ABSTRACT
From the moment they met, Alva and Gunnar were intensely engaged with one another. Gunnar and two school friends, who were bicycling through the countryside, spent a night in the barn at Slagsta farm, where Alva and Rut brought them breakfast. So taken were Gunnar and Alva with one another that they changed their plans, bicycling through Dalarna and visiting Gunnar’s parents while the Reimers had no idea where their daughter was. That midsummer idyll was a touchstone to which both often returned. Gunnar’s most powerful memory was laying his head in Alva’s lap while she stroked his hair; recalling that moment brought him comfort when he was upset. Alva was filled with wonder that an intelligent, well educated, and ambitious man valued her ideas as well as her beauty. For the next two years, as Alva completed her gymnasium studies and Gunnar his law course, they met infrequently but wrote each other constantly, groping to find language and images that expressed their thoughts and feelings, discussing everything they were reading, and analyzing each other and their relationship. These letters give us insight into the contradictions that troubled their relationship throughout their lives.
