The Lowenskold Ring

by Selma Lagerlof, Linda Schenck (Translator), Helena Forsas-Scott (Preface by)

Overview

The Löwensköld Ring (1925) is the first volume of the trilogy considered to have been Selma Lagerlöf's last work of prose fiction. Set in the Swedish province of Värmland in the eighteenth century, the narrative traces the consequences of the theft of General Löwensköld's ring from his coffin, and develops into a disturbing tale of revenge from beyond the grave. It is also a tale about decisive women. The narrative twists and the foregrounding of alternative interpretations confront the reader with a pervasive sense of ambiguity. Along with the narrative technique, the spell of the ring extends into the two subsequent volumes, Charlotte Löwensköld (1925) and Anna Svärd (1928).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781870041928
Publisher:	Norvik Press
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Series:	World of Discovery (Norvik Press)
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d)

Editorial Reviews

In payment for his participation in Charles XII of Sweden's campaigns of the Great Northern War, Bengt of Lowenskold was awarded the rank of major general and the gaudy ring of the title. In due course, ``Big Bengt'' is interred with his trinket, but barely is he in the grave when the ring is taken for ``safekeeping'' by a local farmer, thereby setting the stage for the Nobel laureate's 1925 novel of long-held grudges and revenge. The ring, of course, is accursed, bringing the dead general's wrath upon both guilty and unwitting possessors alike until one woman's selfless love breaks the cycle. Like her Norwegian contemporary Sigrid Undset, Lagerlof returned to the Scandinavian past for her subjects but she also indulged in a taste for the fabulous. Here, as in her best-known work, Gosta Berling's Saga , the supernatural figures prominently. But with little of the descriptive sense that marks an historical work like Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter , this first installment of Lagerlof's trilogy is less a Scandinavian epic than a rather exotic ghost story. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly