The father made a neat little bowl of ash wood for the baptismal water. The christening robe Kristina sewed from leftover pieces of her bridal petticoat, which she washed and starched in potato water until it shone. A child should wear a snow-white robe when the Saviour received him at baptism.
They had never before had a christening performed at home, and now they felt as though they were going to church in their own house. They dressed themselves in their best clothes. The floor was swept and the cabin put in order. They could not afford a feast this time; no guests were invited except the officiant and the godmother. Besides, it was difficult now in the middle of the winter to get from one house to another. This time they would have only a simple christening ale; the important thing was that the child be baptized according to the clear Lutheran confession.
And on New Year’s Eve in late afternoon the christening took place in the log house. Parents, christening officiant, and godmother stood gathered around the new table, on which was spread their only linen cloth, brought from their old home. Before the holy act Kristina had given the breast to the baby; she held him a long while and let him suck out every drop of milk she had so that he would keep silent while receiving the Sacrament. He was now satisfied and content as she handed him to the godmother, and he lay goodnaturedly in Ulrika’s comfortable arms.
Ulrika herself realized fully the importance of her function here; she stood solemn and silent and let Danjel do the talking today.
Kristina had asked her uncle to perform the christening word for word as it was printed in the psalmbook on the page About Baptism. And Danjel did as he had been asked to do — he used only the printed words of the book, not a single one of his own. He read Our Father and the Christian doctrine into which the child was to be baptized, he read every one of the Tenets of the Faith, from beginning to end. And with his hand laid gently on the little one’s head, he asked according to the book: “Child! Do you wish to be baptized in this faith?”
The babe in Ulrika’s arms was so filled with his mother’s milk that part of his last meal began to run out of his mouth in little runnels. Down his chin it dripped — he spluttered all over his godmother’s blouse. And to the officiant’s question he answered only with a satisfied belching.
But Ulrika answered for the baby in the psalmbook’s own words, which she had learned by heart in advance: Yes, he wanted to be baptized in this faith! Then Danjel Andreasson picked up the boy from the godmother, three times he dipped his hand into the water in the wooden bowl and sprinkled it over the downy head: He was baptizing a human soul in the name of the Holy Trinity.
The child suddenly began to yell, annoyed at this wetting, even though Kristina had been careful to warm the water so it would be neither too hot nor too cold for his delicate scalp. But Ulrika, with motherly care, stuck her thumb into the baby’s mouth and the little one sucked and kept his silence.
According to the ritual, Danjel now turned to Ulrika: In case of the parents’ inability or absence, it was the godmother’s duty to watch over the child, to see that it faithfully kept the promise it had today given in baptism. And she answered her “Yes” in a loud voice and promised to obey all God asked of her. And the parents observed all was performed to the very last word as was written in the psalmbook. Everything at this baptism was done right.
Thus the christening was accomplished: the pure Evangelical-Lutheran Church had one more adherent in the St. Croix Valley.
The budding American citizen in the settlement on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had been given the name Nils Oskar Danjel. He was to be called Danjel. He had one name from his father, one from his grandfather, and one from the man who had baptized him. All three were good Swedish names. Ulrika had wished to add a fourth, an American name, because he was born in America; but the parents thought they would wait to use such a name until they had another child to christen. The boy, after all, had had his beginning in Sweden.
After the Sacrament was over, the godmother prayed a silent prayer to the Lord of Heaven for her foster son: Would the Almighty ever keep His hands over him, so that no disadvantage might come to him and no evil befall him, even though he was begotten in Sweden.
So ended the year of our Lord 1850. It had been the most unusual year yet in the lives of the immigrants.
— 3—
The new year 1851 opened with blizzards, followed by heavy snowfalls over the Territory. The snow piled so high around the cabin that they could not see through the windows; it reached to the eaves. Karl Oskar Nilsson’s log cabin lay there at the edge of the forest like a tall snowdrift, little resembling a human habitation. Inside, the cabin’s owners lived as in a mine, deep in the ground.
They had heard the story of one settler who had hung his cabin door swinging outward; after a heavy snowfall he had been unable to open it; for three weeks he had been locked inside his house and had almost starved to death before the snow melted and he managed to get out. At home all entrance doors swung inward; the locked-in settler could not have been a Swede.
After the heavy snowfall the men had a new chore — to shovel the snow from the door, make paths to the shanty, the lake, the water hole at the brook. They also cleared away the snow from the windows, but the tall drifts against the walls were left undisturbed, as they were a protection against winds and helped to keep the warmth inside.
After the blizzards followed a time of even, strong winter. The air was crystal clear and like hoarfrost to breathe. The cold dug and tore with its sharp frost claws; the hard snow crust, strong enough to carry full-grown men on its glittering back, now made the wilderness easily accessible. During the stillness of the nights, cracking sounds could be heard as the frost sharpened under a starlit sky.
They must ever be on guard against freezing to death. In the cabin the fire was kept alive day and night. If the embers should die down for a few hours toward morning they would feel the cold when awakening. The children were not very anxious to crawl out of their beds until the fire was burning brightly. All of them — big and little — huddled around the hearth with its blessed fire.
Outside, all animals had sought invisible hideouts. The lake birds had long ago disappeared, and so had the rabbits, the squirrels, and the gophers. The crickets no longer drove their ungreased wagon wheels; the screechhopper had been heard in the grass until late in November but now it was silenced. And the settlers at the lake wondered how any of the delicate forest creatures could survive such a winter, such unmerciful cold; here even able-bodied people found it hard to survive.
— 4—
The almanac had come to an end with the old year, and with it Swedish time had ended for the immigrants. They had no guide for days and weeks, nothing to indicate name days and holidays.
Now an idea came to Robert: He could take the old almanac for 1850 and from this figure the days of the new year. He could write a new almanac for the whole year 1851. In Sweden it was forbidden by law to use any almanac except the one printed and sold by the government, but North America had a friendly government; here people could live according to their own almanac, free from persecution or punishment. And once Robert had written one almanac he might make copies of it and sell them to other Swedes who might be equally lost in time.
Karl Oskar gave his brother a few sheets of paper which he had bought when he wrote the last letter to Sweden. Robert folded each sheet twice, cut it up and sewed the pages together into a small book about the size of the old almanac. Then he filled each page with his writing in ink; this work helped him while away the long winter evenings.