Ari’s Inheritance At Risk

Bjorn Gustafsson had ruled his family with a rod of iron and life had deteriorated for the family after the loss of his second wife Brigid.

His first wife Edda had left two years into their marriage and fled across the border of Manitoba into the US state of North Dakota and was now happily married to another Swede who was treating her better than Bjorn had in their brief marriage.

Bjorn had been raised by strict hard-working Lutheran parents who expected him to carry a heavy load of work from the time he was a child, and he had many a beating to teach him the value of hard work and obedience.

Survival on the plains of Manitoba with its limited crop growing season and long harsh winters required everyone work hard in the crop growing season and continue to work during winter under cramped conditions of the wooden cabins that served the needs of a large family with chores continuing in the barn and sheds sheltering their animals a daily need specially during winter. The ranch was well established after being initially carved out of the wilderness by Bjorn’s grandfather when he migrated to Canada in the mid eighteen hundreds and improved to its present well-established state by his parents and siblings.

Every cent earned during Bjorn’s parents’ lifetime had been invested in additional livestock and storage areas for their extensive ranch far from the nearest town so Bjorn’s parents would only make a trip by horse and buggy that long distance occasionally to buy household items they couldn’t produce themselves.

Everyone worked together being so exhausted at the end of each day’s activities there was no opportunity for fighting between the eight siblings. They had to work harmoniously for family survival.

When his father died the eldest brother inherited the ranch and finding a wife began his own family. Over time the sisters found husbands among the Swedish diaspora and moved out and his brothers moved on to seek their own fortune.

That had been his life and Bjorn resolved to follow the same way of life. He found a wife within the Swedish community Edda and took up a government grant of property in an even more remote location where his elder brother helped him to establish the rudiments of a homestead along with a barn and some horses and cattle from the ancestral property. Backbreaking work establishing a new ranch was too much for Edda and two years into their marriage she fled across the border to the United States joining a Swedish community there.

The work was too much for Bjorn alone and he had little money to afford hired help, so he began a search among the Swedish families in Manitoba and eventually found his second wife Brigid. Her family was anxious for her to move out because of the financial pressure of too many girls to feed and were delighted to learn Bjorn was looking for a wife. They married in the Lutheran Church and Brigid made the long journey to their new home where she began the hard work of establishing this new ranch along with her husband and producing children in quick succession. Brigid was used to the hard life in her own growing-up years and endured it all cheerfully.

The first child was a girl. They named her Freya which means noble woman. The second was also a girl who they named Astrid. Bjorn was nonplussed. He needed sons to help him run this ranch as he constructed buildings to serve an expanding business with occasional itinerant labor. He was delighted when Brigid produced his third child, and it was a son. They called him Ari which meant eagle in the Swedish language. This was followed by another girl they called Ingrid, and yet another they named Greta. But the following year when Brigid was delivering their sixth child both mother and son died. Brigid was forty years old when she died and Bjorn fifty-two.

Bjorn turned to Freya as the oldest to run the home and Freya accepted the challenge. Freya had received an excellent grounding in the rudiments of home education girls were expected to have but ranch work being the major learning activity she was heavily involved in that too, so her book learning was hampered.

Brigid was proficient in English, so this had been passed on to her children in addition to their ancestral language along with mathematics and the handling of money matters.

Freya had developed a thirst for education and longed to someday be a teacher but prospects of doing that within her ancestral culture was slim, so she concentrated on running the home and business matters of the ranch and continued to teach her siblings with the aid of books her mother had bought with her when separating from her family at the time of marriage.

These books were Freya’s treasures, and she’d read them so often under the dim light of a candle at night she knew them all by memory. She felt fortunate she was the one to manage the home and even her brother Ari had received a few slaps from Bjorn and told to give the same respect to Freya as he’d been expected to give to his late mother Brigid. So far things have worked well for a reasonably harmonious home.

 But now Ari at age seventeen began to assert himself and try to alter the status quo in the family. He understood he’d inherit the ranch, and his father was beginning to have health issues requiring Ari take more responsibility in ranch management. His sisters being ranch hands slowly bowed to Ari’s increasing influence over his father and Ari turned his attention to Freya contesting her rulership in the home. Freya was his sister not his mother and she’d better be aware of that when Ari became the head of the home as his father deteriorated in health. He’d decide what happened in the home, not his elder sister.

Bjorn watched this with alarm and tried to reason with his son. Freya was vital to the family as one to organize household chores, run the business side sensing opportunities as roads were developed and government laws and regulations began to reach the outposts of Manitoba where each family had been an isolated self-sufficient unit but were now answerable for their actions to government authorities.

Bjorn could see his eldest daughter understood better how the family should adjust to these new realities. The horse and buggy days were fading fast and vehicles of various types along with farm machinery began to become available to remove isolation and bring the expanding cities and towns into closer proximity timewise.

Freya saw possibilities to increase family wealth using modern methods and Bjorn saw his daughter as an asset often taking her suggestions for better methods of using their ranch for the prosperity of the family. Ari was nonplussed and angry as he saw his sister’s continuing influence on the running of the ranch. His father’s health was increasingly poor, and Ari was taking more and more responsibility. Soon he would have the power to bring his sister in line and humble her so that she was subject to his instructions.

Bjorn realizing his health issues were becoming serious and not having access to a doctor in proximity sent word to the city he wanted to have a visit from a Lutheran pastor. A week later a Pastor Johanson arrived with some of the elders in his Model T hand produced by Ford of Canada before the production lines were established in the United States in 1916. Johanson and the elders spent time with Bjorn and Ari and the pastor’s wife assembled the girls and spent time assessing their needs to share with her husband before they departed for their home city.

The pastor’s wife Annika Johanson was a well-educated and insightful woman and soon sensed the tension in this home so she carefully asked well thought out but seemingly innocent questions to determine how the girls could best be helped. The tension between Freya and her brother was soon drawn out of the younger girls and Annika realized with the passing of their father Bjorn which she knew as a nurse was a probability for the immediate future there could be issues in this family that would destroy its prosperity.

The youngest girl, Greta, was now fifteen and the next two above her were sixteen and eighteen. Freya was nineteen. In Annika’s mind she determined Ari at age seventeen was not mature enough to arrange for a wife within their community though he was obviously capable of running the ranch.  But it would be different for the girls. It was quite common for girls as young as sixteen to be suitable as marriage partners and she could take Greta with her and keep her in their home until she reached marriageable age. There were many young men looking for work on ranches so perhaps her husband could persuade Bjorn to hire some young men to help Ari and she would investigate marriage partners for the girls as they reached a suitable age. She could see Freya had the capacity to further her education and they were always on the lookout for teachers in their Lutheran schools.

So, Annika had a private conversation with her husband and the elders, and they went back to see Bjorn while one of the Elders had Ari show him around the buildings on the ranch and explain what Ari visualized the future of the ranch was once his father had passed on which he’d report back to the pastor and rest of the elders.

When the pastor and his entourage were ready to return to the city Bjorn called his youngest daughter Greta and ordered her to pack a suitcase with her clothes. She was going to return to the city with Annika as her ward and prepare for a suitable education and later before she turned twenty a marriage would be arranged for her. Both Astrid and Ingrid begged their father to accompany their sister but that was not to be their lot for the present. They must stay on to support Freya and learn from her and support the work on the ranch until Bjorn decided on the idea of hiring young men to assist Ari who was soon to take over responsibility for the full-time management of the ranch. When suitable hired hands could be found then he’d reluctantly release the girls to the pastor’s care as he realized he’d have to act quickly to arrange matters so Ari would have support as he managed the ranch, and the girls would have their future determined by the pastor’s wife.

When Ari heard what his father was planning he was pleased. Men could run a ranch better than his sisters could as his helpers and he wouldn’t have the responsibility of arranging for their eventual marriage. However, he determined to make Freya’s life as difficult as possible for her as he could in that his father was becoming increasingly incapable of keeping him in check.

Over the next month a series of young men were dispatched to the ranch by Pastor Johanson so Bjorn could look them over to see if they’d make suitable hired hands. They came with the pastor’s recommendation but one had to be careful as Ari at seventeen should be able to control any hired men and Bjorn was a good judge of men. Even though he knew his son was headstrong and overconfident he had to find suitable personalities who were experienced and tolerant of a young man needing experience in handling others so there’d be no unpleasant outcomes. If a young man came with a wife that would be even better as the wife would cook and keep house and that would release Freya to follow the suggestion of the pastor’s wife and train to be a teacher.

