THE TOWN HALL, STOCKHOLM

[vii]

[ix]

SKETCH MAP OF SWEDEN

THE LAND AND PEOPLE

For those who wish to wander a little further afield than France, Belgium, or Italy, there are few more delightful places in which to spend a holiday than Sweden, for not only is this country a paradise for the lover of open-air life and every kind of summer and winter sport, but it is a land especially favoured in the variety and beauty of its scenery and unique character of its climate and geological formation, the peculiar charm of its atmospheric effects, and the appeal that lies in its strong national characteristics.

The Swedes hold of course that they were the originators of the various kinds of sport that are practised in Europe to-day, though they confess that the supremacy which they originally exercised[2] in this field of human activity soon passed to other countries; in fact, that it is only comparatively of recent years that they have made any serious attempts to regain their lost laurels. Idrott, or sport, is an old Swedish name, and it cannot be denied that among the ancestors of the present-day Swedes sports were in vogue even in times beyond the reach of history, no ancient literature in the world containing so many descriptions of sport as the old Norse sagas. We read that greater assiduity was shown by the Vikings in perfecting themselves in strength, suppleness of limb, and courage than in promoting the culture of their mind by “exercise in the art of poetry and jurisprudence”. Their principal sports consisted of racing (either with or without armour), running and leaping of various kinds, wrestling, ski-running, tugs-of-war and throwing the spear, skating, swimming, riding, archery, and fencing with sword and shield play, and also many ball games. Every one of these sports, and also such typically British games as Association football and ice or ground hockey, are now played extensively in their proper season, the great importance that is attached to athletics being more than justified by the brilliant results which Swedish athletes[3] have lately been attaining in the Olympic games. More truly characteristic of Swedish life, however, than any field game, or even than pure athletics, are certain branches of sport which perhaps thrive in Sweden better than in any other country in Europe owing to her peculiar climatic and geographical conditions; and also that system of physical culture which is associated with the name of P. H. Ling, the creator of modern movement therapeutics.

Sweden, thanks to the severity of her winter, is perhaps the country in Europe where winter sports can be practised to the best advantage; and not only is ski-ing the Swedes’ national pastime even more truly than it is that of the Swiss, through it having become in many northern provinces of their country the only method by which the people can conveniently travel from one district to another, but it can be practised with even greater frequency than in any part of the Swiss Alps, and for a far longer period in the year. The Swedes also excel in figure-skating, tobogganing, and bobsleighing, while I have seen nothing as exhilarating as ice-yachting among the skerries of the Baltic when a good breeze is blowing, the speed attained by the ice-yachts often[4] exceeding that of any express train. To mention only a few places where Swedish winter sports can be played under ideal conditions, the ski-ing on the fjells of Jämtland, the skate and ice yachting among the skerries of Stockholm, rival, if they do not excel, any that can be found in other regions of Europe.

Thanks to her long indented coast-line, tideless seas, and a superabundance of large inland lakes, on the other hand, Sweden can offer ideal conditions during the summer months to those who like an open-air life and are not in need of the usual conventional amusements; and not only the Skärgård and the extensive Stockholm archipelago, but the coast of Bohuslän, stretching right up to the coast of Norway, provide ideal water playgrounds for those who are fond of swimming, boating, and yachting, the innumerable rocky islands surrounding the southern coast being perhaps unsurpassed for the opportunities which they offer in these respects. As sailing and motor boats can, moreover, easily be hired, and the air is magnificent, an extended stay during the summer months in this part of Sweden has much to recommend it, while there is always plenty of good and not too expensive accommodation[5] to be found at such seaside resorts as Marstrand, Särö, Lysekil, or Fiskebäckskil, if only the prospective visitor applies for it in seasonable time.

THE KULLEN ROCKS, MÖLLE, ON THE KATTEGATT

In the domain of gymnastics proper, lastly, the Swedes have long exercised supremacy, and not only has the system of physical culture which Ling devised during the time that he was teaching fencing and gymnastics at Lund University proved to be one of the main contributory causes of Sweden’s subsequent athletic prowess, but it has been generally adopted in other countries of the world, and more especially in this country and the United States, Swedish gymnastics having come to be recognised as the most efficient and valuable physical culture system so far devised by man. Physical culturists, in fact, hold the name of Ling in such esteem that when the Olympic Games were last held at Stockholm many of the foreign and all the Swedish athletes who had flocked to the Swedish capital to participate in the games paid a special visit to his grave in order to offer their floral tributes of affection and regard.

The climate of Sweden is almost unique. Lying between the 55th and 69th degrees of latitude, it stretches nearly two hundred miles[6] north of the Arctic circle and in line with the south of Greenland, while its most southerly point is not far north of Hamburg, and somewhat lower than parts of Northumberland, this length of coast implying great extremes of climate; yet so magical is the potency of the Gulf Stream, which fortunately flows in a north-eastern direction right across the Atlantic towards Scandinavia, that the lower layers of air are able to absorb sufficient heat to make even the extreme north habitable in the winter months, the weather north of the Arctic circle being, moreover, often delightfully warm during the summer. The average July temperature in Kiruna, the most northerly town in Sweden, for instance, is well over 55 degrees: that is to say, equal to the mean May temperature in England; and the sun never sets here or in Northern Lapland for a period of six weeks. Stockholm, on the other hand, has days which last nearly eighteen hours in June, with a temperature equalling that found in Paris at the same time of the year. Swedish climate possesses consequently the dual advantage of being sufficiently warm in summer to attract even the most exacting lover of sunshine and warmth, and yet of being cold enough in winter to provide an ideal[7] playground for winter sports of every description, the period during which these can be safely practised being appreciably longer than in Switzerland or any other region of Europe.

Geologically, too, Sweden is one of the oldest parts of the world, its formation differing materially from that found in other European countries. It is, generally speaking, a very rich land, but its wealth usually entails a considerable amount of work to become productive, as the greater part of it consists of granite, timber, lime, and iron-stone. Everywhere, except perhaps in the south of Skåne, you will come across towns that are built on granite or even iron-stone rock, there being such a profusion of the latter that there are actually some localities like Kiruna where the iron mines serving as foundation do not consist of underground veins, but of mountains of ore from which the iron has to be blasted from the surface almost in its natural state. The spring water issuing from these rocks is strongly tonifying, moreover, and at such places as Porla has been converted to practical uses, its healing and curative qualities in all cases of debility or anæmia being remarkable. Next to iron, Sweden’s greatest asset lies in her timber[8] land, and dense forests abound which cover an area greater than the British Isles. It is estimated that over 52 per cent of the soil is covered by trees the greater part of which consist of pine, fir, and birch, while immense quantities of timber are cut every year for the wood pulp and other industries. Much more than the above might here usefully be written concerning Sweden’s great industrial resources, but as the writer of the present volume is not concerned with writing a book on Swedish industries but is merely seeking to offer some illustration and account of the many beauties and points of interest, artistic, historic, and social, of this little-known country, we will readily leave off considering such matters to find ourselves upon more congenial and, we will venture to say, more artistic ground.

The greatest appeal which Sweden makes on all those who pay it a visit, however, lies in the beauty of its scenery, this being as varied as the climate or the character and appearance of the people that are found on its shores.

Fringing the southern coast are the principal seaside resorts of the country, mostly in the province of Skåne, this province being the most fertile and thickly populated district of the[9] kingdom. Skåne, which is called the granary of Sweden, not only produces enough sugar-beets to supply the whole of Sweden with sugar, but boasts a vegetation and flora that are usually only found in more southern climes, its climate being so mild that peaches, apricots, and even grapes are found ripening to perfection, while it also abounds in old historic castles and manor-houses as well as dolmens and archæological remains that, like those found in Brittany and Cornwall, evoke prehistoric ages. Further north we come to Bohuslän and Halland, provinces that if a little barren in vegetation nevertheless possess a coast-line whose rugged wildness of scenery never fails to make a special appeal to the mind of those who are attuned to its beauty: dense groups of bare and often treeless red granite islands which when illumined by the setting sun become visions of beauty and hold the eye as surely as does the silver of the moon on running water. North of these provinces is Gothenburg, the second city of the kingdom and the starting-place of the famous Göta Canal that takes you through the very heart of the country, linking up in one continuous waterway of river and lake the capital of Sweden with the west coast; an idyllic journey that,[10] lasting three days, conveys you along peaceful rivers, across shimmering lakes and past lush meadows overgreen from the bounty of the waterways near by. Then, after passing Stockholm, most beautifully situated of all cities, we proceed north through Dalecarlia, the home of folk-lore and peasant costume, a smiling, fertile country of rich farm-land and pleasant homesteads, until we reach the province of Norrland with its great wide valleys and undulating plains, boundless forests, roaring waterfalls, and barren mountain-tops on whose surface the colours of the sunset are ever playing in constantly varying flushes of crimson and rose, silver or grey. Here is the home of the timber industry, and here too winter sports and game of every description abound, the landscape evoking in turn the endlessness of the Russian steppes or the mountain scenery prevailing in Canada or Norway. And continuing our way north we finally reach the province of Lapland, a vast barren country of high mountains and immense forests, iron hills and foaming waterfalls, where live the strangest and perhaps the most primitive people to be found west of the Caucasus, and where, incidentally, a nine months’ bleak and bitter winter is followed by a delightful[11] summer, during six weeks of which the sun never sets.

Of such is Swedish scenery, its main appeal lying, I fancy, not so much in the contour of its landscapes, beautiful though they be, as in the peculiar clearness of atmosphere that appears to endow every object with an almost magical quality of colour; and whether you visit the more southern regions and the enchanted island of Gothland in the Baltic, or travel north to Lapland, you will invariably find, not only sunsets whose beauty so transfigure every crag, island, or peak, that you begin to feel as if you have been transported from the common world into some wondrous world of phantasy, but a crystalline limpidity of atmosphere that makes every detail and contour of the most distant landscape stand out with faultless definition. It is this continual drama of surprise and delight that captures one’s very soul and that gives a visit to Sweden its characteristic charm.

