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Updated: June 18, 2025
One evening, in the summer, there was a rush of work at the smithy. At one anvil stood Birger Larsson flattening the heads of nails; his eldest son was at another anvil forging iron rods and cutting off pins. A second son was blowing the bellows, a third carried coal to the forge, turned the iron, and, when at white heat, brought it to the smiths.
Not until they were safely within the walls of home did he speak, and then it was to ask, "Why did he call me a dirty Lapp?" "Because many Lapps are dirty," replied Birger, feeling just as miserable as Erik looked. "They don't bathe, nor eat from dishes, nor sleep in beds, as good Swedish people do."
"Gerda and Birger are here!" they would cry, opening the door and running into the living-room to find their grandmother. "Gerda and Birger are here!" The news always ran through the neighborhood in a twinkling, and from far and near the boys and girls flocked down the road to bid them welcome. "Ger-da!
This condition was not kept, notwithstanding the fact that he was innocent of his father's crime. The indignant people were not willing to leave any scion of their wicked king alive and the poor boy's head was cut off. Thus the unholy treachery of King Birger met with retribution.
"Yes," replied her father; "those on the east coast of Sweden have several months in the winter when the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia are covered with solid ice; but on the south and west coasts the lighthouses and even the lightships are lighted all winter." "Why is that?" questioned Birger, coming to join them.
This was the Law of Home-peace or House-peace. All violence was in like manner forbidden to any one going to or attending an assembly of the people, this being the Peace of Assize. Birger Jarl improved the laws in many other ways and made Sweden a far more civilized country than it had been before his time.
Birger Larsson glanced up from his work to see what the man wanted. "I hope you don't mind my looking in, although I have no special errand here," said the stranger. "I was a blacksmith myself in my younger days, and can never pass by a smithy without first stopping to glance in at the work." Birger Larsson noticed that the man had large, sinewy hands regular blacksmith's hands.
Of course he knew that his ancestors had lived in Lapland for hundreds of years; but before he went to the Djurgård that day with Birger and Gerda, he had never heard himself called a Lapp in derision. The Djurgård, or Deer Park, is a beautiful public park on one of the wooded islands near Stockholm.
"Let us name the boy 'Birger' for your father," suggested his wife, kneeling beside the cradle; "and call the girl 'Anna' for your mother." But Grandmother Ekman shook her head. "No, no!" she said decidedly. "Call the boy 'Birger' if you will; but 'Anna' is not the right name for the girl." Anders Ekman took his hand from the baby's head to put it upon his wife's shoulder.
On the largest of these islands, according to tradition, Agne, King of Sweden, was strangled with his own golden chain, by the Finnish princess Skiolfa, whom he had taken prisoner. This was sixteen hundred years ago, and a thousand years later, Birger Jarl, on the same spot, built the stronghold which was the seed out of which Stockholm has grown.
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