

At  0         Clean dining room, lay the table, make breakfast
>> 8          ----Breakfast---
>> 0          Make an inventory of the pantry & larder, order for the day
>> 0          Daily cleaning of bedroom, nursery and drawing room
>> 0          Weekly chore
>> 0          Cook second meal and lay the table
>> 12.30   ---Second meal---
>> 0         Wash up after both meals. Clean kitchen.
>> 0         Rest and short coffeebreak
>> 0         Lighter weekly chore and unforeseen tasks
>> 0         Cook third meal. Lay the table
>> 5.30    ---Third meal---
>> 0        Wash up and so forth


            Weekly chores

Monday      morning: Wash the children's clothing
                   afternoon: Unforeseen tasks
Tuesday     morning: Weekly cleaning of nursery
                   afternoon: Polish brass etc.
Wednesday morning: Weekly cleaning of bedroom. Iron the children's clothes.
                   afternoon: unforeseen tasks
Thursday   morning: Weekly cleaning of drawing room etc.
                   afternoon: Mend children's clothes
Friday        morning: Weekly cleaning of kitchen and pantry
                   afternoon: Unforeseen tasks
Saturday    morning: extra work according to circumstance
                   afternoon: Baking and cooking for Sunday

A household schedule is, Mrs Norden underlines, a strictly personal matter. It must be adapted to the circumstances under which one lives, such as the size of the family, the ages of the members of the household, what kind of house you live in etc.

Either way, however, she suggests that one always adheres to the following principles:

1) you should get the daily cleaning done as soon as possible,
2) one of the heavier weekly chores should be dealt with every day,
3) the heaviest and most tiring chores should be doen early in the day when your energy is high, and consign "the chores that afford certain relaxation to the latter part of the day,"
4) you should avoid scheduling a specific day for cleaning the house "but instead try to spread it over the days of the week as invisibly as possible without upsetting the natural course of the workday,"
5) it's best if the person working may focus on one thing at a time and not let her time be wasted on a myriad of smaller tasks; "either by division of labour, so that the housewife frees the servant from such that might distract, or, in the cases where one person manages the work on her own, by putting off all the small brief tasks until the most important chores of the day are completed,"
6) you should set clear and precise boundaries between work and rest and respect both.

Source: 

Husmoderns gyllene bok, Stockholm, 1925  (all the quotes above have been translated into English by me)

Sex, Lies and Death: The Story of the Yngsjö Murder

Yngsjö is a small and rather insignificant municipality in the southernmost county of Sweden. It's the sort of place most people wouldn't have heard of unless it had been the centre of one of the most publicised murders in the history of Sweden.

Anna Månsdotter

Where it all began is debatable, but a good starting point for the story seems to be the marriage of one Anna Månsdotter to a Nils Nilsson, 13 years her senior, around 1860. It seems that it was very much a marriage of convenience rather than infatuation and Anna had counted on a financially stable and secure future. In reality, however, they ended up poor and debt-ridden. The relationship between husband and wife was strained, and Anna sought comfort in their son Per, the only of her three children to survive into adulthood.

Per Nilsson

At some point - it's not entirely clear when, but likely when Per was still a child - Anna started sexually molesting her son who grew increasingly dependent on her. It's not clear if Nils ever suspected anything - inquiries were made into the cause of his death after the incidents of 1889 but nothing conclusive that pointed to foul play could be found. Either way, after his death in 1883, when Per was 21, the relationship could carry on without outside interference. However, nothing can long be kept a secret in a small community, and soon tongues started wagging about the unnaturally close relationship between mother and son (judging by the number of people who could later testify that it had been their habit to sleep in the same bed, they weren't exactly discreet either). This may have been the reason why Anna persuaded Per to get married in 1888.

Hanna Johansdotter

The young bride was one Hanna Johansdotter, 21 years of age and the daughter of a respected pillar of society, lay judge and church usher Johan Olsson. The idea was that Anna would then move in with her own mother, but when push came to shove, she stalled and she soon came into conflict with her daughter-in-law. The relationship between the two women was one of intense rivalry over the rather vague and quite frankly weak-willed Per, and Anna resented having to share her son with his wife, despite the marriage originally being her idea.