Almost as great a diversity is seen, however, among the people who inhabit this country as in the scenery which I have just described; and though no other nation surpasses the Swedes in the patriotism, pride, and love of country which[12] have always been some of their dominant characteristics, few present as many different racial features.

In South-west Sweden, and especially in the province of Skåne, we find a population which strongly resembles the Danes living across the Sound in physique and character, the two races having for centuries constituted one political unit. Further north, and extending from Gothenburg to the Norwegian frontier, is a race of Goths who, like the sturdy inhabitants of Gothland in the Baltic, claim descent from the Vikings, the greater number of these famous sea-rovers having hailed from these two localities (this province is now called Viken). Further inland and to the north of the lake district of Vättern, Vänern, are the Sveas, a race of Swedes who, like the Dalecarlians and the men of Småland, constitute an element of the Swedish nation whose ethnological purity has been little affected by either Norwegian or Dane. The Sveas, unlike their southern neighbours, are distinguished by a liveliness and pleasure-loving temperament that makes them ideal hosts and boon companions, and also by a love of art and beauty which they share in common with the Dalecarlians. Like the inhabitants[13] of Skåne and Viken, however, they are an easy-going and industrious folk, but extremely combative and stubborn if roused. Even more attractive in disposition are the Dalecarlians, who are found clustering on the shores of Lake Siljan, and nowhere in Sweden will you come across a finer race of peasantry or one less spoilt by the modern spirit of industrialism.

ARILD, A FISHING VILLAGE NEAR MÖLLE

As for the other branches of the Swedish nation, if exception has been made of the Roos Swedes who are found about the capital, and the men of Småland, to the north of Blekinge, whose proverbial honesty, truthfulness, and hardihood are as pronounced to-day as they were in the days of Charles XII., none can be said to be of pure Swedish stock. Norrland is inhabited by a race which either strongly resemble their Norwegian neighbours (in Jämtland) or ethnologically are not unrelated to the Finns and Lapps, with whom there has been some slight intermarriage; while you meet in Lapland a Mongolian people that are entirely alien to the remainder of Sweden in both manner of living and race.

In spite of ethnological distinctions which, it should be stressed, are in any case not any more strongly marked than those at present existing[14] in the British Isles, the Swedish nation remains to-day as of old one of the most united countries in the world as well as one of the most distinctive, its highly marked national characteristics never failing to impress the visitor.

If I were now asked for the dominating impressions which the Swedish nation generally leaves on the mind of people visiting their country, I would say that the first is of a highly practical, hard-working, and cultured race, which not only considers efficiency as one of the cardinal virtues, but also manages to ensure such a quality being the one outstanding characteristic which any foreign observer never fails to remark whenever he comes into contact with Swedish national or civil life. I strongly question whether towns more efficiently run, and citizens more profoundly imbued with civic or public spirit, are to be found anywhere in either Europe or America than in this country, the result being a husbanding of resources and a co-ordination of public and private activities that certainly makes for prosperity and contentment. Nowhere have I seen cleaner or more orderly streets, tramway or telephone and public services better run, public squares or parks more beautifully laid out, educational and cultural[15] institutions better designed to promote the welfare of the race; hospitals, prisons, and public institutions better organised or conducted, and public buildings and business undertakings conceived on a larger scale. The second impression, of a general standard of living vastly superior to that found in any country in the world outside the United States, with the additional advantage of a comparatively small difference between the standards attained by the rich and poor respectively; and the third, of a people that combines an almost excessive formality of manners with the most lavish and whole-hearted hospitality, there being few countries, moreover, where an Englishman is more certain of being well received wherever he may go.

GOTHENBURG[1]

The two principal ways of reaching Sweden from England are: the first via the Continent and the Sassnitz Trälleborg train ferry route, the second by steamer across the North Sea; and for those who are not subject to sea-sickness the sea route is by far the more comfortable of the two. I travelled direct to Gothenburg in one of the Swedish Lloyd Company’s boats, the Saga, and found both boat and crossing a pleasant experience. There is a special train from St. Pancras to Tilbury in connection with the steamers, and the crossing takes about forty-five hours, instead of the long railway journey, and endless passport formalities, which all take place, however, in the comfortable through carriages. Swedish passenger steamers are invariably replete with every comfort and[17] convenience, and the Saga was no exception to the rule, her cheery captain proving not only an ideal skipper, but a host whose gaiety and entrain were so infectious that even those passengers who were beginning to be adversely affected by the strongly dipping and rolling boat were beguiled into making light of their troubles. The two great events of the day on board a Swedish boat are always the two principal meals, and in this respect a Swedish steamer is much like other boats, but the thing that marks out the Swedish meal from its fellows, whether taken on land or sea, is the Smörgåsbord (the bread-and-butter table, literally butter-goose) which almost invariably opens the meal. Prominently exposed on the various sideboards that greet you as you enter the dining-saloon are a large selection of dishes flanked by tall stands upon which enormous pats of butter and a most varied assortment of breads are heaped: black bread, white bread, honey bread, wheaten bread; and as soon as the gong has sounded for luncheon (or dinner) the guests make a massed attack on these dishes, after arming themselves with a large plate, knife, and fork. You first help yourself handsomely to butter out of a huge central stand and also to[18] the species of bread which you fancy, and then proceed to fill up your plate with as large a choice of edibles as possible, there being no fixed rule as to the sequence in which these are to be eaten. Around you are eggs in every conceivable form, olives, tomatoes and sardines, anchovies, cucumber in sweet sauces, cold fried fish and strömming salmon, hams and cheeses hailing from many lands, sausages and Swedish caviar, fish in aspic, pâtés and minces, as well as the great national delicacy called “sill”, consisting of slices of herring floating in sweetened vinegar and plentifully flavoured with spices and onion, which the Swedes consume before anything else. This ambulatory portion of the meal is apt to last a considerable time, as a Swede who is in form is rarely satisfied with one journey to the Smörgås table, but the inexperienced should abstain from following his example, however enticing the lure that lies in novel gastronomic experiments, in view of the very liberal meal that they are expected to consume after it, and of which the Smörgåsbord constitute only a preliminary coup d’essai. As accompaniment to these somewhat strenuous hors-d’œuvre, a species of cocktail called snaps, consisting of pure alcohol flavoured with a kind of carroway, is[19] invariably swallowed in one gulp before attacking the Smörgåsbord or immediately after that operation has been completed. This beverage is certainly a better appetiser than any commonly drunk in England, which may possibly account for the ease with which the average Swede is able to demolish an almost infinite selection of smörgås without either his capacity appearing to be strained or his curiosity to be sated, while he then proceeds to wash down the meal proper that follows with plentiful draughts of a Pilsener (No. 2 or 3) that are so innocuous that even Pussyfoot Johnson would drink of it without polluting his immortal soul.

The approach to Gothenburg from the sea is exceptionally beautiful, and the traveller should make a point of being up early on the morning of arrival to see the ship as it forges its path through the rocky archipelago of the Skärgård lying at the mouth of the river Göta älv. Here are thousands of islands, many of these bare of trees and without the slightest vegetation, whose red granite boulders, if seen in summer with the sun and waves beating upon them, possess a fascination that no artist as yet has adequately been able to convey on his canvas. They are the favourite[20] haunts of the inhabitants of Gothenburg, and like the skerries of Stockholm, are admirably adapted for bathing, yachting, and living the simple life, the whole coast right up to the Norwegian frontier providing almost equal facilities for this form of sport. The first object that comes into view of the town proper, however, as you pass the last group of islands of the archipelago (and even before that if the day is at all clear) is the tall high tower of the Masthuggs Kyrka, which is one of the best-known landmarks on the coast; and then as the boat draws nearer to the harbour mouth the whole panorama of Gothenburg appears before you in all its splendour. Here the busy, humming port, crowded with shipping of every kind, from the massive ocean liner to the smaller coasting vessel, fishing smack, or miniature passenger steamer; there enormous floating docks and shipbuilding yards whose unceasing activity attests Gothenburg’s prosperity, with as background to the whole scene the city itself with its many fine buildings and towers.

GOTHENBURG—THE HARBOUR

Built largely on a foundation of rock and situated about five miles from the river Göta älv at the foot of low-lying hills that are almost equally rocky, the city of Gothenburg probably[21] owes not a little of its reputation to the fact that it stands on the threshold of a district which is not only one of the best known and most popular of any in Sweden, owing to it being the starting-point of the famous Göta Canal route, but which also possesses an almost inexhaustible store of interests at the disposal of the student of mediæval history, folk-lore, and geology.

Like many other Swedish towns, Gothenburg is comparatively a modern city, but it stands on a site that is a veritable storehouse of legend and history, the adjoining territory having frequently changed hands or provided a battle-ground for those nations or piratical bands that were usually found contending for its possession. It was founded in 1621 by Gustavus Adolphus, after a visit which this enterprising and far-sighted monarch paid to the mouth of the river Göta älv early in that same year with the object of seeing if a commercial port could not conveniently be erected as close to the main ocean highways as possible to ensure his country becoming a factor in the world trade of the future. We are told that as he was deliberating on the matter, a bird who was being pursued by an eagle dropped suddenly at his feet, and that looking down at the utterly[22] exhausted bird he remarked that he could not look for a more promising omen.

“Here I shall build the town,” he declared; and acting on these words, he selected the present site of the city and entrusted its planning and building to some Dutch mercantile experts whose help he had solicited. The town was accordingly laid out in the Dutch manner, with many artificial canals and straight streets, and was also fortified and surrounded by a large moat. Ultimately the walls were razed to make way for a beautiful esplanade, while the moat was converted into a picturesque artificial waterway with high trees, bordered vernal banks, which winding in and out through the very heart of the town, have invested those portions traversed by it with a scenic charm that they would hardly have possessed otherwise.

