Book Three — The Big Log
At dusk, two young lovers stand in the road. Ingmar has brought a big log down from the forest — so heavy the horse could barely pull it. It is the first timber toward the house he means to build for him and Gertrude. The first. He has been at it five years.
Summary
At dusk, Ingmar drives a big log down from the forest and halts in front of the school. Gertrude comes out to look. She cannot say enough in praise of it — how long and thick and straight, what fine timber. Ingmar tells her how long it lay drying in the forest, where it was felled, how heavy it was to haul.
"But, Ingmar," she says, "it is only the first." Five years of effort have produced one log toward the house he means to build. Gertrude is slightly uneasy at this pace, but Ingmar seems confident. Difficulties can be overcome; he will get more; the house will be built.
The scene is brief. Lagerlöf gives it less than twenty paragraphs. Its weight comes from what the reader knows and the characters do not yet: that Karin has decided, and the auction of the Ingmar Farm is approaching, and Ingmar will not have a farm to build on or a marriage to build for. The log stands in the road. They look at it together.
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- And They Saw Heaven OpenThe Dal River floods in spring. The mission house is newly built. Something extraordinary happens there that the parish cannot...
- Karin, Daughter Of IngmarKarin Ingmarsson returns to the valley after her disastrous marriage to Elof Ersson, who deliberately ruined them before dying....
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- The Wild HuntIngmar, penniless after Elof's ruin, returns to the schoolmaster's as a student. He and Gertrude grow close in the careful...
- HellgumKarin collapses after a dream-visitation from the dead Elof. Seeking explanation at the mission house, she encounters Hellgum. Her...
- The New WayIngmar returns from winter in the forest to find Karin fully converted to Hellgumism. She urges him to join. He cannot find a...
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- Unity, UnitySurvivors of the L'Univers sinking. A woman hears the noise of catastrophe as an answer from God. A Norwegian ship finds bodies....
- Hellgum's LetterOld Eva Gunnersdotter, the most zealous of Hellgum's converts, walks to a meeting at the Ingmar Farm remembering when the movement...
- The Big LogIngmar brings down the first log toward a new house he is building for himself and Gertrude. One log, five years in the making....
- The Ingmar FarmThe pastor struggles toward the Ingmar Farm in a blizzard, hampered by a drift that has banked in the same place for generations...
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- The AuctionThe Ingmar Farm is auctioned. Mother Stina walks there through the flowering May countryside, picking wildflowers and thinking the...
- GertrudeGertrude cannot bear to see Ingmar after his marriage to Brita. Lagerlöf follows her fear through its daily mechanics — the...
- The Dean's WidowThe authorities try to stop the departure with practical arguments. The Hellgumists have an answer for each one. An ancient dean's...
- The Departure Of The PilgrimsThe pilgrims' wagons leave the Ingmar Farm on a July morning. The most moving moment comes not from the pilgrims themselves but...