April 21, 2023 at 11:16 a.m.
Friends of Karl Oskar House bring Moberg speaker to town
They were treated to fika— coffee and sweets— and a stringed instrument performance by the Nya Duvemala Folkmusiklag. The group plays periodically summers at the “Karl Oskar House” in Ki Chi Saga County Park.
The K.O. House Friends organization hosted the Saturday program.
The featured speaker, Gustavus Adolphus Professor Emeritus Roger McKnight, said Vilhelm Moberg didn’t truly embark on following his literary muse until he was in his 40’s. He came to America when a Stockholm publisher agreed to pay Moberg for a series of stories in 1948.
First thing everybody at the library program came to realize is we’ve all been saying Vilhelm Moberg’s name incorrectly. The Swedish pronunciation of Moberg calls for the second syllable to end like “air’ and an almost silent ‘g.’
McKnight noted some of the intersections between his own life and Moberg’s.
McKnight is part Scott and part Pennsylvania Dutch, and yet he found himself living in Sweden, having been chosen for a Fulbright scholar opportunity decades ago. Having heard about the North Star State while living in Sweden, McKnight moved to Minnesota eventually. He grew up in the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois. In this respect he and Moberg were similar, because Moberg also experienced culture shock arriving in Minnesota.
Moberg’s writings were about feeling the impacts of encountering a gun culture where few owned non-hunting firearms in Sweden. Moberg wrote of reeling from Minnesota’s excessive conservatism and religious fervor. Even the weather was too harsh for the Swede and certainly took some getting used to by a kid from Illinois.
Moberg wrote news articles as well as novels. He lectured at the Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.
McKnight said his impression studying Moberg was that he lived a life of angering ‘the authorities’ and railing against injustice suffered by those who work hard and never were allowed to profit.
Sweden had class issues and McKnight explained that Moberg had no love or loyalty for the royals. A full 90 percent of the nation’s wealth was in the hands of four percent of the population in Moberg’s time. Moberg would read of growing rich in America but was disappointed when the wealth was individual and this was not a society that prized the welfare of the whole.
The Friends of the Karl Oskar House have a spring grounds cleaning scheduled for Monday, May 8; if you want to get out and get some exercise raking and tidying the historic site, bring a tool, gloves and your water and show up about 10 a.m.
The site officially opens for the season May 21 1 to 4 p.m. The first music jam is June 4. See the website friendsofkarloskarhouse.org.
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