The subsequent history of the town soon demonstrated the wisdom which had dictated Gustavus Adolphus’ selection of a site, for the city not only received large influxes of colonists, mostly German, Dutch, and Scotch, who materially contributed to its welfare by the important and fast-growing volume of trade which followed in their wake, but very quickly became an important trade centre for eastern commodities. The East[23] India Company, which was established here about this time, was for a long time one of Sweden’s most flourishing concerns, while the herring fisheries on the coast of Bohuslän became sufficiently productive to allow large quantities of this fish to be exported to foreign lands. Further impetus was given to the commerce of the town, moreover, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by Napoleon’s attempt to enforce a continental blockade of Great Britain in 1806, this short-sighted measure having the effect of converting the Swedish city into the principal emporium and transit mart of all English goods in North Europe, while its subsequent progress has been almost equally marked. During the War it enjoyed a period of tremendous prosperity which, though followed by an unavoidable slump, has nevertheless persisted to this day, Gothenburg having by now entirely superseded Stockholm as the leading exporting and shipping centre, while it has also become the second most populated town in Sweden, as well as an important educational and cultural centre, and one of the most thriving commercial and industrial cities of the kingdom. Gothenburg owes these advantages, however, almost as much[24] to the tireless energy, business acumen, and flair which her inhabitants appear to have inherited from their Swedish, German, and Dutch ancestors as to her favoured position in the world markets; and in no other town in Europe of equal size will the traveller find a more hard-working or efficient corps commercial or a population whose civic pride and public spirit so strongly impel them to insist on superefficiency. The town has consequently a well-ordered aspect which appears to apply to even the most out-of-the-way path and little lane, while its administration has been raised to so fine an art that, apart from the town fire brigade, which seems to have been a little overlooked, the whole machinery runs on model lines. You may wander in the town when and where you will, and yet never find a street that is not clean or devoid of refuse, the local scavengers apparently fulfilling their duties at such an early hour and so unobtrusively that you will rarely come across them, while the public gardens and parks are so perfectly kept and become in May and June such dreams of beauty, that you are found most often calculating the lavish expenditure and imposing staffs that alone can have ensured such excellence. Indeed in no[25] town in Europe have I found public gardens better or more artistically laid out than in Gothenburg, the Swedish gardeners often possessing not only an ample expertise and a sufficiency in botanical knowledge that marks them out among the gardeners of the world, but a natural taste of an order high enough to justify appeal being made to them in questions dealing with the designing of ornamental and formal gardens.

To visit Gothenburg without seeing its gardens is therefore as unthinkable as if you passed through Rome without seeing St. Peter’s; and though every visitor should, almost as soon as he has landed, first take a stroll over by the water front (this being the obvious thing to do) in order to steep his mind with an adequate sense of the town’s importance as a commercial and shipping centre (which should be his principal dominating impression), he must immediately afterwards, and before seeing anything else, stroll even more leisurely along the delightful artificial waterway that has given Gothenburg its peculiar resemblance to a Dutch city; and after passing by the picturesque market thronged by lusty market women who can daily be seen selling their baskets[26] of fruit and flowers along the very water edge, linger for a while in the beautiful Slottskogen and Trädgårdsföreningen parks, on whose upkeep and embellishment many municipalities have expended lavish sums. In the summer months these gardens are a dream of delight and colour, while they are so beautifully kept and well ordered that though frequently invaded by festive crowds there appears to be an almost entire lack of that careless abandon that so often impels the British holiday-maker to litter even the most pleasant garden with paper bags and food refuse. Of the two parks the Trädgårdsföreningen is perhaps the finer and more restful, and it contains incidentally one of the finest hot-houses for tropical plants that are to be found in Northern Europe after those in Kew Gardens, as well as a very good restaurant and theatre; but the Slottskogen park contains almost as many pleasing features, although its principal charms are to be found in the natural beauty that it possesses or in the magnificent view that can be obtained of the city and surrounding country from its Belvedere, rather than in the number, variety, and orderly beauty of its flower-beds, which are not to be compared to those of the other park.

[27]

Having thus briefly surveyed the various vicissitudes through which Gothenburg has passed in the course of its somewhat short life as a city, and given some account of its parks and general aspect, we may now proceed to consider some of the principal characteristics of the town itself, its monuments and other public buildings, and then deal with the surrounding country.

Like many other Swedish towns, Gothenburg impresses from the first as a city in which every street and building form integral parts of a general scheme. The thoroughfares are mostly ample in size and the buildings nearly all modern structures of stone and plaster in which the new school of Swedish architecture has sought to express a purely Swedish style of architectural expression. As I intend in a subsequent chapter to treat this subject more fully, I will content myself with saying that though the public buildings of Gothenburg undoubtedly reflect the art that was preconised by such masters as Clason and Ferdinand Boberg in the way in which the principal ornamental designs centre around the entrances, and also in the very distinctive form of panelling and decorative motifs which characterise them, they should not be taken as typical examples of a style[28] which can only be studied to advantage in the capital. I should therefore advise all lovers of architecture, whose first view of Sweden is by way of this city, to suspend all judgment of Swedish architecture until they have arrived in Stockholm and seen Ragnar Östberg’s famous masterpiece, the new Stadshus.

GOTHENBURG—THE CITY

Of the many new buildings of Gothenburg which have been inspired by the new school, the most pretentious and interesting is the New Art Gallery, which was opened to the public last year at Götaplatsen, a big, massive building containing a fine handsome loggia with seven high round arches, which, though awaiting completion, possesses a certain massive dignity that is not without charm. Of the other numerous buildings that are to be found in the town, which incidentally probably contains a greater number of scholastic institutions, technical colleges, and hospitals than any other city of its size in the world, there are few which deserve any special mention. A visit should, however, be made to the old seventeenth-century building on the Harbour Canal in which the Swedish East India Company once had their offices and warehouses, where very interesting ethnographical and sociological historical collections[29] can be seen, and also to the new General Post Office, which is probably the largest post office to be found in the north of Europe. As for the churches of Gothenburg, there are only one or two that are in any way out of the common, and none that should detain the tourist for any appreciable length of time, except perhaps the Masthuggs Church, situated in the suburb of Majorna, whose red-bricked tower certainly possesses quite a distinctive air of its own, and also the Kristine or German Church on the Harbour Canal. The remainder are devoid of any special interest.

Before passing on to consider the many pleasant excursions that can be made from Gothenburg along the coast of Bohuslän, a few remarks concerning the hotels and restaurants of the town may not fall amiss; and while I have little further to add to the description which I gave in the earlier pages of this chapter of a typical Swedish meal (the luncheon which I described being characteristic not only of Swedish steamers but also of Swedish towns generally), it may be useful to point out that the hotels of Gothenburg mostly belong to the expensive category, and that travellers should not therefore base their estimate of costs on this city alone, Gothenburg and Stockholm[30] being probably the two most expensive towns in the whole of Sweden. Swedish hotels are invariably clean and comfortable, however, and though a traveller may at first experience a certain shock at finding that the stalwart and often prepossessing chambermaid whom he has requested to prepare his matutinal bath will not only prepare it most adequately, but will also look very aggrieved if he does not allow her to scrub and generally rub him down much as his nurse used to do in the days of his childhood, he will find little else that differs materially from his experience of English hotels. Swedish rule of behaviour must, however, be acquired by any visitor who intends to make a protracted stay in the country, as Swedish table manners differ considerably from our own; and one of the first rules that must be mastered is never to drink any wine at a dinner or luncheon party without first toasting somebody: it does not matter who it is so long as it is not your hostess. As this book is not intended to be a Swedish etiquette manual, we will now pass on to other subjects, after contenting ourselves with saying that though the custom referred to is the one which the ignorant Englishman is the most likely to break, there are many others that he[31] should try to assimilate, especially if he happens to be one of those luckless individuals who are always doing the wrong thing. In no other country in Europe has a gaffeur more opportunities for showing off this particular failing.

BOHUSLÄN

A more weather-worn and scarred coast than Bohuslän is difficult to find, for the waves have cut so deeply into its shore that it presents the appearance of a huge and abnormally uneven comb with countless jagged teeth or “Naess”, between whose steep and precipitous banks equally innumerable and winding fjords have eaten deeply into the land. In winter, when both sky and rock are bleakly grey and repellent, it brings suggestions of desolateness and strife, and affords foreboding vistas of innumerable clusters of bare rock often separated by the narrowest of channels, which some primordial giant of fable has scattered all along the coast to protect the mainland from the onslaughts of tide and breakers, and so maintain the integrity of the rugged country over which Beowulf once held sway. This forbidding coast has, however, many compensating advantages,[33] and if only you explore it during the summer months with a certain amount of thoroughness it will never fail to appeal to any one who loves wild scenery. To see it at its best you should of course visit it when the sky is azure blue and the waves are beating against the rocky red granite islands of the Skärgård, encircling them with snow-white foam, while the sun is transfiguring even their most forbidding boulder into a dream of beauty. But even if conditions are not as favourable, you may, if you wander a little far afield, find concealed here and there among the fjords and skerries many enchanting valleys and little coves where trees grow luxuriantly and which are so protected from wind and storm that even the most exacting lover of warmth and sunshine will in summer imagine he has been transported to a more southern clime, without too much stretching of his imagination. Arid and grey-looking as the greater part of the mountain landscape may be, the restful green of pine and fir is never entirely absent; and while there is also the cool grey of crag and peak to delight the eye, even the wildest and most rugged mountain feature feels ever companionably close—not immeasurably distant and unattainable as the desert.

[34]

Of all the provinces of Sweden, Bohuslän is perhaps one of the earliest inhabited, while the entire coast is stamped with memories, memories of Viking days when in the fjords of the coast the Sea Kings fitted out their fleets for voyages across the North Sea, or legends concerning the great Beowulf, King of the Western Goths, whose name is so bound up with Bohuslän that I cannot refrain from describing his most legendary exploit more or less fully.

For many years Bohuslän had been looted and ravaged by Grendel the sea monster without being able to retaliate, when very unexpectedly there arrived in the land a strange boat full of armed men whose tall and fair leader was brought before Hrothgar, the King of the Danes (who was then ruling Bohuslän), and asked to account for his visit.

