- Arvid: What do you think it will cost to ship us there?
- Robert: Around 200 riksdaler.
- Arvid: Ya, well, might as well forget it. 200 riksdaler. I'll never have that much.
- Robert: You don't have it?
- Arvid: I will go anyway. We can travel to America on foot.
- Robert: Nah, there's an ocean. You can't go on foot to America.
- Arvid: Do you mean there is no way?
- Robert: I'm afraid there is not. America is an island.
- Arvid: Damned ocean.
- Opening Titles: This is the story of some people who emigrated to North America from the Swedish province of Småland. The year was 1844. At that time the parish of Ljuder had 1,925 inhabitants. There were 254 farmers who owned their land. 92 tenant farmers and 11 tenement soldiers. 39 persons were artisans. There were also 274 servants, 129 paupers, 60 cripples, 5 halfwits, 3 idiots, 3 whores and 2 thieves. Four men governed the parish by virtue of their spiritual and temporal offices - the deacon of the church, the sheriff, the biggest landowner and the churchwarden. It was the same as in all other parishes at that time.
- Robert: In America, there are no commoners and gentry. People are the same there. And anybody can talk to the President as they please.
- Robert: There are two kinds of folk in America. There are those who become rich because they've been here so long and there are some who have come so recently they haven't had time to get rich.
- Kristina: Nah, Karl Os, don't.
- Karl Oskar: Why not?
- Kristina: I'm thinking of the children.
- Karl Oskar: All three are asleep.
- Kristina: I didn't mean that. How shall we feed them?
- Karl Oskar: Feed them?
- Kristina: I mean, if we stopped, there'd be no others.
- Karl Oskar: Stopped? Stay away from each other? For the rest of our lives? Kristina, it's more than I could do. Kristina, not till I'm so old the moss is growing out of my ears.
- Kristina: Karl Oskar, I have to tell you something. I'm in that condition again.
- Karl Oskar: Oh? It couldn't have come at a worse time.
- Kristina: So I can't get pregnant so it fits for you? It's your fault I'm this way too, yours more than mine! You're the one who comes at a bad time!
- The Vicar: [First lines] Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but that of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth these powers, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
- Nils: This is no great kingdom, son. But it's double the amount of land I took over 25 years back. But, you need a woman to be a farmer. It's very important.
- Karl Oskar: I can have a good one, if I want her.
- Nils: Hmm. Don't sit there bragging, son.
- Ulrika: [to the Parson] You vicious, evil potbelly!
- Kyrkvärd: Should you insult the Parson, Ulrika?
- Ulrika: You look out, I can also insult the Church Warden, even better!
- Kyrkvärd: You ought to wash out your mouth before you talk to the clergy.
- Ulrika: With the Parson's liquor, you mean, or with the Parson's waste-water.
- Kyrkvärd: You just shut up, you whore.
- Ulrika: Whore? You said, whore? Ya? Your whore, don't forget! Church Warden! If I'm a whore, you're a lecher. You remember when you came to me, your money in your dirty hands, to buy my services?
- Kyrkvärd: Ulrika.
- Ulrika: Then, you asked me to lie on my back a little while for you. How nicely you spoke then.
- Danjel: Ulrika, don't talk so.
- Ulrika: Only that, only that. God preaching lecher - is not denied communion in church, because *he's* friendly with the potbellied Parson! Who wallows in his own miserable flesh and fat and talk!
- Karl Oskar: Who? The glad girl?
- Kristina: Why do they call her the glad girl?
- Karl Oskar: She's never sad, I guess.
- Arvid: Last year the parson asked who our lords and masters are. But, I couldn't answer him.
- Robert: All of our lords and our masters, besides our parents, are those God has ordained to have a fatherly power over us...
- Arvid: Is that the truth?
- Robert: Do you know how many lords and masters we have over us - in the whole world?
- Arvid: Nah.
- Robert: The first is the King, Oskar the First; the second is the Governor; the third is the Chief Constable; the fourth is the Sheriff, Lönnegren; and the fifth is his Deputy; and the sixth will be the Parson; and the seventh, Aron, our master.
- Arvid: Why, that's a lot of lords.
- Kristina: Nobody around here has gone before us. No one ever has. No one.
- Karl Oskar: I'll have to be the first then.
- Kristina: And you're able to answer for it?
- Karl Oskar: Someone has to answer for it.
- Karl Oskar: Doesn't the iron ever get stolen?
- Robert: Nah. In America, there is such an abundance of iron, that no one would care to steal as much as a farthing. Its the same with gold and silver. In America, they hang a thief at once. Often before he's had time to confess. Americans are the most honest and sensible people in the whole world.
- Karl Oskar: I guess even over there they have a couple of crooks.
- Robert: I read yesterday in the paper about a man who came home and found his whole family eaten up by a crocodile. Ya. There were three children and it had just swallowed the wife. But, the woman's head it got stuck in the beast's throat and so it choked to death. That was her revenge. Apparently the ground was soaked with human blood.
- Kristina: Are we going to such a place?
- Karl Oskar: You should know Robert and his tall stories by now.
- Robert: I didn't invent it. I really read it.
- Danjel: I have a message. It is for you Karl Oskar.
- Karl Oskar: From whom, Uncle?
- Danjel: From God. The Lord awakened me last night and said, "Go thou to Karl Oskar at Korpamoen, husband to thy dear sister's daughter." And the Lord spoke to me, as once he did to Abraham. He said, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. Go thou to Karl Oskar at Korpamoen and he will help thee."
- Kristina: Are you coming with us to America, Uncle?
- Danjel: We live in a time of persecution. In my father land, they do not allow me to serve my God. And I am exiled from my country. But, the Lord will open a new country to me. We shall go there together and we shall, none of us, know any fear at all.
- Robert: You can't speak the language, can you?
- Elin, Ulrikas dotter: Nah, not now. But, the minute I land in America, then I shall.
- Robert: You mean you'll speak it the minute you land?
- Elin, Ulrikas dotter: Ya.
- Robert: Well, but who told you that?
- Elin, Ulrikas dotter: It was my Uncle Danjel. But, you must study it because you don't live in the spirit. For us, it's not the same. Studying won't be necessary.
- Robert: Can that - really be true?
- Elin, Ulrikas dotter: Do you think Danjel lies?
- Robert: Nah.
- Elin, Ulrikas dotter: All the faithful, as they go ashore, shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, like in the Bible, the Apostles, the first Pentecost. And they will be reborn with faith in Jesus Christ and also they'll know how to speak the American language the minute they land. Haven't you read the Acts of the Apostles?
- Kristina: What will be our turn to use the kitchen soon?
- Karl Oskar: Not for awhile. It's as crowded as church pews for the mass at Christmas.
- Jonas Petter: Ulrika gets crazy like that, all due to her not having a man for some while now. She needs someone who can take good care of her needs.
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