Meanwhile, Hanna, who was genuinely fond of Per, felt she was treated as an outsider and complained of Per's treatment of her to her family. She even tried to get her father to intervene and force Anna to move out, and he promised to help buy her out and build her a new house. However, Hanna soon realised that their future happiness depended on their removal from Anna's presence altogether, and she pushed for selling the family farm and moving. According to witnesses, Hanna had told them that she and Per had never lain together. She also expressed fear of her mother-in-law both verbally and in writing. The day before she died, she is said to have cried and told a neighbour that:

"I am so afraid of Anna Månsdotter that it feels like someone stuck a knife in my breast whenever I see her. As soon as she comes home lately, she and Per shut themselves up in the stable, where they keep conferences. This happened today too. I think they are conspiring against me. I simply don't dare to go home! I even want to scream - because I am thinking of something wicked." 

Her last letter to her parents, seven days before her death ends: "I will not remain in Yngsjö. I have told Per so."

Exactly what happened next isn't known as the only people who could have told were either dead, or constantly changing their accounts. Most likely Hanna had begun to suspect the true nature of her husband's relationship with his mother, or she might even have discovered them in flagrante. Anna would later claim that Hanna had confronted her and told her that she knew everything. Either way, someone - most likely Anna - decided she had to die.

On the morning of 28 March, 1889, a neighbour visited and couldn't find Hanna anywhere. Upon returning a few hours later, he found Per who said she'd likely gone out. The neighbour was sceptical and persuaded Per to look for her. They found the trapdoor to the basement open and Per peeked down and said - quite without any real emotion: " Oh, here she lies, dead from the fall. Oh no, woe me!"

The neighbour started screaming and more people soon arrived. When they helped lift Hanna up the stairs, they nothed a deep red groove around her neck, as if after a noose. One of the local women also notced that she wasn't completely dressed - she wore a shift and stays, but no dress bodice. No one thought to notify the police, though. Instead, they turned to the local vicar and told him of their suspicions. He then notified the authorities and the district doctor who performed the autopsy concluded that there could be no doubt that she had been murdered.

Both the victim's father and several other locals began pressuring Per and his mother, trying to get them to confess. After five days, Per finally relented but refused to implicate his mother. It wasn't until after Per's confession that the police was notified and the first real interrogations were held. The general view was that Anna wasn't just involved, but the instigator of the whole affair, and most of the inevstigation was aimed at proving that fact.

While the exact hows were never fully established beyond the fact that Hanna was killed, either by Anna or by Per and Anna in collaboration and that mother and son helped each other to cover up the foul deed, the "why" seems pretty straight-forward. Hanna had come between mother and son and she did not intend to yield. She had some knowledge, or anyway a well-founded suspicion, of a criminal relationship between them, and so she had to die.

Both mother and son were sentenced to prison for the illicit sexual affair and they both received the death penalty for their share in the murder of Hanna Johansdotter. Anna was beheaded (with an axe) in August 1890, but Per, who had appleaed to His Majesty the King for mercy, had his sentence transformed into a prison sentence. Virtually all their neighbours supported his appeal and when he was finally released after 23 years, they welcomed him into the community with open arms. He finally died from a disease of the lungs in 1918, and is said to have expressed relief at his upcoming demise.

Anna Månsdotter, moments before her execution

Even today, and even internationally, the murder in Yngsjö 1889 stands out as a sort of bizarre, 19th century Freudian tragedy. It's hardly surprising that the case has been the subject of several books as well as being filmed several times. Anna Månsdotter was also the last woman in Sweden to be executed, and as such, she is the object of some interest. Sadly, but perhaps typically, I noted that while both she and Per has an entry each on the Swedish Wikipedia, Hanna, their victim, does not.  I think she deserves better than to be a footnote in her murderers' story.

Sources:

Main source is Yngsjömordet by Yngve Lyttkens, Stockholm, 1951

The images are all in the public domain and full information can be found:

1. Anna Månsdotter
2. Per Nilsson
3. Hanna Johansdotter
4. Execution of Anna Månsdotter


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Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New,

In Sweden, since 1895 (with shorter breaks), the countdown to the new year has been accompanied by the reading of the Swedish translation of Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is usually read from the outdoor museum Skansen, and is broadcasted live. It's an honour to be asked to do the reading - for many years it was Swedish legendary actor Anders de Wahl, and the current reader is actor Jan Malmsjö. It's a tradition on many New Year's parties to turn on the tv and listen as the old year is rung out and the new one welcomed.

Published in 1850, the poem slightly predates the period for this blog, but as it was clearly read throughout the era, I thought it would be nice to share that tradition with you here by posting the original poem.

May its hope for the future be fulfilled for all of you in the new year!

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

 

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850