“We are of the Goths kin,” he replied, “Hygelac’s hearth sharers; my father is widely known; he is the high-born lord Eogtheow.” Hrothgar recognised him as Beowulf, and bidding him warmly welcome, escorted him to his castle. That same night, as the King was sleeping, the sea monster crept into the palace and seizing one of the sleeping knights, “bit him through the body,[35] drank his blood, and tore off his flesh in great strips”. Then he advanced towards Beowulf, and would have treated him in similar fashion if that knight had not forestalled him by immediately attacking. Seizing the monster with his two hands, Beowulf tore his shoulder open with a superhuman effort, and breaking his sinews rendered him powerless. Grendel limped away mortally wounded and made for the cavern at the bottom of the lake which acted as his lair, leaving a trail of blood behind him, but succumbed to his injuries while seeking to reach the bottom of the water. Next night his infuriated mother left the cavern to avenge her son, and creeping surreptitiously into the palace succeeded in killing one of the Danes before Beowulf could prevent her. The sea monster then fled back to her lair, with Beowulf following hard upon her. Reaching the lake he dived to the bottom, and though seized by the monster as he reached it, was able to draw his magic sword and slay his opponent. He then cut off Grendel’s head, and returning to the surface took the trophy back to the palace and laid it at the King’s feet. Some say that this legendary hero is buried on a headland at Hronesnass near Gothenburg; others that Upland[36] was his last resting-place, while objects similar to those that are depicted in the Beowulf Anglo-Saxon epic are shown to this day in both places purporting to have been discovered in the near vicinity.

We should be too obviously departing from the legitimate scope of this volume were we to enter upon any detailed account of the many other legends which deal with Beowulf and his exploits. They are legion. It must suffice to say that the student of folklore and mythology will find in Bohuslän an almost inexhaustible fund of old legends at his disposal, as well as an unusually rich store of relics from even the earliest period of antiquity. I have been shown burial chambers and vaults that were 4000 years old, and also inscriptions on slabs of rocks dating from 1500 B.C. which purported to reproduce human forms or animals, while the whole district also abounds in cairns and grave finds of stone, bronze, and iron, many of these dating from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron epochs, as well as numerous caverns and islands that are popularly supposed to have been the favourite resorts of sea monsters akin to Grendel.

As for the people of Bohuslän, they are in[37] every respect worthy descendants of their Viking ancestors, and while their lives are not as equally colourful and picturesque, they are almost as constantly exposed to danger both on land and sea. A hardy and energetic race that turns to a seafaring life as by a natural instinct, they make ideal sailors, deep-sea fishing with its accompanying sister industries of salting and canning being one of their principal and most productive occupations, while those who are not employed in fishing earn their living quarrying granite, of which there are enormous quantities all along the coast, and shipping it to foreign countries. This occupation, though even more remunerative than that of herring fishing, entails even more risks, owing to the unfortunate tendency that charges of dynamite occasionally manifest of exploding at the wrong moment, large blocks of stone having frequently been known to crash down on groups of unfortunate workmen at the most unexpected moments.

While there are many pleasant excursions that can be made along the coast of Bohuslän and among the islands of the Skärgård, there are none which will give the visitor a more comprehensive idea of the coast in as short a time as that which[38] may be made by taking one of those many small steamers that ply regularly from Gothenburg to Marstrand and Lysekil, and then returning on the following day by the Uddevalla route.

Leaving Gothenburg, the steamer turns sharply northward, and after passing a lighthouse enters the archipelago of the Skärgård, through which it now proceeds to thread its way, stopping occasionally in front of islands on which you see grouped near a landing-stage a number of fishermen’s wooden houses, all painted red. Nothing very distinctive about the scenery apart from its almost entire lack of trees or vegetation, but many of the skerries are so protected from the wind, and they evidently offer such remarkable facilities for boating, yachting, and swimming, that you soon begin to realise the cause of their popularity during the summer months, while the scenery and conditions which they present are of so novel a character that you find yourself enjoying every minute of your leisurely progress through the channels and straits that separate them.

MARSTRAND

After about two hours’ journey you arrive at Marstrand, one of the most popular bathing resorts of the whole coast, and further meditations are cut short by the captain’s announcement that[39] you have barely three hours for obtaining some food and also for seeing the town.

Marstrand is a city of great antiquity, perhaps the oldest in the province after Kungälv (a town with which we will make acquaintance as we proceed on our way to Stockholm by the Göta Canal route), and like many towns that have enjoyed great prosperity, has little to suggest its former greatness, apart from a few old seals and documents. Two centuries ago it was one of the richest cities in Sweden, owing to its thriving herring fishing industry, though an old writer informs us that “the herrings suddenly began to disappear owing to the ungodly ways of the fisherfolk, after which it rapidly declined and sank into poverty and oblivion”. It has recovered, however, much of its former prosperity, and in the summer months is thronged with visitors, mostly Swedes and Swedish-Americans, who delight in its excellent boating and yachting.

Built on a small island that is separated from another called Koön that immediately faces it by a narrow strait, it is dominated by an old dismantled fortress with a massive circular granite tower which dates from the seventeenth century and affords a splendid view of the skerries and[40] surrounding country. As it entirely lacks even the most conventional form of amusement, it will hardly appeal, I fancy, to that class of tourist whose only conception of a seaside resort is based on their experience of English or French watering-places, and should therefore be avoided by any visitor who does not consider a bracing air, excellent bathing, yachting, and camping-out facilities as indispensable adjuncts to a holiday. In these respects, at any rate, few seaside resorts excel Marstrand, which incidentally possesses the additional inducement of a scenery that is almost unique in character, while its hotels are comfortable and their proprietors so up-to-date in their methods that almost before I had set foot on the island I found myself being rushed off to a particular hostelry (the Grand) and induced to order the most expensive and elaborate of meals. As Swedish hotel managers all appear to possess an equally ingratiating manner, I strongly advise people travelling with a light purse to fight shy of any but the cheaper hotels. In justice to the particular restaurant in which I was so dexterously inveigled I must add that, expensive as was the bill with which I was presented, the luncheon which I consumed was so excellently cooked as to almost[41] justify the expenditure that it incurred, the genial manager informing me that he had served a long apprenticeship in France before the War, and that nowhere in Sweden except at the Royal Hotel in Stockholm would I find a more delectable and recherché cuisine. Judging from the many restaurants whose food I subsequently sampled during my stay in this country, I rather fancy he was right.

Passing on our way we then come to Lysekil, a busy little fishing town whose herring industry ranks next to that of Marstrand in importance. Like most Swedish cities of this part of Sweden its red-tiled houses are nearly all built of wood, but it is picturesquely situated at the mouth of the Gullmar Fjord and is not devoid of a certain charm, while it is equally celebrated for the efficacy of its medicinal waters and the excellence of its boating and bathing. Near the quays are innumerable sailing boats specially built to accommodate parties of twelve or more, in which one can comfortably cruise about the adjacent fjords for the whole or part of a day at a price that is obtainable nowhere in England, while the lover of sea-bathing will find every facility that he can desire, not only in the octagonal wooden bathing establishments that are to be found near the quays, but[42] in the many clear pools that abound among the rocks, the Swedish Mrs. Grundy being very tolerant with regard to the costume that may be worn on these occasions. But Lysekil possesses many other attractions, and is not only an ideal place for fishing whether out at sea or in the fjords, but the centre for many interesting excursions in the neighbourhood. Over across the bay is the picturesque little village of Fiskebäckskil, while further north is the seaside resort of Strömstad, quite near to the Norwegian frontier, and beyond it the fortress of Frederikshald, where Charles XII. was killed as he was attempting to invade Norway. Near this fort, incidentally, is a small cove where this Swedish king launched his galleys “after having had them dragged twelve English miles across the land from Strömstad”, a feat which, according to Emerson, was only rendered possible by the material help and advice of Swedenborg.

The first part of the excursion being now completed, we then take the train for Uddevalla, and after a short journey, during which the scenery gradually loses its barren character, soon arrive at our destination.

Delightfully situated at the foot of wooded hills and in a countryside whose luxuriant fertility is a[43] pleasant contrast to the barren wildness of other parts of Bohuslän, Uddevalla is a busy little place with a large paper-mill and other industries that was originally founded by Dutch settlers. And like Marstrand and Lysekil, it is thronged in summer by Swedish holiday-makers, its principal appeal, apart from its pretty setting, lying in the splendid opportunities for open-air life that, like other Swedish summer resorts, it is able to offer to the visitor. Boarding the Gothenburg steamer, we then pass through the Byfjord and begin a journey that if taken so as to include a sunset will often present you with entrancing vistas of promontories and rocky islands that appear to have been especially designed as settings for the sun. And plodding our way among islands that by this time have lost all sign of vegetation we deposit portions of our cargo at various ports and pass countless granite boulders strewn along the coast that, seen in a fading light, look like huge sea monsters on whose bare backs the waves are beating in vain. Slowly the darkness deepens, and as the sky assumes its many shifting colours the beams from the lighthouses of Gothenburg come into view and very soon we reach our moorings in the harbour.

THE GÖTA CANAL

For those who are not pressed for time I can hardly imagine a more enjoyable trip than that of travelling from Gothenburg to Stockholm by the combination of river, lake, and canal known as the Göta Canal, a leisurely journey of two days and a half that takes you through the heart of the country, from coast to coast, on a line of steamers that, though bearing much the same relationship to an ordinary passenger boat as a Pomeranian to a wolf-hound, are models in miniature of what a river vessel should be, accommodation, cooking, and service being all that could be desired. The charm of this trip does not lie so much in the beauty of the castles, churches, and lake scenery that characterise it, as in the way in which it brings you into constant touch with the heart-beat of the country. At times the boat glides along fertile fields and meadows, and within sight of ancient[45] churches, pleasant villages, or old castle ruins; at others it makes its way across wide shimmering lakes or passes locks innumerable that afford ample opportunities for exercise to those desiring it. I shall not easily forget the enjoyable days that I spent in this manner seeing mile after mile of the most varied scenery unfolding itself before me, as I sat lazily complacent in a comfortable deck-chair, almost hoping that the journey would have no end. This passage across the very centre of Sweden is so assuaging that I most heartily recommend it to all those who hold with me that every traveller who would duly appreciate a country that is to him virgin soil should only visit it with mind attuned to the world, and consequently that the Göta Canal should be regarded as a kind of portal to the more arduous Sweden which is disclosed to the senses as soon as the last lake of Östergötland and the Stockholm Archipelago will have been traversed. Used both as an entrance and as an exit to Sweden, however, it is alike admirable, since in the first instance it predisposes the mind to view everything favourably, in the second it soon consoles the disillusioned traveller for any shortcomings and deceptions that he will have discovered in the rest of the country.

