“There is no power but of God”
The Emigrants“There is no power but of God” is a scriptural claim that characters use to explain authority as ordained by God. It links the parish’s civil and religious hierarchy to household discipline, while the later voyage tests how far providence can explain suffering and human responsibility.
Authority in the Parish
In the 1840s, the dean, Enok Brusander, and the sheriff, Sheriff Lönnegren, represented spiritual and worldly authority in Ljuder; Lieutenant Sir Paul Rudeborg and Per Persson completed the four-man governing group. The narrative explicitly grounds their offices in Romans 13: “. . . For there is no power but of God. . . .” The verse makes the parish’s established order appear not merely customary but divinely sanctioned.
The same logic shapes religious instruction. Under the 1686 church law, clergy were to teach children to read so that they could see God’s laws for themselves, while the royal order of January 12, 1726, was presented as protecting Christian unity and good order against dangerous new ideas. Reading, examinations in Luther’s Little Catechism, and the expectation that unmarried parishioners attend their examination made religious teaching part of everyday discipline.
The Lesson Passed Between Servants
Robert repeats the doctrine to Arvid as a lesson about parents and masters. He explains that those placed over people at home, in the state, at school, and at work hold power by God’s ordinance, then recites the biblical teaching that every soul should be subject to the higher powers. He identifies Oskar I, king of Sweden and Norway, as the first master from whom other authority derives. After rehearsing the hierarchy, Arvid can name all seven superiors Robert has taught him.
The scene gives the doctrine a social life beyond church and law: a young farm servant teaches another servant to understand their own subordination through religious language. Robert’s confident recitation impresses Arvid, but the setting also makes the lesson concrete. Authority is not an abstraction; it reaches into the stable and the workplace, naming the powers that govern their lives.
Household Authority and Dissent
The doctrine’s reach into the home appears in Inga-Lena’s struggle to follow Danjel. After thieves take pork and flour from their unlocked larder, she quietly locks it again, believing she must ensure that the household has enough food. Yet she feels guilty because the biblical injunction that a wife submit to her husband seems to require obedience to Danjel. Her conflict is not simply over a lock: it is between practical responsibility for the family and a religiously framed hierarchy of marital authority. When she experiences religious rebirth, she comes to believe that Danjel is right in spiritual matters, and their marriage is restored.
Danjel’s practice, however, also brings him into conflict with the established church and worldly authorities. He resumes Åke’s teachings, welcomes visitors to Sunday Bible talks, prays while working, and treats his possessions as gifts to share with poorer brethren. He opens his household to people others despise and holds Communion outside the church, insisting through his practice that Christ’s table may be wherever Christ is present. The dissenters understand themselves as redeemed through faith, yet their separation from the church’s altar makes visible the boundary between their spiritual convictions and institutional authority.
Providence, Suffering, and Responsibility
Other episodes complicate the assurance that events follow God’s will. Nils Jakob’s Son accepts his broken hip as preordained: he believes God had determined that a stone would roll back into its hole, causing his fall. Rather than question the Creator, he lives with the injury and continues working with his hands. Kristina likewise sees a chain of providence in her life, tracing her marriage and children back to the childhood fall from a swing that led her to seek treatment in Idemo and meet Karl Oskar.
At sea, Danjel turns to the ninety-third Psalm during a storm and regains confidence that God is present aboard the ship. He tells frightened passengers that the storm is a trial of faith and reads the Gospel account of Christ stilling the waves. Yet the sick passengers remain absorbed in their pain; the ancient biblical storm does not relieve the immediate one. The episode preserves Danjel’s faith while showing the distance between scriptural assurance and bodily suffering.
That distance sharpens into moral reckoning for Karl Oskar. He had persuaded Kristina and the children to emigrate and had accepted responsibility for the decision. When Kristina lies ill, he recognizes that his choice brought his family onto this voyage and feels regret. The recurring language of divinely ordained power thus does not erase human agency: the novel places inherited teachings about providence beside the consequences people must own.
