Tit for tat and schoolteacher Strömberg goes through the ice

My mother-in-law, Anna Bergh, is 93 today, and to honor her, I´d like to share with you a story from her memoir.

Eva and Anna, a few years later.

"The road to school went around the lake, it was seven and a half kilometers, and we had to take it during the time of year when we could no longer row across the lake, but the ice wasn´t yet strong enough to carry us. It was getting stronger, but we were not allowed to cross it, and must take the road. We sometimes took the shortcut across the Harrok inlet, and had to pass the Harrok creek, which took us to Berg´s yard and on to school. This time there was a coating of ice on the footbridge across the creek and it was very slippery. I fell in the water. The water was cold, I was wet through, and I realized I couldn´t go to school in that condition, so I returned, or rather, I ran all the way home. I ran myself all out of breath, and that´s probably why I got away unscathed. When I came home my stockings had frozen solid and they had broken off just behind the knee joint. Mother put my feet in warm water at once and took my clothes off as fast as she could, the skirt and the coat was frozen stiff. But she got me warm, I gave me hot drinks and didn´t even catch a cold.

When my sister Eva came to school and said that Anna isn´t coming because she has fallen into the Harrok creek, schoolteacher Strömberg made fun of me - assuming that I had fallen while gesticulating, putting on a show, trying to be funny. Eva came home, quite indignant about it, but she wasn´t taken much seriously by my parents. But, tit for tat.

A few days later, the schoolteacher ventured out on the ice. It was strong enough by then, as long as you kept to the safe places, but you couldn´t go anywhere. Our father had put out heaps of twigs on the lake to mark the spots where we couldn´t go, and that was a strict rule. Schoolteacher Strömberg, who was from Småland*, asked my future father-in-law, old man Berg, "How strong is the ice? I intend to put the nets out."**. "Well", said old man Berg, "it will not hold you if you go too close to the mouth of the creek. Go towards the barn, not the one closest to the creek, but the one about 500 meters away, and you´ll be safe." "Well", said the teacher, "if it holds to the first barn, it´ll hold to the second as well." And so he went, to where he had been advised not to go. And he went through the ice.

Winters were cold, dark and long.

In the afternoon, when it was already quite dark - this was the end of October or early November - old man Berg heard a cry from the lake. He walked out on his porch and listened. Someone was calling from the lake: "God help me! God help me! God help me!" He realized someone was in dire straits or even mortal dread. Someone had gone through the ice. He rushed to the shore, and recognized Strömberg´s voice calling: "Come this way with a ladder!" Well, where do you find a ladder by the lake shore? Berg had his hay-drying racks closer at hand and took a pair of drying rods, which were at least seven or eight meters long, and with these he wormed his way out towards the distressed schoolteacher. Berg reached for him with the rods and asked him to hold on firmly. By then the older sons in the Berg house, Assar, Anton, and Ernst, had come out to form a chain. This way schoolteacher Strömberg was gradually hauled up from the ice hole. While this was going on, he continually called out "God help!" and "God help!" and Berg, who was very annoyed with the teacher for walking in just the direction he himself had warned him of, called back: "You stupid bugger, you´ll lay there for quite a while if you´re expecting God to save you! If I can get you out, you might survive, but you´ll be waiting a long time, if you´re waiting for God!" As it happened, God never had time to intervene, it was old man Berg with his boys who saved the teacher. They got him on to firm ice and then home.

Berg followed him home, to make sure he got there, wet and frigid as he was. It wasn´t more than a quarter of a kilometer. His wife recieved him, terrified. She always called her husband by his last name: "Oh, Strömberg, Strömberg!" "Yes", said Berg, "he fell into the water as he was laying out the nets under the ice." "Oh, yes, Strömberg, Strömberg, but where are the nets? Where are the nets?" Yes, well, it seemed that the nets were more important than Strömberg - they were new! She kept going "Oh, but the new nets!"

The next day, when Strömberg had dried out and felt like his old self again, he came over to old man Berg in an attempt to explain himself. He wanted to be the kind of person who could do anything and knew everything and now he wanted to gloss over the events of the previous night. "Well", he said, "I was lying there thinking - I have to use my last ins and outs to get out of this ice hole." "Well", said old man Berg, "if I had known you had any ins and outs left, I´d have let you lie longer!" I think his ins and outs were exhausted. Another few minutes, and schoolteacher Strömberg really would have met his God."

Notes from the translator:
* Småland - a province in the south of Sweden. In folklore, it´s people are said to be a bit tight-fisted, or frugal.
** Nets would be placed under the ice, sometimes using rods, sometimes using an "ice horse". They would remain under the ice all winter, and be emptied daily. My grandfather did this every winter still in the 70´s and 80´s, and as a child I sometimes assisted him.