[46]

The credit of building a system of waterways linking up Sweden’s many large lakes, and even the Baltic and North Sea, belongs to no modern engineer but to a certain Catholic bishop called Brask of Linköping, a town found on this route, who in 1525 advocated this canal in a letter to King Gustavus I. as a means of escaping the duties that were exacted by the Danes on shipping passing through the Sound. The work was actually begun at a place called Norsholm, and advanced so far that signs of it are still visible at Brask’s Ditch: only the King’s extensive commitments in other directions preventing further progress being made. And from that moment there was hardly a Swedish monarch who did not recommend the project, though nothing much was achieved until the reign of Charles XII., when Christopher Polhem finally obtained permission from the Swedish King to “construct a passage between Gothenburg and Norrköping by using the natural waterways as far as possible”. The Swedish Government was to be responsible for the financial part of the undertaking, and according to the terms of the contract that was now signed between the King and Polhem on January 17, 1718, this engineer was to complete the canal in[47] five years, a sum of 40,000 silver daler being allowed him annually for expenses, with a stipulation that any eventual deficiency would be made good by the King. The length of the sluices was fixed at that time at 180 feet and the breadth at 38 feet. The great engineering project was immediately started from the side of Gothenburg, but Polhem was compelled to abandon the enterprise at the King’s death in December of the same year, the Council declaring that the entire project was useless, as it was only a product of Polhem’s egoism and that it would therefore have to be abandoned. The completion of the canal was subsequently delayed for many years, owing to difficulties which arose attendant upon the construction of several of the locks, and it was only in the early part of the nineteenth century that a really concerted effort was made to complete the work, this ultimately leading to the opening of the route from the Cattegat to the Baltic in 1832, a result that was in the main due to Baltzar von Platen’s extraordinary energy and driving power. The cost incurred in completing the canal, as well as the time that was spent in building it, were so much beyond the estimates made at the time that there is good reason to assume that[48] von Platen deliberately handed in an erroneous estimate from the very beginning, so keen was his resolve to allow no consideration to interfere with the carrying out of his plan, and so firm his conviction that a more correct estimate would only have torpedoed his scheme; this misrepresentation giving Sweden a canal that, though possessing far less importance as trade route or for war operations than many later canal constructions, is, as a piece of engineering work, ahead of even the Suez Canal.

During the first stage of the journey the steamer proceeds slowly up the Göta river, and after passing Jordfallet, arrives in sight of the picturesque ruins of Bohus Castle, which dominate the two arms of the river. Erected in 1308 by Håkon Magnusson, King of Norway, this fortress long enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most formidable strongholds of Scandinavia, and was also the scene of innumerable sieges and counter-sieges in which the attacking party invariably came off second best. King Eric XIV. invested it for over a year and a half, only to find his best armies and most experienced generals recoiling in defeat before its massive walls and equally stout-hearted defenders, and it continued to live up to its proud reputation of impregnability until[49] the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was condemned as a fortress and left to fall to wrack and ruin. Only two of its towers remain, the Fars hatt och mors mössa (the father’s hat and the mother’s cap), of which the first is an interesting and well-preserved example of mediæval fortress architecture.

THE TROLLHÄTTAN FALLS

On the opposite shore, and immediately facing Bohus, is the little town of Kungälv, now an unimportant village, but at one time a large and thriving city which appears to have been the Scandinavian Geneva of its age. Here the rulers of the three Nordic nations used to meet in conference, and it was here again that the famous Peace Congress of 1101 held its meetings. Kungälv did not, however, long retain its exalted position, and after having been partly destroyed by Ratibur, King of the Wends, at the close of the twelfth century, quickly relapsed into comparative obscurity. Though shorn of all its former importance, Kungälv is an attractive place to visit, especially during the summer, and is picturesquely situated at the foot of a steep and thickly wooded hill from which interesting views can be obtained of the neighbouring country. Beyond Bohus are the green fields and marshes of Hisingen island and[50] in the far distance the chimneys and church steeples of Gothenburg. After passing Gamla Lödöse (Old Lödöse), of which a story relates that by command of Gustavus I. its inhabitants removed to another locality twenty miles nearer the mouth of the river and there built a new town on the spot now called Gamlestaden, the steamer reaches Trollhättan and the first series of sluices that lead up to Brinkeberg Hill, the time spent in negotiating this uphill climb providing ample opportunity and leisure for seeing the Trollhättan Falls and electric power station. The Falls are six in number, and the sight of the great masses of water as they hurtle and leap down from one rocky shelf to the other, impetuously forging their way between rocky canyons in a frenzied descent of over a hundred feet, is impressive to a degree. The accumulated force of this water is more than 270,000 horse-power, of which over 170,000 have been turned to practical use by the huge electric power station that has been installed in the vicinity of the cataract; while of the current thus generated part has been transformed into electricity for the lighting of a 300-mile area and also for the Stockholm-Gothenburg railway, and part consumed by the numerous saw and wood-pulp[51] mills, smelting furnaces and ironworks which have been set up near the falls. For sheer grandeur of scenery Trollhättan compares favourably with any other place in Sweden, and abounds with beautiful walks in the surrounding woods, from whence magnificent views can be obtained in all directions.

Shortly after leaving Trollhättan the steamer begins what is to many by far the most attractive portion of the journey, for lake after lake are now traversed that, if lacking the dreamy voluptuous charm, soft atmosphere, and luxuriant vegetation of southern lakes, are almost equally pleasing for the exquisite loveliness of their sunsets and the beauty of their skies. Surrounded by low-lying hills and pine woods that often extend to the very water edge, these lakes are strongly evocative of Canadian scenery, and from early dawn to that golden twilight which in June is the nearest approach to night that is obtainable in these northern latitudes, present a slowly changing kaleidoscope of colour so rich and varied that not only does the eye rarely weary of watching it, but even the mind refuses to do aught but unquestioningly admire.

The steamer first glides into Lake Vänern, the[52] largest inland lake in Sweden, and the biggest in Europe outside of Russia. Over 2000 square miles in area, this lake is divided into two parts by two long necks of land, each with an archipelago. Dotted here and there are many beautiful islands and skerries, of which many call for careful navigation, compasses being often at a discount owing to the ore lying at the bottom of the lake.

From Vänersborg, the first port of call in the lake, we motor or drive to Halleberg, a strange-looking hill that is now separated by a deep valley from Hunneberg, a sister hill which was originally one with it. Exceedingly steep and difficult of access, but equally picturesque, Halleberg is crowned by a large plateau in which lonely waste land alternates with small lakes and pine woods, where, if luck favours you, giant elks evoking prehistoric times may occasionally be seen crashing through the encircling branches. Like many other hills found in the vicinity of these lakes, Halleberg possesses many interesting geological features and affords a good idea of the type of Swedish scenery that characterises this part of Sweden.

SJÖTORP LOCKS, GÖTA CANAL

The steamer from here proceeds north, and after reaching the Eken archipelago, a labyrinth[53] of small islands and skerries which present considerable difficulties to the navigator, rounds the promontory and turning south calls at Hällekis, a village that is most picturesquely situated at the foot of Mt. Kinnekulle. Towering over all the surrounding country, this mountain is not only so extraordinarily fertile that in early spring and summer it becomes a garden of wild flowers, but it possesses geological characteristics that in themselves would justify making it a special visit, there being no less than three distinct layers of rock strata below the diorite that once covered the entire hill. Surrounded by many pleasing valleys and woods, Kinnekulle is during the summer months an inland rural paradise and an ideal place for dreaming away an hour in quiet contemplation of the landscape.

Leaving Kinnekulle the steamer then proceeds north and at Sjötorp begins a long uphill climb along the canal leading out of Lake Vänern into the province of Västergötland. From lock to lock the boat is gradually raised until it is more than 150 feet above Lake Vänern, this providing a unique opportunity for getting down on shore and having a look at the country people working in the fields. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience,[54] but found few fellow-passengers energetic enough to follow my example, the great majority seeming to prefer to remain on deck, from which they could occasionally be heard making those vapid exclamations of admiration that pass for appreciation of beauty.

Comfortably reclining in deck-chairs and basking in the sun, it was clear that their thoughts were little concerned with the rustic beauty of the landscape through which they were passing, and that they only regarded the journey in the light of a rest cure. For this regrettable state of affairs I rather fancy the Göta Canal Company is in part responsible, for the diminutive little steamers in which the journey from Gothenburg is taken are so crammed full with comfort and so similar to miniature hotels that it is perhaps not to be wondered at that so many travellers succumb to their attractions and lazily allow life to slip by without worrying over such trifles as scenery or old and historic buildings. On le ferait à moins.

Quietly and almost unobtrusively, then, the steamer glides along fertile fields and rural landscapes, the canal being at times so narrow that at one place after passing Lake Viken (Spetsnäset or Pointed Ness) branches can actually be broken[55] off the trees lining the banks. Nothing very distinctive about the scenery, apart from its general pleasantness, but I noticed, in addition to innumerable silver birches, a profusion of unfamiliar trees of the ash variety lining the banks of the canal, which I was informed were called oxel or beam trees. Covered with white blossoms they made a pretty picture, though their general effect was rather marred by the very pungent and sickly perfume which emanated from their flowers, and of which I became unpleasantly conscious as I approached nearer to the trees. I made various attempts to bring back some of these sprays of white blossoms to the boat, but on every occasion elected to throw away those which I had picked, owing to their offensive and almost nauseating odour.

