Karl Oskar leaves home to work as a farmhand

Karl Oskar leaves home to work as a farmhand at fourteen, turning a small disagreement with his father into a decisive break. The episode establishes a defining trait—independence expressed through action—and introduces the tension between personal judgment and the authority governing work and family life. His seven years in service also provide an early point of comparison for the labor constraints that later shape Robert’s experience and for the emigrants’ regulated existence at sea.

Background and the dispute

Karl Oskar is the first-born son of Nils and Märta, and grows up strong enough to help his father with building and stone breaking. Yet he does not simply follow instructions: even while eating his parents’ bread, he insists on working in his own way. Nils repeatedly becomes angry at this independent streak, and chastisement does not make his son more compliant.

The immediate dispute concerns a new hayrick. When Karl Oskar is fourteen, Nils asks him to make slats five feet long. Karl Oskar judges that this would leave the hayrick too low, so he makes the slats six feet instead. The disagreement is practical as well as personal: the boy trusts his own assessment of the work, while his father expects him to carry out the order as given.

Nils measures the slats and tells him, “Do as I tell you, or go!” Karl Oskar remains silent for a while, then answers, “I shall go.” The exchange makes the choice stark: obedience and continued residence, or departure. Rather than withdraw his decision, Karl Oskar accepts the consequence of his answer.

Departure and years in service

That same day, Karl Oskar hires himself out as a farmhand to a man in Idemo. He remains there for seven years. His father later regrets taking him at his word, since the boy had been a help at home, but Nils cannot simply retract the ultimatum. In the account’s description of the household rules, a boy who had not yet received Holy Communion could not rule his father in his work. Karl Oskar’s departure therefore follows not just a clash of temperaments but an accepted hierarchy in which parental authority governs the work of the household.

The decision begins a period of service, but the evidence does not present its details as a continuous account of Karl Oskar’s seven years. Elsewhere, farm service is shown through Robert’s experience at Nybacken: he is woken at four, receives tasks from multiple members of the household, and must tend horses as well as perform other chores. The general conditions described for hired hands include a service year of 358 days, with one free week. These details illuminate the labor system in which Karl Oskar’s choice placed him, without establishing that Robert’s particular treatment or duties were also Karl Oskar’s.

Authority, work, and the limits of choice

The episode anticipates the novel’s broader examination of how work and authority restrict people’s options. In Robert’s case, a master’s right to punish a servant is defended through the servant law and repeated in the dean’s yearly examinations. That later account gives a sharper institutional form to a hierarchy already present in Nils’s ultimatum: those who control work also claim authority to direct the worker. Karl Oskar’s departure is not a general escape from such constraints, but an early act of choosing one form of life over another.

The same contrast reappears at sea. After a week aboard ship, Robert judges that a farmhand on land had more freedom than a seaman: shipboard workers face dangerous tasks, confined quarters, and restrictions on movement. The ship’s mate likewise lays down weekly food allotments, cleaning duties, limits on water, and rules for using the galley. These scenes extend the book’s comparison of labor regimes; they do not describe Karl Oskar’s own service in Idemo, but they show why the distinction between choosing work and controlling one’s working conditions remains important.

Significance in Karl Oskar’s later choices

Karl Oskar’s adolescent departure foreshadows the larger decision he will later confront: whether to remain in Korpamoen or leave Sweden. As an adult, he argues that four years of work at the farm have made the household several hundred riksdaler poorer, and that continued toil offers no prospect of improving their position. His case for emigration grows out of material exhaustion and fear of ending in the reserved room with little to show for years of labor.

Kristina does not share his confidence in the destination. She asks what guarantees they have that land will be available in the United States, noting that they have no deed, no promise from its rulers, and no firsthand report from anyone they know who has been there. The contrast recalls the fourteen-year-old’s earlier willingness to act on his own judgment, but the later choice is more consequential: it involves his wife and children as well as himself, and it must be weighed against uncertainty, cost, and the risks of the voyage.

The family’s preparations make those costs concrete. After the sale of Korpamoen and its belongings, about 1,200 daler remain once debts are deducted; passage for three adults and three children costs 675 daler, leaving Karl Oskar with about 500 daler before fees and onward travel. He hopes to obtain land at little cost, but the remaining sum must also cover the means of establishing a farm. His youthful departure required only his own immediate decision; emigration requires him to place a household’s limited resources behind a future he cannot verify.

The fourteen-year-old’s answer thus serves as an early pattern rather than a simple rehearsal of the later choice. Karl Oskar will not accept another person’s judgment automatically, whether the matter is the height of a hayrick or the prospects of remaining at home. But the narrative also distinguishes independent resolve from certainty of outcome: the emigrants endure illness and privation during the crossing, even as the first sight of green American ground restores their energy and hope. His original departure marks the beginning of a life in which freedom is pursued through decisions made under constraint, and in which each act of self-direction carries practical consequences.