translations from Swedish

Midnatt (Midnight), painting by Anders Zorn (1891)

[Image source: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnatt_(m%C3%A5lning). The painting is in the Zorn Museum in Mora.]




Krus Erik Ersson, the parish cobbler, and his apprentice, Konstantin Karlsson, had sat the whole week and made shoes in the rectory, and now at nine o'clock on Saturday evening were on the way to their home, which was a long way off, on the edge of the parish.

It was autumn, and the sun had gone down long before, but that did not mean they walked in darkness, but through clear air and moonlight. It was as lovely as could be. The lake below the rectory lay mirror-bright, with a track of silver down the middle, and in the fields you could see dewdrops on every grass-stem, like white pearls in the moonlight. It was only when they had to pass through one of the groves of trees that it darkened around them. It wasn't particularly late in autumn, so the branches still had their leaves, and the tree-crowns spread out like a vault of the deepest black over their heads.

(Selma Lagerlöf, Tjänsteanden / The Spirit of Service, first published 1911)


Here's my completed translation:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/01/selma-lagerlof-attendant-spirit.html


Beredan väg för Herran!
Berg, sjunken, djup stån opp!
Han kommer, han som fjärran
Var sedd av fädrens hopp.
Rättfärdighetens förste,
Av Davids hus den störste.
Välsignad vare han,
Som kom i Herrens namn.

Prepare the way of the Lord!
Sink, ye mountains! And ye deeps, rise up!
He comes, who long since was
the foreseen hope of the fathers.
Foremost in righteousness,
of David's house the greatest.
Blessed be he who
comes in the name of the Lord.


(Frans Michael Franzén (1772 - 1847). First verse of a carol sung at the Sankta Lucia service in St Paul's Cathedral last December.)

Dance in Gopsmor, painting by Anders Zorn (1906)

[Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Zorn#/media/File:%22Dance_in_Gopsmor%22_by_Anders_Zorn.jpg.]