May 1850

May 1850 marks the Charlotta’s prolonged passage between departure and arrival. Five weeks after the emigrants put to sea, the month of flowers reaches the land they have left, but offers them no blossoms on the ocean: its seasons are difficult to read, its horizon repeats itself, and contrary winds make the new home seem immeasurably far away. The month turns migration from a decision into a material ordeal, governed by weather, rationing, crowding, and the passengers’ continuing attachment to land.

A crossing begun in spring

The departure had been planned around the agricultural calendar. Karl Oskar reasoned that an early-April voyage would follow the winter storms and allow the emigrants to reach their destination in time to till and sow for a fall harvest. He and Robert secured passage for six people aboard the Charlotta, sending a hundred daler as a down payment; the merchant brig was to sail directly from Karlshamn to New York. The crossing therefore began with spring as both a season and a practical deadline: the travelers hoped not merely to reach another continent, but to arrive in time to work its soil.

The Charlotta sailed from Karlshamn on April 14, 1850. She carried pig iron and miscellaneous goods as well as seventy-eight emigrants, bringing the number aboard to ninety-four, crew included. May found this group well into a voyage whose duration depended on winds and currents rather than on the travelers’ plans. The delay would make the hoped-for sequence—cross, arrive, plant, harvest—feel increasingly uncertain.

The season without blossoms

After five weeks at sea, the emigrants could recognize spring by a mild wind, but not by what they saw. The ocean offered no plants to mark sowing or harvest, and its surface gave no reliable account of the season. A gray sea beneath a cold northerly wind could suggest winter; blue, calm water recalled the small tarns at home and suggested summer. Neither appearance could reassure them that May had truly arrived.

The passengers inhaled balmy air and wondered whether it had passed over their own fields and meadows. Their thoughts returned to the work that the spring season demanded: whether the oats had been sown, the potato ground prepared, the sheep pens cleaned, and the cattle released to pasture. The air connected them imaginatively to home, while the empty horizon denied them its visible signs. Their spring was being spent at sea, and the home they had left remained easier to remember than the future home they sought.

The contrast gives May its particular emotional force. At home, the hills would have been bright with familiar spring flowers; aboard the ship, blue-green waves replaced the blossoming landscape. The emigrants had left cultivated fields for the prospect of wilderness, yet the sea between them contained no land to cultivate and no seasonal work through which they could measure time. The novel presents them as a sailing caravan crossing a barren water-desert: for these people of the soil, the ocean was passage, not a destination or a way of life.

The ship as a confined world

The crossing’s physical conditions sharpened the distance between expectation and experience. In the hold, canvas divided the passengers into three crowded compartments. The low overhead and thick air enclosed bunks, mattresses, straw, baskets, food, tubs, and bundles until scarcely any floor remained for people to move across. With no room in the family pen, Karl Oskar shared a two-man bunk with Robert in the unmarried men’s compartment; Jonas Petter slept above them, and Arvid was nearby. The brothers’ sleeping arrangements made the ship’s organization part of ordinary family life, not simply a backdrop to the voyage.

The passengers’ daily routines were governed by limited supplies and the ship’s authority. Provisions were issued as weekly portions of unprepared food, which families had to make last until the next allotment. Passengers took turns using the galley and were expected to dispose of refuse over the leeward side. Each person received half a gallon of fresh water a day for drinking, washing, and cooking, while the hold had to be cleaned before water was distributed. After nights of seasickness and soiled bedding, men carried water and women scrubbed, washed, and hung wet clothes on deck. The restriction that first seemed an arbitrary hardship became legible as the consequence of a finite supply aboard a vessel that might remain at sea for months.

Contrary winds and suspended arrival

The wind was mostly westerly and against the ship. By May, the emigrants had spent five weeks at sea, measuring distance less in miles than in the long succession of days since their departure. Their homeland seemed incalculably remote, but America did too. Winds, currents, fog, and waves impeded the Charlotta, and passengers grew suspicious that they had been misled about how far away North America was. Some longed simply to stand once more on firm ground and resolved not to entrust themselves to the sea again.

This uncertainty reverses the freedom suggested by departure. On the road out of the parish, Robert had counted gates along the America road, turning each threshold into a marker of forward movement. At sea, however, the emigrants could not tell whether they were advancing: the same water seemed to surround them day after day, while the contrary wind came from the very land they hoped to reach. May thus holds the voyage between two homes, converting spring’s promise of renewal into a season experienced without flowers, fields, or certainty of arrival.