I want to begin with a confession and a question. I know you’re not supposed to begin with confessions, but since the content of this one has a bearing on what I’m going to talk about, I pardon myself. I am not an avid Strindberg-reader. My familiarity with his corpus is extremely limited. Thus, my entrance point into the work I will be talking about today, The Roofing Ceremony from 1906, is neither determined by reading other Strindberg's works, nor by reading Strindberg research. Which, perhaps, determines my question.

Now, when I had finished reading The Roofing Ceremony, one simple question loomed larger than all the others in my mind. What disease is the protagonist of this short novel, or long short story—the curator—suffering from? Or, to be more precise; what tropical disease has brought on his fever, his hallucinations, and, finally, his death? You have to believe me, when I say that it was not until I read the critical commentary by Barbro Ståhle Sjönell at the end of the Swedish edition published in Nationalupplagan from 1984, that I learned that the curator's feverish death-throes are supposed to be the consequences of an accident involving a horse. Ståhle-Sjönell quotes Strindberg's introduction from Ockulta dagboken from March 17th, 1906; “Ended the tale for [the magazine] ‘Hvar 8e dag’—Every 8th Day… In this tale I tell of how the hero is crushed to death by a horse on the island of Djurgarden” (Strindberg 1987:161). The reading instructions from the author could not be more clear or specific

Re-reading the tale in the light of the author's words, I of course found the momentous scene where the despondent curator is out for a walk. It has all the marks of dark powers contriving to bring down the hapless protagonist, who, in the position of Teresias, foresees everything but is unable to prevent anything. He meets the dog-walking ladies whose diabolical laughter foreshadows what is to come in the moment when the hitherto ominously silent dog lets out a bark at the precise moment when a horse rider passes the spot where the curator has fatefully decided to press himself against a rock.