# Colonel Beerencreutz — Short Fiction character guide

> Colonel Beerencreutz in Short Fiction by Selma Lagerlöf.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** old Colonel Beerencreutz, Beerencreutz, the Colonel

**First appearance:** 0082-the-wedding-march

## Snapshot

An old cavalry colonel who has quit Ekeby for a farm at Svartsjö, weaving enormous rugs without a loom and seeing God's pattern in the threads.

## Who they are

Beerencreutz stretches his wool from wall to wall across a room so he can see the whole rug at once, and while he works he thinks of his own life and his friends' lives as a small piece of God's greater weaving. He travels each midsummer to visit old comrades, preferring the roads when the clover smells and the flowers line the ditches. His loom-meditations give the story its image of a pattern that includes both light and dark shades, and of old men who read their past as part of something larger.

## In the story

### [A Story from Halstanäs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_50_se/chapters/a-story-from-halstan-s)

Visits Halstanäs, weaves rugs as a metaphor for God's weaving of fate, and is haunted by a vision of a laborer.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_50_se/characters/colonel_beerencreutz
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_50_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_50_se/characters