Sophie Carlén (The Kalmar Union)

Sophie Carlén Kjellsdottír
Timeline: The Kalmar Union

Portrait of Sophie Carlén Kjellsdottír
Born	6th June, 1782 Lákriostrurvik, Nanticokeland Fylk, Álengiamark
Died	18th April, 1828 Stockholm, Svealand
Profession	Novellist

Sophie Carlén, Sophia Kjellsdottír, was an 19th century Álengsk-Svealandic author. Her series of six character-driven books written in the 1800 and 1810s are rightly regarded as some of the finest works of Álengsk literature, however her reputation was long marred by her radical politics.

Sophie Cárlen was born in Lákriostrurvik, Nanticokeland in 1782 the twelfth child of Kjell and Johanna Cárlen. Both parents were emigrés from Svealandic Ingria who left the territory following the Great Baltic War. Kjell Cárlen was a gentlemen farmer who arrived with enough capital to buy a large farmstead in northern Nanticokeland (rather than the meagre plots many emigrés were sold) and the new family farm proved prosperous. She would attend the St. Tómas Klúster Stúlkskol in Kanshíhakínbae, Unamiland, an experience which supposedly turned her off religion for good (though her sister Karin also attended and would become a nun). From there, with no other meaningful or suitable employment available, would take up the position of 'Lady's Companion' to the widow Auður Eiríkursdottír in Hnakkurána, Margirhaedeyja.

In relative comfort and with few real duties Sophie devoured novels and began to write her own using the town and surroundings as inspiration. In her own words Hnakkurána was: 'a bustling market town on the Kanien'gehaga, where the river gets so broad it may as well be a lake, inhabited by serious men who have serious conversations, ladies full of plans for the next party, and their children, hopeful and impatient to grasp their futures, be it a piece of their father's business or the hand of a gallant cavalryman in marriage. It is a town where dreamers are tolerated by doting parents, rudeness never forgiven, and trivial gossip endless'. Sophie would live in Hnakkurána for 4 years as Auður's companion but as a 'emigré Svealander', and committed atheist, was never quite accepted by society figures there, though she was a good enough horse rider to be invited on hunts without Auður. During those 4 years she wrote the first two of her six 'great' novels, getting them published anonymously by Buskhfandar of Kristjanaborg. She was obliged to get her brother Olof to pose as the writer of Svava, to initially get it published as the publishers refused to believe a lady could produce a novel as good as it was deemed. It was only on the publication of Vacoþrayihstur that they realised their error and henceforth dealt with Carlén directly.

Svava and Vacoþrayihstur (Blackbirds) were both love letters to Hnakkurána and its small-town mindset. Svava dealt deftly with the coming-of-age of the titular character and satirises the oppressive world of society and patriarchal etiquette in which she finds herself. Vacoþrayihstur did not veer too far from the same subject, pitting young lovers from opposite sides of the economic spectrum against ingrained suspicion and prejudice. This had a slight autobiographical bent in that her female protagonist, Elisabeth, is the daughter of a Svealandic emigré.

To Kristjanaborg

In 1807 however her circumstances changed. The widow Auður died and her family descended to divide up the estate. The city of Kristjanaborg, downstream from Hnakkurána, was in the final throes of being rebuilt after major fires in the 1770s, and had captured her imagination. She would rent a small house on Mórbergat, not too far from her brothers Anders and Olof who had a setup a small marine insurance firm. Armed with a relatively good income from Svava and Vacoþrayihstur and some growing fame (as subsequent editions were published under her real name) she was soon entwined with Kristjanaborg's artistic set, becoming a fixture in Lady Vigdís Ásgeirdottír's literary salon and Jónas Carlsson's coffee house. She corresponded with many of the leading lights of Álengsk literature; August Justander, Daniel Karlsson and her hero Egill Danielsson (who supposedly based Haraldur Eyþórsson's troublemaking and 'godless' sister Hjórdís on her). Through the salon she would meet and wed 'a poor scion' of a wool merchant family, Haukur Pallsson in 1810. The newlyweds would move into a fine townhouse on Masqusitópgat where Carlén wrote her next two novels and had a son, Hilmar.

Helena and Legjanding (The Tenant) were giddy romances set in Kristjanaborg. Helena tells the story of the titular heroine, a orphan who climbs the social ladder through her beauty and wit, Legjanding details the progress of the headstrong Djits Grétarsdottír, an artist, determined to make her own way in the world and her landlord Reynir who is swept up in her beauty and mystery. Both novels featured unconventional women at odds with the social order, much like herself in some ways.

Her 5th novel Shapoing í Sólstofung (The Chair in the Sunroom) harked back to the unsentimental division of the widow Auður's estate as it depicted a family in dispute over who exactly owns the titular piece of furniture of their dear-departed aunt Aðalheiður. The narrative moves back and forth over her life, her loves and the family now carving up her belongings. Its structure resembles the rambling Haraldur Eyþórsson and Carlén prefaced the novel with gushing praise for Danielsson. It was rapturous received and Carlén was paid 1000 rikstaler by her grateful publishers after the initial 3 editions were sold out.

But the mood in Álengiamark was about to abruptly change. The Chesapeake Company, the joint-stock operation intended to help emigrés set up farms in under-populated Nanticokeland and Unamiland, had been running wild with speculation for years making fortunes on the back of expanding production and generally rising food prices. Some poor harvests had pushed the company's stock prices to crazy heights but by 1815 the only expansion was into poor marginal farmland and when the 'year without summer' hit in 1816 on the back it brought the company crashing and the economy of Álengiamark with it.

