Children of the moor by Laura Fitinghoff

The author, Laura (Runsten) Fitinghoff, grew up in a large and wealthy parsonage in Ångermanland, Sweden. She was one of five children in a home ‘where music and spiritual nourishment were given the children just as naturally as milk and bread were given other children,’ writes her daughter. In the parsonage were entertained such distinguished people as Jenny Lind, King Charles XV, and King Oscar II, but the poor of the great parish, too, were welcome guests. During famine years, when groups of starving people wandered over Sweden, none were turned away empty-handed from Pastor Runsten’s door; and the scenes of one particularly sad famine year so impressed a gifted daughter of the house that the beautiful and moving story of ‘Children of the Moor’ was written.