I remember Scandinavian delights

 
The Ring of the Lowenskolds****
by Selma Lagerlof

After reading Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" in my senior English class and scarfing up every Ibsen play I could get my hands on, my teacher, Mrs. Roberts, may she read forever in heaven, loaded me up with Scandinavian literature: Lagerkvist's "The Sybil," Hamsun's "Pan" and "Hunger," Haldor Laxness' "Paradise Reclaimed," and, of course, Sigrid Undset's magnificent trilology, "Kristen Lavransdatter."

I was amazed and delighted to discover that my grandmother had quite a collection of Scandinavian lit, and I spent half the summer before college lying on her dock in a lake in northern Michigan reading about outwardly stoic Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Icelanders whose souls were roiling with longing and passion. 

I reconnected with the grim pleasures of Scandinavian literature in a new translation of Selma Lagerlof's "The Lowenskold Ring." Read my review for Belletrista here. Perhaps it's time to pack up those books this summer and head again to the far north!

The painting is by the Icelandic artist J.S Kjarval.