Kingdom of Sweden

The Swedish monarchy is named as an institution Moberg opposed, but it remains in the background of the novel’s more immediate encounters with authority. The story gives that power practical form through servant law, parish discipline, and the rules governing departure: institutions and officials claim obedience, while workers and dissenters try to protect their own choices.

Political Context

In describing Moberg’s public positions, the book notes his protests against blackmail and cover-ups in the Swedish police and legal system and his opposition to the continued existence of the Swedish monarchy. This places the monarchy within a broader criticism of institutional power. The account does not describe a confrontation with the crown in the characters’ lives; instead, the novel’s action turns toward the local mechanisms through which authority is exercised and resisted.

Authority in Daily Life

At Nybacken, Robert’s service is governed by a hierarchy that reaches into his working day and his understanding of himself. He is awakened at four in the morning and hurried to work by Aron of Nybacken, while the mistress, the old mistress, and the maids also direct his labor. The farm’s four horses require attention morning and evening, and Robert must curry them, clean their stalls, bring hay and oats, cut fodder, and carry water. His service year lasts 358 days, with only one free week. The animals are tied in their stalls, the narrative observes, just as the hired men are bound to them.

That subordination is sustained not only by the master’s commands but by a shared idea of what is lawful and deserved. After Aron strikes him, Robert keeps silent: he believes he has been lazy and has received the punishment he earned. The servant law, repeated at annual examinations by Dean Brusander, authorizes a master to correct a lazy servant through “suitable chastisement.” Robert therefore interprets the blow as rightful discipline rather than an injury he may contest. The episode shows authority working through internalized rules as well as physical force.

Religious and Legal Power

The same conflict over who may command appears in the interrogation of Danjel Andreasson. Dean Brusander insists that no one may minister without a call and ordination under church law, and orders Danjel to stop preaching. Danjel refuses to recognize the dean’s authority over his spiritual life. When Brusander warns that further preaching could bring a civil fine, bread and water in prison, and, after a third offense, two years’ exile, Danjel answers that no human authority can exile him from the kingdom of God. The exchange makes the limit of the dean’s power a matter of competing claims: church office and civil punishment on one side, conscience and religious conviction on the other.

Legal authority also reaches into family loyalty. When the sheriff seeks Robert, who has escaped from service, he invokes the servant law and land code to demand that Karl Oskar disclose his brother’s whereabouts. Karl Oskar refuses to accept that he is obliged to help apprehend his own brother and asks to see the legal paper establishing such a duty. The sheriff recognizes that Karl Oskar knows his rights, even as he maintains that enforcing the servant law is his duty. Their exchange exposes the tension between the law’s authority and the practical discretion of those charged with applying it.

Departure and Freedom

The possibility of emigration offers a different relation to authority. A person of good character may leave Sweden without petitioning the King, and even without an extract from the parish register. Robert, as a fugitive from service, cannot safely approach the dean for papers; Karl Oskar, by contrast, wants to leave openly and requests his documents from Dean Brusander. The contrast shows that departure is formally possible, but that a person’s legal and social position shapes how freely it can be pursued.

The novel further complicates any simple opposition between coercive service and freedom at sea. On the crossing, the mate allots each family a week’s provisions, limits fresh water to half a gallon per person each day, requires passengers to clean the hold, and insists that everyone obey the ship’s orders. After a week aboard, Robert sees that seamen, like farmhands, are bound to their work: sailors climb dangerous masts, sleep packed in the forecastle, and remain confined within the ship’s narrow space. The comparison does not erase the difference between leaving home and staying; it shows how authority over labor and movement can persist even after a person has crossed a national boundary. In this wider pattern, the monarchy stands as a political emblem of a system whose constraints are felt most concretely in the laws, work routines, and obligations governing ordinary lives.