After crossing Lake Viken, a typical forest lake of great natural beauty studded with rocks and small wooded islands, the steamer proceeds down the canal, and near the point where it enters Lake Vättern passes the powerful fortress of Karlsborg. Begun as far back as 1820 to serve as a final base of operations against a potential invader, this fortress was part of a scheme of defence which Carl Johan Bernadotte, the founder of the present[56] Royal House of Sweden, organised just after the Napoleonic campaigns in order to make good the wastage caused by a very exhaustive series of wars. It was thought at the time that the fortress would take ten years to build, and the probability is that it would have taken no longer a time if the military authorities had not been so anxious to make it outshine every other fortress in Europe. The result was that though any amount of work was put into building it the Swedish military authorities submitted so many plans and counter-plans that little was done that was not immediately undone, in view of a possible improvement, this policy causing the work to drag on till 1909, when the principal fort was at last completed. Passing on from Karlsborg we then enter Lake Vättern, the second largest lake in Sweden and perhaps the most beautiful. Shaped somewhat like a spindle, Vättern is fed almost entirely by subaqueous springs of purest quality which would account incidentally for the limpidity of its waters, and possesses so many legends and historic memories of the past that it has become invested with a charm and attraction that are quite its own. Our next objective being the town of Jönköping, at the southern extremity of the[57] lake, the steamer now takes a southerly direction, and after a few hours arrives in sight of the mysterious Vising Island, a visit to which is almost obligatory upon any visitor to the lake. It contains an old abbey and a castle which was for centuries the residence of the Swedish kings, as well as a number of runic stones that were erected in the Viking age to the memory of warriors who had fallen in distant lands. Apart from Mt. Omberg, with its lovely grottos and its wooded heights recalling Kinnekulle, however, we pass nothing else of special interest until we reach the extremity of the lake and the town of Jönköping.

An important commercial city and the centre of the match industry, Jönköping is less frequented by tourists than the other parts of the lake because it is not on the direct line between Gothenburg and Stockholm and consequently is very often overlooked by English and American tourists. It is, however, well worth visiting, if only for the beautiful park which the municipality has had planted on the shores of the lake and a very interesting wooden church dating from the Middle Ages, in which I saw many quaint wall-paintings and carvings as well as an old portal that[58] was simply riddled with Danish bullets. Jönköping is the most convenient headquarters for making excursions to either Visingsö, Vadstena, or St. Bridget, while it is within easy distance from the iron mountain of Taberg, the surrounding country being very typical of Sweden.

Turning north again the steamer then proceeds to Vadstena, perhaps one of the most interesting historical places in Sweden, and certainly one of the oldest.

Dominating the town is a large sixteenth-century Renaissance castle, built for Gustavus Vasa by Joakim Bulgerin, the best fortress architect of his age, as a defence against Danish Sweden, an imposing edifice forming one side of a rectangle, the others consisting of ramparts and four circular bastions bristling with cannon embrasures, which are surrounded by one of the widest moats that I have ever seen. A little too massive for my taste, yet not without a certain air, and replete, moreover, with historical memories, this building is typical of what Augustus Hahr calls “business-like architecture or utility buildings”. You feel that it was only constructed for a utilitarian purpose and that Bulgerin’s principal concern was to make a fortress that would resist[59] both the attacks of time and those of its enemies.

Here many Swedish monarchs had their residence, including Gustavus Vasa, who was married here to Catharine Stenbock, and Magnus, who in a fit of madness hurled himself out of a window in order to “seize a beautiful girl whom he had seen rising out of the waters of the lake”. Here again many Parliaments were held, including that of 1501, when Hans of Denmark was dethroned. Vadstena owes its proud position as royal city almost equally to the convent which the same Magnus Eriksson had built on the shores of the lake in 1370 for St. Bridget and the religious order which she founded—the most influential and respected association of the north at that time. And especially after St. Bridget’s canonisation in 1391 the town increased in population and in importance sufficiently to enable Queen Margaret to give it full civic rights, while it was also entirely re-planned. Very little remains to-day of the original convent buildings erected by Magnus, but within the precincts of the lunatic asylum which now stands on the old site are still to be seen one or two nuns’ cells, and also the private chapel of the Abbess, while of the original gardens[60] there remain a few old pear trees dating from those early days on which the first Bergamote pears had been grown. Apart from the castle and convent there is little else of interest to be seen in Vadstena except the Blue Church, an attractive towerless building of bluish-grey limestone in which the bones of the saint and many memorials of the Middle Ages can be seen.

JÖNKÖPING

Passing on from Vadstena we next come to the town of Motala at the most easterly extremity of the lake, and re-entering the canal begin our gradual descent to the Baltic, after passing the stone memorial which the townspeople of Motala erected in the early part of the nineteenth century to Baltzar von Platen, the founder of the canal. Made of one solid block of stone, this monument is typical of early Victorian architecture, and a blur on the landscape. More pleasing and typical of a scenery which from this moment is perhaps the prettiest of any found on this journey are the many fine estates now seen on both sides of the canal and on the shores of Boren, the next lake that we meet. And after making its way across this very attractively wooded lake the steamer re-enters the canal at Borensberg and there begins a slow progression down fifteen locks[61] in the short distance of two miles, a feat that, taking nearly two hours to accomplish, affords a splendid opportunity for walking to Vreta Abbey church situated near by. Built in the twelfth century, in the reign of King Charles Sverkersson, this old church has undergone many vicissitudes, and after being burned to the ground in the middle of the thirteenth century was repeatedly built over and even considerably altered in form and dimension. In 1915, however, the church was restored and excavations made, in the course of which large parts of the old walls of the monastery building were brought to light and freed from the thick layer of soil that had covered them for centuries. Inside the Abbey are numerous graves of the Middle Ages, in which are treasured the relics of the old dynasties of the country, the most noticeable of these being the tombs of King Inge and his queen Helena, those of Kings Magnus Nilsson and Valdemar and Queen Sophia, and the well-preserved mortuary chapel in which members of the Douglas family lie buried. Like most of their countrymen who emigrated to foreign countries in the Middle Ages, the Scotch soldiers of fortune who came over to Sweden at various moments of her history to earn renown not only[62] made good but rendered signal and distinguished service to the country of their adoption, there being few fields of activity in which they were not soon prominent.

From Vreta the journey now proceeds through Lake Roxen, there being, however, little to detain us beyond the pleasing character of the scenery and the town of Linköping on the southern side of the lake, where a visit should be made, if time permits, to the thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral which has been attributed to Bishop Bengt, brother of the mighty Birger Jarl.

Richly decorated, this old church is one of the best examples of fifteenth-century Gothic architecture to be found in Sweden. After passing Norsholm, where tourists who are pressed for time can break the journey and proceed to the capital by train, we then cross one of the most enjoyable parts of the Göta Canal, the scenery being not only extremely attractive but equally varied. At one moment we glide through a lake (Asplången) whose banks are pleasantly wooded or studded with picturesque country houses; at another we follow the sinuosities of a canal that, winding its tortuous way through a most fertile landscape or passing between high banks of trees whose[63] branches sweep the very deck of our boat, is a revelation of what engineering can do. And passing lock after lock we reach Söderköping, once an important commercial centre and coronation city, now one of Sweden’s principal watering-places. Picturesquely situated almost on the shores of the Baltic, this town abounds in enjoyable excursions, the finest of these being the delightful though steep ascent that may be made of the heights of Ramunderhäll on the other side of the canal. An hour later, and as the steamer glides gently into an arm of the Baltic Sea at Mem, the water trip across the mainland of Sweden may be said to be completed, yet the remainder of the journey to Stockholm is no less enjoyable than that spent along the canal. We first pass the ruins of Stegeborg on our right, a solitary tower on the water edge dominating the surrounding country, which is the last remnant of a castle in which Gustavus I. and his son John III. are said to have passed the greater part of their lives. Stegeborg has had an interesting history, and by some authorities is declared to be of unknown antiquity, by others to date back to the twelfth century. All, however, agree that King Birger Magnusson held his court here at[64] the beginning of the fourteenth century and that after his flight it underwent many vicissitudes.

It was first captured by Mats Kettilmundsson, and then besieged in turn by Engelbrekt, Charles Knutsson VIII., Sten Sture, and Gustavus Vasa’s famous leader, Arvid Västgöte; the estates ultimately passing into the possession of certain noble families connected with the Vasa dynasty, only to be then dismantled and allowed to fall to rack and ruin.

VADSTENA CASTLE, LAKE VÄTTERN

From here the steamer proceeds past Etter Sound and the deserted copper mine of Arvidsberg along the wooded shore of the mainland until the Arkö Sound is reached, when it cuts right across Bråviken Bay and steers north in the direction of Oxelösund, the first of the Archipelago lighthouses (the Femörehufvud or Half-penny Lighthouse) being passed shortly before reaching this port. These lighthouses are not exceptionally striking to look at, but possess a lighting apparatus that is so exceptional that I am not afraid of wearying my readers by describing them with some detail. Around a petroleum flame 14 inches in diameter, whose glare is intensified by a powerful lens and driven by the heat generated by it, there revolves a rotary plate[65] which ensures that the flame is adequately hidden at regular intervals from any given point, frames of coloured glass, red or green, in the body of the lighthouse itself but interposed between the flame and the outside world, causing that light to appear red or green according to the position in which the observer is then standing. This enables the position of the vessel to be correctly estimated. These lights are so distinct that no person who is not absolutely colour-blind should ever make a mistake as to their character, and so carefully adjusted that as you stand on one part of the deck of the steamer one colour is visible, while another can be observed if you shift your position in any appreciable degree. When the course is clear the light appears white. The archipelago is strewn with so many rocks and skerries, however, that even with the help of these splendid light towers the most expert navigator crossing it would be courting inevitable danger if to his skill was not added great local knowledge of the shoals and rocks lying in his course.

Oxelösund itself is a very thriving industrial town possessing every natural advantage for the facilitation of transport both by land and water, in addition to being the terminus of the Flen[66] Oxelösund railway and the port to which converges for transporting purposes practically all the iron ore mined in Central Sweden. The harbour is deep and capacious enough for the largest steamers, and enormous quantities of iron ore are shipped from here not only to other parts of the country, but also to Germany and Great Britain, where the high-grade Swedish iron is in great demand for the manufacture of heavy ordnance and plate armour. From this town, moreover, many delightful excursions can conveniently be made, especially in the direction of Norrköping.

