Robert’s fugitive status

Robert’s fugitive status is not simply a label for leaving service: it is the condition imposed on him when he refuses to return to Nybacken after Aron beats him, and the law gives his master power to pursue him. His hiding, fear of arrest, and dependence on family and neighbors reveal the coercion built into farm service; his eventual journey with the emigrants makes flight from Nybacken one strand in a broader departure from the limits of life in Ljuder Parish.

Service and the decision to flee

At Nybacken, Robert’s work reaches beyond the human household. As the youngest hired hand, he is sent about by Aron, the mistress, the old mistress, and the maids, while the farm’s four horses require feeding, currying, cleaning, and constant care. He rises early to fill their mangers, fetches oats and hay, cuts fodder, cleans stalls, and carries water. The animals are tied in their stalls, and the workers are bound to their care: a hired hand’s service year lasts 358 days, with only one free week. During Robert’s first week, he decides that he must escape all his masters, human and animal.

His refusal becomes an open break after a wagon accident. While bringing home rutabagas, Robert passes a narrow gate after a bend; the mare does not obey the reins quickly enough, the wagon strikes a gatepost, and its shaft breaks. Aron beats him repeatedly with a fence stake whose protruding knots tear his back. Robert’s ear still rings and buzzes from an earlier blow. He leaves for home the following morning, without permission, and tells Nils and Märta that he will never go back. His injuries make plain what is at stake in the flight: this is not an abstract rejection of employment, but a refusal to submit again to a master’s violence.

Law, family, and pursuit

Robert’s flight places his family between protection and legal jeopardy. Nils warns that a servant who has received earnest money is bound to stay through the year. Under the servant law, Aron can ask for Robert’s return; if Robert leaves without permission, he risks losing half his pay and having to cover the master’s expenses. Karl Oskar answers the family’s hesitation with a firm refusal to send his brother back, while Nils worries that an amicable settlement might prevent worse consequences.

The law also gives the sheriff an official means to enforce the master’s claim. When Sheriff Lönnegren comes to Korpamoen, he says Aron has requested help in bringing Robert back and cites the provision allowing a master to correct a servant with suitable chastisement. In the law’s account, the beating is supposed to improve the hired hand, who should accept it submissively; it does not justify desertion. Lönnegren then unfolds a stamped paper and invokes the servant law and land code to demand that Karl Oskar disclose Robert’s whereabouts. Robert’s injured body and the sheriff’s legal document thus stand against one another: the beating is treated as a master’s right, while the servant’s escape is treated as an offense.

Karl Oskar refuses to give up his brother, but the refuge at home cannot be secure. He advises Robert to hide in the woods if visitors come. When the sheriff’s carriage approaches, Robert drops his saw and disappears into the woodlot near the byre. Later he returns after hiding in Jonas Petter’s meadow barn, shivering in the night frost; Karl Oskar warms milk for him by the hearth. Understanding the sheriff’s warning to mean that Robert would be safe outside Lönnegren’s district, Karl Oskar proposes that he go to Duvemåla, where Kristina’s parents need help and where the parish lies beyond the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Robert agrees to set out early the next morning.

Shame, shelter, and the threat of despair

The prospect of escape does not immediately end Robert’s fear. He has stayed out of public since returning home, and the dean has preached against hired men who leave their masters, calling such servants disobedient to God’s ordinances and a disgrace to the Christian community. Robert feels disgraced and speaks to no one except Arvid, another farmhand who is ostracized for different reasons. The sermon extends the pressure beyond the legal claim: public religious denunciation makes Robert’s status visible even when he is not being actively pursued.

A month before departure, Jonas Petter warns the family that Lönnegren has been asking whether Robert has come home. Aron insists that his servant be returned and suspects Robert may escape to America when Karl Oskar leaves. Robert’s answer is desperate: rather than go back to Nybacken, he says he will go to the mill brook, and this time he will not leave only his jacket and shoes. The allusion to an earlier attempt at escape makes drowning seem to him a possible end to his situation. Jonas Petter offers a practical alternative, promising to hide him at Hästebäck if the sheriff comes. Karl Oskar urges Robert to dry his tears and go with Jonas Petter, turning a threat of self-destruction into a temporary plan for shelter.

From runaway servant to emigrant

Robert’s fugitive status shapes his place in the family’s emigration preparations. When Karl Oskar sells Korpamoen, Robert cannot safely approach the dean for the papers normally needed to leave the parish. Karl Oskar, by contrast, wants to depart openly and goes to Dean Brusander for his own household’s papers. Robert’s escape from service therefore affects not only where he can live but how publicly he can prepare to leave.

The migration plan gives his flight a route and a practical opening. Karl Oskar and Robert have arranged passage on the Charlotta from Karlshamn to New York, paying a hundred daler in advance for six people; when Danjel decides to join, Robert is to write for a passage contract if the ship has room. Later, as the emigrants gather at Åkerby Junction, Robert rides with Jonas Petter, seated between him and Elin. Arvid is there too. The two farmhands who had once imagined escaping Nybacken in secrecy are now traveling together toward the New World as members of a larger party. Robert’s flight has not erased the danger or shame attached to desertion, but it has carried him beyond the farm’s immediate control and into a collective journey.

Meaning and limits of the escape

Robert’s case gives specific human stakes to a system in which the hired worker’s time, movement, and discipline are controlled by the master, with the sheriff and servant law available to enforce that authority. The contrast is sharp: the law presents the beating as permissible correction, while Robert’s wounds show what obedience costs him. His decision to leave is met first by concealment, then by his family’s protection, a neighbor’s offer of shelter, and finally the possibility of emigration.

Escape does not make Robert’s departure easy or certain. The sheriff can still search for him, Aron can still demand his return, and the threat of public disgrace follows him into the weeks before sailing. Yet Robert’s status changes as his route widens: from Nybacken to the hiding places near Korpamoen, from refuge beyond the sheriff’s district to the emigrant wagons at Åkerby Junction, and onward aboard the Charlotta. His story makes the group’s departure more than a shared attraction to American land. As the novel’s account of emigration suggests, people leave for different reasons; in Robert’s case, the push is the immediate experience of violence and a labor system that offers no safe way to refuse it.