CHILDREN OF THEIR CITY

Author: Per Anders Fogelström
Year: 1962
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Language: Swedish

The second book in Per Anders Fogelström’s epic tale about the people of Stockholm, “Barn av sin stad” (“Children of Their City”) shifts its focus to the children of Henning Nilsson, the protagonist of the first volume of this timeless saga (see my review from August 2024). After his untimely death, a cruelty all too often meted out by fate to the people of the 19^th century, his widow Lotten steps in to shoulder his mantle, taking upon herself the heavy burden of keeping the household clean, clothes mended, and food served while also working long hours as a washerwoman, like her mother before her, eternally bending beneath the dirt of others.  

The city, once a pastoral farmland gracing the slopes of the Brunkeberg ridge, is slowly changing as new buildings sprout from the soil claiming dominion over territory not long ago commanded by the plough. Yet, it is not merely the landscape that shifts. Society itself is caught in the winds of change. The many large and small industries and production facilities, as well as the booming trade with buyers and sellers from near and far, attract masses of unskilled labour who pour into the city in search of a brighter destiny, much like Henning had done 20 years prior to the events in this book.  The city, in all its glory and allure, remains cold and relentless to the newcomers as well as their offspring. Housing is scarce and expensive, work is hard, wages are kept low by the constant inflow of labour. The dreams held by men and women such as Henning and Lotten are quickly shattered by the reality of the city as it appears to exchange their rustic chains for urban shackles, equally crushing but far more insidious. No wonder then that the trade unions, that only began to form in the first novel, by the last decades of the 19^th century begin to gain momentum as they challenge the suffocating weight of an industrial beast that, until now, had cared little for the crushed souls left in its wake.

“The want grew and fed the hatred”

For Henning’s now fatherless family, the poverty is of a different kind than it was for him when he first arrived to Stockholm in the 1860s. Their hardship, though still palpable, is softened by the warmth of companionship. Unlike Henning, who had entered the city as a stranger, forced to forge his own fragile connections, his widow Lotten and their children have each other, as well as a network of friends and acquaintances she and Henning had painstakingly woven over the years. Moreover, they possess something Henning could scarcely have dreamt of in his early days: a house, their own home, modest yet solid, a refuge in a city of shifting fortunes. While Henning had once rented a mattress on the floor of a violent and unpredictable coalman, his family now have the means to offer a room as landlords to others less fortunate. One of their tenants is Bärta, who by lack of character rather than premeditated malice, will in time prove to have a profound impact on the family.

One cannot help but be dazzled by Fogelström’s exquisite command of the history, politics, and geography of 19^th century Stockholm. He masterfully incorporates global, national, and local events into his narrative. At times, these events exercise great influence on his characters’ development; at others, the glide by in the background like clouds in the sky, visible but inconsequential. Reading Fogelström is like being transported back in time. Every alley is historically correct, every event perfectly fitted into the story. As a reader, I trust Fogelström to get every shadow right and the weather report on any particular day to be accurate.

Consequently, Fogelström’s account of the wretchedness that stalks the impoverished is imbued with a chilling authenticity. The prostitution, the crime, and the violence; these are not the aberrations of a select few, but the inevitable companions of destitution in any community. In present-day Sweden, where organised crime casts its bleak shadow ever further over the underprivileged segments of society, typically populated by first- and second-generation immigrants, and gradually spreading its tentacles into every corner of civil society, it is all too convenient for some to attribute this ruin to migration. I would urge anyone who clings to this childish illusion to read "Barn av sin stad" as a necessary corrective. There, within its pages, one will find that the thieves, the rapists, the con artists, and even the murderers are not foreign to this soil. They are blonde, Swedish, and irredeemably poor. Poverty, it seems, is an alchemist that turns human beings into the basest versions of themselves, regardless of their origin. And though the narrative offers moments where happiness dares to flicker and respite from the relentless drudgery briefly graces these lives, it is never long before the misery of want reappears, omnipresent, a constant reminder of the abyss that lies beneath.

“To smile is to open ajar for a moment the hardened shell of everyday existence – and is there anything but tears inside?”  

All quotes are my own translations from the Swedish original and are not from the printed translation by Jennifer Brown Bäverstam.