Carlén had not personally bought into the 'bubble' but many of her friends and relatives had. Her brother Olof lost so much money he committed suicide, Anders lost the business and moved into the Carlén-Pallsson house, drinking himself senseless everyday. By December 1817 Haukur was dead too, a victim of the typhus epidemic which had hit the city. Bereft, looking after a young son and her drunkard brother and without recourse to the church, Carlén channelled her sadness and anger into completely revising her 6th novel, turning it from a light romance to a state of the nation address. Meanwhile an atmosphere of food shortages, corruption and glaring inequalities, alongside the seeming indifference of the establishment, was turning Kristjanaborg into a revolutionary hothouse.

Óko Edena (Beyond Eden) still retained the structure of a romance at the beginning but abandoned its light-hearted tour of Kristjanaborg and soon turns into a elegy for a lost country as two young lovers fall head over heels in idyllic naïve love in the city then attempt to travel to a family farm in Unamiland, running into an array of personalities, good and bad, on their way. The novel is remarkable in advocating equality and social justice and is scathing with its satire on establishment figures, especially the church.

Paper shortages meant Óko Edena would only have a short run, was badly received by critics who disliked its dash of realism and is often overlooked due to her actions in the next few months. With her publishers unable to pay her fully she took the offer of penning an essay for Certain Papers Pertaining to a Fairer Country. Her essay essentially distilled the ideas of Óko Edena and outlined a future Álengiamark with full democracy, justice for all (not just those who could afford it) and the removal of the church from temporal affairs. Her contribution was of course calling for a major change to the status quo, but was was mild in comparison to some other essays in the Papers, some which called for the confiscation of all lands held by the nobility and abolition of the monarchy. She would be arrested twice for her association with the publication, though freed after paying substantial fines to the courts.

Buoyed by its notoriety the publishers hurriedly issued a 2nd edition which featured an essay calling for the head of Queen Thorey V. Kristjanaborg was boiling over with revolutionary fervor and fell into rioting a week after the 2nd edition's publication with 'Septemberists' erecting barricades on the streets and openly fighting with the city's militia. Carlén's house backed onto the Kristóffersson property where the rebellion's stand against the city's militia was, and her property was used to supply the initial stand of the rebellion there. She was arrested for her participation but the authorities soon lost control of the situation and she would be released as the revolutionary mob captured the city's prisons.

The city was run as a republic for several months but it could not last forever and after the Royal army decamped outside the the city walls many took the opportunity to flee. Carlén found passage on a skiff which could take advantage of the marshlands on the Margirhaedeyja coast and, evading naval patrols, she and her family fled the city before it fell to royalist forces.

In Exile

Initially the party went to Susquehanockland, close enough to the family farm to send news, but the authorities there soon obliged them to leave. Anders went home to face his debtors but Carlén herself decided to head for Vinland where some other revolutionary-minded writers had decamped. This coterie of exiles were barely tolerated, and heavily spied upon, by the Vinlandic authorities. Carlén would write copious essays regarding Herridr II's absolutist policies in Álengiamark whilst in Karantóborg. But she would also produce a novel, not considered a classic by any stretch of the imagination but interesting nonetheless.

Her first novel in exile was Edda, which is mostly just a rehash of the themes of Vacoþrayihstur just in a Vinlandic setting, but the titular character is considerably more cynical and jaded than in the original. Vinlandic critics saw it as overly dour, not particularly witty and stuck in the past but this is probably due to a poor translation job; in the original Álengsk the wordplay and jokes are more obvious and the satire sharper. It sold poorly.

The novel failed to recapture her previous popularity and with little income, thanks mostly to a complete ban of her other works in Álengiamark, she was forced to rely on the largesse of sympathisers and take secretarial work. As Herridr II's root and branch reforms began to be implemented in Álengiamark in the early 1820s she hoped she would be granted amnesty and be able to return home, however the Álengsk authorities still sought her arrest and imprisonment for sedition. Even writing to Herridr II directly for clemency got her nowhere. In August 1826 Vinland too lost patience with the Álengsk revolutionaries in exile and she was obliged to leave under threat of arrest.

She initially travelled to Iceland and, appearing to give up all hope of returning to Álengiamark, wrote three 'revolutionary pamphlets' regarding Iceland's long standing and successful republic and how Álengiamark would benefit from such a system. These were never properly published in Leifia, though copied and passed around amongst reformers and revolutionaries. After a 18 month stay in Reykjavik she moved on to Copenhagen where her notoriety was enough to get her entrance to the city's literary salons. She would meet her closest rival for 'greatest female Álengsk novellist', Heitdís Reventlow, in 1827. The two did not get on.

In 1828 she moved for the final time, from Copenhagen to Stockholm, on the invite of Karl Lafrensen, a well-known society figure and publisher. Lafrensen wished to print a new translation of Carlén's six 'classics' and asked her for her direct assistance, promising to publish any further novels too. She had a stroke however after three weeks in Svealand and died four days after that on April 18th 1828. A final unfinished novel, Stefanía, ela Sírenurn (Stefanía, or The Siren) a magnificently florid homage/satire of Gothic literature, was found amongst her affairs. Various Scandinavian authors have 'finished' the novel over the years, to varying degrees of success, though the best version is judged to be Amalie Køppen's 2005 attempt.

Legacy

Following Carlén's disgrace her novels fell out of publication in Álengiamark and were mostly forgotten. For a while Álengsk literature cleaved more to the model of gothic-style fiction of Justander or Reventlow.

In 1980 Queen Brynja III was spotted with a copy of Helena causing a minor scandal but it also prompted a long overdue reappraisal of Carlén's work. Shorn of the revolutionary missives of her later career the early novels shine and have come to rightly claim their places as classics. All six of her novels have now been made into films, some multiple times, with Vacoþrayihstur winning the jury prize at the 2020. In addition the Gothenlandic-Álengsk actress Kajsa Noren has played Carlén herself in a biographical film of her life.