Annika was making the long journey to the ranch with a driver weekly now to report to her husband on Bjorn’s failing health condition. Someone needed to be with him when his final moment of life happened. That may require her husband to take a few days off his busy program to stay with the family as Bjorn reached the end of his life due to the long distance the ranch was from the city. The pastor took the needs of his flock seriously and nothing was too much trouble for him. He could then give Bjorn a suitable burial and carry out his final wishes in connection with the girls.

Eventually Bjorn was able to gather a small team of hired workers and they set about building a bunk house for the young men. There was a married couple among them and Bjorn was happy with his selection as they seemed cooperative. While they were building quarters the men lived in the barn loft and the married woman moved into the home temporarily when Bjorn released Ingrid and Astrid to the care of Annika Johnson who took them to the city to be billeted in homes of some of their Lutheran believers while Annika began a search for suitable husbands for them. The sisters were happy to be able to see Greta when they all met together at the church on Sundays but during the week they were kept very busy working around the homes of those who’d offered them free lodgings in payment for their support in the home. Only Freya remained to orient the young married woman to her duties around the home and the business of the ranch which Ari was increasingly supervising.

Pastor Johanson was preparing to visit one of his parishioners when he was informed by Annika that one of the young men hired to work at the Gustafsson ranch had just arrived and requesting to see him. Apparently Bjorn had died unexpectedly, and things were not going well at the ranch. Could the pastor return with him to sort things out and perform the burial.

Annika said she’d care for her husband’s appointments while he was away, and the pastor immediately set out to return with the young messenger. On the way he learned that Ari had been treating the hired hands roughly in his inexperience and there was mutiny brewing. Further with the father dead Ari had taken his belt and beat his sister Freya in front of the workers. The workers liked Friya very much as she’d treated them well and cooked special meals for them along with the wife of one of the workers so when they saw Ari beating his sister they’d overpowered Ari and taken his belt and beaten him unmercifully with it. Ari was on a bed recovering from the beating and demanding they all leave the ranch.

When Pastor Johanson arrived the ranch he found the situation to be just as had been described to him on the trip there. He first attended the rites of burial with the help of the workers while Ari watched sullenly, and Freya covered in bruises wept over her father’s grave.

After the ceremony was completed the pastor talked with the workers and convinced them to stay while he sorted things out. He then steered the sullen and humiliated Ari into the home and gave him a reality check. Violence produces violence in return and violence against women was not to be tolerated in any civilized society. If Ari’s workers left him he’d not be able to work the ranch and eventually would be bankrupted. Furthermore, the pastor would spread the word to all in the Lutheran community that it would be unsafe to make a marriage agreement with this man who it was demonstrated was prone to violence against women.

Now if he wanted help from the Lutheran community he’d need to spend a long time regaining their trust in his maturity. If he didn’t want to run his ranch single-handedly then he better be out there immediately apologizing to his workers and declaring that in future he’d treat them as a team and not as slaves. Was he prepared to do that?

As for his sister he owed her an apology and she’d be leaving with the Pastor to be placed in a much more loving environment in the city.  Pastor Johanson then went to find Freya who was still in tears over the loss of her father and humiliation from her brother. The pastor spoke to her soothingly ordering her to pack her clothes and be prepared to return to the city with him. She quickly ran to do his bidding knowing she was fortunate to have protection from her brother’s jealous rage.

The workers were packing their things into a Model T when the pastor emerged with Freya and her suitcase. Ari watched this from his bedroom window and realized he was going to be by himself with a ranch to run and it was all his fault. He ran from his room despite his wounds and begged the pastor to intervene. The pastor pointed to the men preparing to leave with one woman. Then he turned to head for his own car silently with Friya following gratefully.

Ari rushed to the workers packing their car and begged them to give him another chance. The workers turned to the pastor for his input, so he returned to the group beaconing Freya to take her place in his car. He pointed to the eldest man among them.

To be continued.

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