Öland is the island home of Måns Jakob and Fina-Kajsa, an elderly couple who leave their farm to join their son in America. Through their passage aboard the Charlotta, the island enters the emigrant story not as a destination but as a remembered home carried across the ocean in family bonds, inherited habits, and a grindstone intended for a son’s farm.

The island and the emigrant group

The novel presents emigration as a movement that begins in settled communities where land is scarce and families grow. News of fertile American soil travels from neighbor to neighbor, unsettling customs formed over generations. For the couple from Öland, the decision is bound to their son’s invitation and his promise of a homestead in Minnesota; theirs is one distinct motive within a larger company whose members leave for different reasons.

At Åkerby Junction, the couple joins the emigrants bound for Karlshamn. The group numbers sixteen passengers—nine adults and seven children—while three drivers are to return from the port. Måns Jakob and Fina-Kajsa travel among the Kärragärde household and other families, making the migration a shared undertaking rather than a solitary departure from the island.

What the couple carries from Öland

Aboard ship, the couple’s belongings mark their rural origins. They have a homemade knapsack of old sailcloth and wood, constructed differently from the sewn knapsacks of the Småland farmers. The account notes that Måns Jakob and Fina-Kajsa carry more Swedish earth than the other passengers, linking their migration to the soil they are leaving behind even as they hope to settle on fertile land elsewhere.

Måns Jakob’s most important possession is a grindstone he is taking to his son. He fears it will break in the hold and wonders whether onward freight in America will be too expensive. The son has written that American grindstones are costly and poor for sharpening axes, so the old farmer’s attention remains fixed on ensuring that this useful object reaches its destination. Its safe arrival seems to matter to him at least as much as his own.

Minnesota as promise and uncertainty

The couple’s son has taken a hundred acres in Minnesota and describes its topsoil as deeper than that at home. In his letters, the region appears as an extensive, fertile plain where farmers from Småland and Öland could each have farms. He also portrays the climate as healthy and comparable to Sweden’s, though he warns that emigrants die in other parts of America where the climate is harmful.

These reports influence Karl Oskar Nilsson, who is trying to decide where his own family might settle after reaching New York. He asks Måns Jakob about the land, then turns to Robert Nilsson for information. Robert cannot find Minnesota in his description book and is unsure whether it is a state or part of the wilderness near the upper Mississippi. The island couple’s family news therefore supplies practical migration information, but it does not eliminate the uncertainty surrounding the destination.

Age, illness, and the cost of departure

The couple’s journey is shadowed by their age and frailty. Fina-Kajsa later reflects that people who have lived safely on land for more than sixty years might have been better off remaining there. She had wanted to stay on the farm, while Måns Jakob was persuaded by their son’s letters and the prospect of seeing his broad fields in North America. On the ship, both suffer from seasickness; Måns Jakob becomes especially ill, and even in delirium he worries that the grindstone has been broken.

Their experience gives the island a double meaning in the novel. It is the place of a familiar farm and the life the couple has left, but also the point of departure for a family reunion and a hoped-for future on new land. Their passage shows how migration’s promise is conveyed through practical details—an acreage, a climate described in a letter, a tool packed for a son—while the ocean crossing tests the travelers’ capacity to reach that future.