Wedding Worries (Bröllopsbesvär)
Dagerman's last novel takes place on a small farm in rural Sweden, where the young daughter is to be married to the considerably older village butcher. Leading up to the wedding itself, the reader gets an insight into the feelings, thoughts and actions of the many characters who are some way are touched by this unseemly union. Dagerman uses this framework as a platform for an existential novel exploring the human condition. He conceived of the novel, set on his childhood farm, while on his way back to Sweden from Australia via Honolulu and San Francisco after a failed attempt to write a book about war refugees. It is by many considered his best novel.
"It was only a spider," Ville says defiantly. "But it had spun a thread that glistened in the sun, and it continued spinning. I had never seen anything as beautiful."
"Then you should have seen Gilda with Rita Hayworth," Nisse cuts in. "Or the last issue of Parisien."
"… The spider just kept on spinning. It saved my life. I lay in the water and looked at the fir trees, and it dawned on me that, alone in the forest by day, nobody would want to kill themselves."
—Stig Dagerman, Wedding Worries
About Wedding Worries
"Today /Dagerman's last novel/ Bröllopsbesvär emerges as his masterpiece thereby making his early death all the more tragic. He was still on the rise."
—Lagercrantz, postscript to Stig Dagerman biography, 1985
Editions and Translations
- Bröllopsbesvär/Wedding Worries, (1949). This novel has been translated into many languages, including French and German. Not yet in English translation.