Robert

Robert is the imaginative, book-loving younger brother of Karl Oskar Nilsson, whose practical knowledge of farming stands in contrast to Robert’s daydreaming and curiosity. In the migration story, that difference shapes how Robert encounters both the material preparations for departure and the unfamiliar world of the sea. His perspective turns the crossing from a mere interval between Sweden and America into a changing landscape to be studied and, eventually, enjoyed.

Identity and Background

Robert belongs to the Nilsson household and joins the group emigrating from Ljuder Parish. The migrants do not share one reason for leaving: crop failure, religious persecution, dissent, personal difficulties, social exclusion, and unfair employment practices all contribute to the group’s departure. Robert’s own circumstances are part of this varied collective story, though the evidence here chiefly illuminates his temperament and his experience of the voyage.

His contrast with Karl Oskar is established through their differing habits of mind. Karl Oskar concentrates on practical details and farming; Robert is drawn to books and imaginative speculation. The difference is not simply a division between usefulness and idleness: aboard ship, Robert’s attentiveness makes the ocean a subject of continual discovery, and his concern with language anticipates the need to find work after arrival.

Emigration and Preparation

The voyage begins aboard the brig Charlotta, which sails from Karlshamn for New York on April 14, 1850. It carries seventy-eight emigrants alongside a crew of fifteen, making ninety-four people in all. The ship’s hold is crowded and divided into separate compartments for families, unmarried men, and unmarried women. With no room for Karl Oskar in the family space, he shares a two-man bunk with Robert in the men’s compartment; Jonas Petter sleeps above them, and Arvid has the neighboring bunk.

The brothers’ possessions are pressed into the same cramped shipboard arrangements as everyone else’s. Robert’s fishing equipment—poles, lines, and hooks—is packed in the America chest and stored below the main hold, so he cannot reach it when porpoises swim beside the ship. The lost opportunity is small but revealing: he watches closely, responds imaginatively, and notices what his practical equipment would have allowed him to do.

The emigrants must also learn to live within rules set by the ship’s officers. Food is issued in weekly portions, with one person per family responsible for collecting it; passengers must take turns using the galley and dispose of refuse overboard on the leeward side. They receive only half a gallon of fresh water per person each day and must clean the hold before water is distributed. Robert’s passage is thus shaped not just by distance but by regulated access to food, water, space, and daily routines.

Learning the Sea

Robert’s response to the ocean changes over the course of the crossing. During the first storm, fear of dying at sea keeps him awake in his bunk. He later grows ashamed of that fear and becomes accustomed to the ship and its dangers. By the latter part of the voyage, he can go to bed without imagining that he will drown overnight, and he has begun to like the sea just as the emigrants approach land.

Where other passengers find the sea monotonous and dispiriting, Robert sees it as a landscape that never holds still. In a storm it becomes a succession of moving hills; in calm sunshine it seems like blue and golden silk; by moonlight, its bright paths suggest a way for angels to cross the water. On shore, a hill remains where it is and looks much the same on each visit; at sea, the view is continually remade. His images extend his established imaginative nature while recording a real change: the sea that first frightened him becomes an object of pleasure, and its impending disappearance from his life gives the approach to shore a note of separation.

Work and Arrival

Robert’s practical preparation for America takes the form of language study. He and Elin reach the textbook chapter on seeking employment because both expect to have to earn a living as soon as they arrive. The book supplies names for many trades, but Robert passes over occupations he cannot perform and settles on a single sentence that matches his experience: “I am used to farm work.” He has worked only as a farmhand, and he practices the words slowly, learning to pronounce them as they are spelled. His study is limited by what he can actually offer, but it is also directed toward an immediate need: explaining his labor to a prospective employer.

Near the end of the crossing, Arvid wakes Robert with the news that America has been sighted. Robert hurries onto deck, where the passengers stand in expectation as the ship enters a broad river mouth or bay. Dawn mist partly veils the land, and its fertility and character remain unknown; what matters to the emigrants is that they have reached the American shore. The sight of green ground soon strengthens the exhausted passengers, many of whom have been weakened by scurvy and ship fever. Robert’s arrival is therefore part of a collective reversal: after prolonged confinement and illness, the land offers renewed energy and the possibility of beginning the work for which he has been preparing.