Continuing our journey, we then cruise in and out of narrow straits and among skerries and rocks that are at times so close that you could almost jump on to them from the steamer as you pass them by, there being one particular strait called Stendörren, or Stone Door, reached shortly after entering Örsbaken, that is so narrow and winding that only the exercise of the greatest caution and the firmest of hands at the helm can negotiate it successfully. From this point until Hållsfjärden, where the boat enters the Södertälje Canal, we then pass the most delightful scenery, the archipelago simply abounding in picturesque pine-clad islands[67] and rocks and furnishing endless subjects for an artist’s canvas, while the clearness of the atmosphere appears to endow every object with the most exquisite colouring. These skerries, like those found in Bohuslän and in the Baltic around Stockholm, are ideal places for fishing, boating, and yachting, and in summer become the happy hunting-ground of numbers of Swedish men, women, and children, who can be seen daily yachting or darting in and out among the islands in those very light motor-boats that have become so common a feature of Swedish life of to-day. As the islands number many thousands, however, there are hundreds which are still unfrequented, this ensuring a complete absence of those unpleasant elements which tourists are apt to bring in their train, there being countless beauty spots where even the most retiring traveller is certain of finding peaceful solitude and oblivion from the world.

After passing through Södertälje Canal—which, incidentally, is so narrow that even steamers as diminutive as the canal-boats belonging to the Göta Canal Company cannot pass one another when crossing it—the steamer follows the coast line of Södertörn and soon reaches Lake Mälar,[68] our course now taking us eastward in the direction of Stockholm, through scores of channels and past even more numerous islands set with pine and dotted with attractive red wooden houses or with the more imposing stone castles of the aristocracy. The scenery here recalls that seen in the archipelago of the Skärgård, with the one distinction that the shore line that we continue to hug until we reach the capital is no longer uniformly pine-green in colouring, this typically Swedish landscape colour being now frequently splashed with the more genial green tints peculiar to the elm, maple, and other less sombre deciduous trees. A very pleasant part of the journey this last stage. Steaming lazily along, we first come to the island of Björkö (Birch Island) on our left, where Christianity was first preached in Sweden by Ansgarius, in whose memory a granite cross in old Gothic style was erected on a prominent part of the island in 1834, and then swinging eastward follow the coast line of Södertörn, first crossing the narrow Bockholm Sound (Buck Island Sound), perhaps the most beautiful strait in the country. On our right we notice several fine estates, among these the beautifully situated Sturehof Castle, and Norsborg with its numerous[69] graves purporting to contain the bodies of old Swedish giants, while we pass several islands on our left concerning which interesting legends have lingered on to this day attesting the part which they played in the early annals of the country or locality. Thus Estbröte recalls the history of Johan Knutsson Folkunge, whom the Esthonians treacherously attacked and killed on his family estate of Askanäs, only in their turn to be annihilated by his avenging wife when they had returned to their island lair, while Kungshatt (King’s Hat), one of the next islands that we come to, evokes the days of King Erik Väderhatt. Stuck on the top of a high pole that is visible from any part of the straits is a large hat which this warrior king is supposed to have flung aside as he jumped down from the rocks into the lake and with his horse swam across to the opposite shore when escaping from his foes. Then after passing Fågelö (Bird Island) and the islands of Långholmen (Long Island) and Slagstaholmen, whose shores are lined with villas and summer residences, we obtain our first view of the quays of Stockholm glimmering white in the water and of the city itself, beautifully situated amid encircling and intersecting waterways.

STOCKHOLM

Of all the capitals of Europe there are few which are more beautifully situated, or that have grown up by a more natural process, than Stockholm, and yet none that appear at first sight to have been built more deliberately on a site especially chosen for its beauty.

Very little is known of its early history before the thirteenth century, except that the heathen monarchs of Svea then holding sway over the greater part of central Sweden erected a stronghold on one of a group of three islands found on the banks of the Norrström, that foaming stream hardly three-quarters of a mile long, which serves as connecting link between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic, and that around this fortress, originally constructed as a defence for the important merchant centres of Upsala and Sigtuna, a village[71] community arose that was destined to become the capital of the land.

It was on these three islands, and in the midst of the watercourses connecting Lake Mälar with the Baltic, that Duke Birger Jarl, a powerful chieftain who was then ruler of Sweden, elected to build his capital in 1255. And taking into account the way in which the surrounding islands were being repeatedly harassed and laid waste by the rovers and pirates then infesting these seas, he strongly fortified the site of his new city, and so made it secure from any molestation.

Stockholm soon outgrew the site of Birger Jarl’s original settlement. First the wall which had been built around it was moved outward until it eventually encompassed the whole of Stadsholmen; then other islands were included within the city, which by the Middle Ages had become a typical fortified town of the age, its commerce being now controlled by German merchants who obeyed the ruling of the Hanseatic town of Lübeck. It was only under the Vasa dynasty, however, that Stockholm freed itself from the tutelage of the foreigner, and almost concurrently with the further expansion of the town, whose old wall was now destroyed as the city began to[72] encroach on the mainland on its northern side, Norrmalm, Gustavus Vasa liberated the country from its Danish oppressors, broke away from Lübeck, and laid the foundations of Stockholm’s greatness. The seventeenth century was the Great Age of the new capital, and during this period the town grew so rapidly that it had to be laid out afresh, while her citizens made every effort and sacrifice to convert their city into a really splendid capital town; a task which, given the almost unequalled situation of Stockholm, afforded unlimited possibilities. The city, which then occupied more than a dozen islands connected one with another by bridges, now witnessed a period of extraordinary building activity, and with the aid of the great riches which the victorious Swedish armies had brought home from the Continent, many stately buildings were erected which were in the main inspired from foreign models.

As was natural in an age when Italy and France exercised a supremacy in the world of manners, art, and architecture that was almost unquestioned, the ambitious city magnates turned almost exclusively to these two countries for their architectural ideas. In 1641 was begun the building of the[73] Riddarhuset, the Assembly Hall of the nobility, one of the most exquisite Franco-Dutch Renaissance buildings which can be seen in Sweden, while towards the close of the century Nicodemus Tessin drew up the plans for a new late Renaissance palace which on its completion was acclaimed by all as Sweden’s and Tessin’s proudest architectural masterpiece.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, and following a period when architecture was at a low ebb, the city of Stockholm entered upon a new stage of development. The plan of the town was revised and numerous magnificent buildings projected which sought to create a purely national style of architecture as well as to make good an undeniable deficiency in monuments of first-rate artistic importance. Only during the Renaissance have municipalities or other public bodies expended on art and public buildings sums in any way comparable to those which the Stockholm municipality now lavishly began to devote to the embellishment of their city. In modern times it has never been equalled.

The best way to approach Stockholm is from the sea, and the view that one then has of it is memorable. On the left, the southern part of the[74] city rising perpendicularly from the water towers like another Edinburgh, while between the northern and southern sides the Old Town, with its many quaint Hanseatic buildings and old palaces, recalls parts of old Amsterdam. Dominating the whole and facing the new Stockholm is the imposing Royal Palace, a massive rectangular Italian Renaissance pile of grey stone with a central courtyard and lower wings projecting east and west, which many architects consider the most beautiful building in Scandinavia.

It faces the water and the North Bridge, “Norrbro”, from which approach is made to it by a stately carriage drive that is called Lejonbacken from the two massive bronze lions that adorn it, and in its Carolean sternness of exterior seeks to give expression to the very spirit of the country and to the express wish of its royal builder, Charles XII., even if the thought behind it was borrowed from Versailles, while its lavish interior decoration and its Gobelin tapestries evoke the days when strong bonds of friendship united the Royal Houses of France and Sweden. Its northern façade is almost entirely without decoration, yet strangely impressive by virtue of that very simplicity, while its southern façade,[75] which, like the western, is richly decorated, has in its centre a triumphal arch with six massive columns, and also four groups of statuary in bronze, and a row of niches containing statues of distinguished Swedes on both sides of the entrance.

The original designs of the palace were drawn up by Nicodemus Tessin the younger, the greatest architect which northern Europe has produced, but the building operations, owing to the delays inseparable from an almost constant state of warfare, had constantly to be suspended, with the result that the Royal Family was only able to move into their new quarters about the middle of the eighteenth century. During all this period, however, and in spite of the unrest and turmoil that characterised this age, which incidentally was almost entirely due to Charles XII.’s romantic and adventurous temperament, the Royal Family and the nation as a whole continued to manifest so absorbing an interest in the building of the New Palace that everything was done to make it really representative of the best Swedish art and art industries of the period, while an equal measure of love, industry, and discrimination was lavished on its interior decoration, of which Masreliez was the principal designer.

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Severe and solemn-looking, this massive building possesses a cachet and beauty of its own, while it certainly gives the city that transforming touch without which it would hardly have the aspect of a capital.

Not far from the Palace is the Stortorget, or Great Market, which is flanked by interesting old gabled houses recalling those seen in Dantzig. On the façade of one of these, and below the doorway on which the builder’s coat of arms and the year 1650 are sculptured, are a number of iron crosses which are said to be a relic of the famous Blood Bath of 1520, in which over eighty Swedish noblemen were beheaded. Each one of these crosses enshrines the memory of one of the noblemen who died as a martyr for his country.

Almost everything worth seeing is found in this ancient quarter of Stockholm, and within easy distance from the Palace are a number of old churches and buildings that are among the best which Sweden possesses architecturally, if the island of Gothland is excepted. At the top of the Palace Hill is Storkyrkan, Stockholm’s oldest and principal church, supposed to have been founded by Birger Jarl in 1264, although the present building was renovated in 1736. This is[77] an attractive red brick edifice in which I especially noted a somewhat ornate but interesting baroque pulpit in the Royal Chapel, with canopy which was the work of Burchardt Precht, and a group of statuary called “St. George and the Dragon”, the masterpiece of Bernt Notke of Lübeck, which commemorates the victory won over the Danes at Brunkeberg in 1471, when Sweden was freed from her long subjection to the national enemy. Crossing over to Riddarholmen, the Knights’ Island (formerly called Gråmunkeholmen, the Grey Friars’ Isle, after the monastery of that order which was founded here by King Magnus Ladulås at the end of the thirteenth century), I see immediately facing the city between the bridges the old Riddarholmskyrkan (the Church of the Knights), originally built in 1280 by the Franciscans—a plain red brick three-aisled building, with a long polygonal choir and a number of burial chapels on its northern and southern aspects, that was built during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which all the great men of Sweden and all her kings have been buried since the reign of Gustavus Adolphus.

