Book Two — And They Saw Heaven Open
A great thaw floods the Dal River. Among the objects drifting past are washing piers, bathhouses, and boats. The children watch. Then something stranger happens at the mission house.
Summary
Spring brings a great thaw and the Dal River rises to an alarming height. Water comes from everywhere: rain, snowmelt, tributaries. The children run to the banks to watch the river carry past washing piers, bathhouses, boats, the wreckage of bridges. The grown folk are slower to pay attention, and then they cannot look away.
The flood serves as a frame for the chapter's real event: a gathering at the schoolmaster's new mission house, where something visionary occurs. Lagerlöf renders it with characteristic restraint — she does not establish exactly what is seen or heard, only that the parish is afterwards unable to account for it in ordinary terms. It is not a conversion scene; it is a loosening of the certainty that nothing unusual will happen here.
The chapter's effect is subtle. Nothing has changed on the surface — Storm is still Storm, the pastor is still the pastor. But the flood has shown that the river can carry things no one expected, and the mission house has shown that the same may be true of the community. Book Two has begun to move.
- Book OneFour generations of Ingmarssons on one Dalecarlian farm. Young Ingmar inherits the farm and the family method: when a hard...
- At The Schoolmaster'sThe schoolmaster Storm's household and the Dalecarlian parish before any religious movement reaches it. Conservative, Lutheran...
- 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....
- In ZionStorm discovers that his authority in the parish is not sufficient to keep the Hellgum movement from taking hold. Lagerlöf is...
- 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...
- Loss Of L'UniversA French liner crossing the Atlantic in 1880. A sailor has a premonition. The ship sinks. Lagerlöf renders the disaster with...
- 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...
- Hoek Matts EricssonHoek Matts Ericsson walks the parish on a beautiful spring day, unable to stop admiring the crops and the calves. His son Gabriel...
- 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...