To the Honorable Samuel Coffin Eastman, of Concord, New Hampshire, belongs the credit of having given American readers an English version of The Family at Gilje while the author was still at the height of his creative activity. Mr. Eastman, who was a lawyer by profession, was a man of varied interests, the author of a White Mountain Guide which has gone through numerous editions, and the translator of Brandes's Impressions of Russia and Poland. He was familiar with the translations by Mrs. Ole Bull of Jonas Lie's The Pilot and His Wife and The Good Ship Future. The Family at Gilje was called to his attention by Miss Amalia Krohg, of Christiania, and it charmed him so much that he rendered it into English. The translation appeared serially in the Concord magazine, The Granite Monthly, in 1894, and was illustrated with views from Valders, the mountain district where the scene of the story is laid.
When the Committee on Publications decided to include The Family at Gilje in the Scandinavian Classics, their attention was called to Mr. Eastman's excellent version, and permission was secured to reprint it. The translator consented to a revision of his text so as to make it conform to the general style of the Classics and to interpret more accurately some of the Norwegian idioms. His death, in 1917, prevented his coöperation in the work of revision, to which, nevertheless, he had given his cordial assent.
Hanna Astrup Larsen