Legends of Christ

A kind and poignant book of tales and legends by Selma Lagerlöf is an example of literary processing of stories heard by the author in childhood from her grandmother, oral traditions of "popular Christianity," refracting in an charmingly naive tradition and plots of the biblical New Testament, the lives of saints, and apocrypha preserved in popular memory for centuries. The Nativity and the flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, the childhood of Christ and his adult years, the Way of the Cross and the crucifixion at Golgotha, the Resurrection and the events that followed—these are just a part of what medieval townsfolk and peasants of Scandinavia, whose artless style Selma Lagerlöf subtly stylizes, have been contemplating and coloring with the hues of imagination for centuries.