Transcriber’s note

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected;hyphenation has been regularised. Close quotes have not been added atthe end of paragraphs followed by more dialogue.

TOP

OF-THE-

WORLD

STORIES

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

TRANSLATED FROMTHE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES

by

EMILIE POULSSON

and

LAURA E POULSSON

Illustrated by

FLORENCELILEYYOUNG

LORTHROP LEE & SHEPARD CO.

BOSTON

Published, August, 1916

Copyright, 1916,
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

All Rights Reserved

Top-of-the-World Stories

Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
Norwood, Mass.
U. S. A.

IT WAS A LIFE AND DEATH RACE.

In memory of ten happy years,

this little book is dedicated to the

children of John, William, Anna, Martha, and George.

PREFACE

Not for my dear usual public of little children have I gathered thesestories from Scandinavian authors, but for boys and girls who havereached a stage which warrants a rather free range in Story Land. Forhere are to be encountered creatures and events, deeds and ideas,unsuited to youngest readers, but which have legitimate attraction forboys and girls from nine to fourteen years old—the age varyingaccording to the child's maturity and previous reading.

Five of these stories were written by the noted Finnish author, ZachrisTopelius, who wrote them, and much else, for the children of Finland andSweden more than fifty years ago. His loving sympathy for children, andhis earnest desire to write only what was wholesome and good for them,shine through all his literary work for the young. His "Läsning förBarn" (Reading for Children) in several volumes, contains stories, trueand imaginative, poems, songs, hymns, and many charming plays forchildren to act. Although a Finn, Topelius wrote in the Swedishlanguage.

By the kind permission of Miss Margaret Böcher I have made use of herexcellent rendering of Sampo Lappelil.

Of the other stories presented here, two (The Forest Witch and TheTesting of the Two Knights) were translated from the Danish, and one(Anton's Errand, or The Boy Who Made Friends by the Way) from theNorwegian.

The translations are not strictly literal, neither are they, I am sure,unjustifiably free. The liberty exercised consists chiefly of omission.For example, in Knut Spelevink, extra incidents were omitted whichdragged the story to a tedious length or marred it by the inartistic,outworn device of explaining Knut's adventures as a dream; in ThePrincess Lindagull, some details of the wild-beast fight were leftout; in A Legend of Mercy, a hampering husk was stripped off from thegood seed of

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