Sale of Korpamoen

The sale of Korpamoen converts the Nilsson family’s decision to emigrate from an aspiration into a costly, practical departure. Karl Oskar accepts less than he paid for the farm, sells its cattle and belongings, and calculates that the family will reach America with only about five hundred daler after passage costs. Kristina sews that remaining money into a sheepskin bag for him to carry against his body: the household’s last security is reduced to something small enough to wear.

Causes and Stakes

For years, life at Korpamoen had produced the opposite of what Karl Oskar expected. He and Kristina worked to exhaustion, yet after three years the farm had one fewer cow and seventy riksdaler more debt than when he took it over. By the fourth year, they were several hundred riksdaler poorer than at the start. The failure was not for lack of labor: weather and the animals’ fortunes lay beyond their control, making work alone an unreliable route to security.

Karl Oskar imagined emigration as an escape from a future of continued toil and decline. If they remained, he feared, they would work until they were worn out and end in the reserved room set aside for his parents, with little to show for their labor. Kristina, however, could not treat the promised American land as a certainty. No deed awaited them, no authority had guaranteed them tillable soil, and they knew no one who had seen North America and could verify what they had read. Their departure thus began in a tension between the household’s deteriorating prospects at home and the untested promise of a new country.

The Sale and Its Costs

Karl Oskar sold the farm to a farmer from Linneryd, but had to lower his asking price by 150 daler. The imbalance was plain: the emigrating seller had to dispose of his property, while the prospective buyer had no obligation to buy. The cattle, sold at auction, fetched good prices because the famine year had left a shortage of animals. Yet the auctioneer, Per Persson, the churchwarden, retained a quarter of the proceeds in return for advancing the money. Karl Oskar accepted those harsh terms rather than remain at home for half a year collecting payments from the bidders.

After the farmstead belongings were auctioned, the house looked almost empty. Everything sold was carried away except the beds, which the family kept until departure so they would not have to sleep on the floor. This clearing-out made the sale more than a transfer of property: the objects that had made the household a home disappeared one by one, while the family remained among the few things still needed for its last days there.

Calculating the Crossing

Once the sale and auction proceeds had been reduced by the mortgage and other debts, Karl Oskar had 1,200 daler. Passage for the family—three adults and three children—would cost 675 daler, leaving about 500 daler before the American entrance fee and the cost of traveling onward to an unknown destination. He hoped to acquire land nearly free of charge, but the remaining sum would also have to cover farm implements and cattle. His parents were dismayed that almost half the amount needed to buy a farm would be spent on the voyage; to them, their son was throwing half a farm into the sea.

The crossing had already been arranged as part of a larger migration plan. Karl Oskar and Robert had written to a firm in Karlshamn and secured passage on the Charlotta, a merchant vessel carrying both cargo and emigrants. They paid a 100-daler down payment for six passengers; the intended spring departure was practical as well as seasonal, allowing time to reach the settlement and sow crops before winter. Robert agreed to obtain a passage contract for Danjel if the ship had room, extending the Nilssons’ plan into a collective movement.

Securing the Money and Leaving Together

Aware that the remaining 500 daler could be lost or stolen during the long journey, Karl Oskar asked Kristina to find a safe way to carry it. She sewed the money into a sheepskin bag that he could fasten to his belt next to his body. The detail concentrates the risks of the sale: the family had turned its farm and possessions into travel funds, and the money that might establish their next life had to be guarded through every stage of the passage.

At Åkerby Junction, the separate decisions had become a traveling party. Sixteen emigrants—nine adults and seven children—were to continue toward Karlshamn in wagons, after three drivers returned from the port. Danjel traveled with his wife, children, and Ulrika; Jonas Petter’s wagon carried Arvid and Elin, while Robert joined them from the Korpamoen wagon. The sale therefore opened a route not only for the Nilsson household but also for people whose reasons for leaving differed, gathering distinct pressures into one outward journey.

The financial risks remained visible after departure. The passengers endured storms, illness, and confinement aboard the Charlotta, and scurvy and ship fever weakened them before America came into view. When the shore finally appeared, the emigrants’ renewed energy did not erase the precariousness with which they had left: Korpamoen had been sold at a loss, much of the proceeds consumed by debt and transport, and their prospects in the new country were still uncertain. The sale stands at the hinge between the failing security of the farm and the dangerous possibility of beginning again.