Selma Lagerlöf - Dödskallen

Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf died 16 March 1940 and therefore I thought it fitting to read one of her short stories today. She wrote quite a few of those, but I chose the one Dödskallen (The skull) just because it fit well for someone's death day.

The short story was originally published under the title En underlig julgäst (A strange christmas guest) in the anthology Julstämning in 1914 and it was also part of the anthology Troll och människor II from 1921 in which Lagerlöf emanated from traditional Swedish folklore.

I love Selma! She is definitely up there among my favourites and I absolutely adore the cover Novellix has chosen for Dödskallen. It is amazing!

Dödskallen is about grave digger and church guard Anders Öster who walks around trying to invite people to his home for christmas dinner. No one accepts the invitation however and as he walks past the churchyard he jokes a bit to himself that he should invite the ghosts instead. He then finds a human skull which he suppose he has disturbed from its grave while he dug another one (Something that probably has been pretty common.) and he decides to invite it for christmas.

As he comes home to his wife Bolla, he is miserable and angry and takes it all out on his wife. He even go so far that he tries shooting her just because she refuses to let him eat in the big hall in the parish house where the parish counsel had its meetings. He justifies this with saying that now he had humbled her and she would know her place. He, however, feels somewhat lonely, so he walks out and brings home the skull he had found before to keep him company.

In the mean time Bolla flees to their neighbours who try comforting her and she sits down to have christmas dinner with them, thinking she can never go back to her husband and while he thinks he has just shown her who is the boss, she thinks that he must hate her. Suddenly Anders arrives looking all scared and Bolla decides to go back with him. It turns out the skull belonged to someone who has been shot making him realise what he has actually tried doing to his wife.

To be honest this sort of twist to the story was rather surprising. I felt sure it was going to turn out that he had really invited the dead to his christmas party and that he would end up scared because the skull came to life.  It was short and rather easy to read and gave you a feeling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. This twist made it feel refreshing and the fact that Anders realises he is the one who have misbehaved towards his wife is making the ending much more hopeful.