A woman's frustration and manifest determination to
overcome and rule those who would rule her.

Valkulla
___________
Chapter
Three

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Vallkulla
      The following day I went to see a man, Andrew…my cousin told me about, a sort of local historian.  He had been a teacher and spoke pretty good English.  Like the others, he found my antik Swedish interesting and wanted to spend some time with me to see whether I knew any (new) old dialect words, which had since been forgotten in the community; it seemed they were endeavoring to save the old dialect.  I promised to take some time with him, later, but for now, I needed to investigate something else.

      He was aware of "the story,” as he put it, of my illegitimate background (though he didn’t put it that way), but there was nothing written about it, he said.  It seemed the shameful occurrences are passed on, verbally.
      “The only place you might find something written will be in the church books,” he said.
      “What are church books?”
      “They are the journals in the church…they go back hundreds of years, if the church didn’t burn down and the records with them.  These will have the church history of your family…the birth of your grandmother, recorded and anything significant that happened, related to religion, while she lived…in Sweden.”
      “How do I see these records?”
      “I can take you.  They are very hard to read, even for me, but maybe not for you, with your older language skills.

      That afternoon we went to the church archive, an unheated room with several of these old tomes stacked in an old cupboard.  The yellowed pages crackled when we opened the books and they were smudged and dirty from much handling.
      “You should make photostatted copies of these,” I remarked, “and put them somewhere else where they’ll be safe.”
      “Yes, we are doing that…all over Sweden; to preserve our history.  They go down to the universities.”
      We spent the afternoon pouring through my history as recorded by the Swedish Lutheran Church.  There wasn’t much of interest regarding the birth, just the date.  But, as I began to examine the “line” on the father’s side, I found something different.
      “Look at these, Andrew...for my great-grandmother Anna-Stina Malmberg.  She had…two, no, three illegitimate children…before she married my great-grandfather?”
       “Let me see…yes, you are correct.  That is certainly strange…let’s see, she came here from…Nås; that is just south of here, down the river.  This is very strange, you know, you may wish to go to the Nås church and look at their record books.  There will be more information there.  It was quite unusual in those days to go so long…having these children, without the church…saying something, trying to force her to wed one of the fathers, if in fact, they were different.  Your great-grandfather, who she did marry, was very influential in the community at the time, fairly wealthy in comparison, as a farmer, in those days.  It is not something the church would have tolerated for long.  He may have been the father of these others, too.  Yes, very interesting.”

      I had been taking copious notes all the while we poured over the books.  I had the feeling I may have accidentally uncovered another scandal in my family and right in front of the local historian.  He was sure to document it.
      “If you like, I could go to the church in Nås…maybe tomorrow and look into this further.  I will advise you of what I find.  How much longer are you staying?”
      “I don’t really have a return date, yet, so probably anytime during the week.”

      True to his word, in three days he telephoned me at my cousins, asking that I stop at his house the following afternoon.  His parlor was filled with similar antiques to my cousin’s, something to be expected from a historian.  He had taken the time to neatly document the family’s history from the Nås church records.  He seemed excited and anxious to explain them to me.

      “It was very interesting,” he related, opening the first sheet.  “When your Anna-Stina moved to Jãrna she had no children, remember…from the books we looked at in Jãrna church?”
      “Yes…and two were recorded there.”
      “Correct.  But she did have children.  There were two births recorded in the Nås books.  It is quite unusual that the record did not follow, when she moved.  You see, it was the law…the church law, that a parishioner’s history follow them to the new church, so the community could know something of this new person.”
      This fact about the authorities in the church didn’t surprise me.
      “This is very unusual.  In fact, the second child has disappeared completely…no record at all, as if he dropped from the earth.”
      “Could he have died?”
      “Yes, certainly.  But those events are never missed.  It is the same for adoption, of if he remained…or moved, later.  Most unusual.  The priest…you call them pastors, I believe…the pastor at the church was quite meticulous about things of this sort; he would not have missed it by accident.  Let me show you what he wrote…with the birth of her first child Anna…he wrote..."
      He put one finger on the page andread: "…and who is the father of this one, I wonder.  But, there is nothing about the second, a boy name of…Per Gustaf.  Gone.  Vanished.  Very unusual.”
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