№ VI
1925 · Novella
The Ring of Lowenskiold
A gold ring. A broken grave. A ghost who will not rest.
Selma Lagerlöf
When General Benedict Lowenskiold of Hedeby dies, he is buried with the ring given to him by King Charles XII — the one thing he prized above all else. Within months, a peasant couple have broken open the tomb and stolen it. What follows is swift and merciless: the family loses everything, is driven into the wilderness, and the General begins to walk at night.
The ring moves through the world leaving ruin behind it — through confession and concealment, false accusation and judicial murder. Thirty years on, a woman named Marit Ericson, who lost three of her own to the Lowenskiold family’s thirst for revenge, finds the ring sewn into a dead man’s cap. She sees her chance. She sews it into the cap of young Adrian Lowenskiold, and sends the curse home to Hedeby.
It falls to Malvina Spaak — a young housekeeper, terrified of ghosts but steadier than anyone knows — to untangle what generations of pride and cruelty have knotted. She is the only one who understands that the General does not want blood. He wants his ring back.
Selma Lagerlöf — the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) — was at the height of her powers when she wrote this trilogy. The Ring of Lowenskiold is the first of three novellas, first published in 1925. Set in the forests and estates of Värmland, it moves with the assurance of a folk tale and the moral precision of a great novelist. This translation renders Lagerlöf’s voice — intimate, ironic, and unerring — in modern English.
Translated from the Swedish · New edition, 2025
ISBN 9789188363817