Here are tombs innumerable, enclosed in exquisite chapels and shrines, in which are[78] treasured the relics of the old dynasties and patrician families of the country, while the floor of the church is almost entirely paved with the gravestones of its illustrious dead. I found much to admire in the beautiful green marble sarcophagus of Gustavus Adolphus, or in the almost equally attractive crypt of the Bernadottes, where lie buried the departed members of the present dynasty; but I confess that my footsteps quickly led me to forsake their historical appeal after I had seen Charles XII.’s chapel, on the north side, a stately and pompous baroque mortuary chapel with sandstone columns and copper-covered cupola, in which I was shown the grey-black marbled sarcophagus in which the much-loved hero knight of the Swedish people lies buried, his head shot through and through. The lid of this sarcophagus is adorned with a lion’s skin, a laurel wreath in hammered gilt bronze, and a Hercules club; and while Nicodemus Tessin the younger himself was responsible for the designs, the stone and bronze work were executed in Holland, where the sarcophagus was finally completed about 1735. Among the other chapels and sarcophagi which abound in the Swedish Pantheon are those belonging to King Magnus Ladulås,[79] the ill-starred Gustavus III., and many other kings, while such families as the Banérs, Lewenhaupts, and Thorstensons, all connected with the Great Age of Swedish history, are represented.

Close by and lying almost opposite Riddarholmen in the north-west corner of Gamla Staden is the House of Knights, also built by Gustavus Adolphus, an imposing building which, in spite of some pavilions that were added to it in 1672 that are architecturally poor, remains a fine example of Franco-Dutch late Renaissance style and the most exquisite seventeenth-century building in Sweden.

Begun in 1641 from the designs of the two brothers De La Vallée, the Palace contains among several finely proportioned rooms a very spacious ceremonial hall with a beautiful ceiling painted by Ehrenstrahl, on whose walls I saw displayed among other relics the coats of arms of nearly 3000 Swedish noble families, quite a fair proportion of these being of Scotch descent. Here can be seen the armouries of the Hamilton, Lewis, Bruce, Leslie, Stewart and Bennet families, descendants of the many Scotch soldiers of fortune who had distinguished themselves on many a Swedish battle-field, while a few hail from[80] England, their ancestors having fled from that country after the Wars of the Roses.

In no ancestral picture gallery have I felt so supremely conscious of the prestige and glamour inherent in long lineage as when I was confronted by these countless coats of arms insolently blazoning the privileges and eminence which their holders had won in olden times through superior valour or might, good fortune or statecraft. Even the beautifully carved ivory arm-chair occupied by the Speaker of the House and originally presented to Gustavus Vasa by the town of Lübeck, and the long rows of comfortable velvet chairs facing the Presidential throne, seemed to possess an air and a dignity which were quite their own. One felt that one was walking on almost sacred ground, and that the plebeian foot that would tread it unceremoniously would probably be seized by the spirit of the place and hurled ignominiously from the hallowed precincts. The Assembly of the Knights is, however, only a shadow of its old self, and of the original 2890 families whose arms are displayed in its Hall only 660 remain to-day. It has lost, moreover, all its right and privileges except that which its members still possess of being able to claim death by the[81] sword instead of by the more contumelious hanging or guillotine,[2] while it now only meets once every three years to discuss economic affairs or to render help to those of its members who require financial assistance.

THE ROYAL PALACE, STOCKHOLM

Though the Riddarhuset is consequently only a survival of an age that is no more, it is impossible to visit it without feeling supremely conscious of the sense of continuity that is bred by old institutions, even when, like the Assembly of Knights, they have outlived their utility, while in few buildings have I felt so close to the past or experienced a keener regret at that past being gone for ever.

Old Stockholm, and especially “the City between the two bridges”, contains a number of old fifteenth- and sixteenth-century houses which remain much as they were when originally erected, but fire has swept this old city so many times during the past four hundred years that the greater part of the old timber buildings which gave distinction to its streets have made way for the stone and plaster structures of a later period. Among the interesting older buildings that were spared by fire in[82] this part of the town the most noteworthy are the Palace of Count Bonde (the old Rådhuset) near Strömmen, and the house belonging to the Petersen family in Munkbron, erected in the middle of the seventeenth century in the Dutch style, while there are a number of gabled houses pointing to a later Hanseatic period in Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan, two narrow and tortuous streets which are well worth visiting. These thoroughfares are so narrow and their houses so high that you feel when walking through them almost as if you were traversing a deep canyon, while their many windings and the innumerable equally crooked and narrow alleys which are continually crossing them have proved the downfall of these imprudent travellers who elect to put their trust in their own bump of locality rather than in a guide. The doorways of many of these houses are surmounted by interesting sculptured coats of arms and other decorative details bearing testimony to the artistic taste of these times, and there is a certain seventeenth-century house in Västerlånggatan, erected by the wealthy burgher Van Linde, whose carved portal is perhaps the finest and best-preserved memorial of the period to be found in Stockholm.

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Another characteristic of this part of the town is the number of small shops which indicate the nature of their calling by the quaint symbolic signs that are displayed over their doorways or shop fronts. Here a pewter pot indicates a café or beer-house, and a pair of wings topping a pole that is itself entwined with diminutive serpents, a bakery; there a maiden milking her cow suggests a dairy, and a gold pretzel a pastry-cook or confectioner. There appears in reality to be no end to the ingenuity that is shown by those tradesmen who would thus make known their particular craft or trade.

Crossing the bridge where lies the newer Stockholm, one finds the main shopping centre of the capital and the more modern of its streets and buildings. Everything here is of an orderly symmetry that is quite lacking in our countries of the west, and perhaps a little monotonous. The shops are nearly all of uniform size and so similar in their outward aspect and in the style of dressing of their windows that it is often difficult to differentiate between them; the buildings are mostly austere and dignified as befits a Nordic race, but a little lacking in that poetry and imagery of line and wealth of architectural ornamentation[84] that past standards of architecture have made us love and admire.

All these characteristics, coupled with the fact that, compared with other large capitals, Stockholm is a little lacking in historic monuments of first-rate importance, might well predispose the casual observer to regard the Swedish capital mainly as a city whose only claim to distinction lies in its beauty of site, atmosphere, and accident, if it were not for the new generation of technically well-equipped architects who have lately grown up in the country and the princely patronage of art that continues to be displayed by the Swedish municipalities whenever the embellishment of their cities is in question.

Of this new spirit in architecture I. G. Clason and Ferdinand Boberg, who is Sweden’s Norman Shaw, and more especially Carl Westman and Ragnar Östberg, are the leading exponents, the architecture which they preconise being characterised not only by certain distinctive forms in towers, panelling, and decorative motifs often borrowed wholesale from Swedish scenery, but by the grouping of the chief decorative designs round the entrances and a happy blending of old Swedish forms and new western tendencies which aims at[85] creating a really national style. In many of these modern buildings one notices a strongly marked cubic effect, while the dark-toned brick hailing from Skåne that is used in their construction gives them a distinction and individuality which mark them out among their contemporaries. Assuming a measure of encouragement and financial support in any degree comparable to that which was so lavishly extended by the municipality of Stockholm to the building of their new Town Hall, it would be astonishing if the next two or three decades do not witness a striking development in Swedish architecture.

Almost equally visible from any part of the city, this tall and imposing edifice, with its mighty square bell-tower and splendid colonnades evoking the portico of the Doge’s Palace at Venice, represents all the best tendencies of the new Swedish style, while it seeks to reproduce in many of the details of its exterior, and especially in its galleries and Central Court, the old castle of Stockholm “Tre Kronor”. Beautifully situated at the most southerly point of Kungsholmen, on the shores of Lake Mälar, its building history is one of the most remarkable of modern times, Ragnar Östberg, its architect, being so determined to make it a living[86] expression of the capital’s mystical individuality that its conception long remained an arduous one, plan after plan being devised only to be replaced by a better one. It has taken over ten years to build and has cost the municipality seventeen million crowns, Ragnar Östberg being given practically carte blanche in order that he might give of his best. Built in the form of a large rectangle, it encloses two beautiful courts: one the open and more severe Citizens’ Court, “Borgargården”, with its double portico looking out on garden and water, and its three gilded statues standing out from the red brick; the other the lighter Blue Hall with its glowing red and blue tiled walls and marble floor, while the tower which gives unity to the various parts of the building is capped by a lantern structure on top of which are the three crowns of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Apart from the general perfection of the building when viewed as a whole, which is perhaps its chief claim to distinction, the clou of the Town Hall is undoubtedly the magnificent frieze under the cornice, with its many beautiful gilt reliefs of distinguished citizens of the city, though its handsome copper cupolas, engraved with the names[87] of their donors, are almost equally memorable. These cupolas, and also the warm Tudor-looking red brick used in the building, give quite a southern warmth and atmosphere to a monument that in its rich-hued and stately style is a reversion in part to Swedish mediæval modes, while it is impossible not to commend the superb fashion in which Ragnar Östberg has succeeded in poising what is really a massive edifice on the most slender and graceful of arcades without these appearing even slightly overweighted.

Passing through the arcade into the open gardens, which look out, Swedish fashion, on to the water, I saw three of the twelve statues which Milles originally contemplated modelling of the famous men who have shed lustre and glory on the city of Stockholm, three powerful nude live studies of Strindberg, Fröding, and Josephson, representing drama, poetry, and painting respectively, and was informed that the remaining nine had never been completed, owing to the loud outcry which a certain section of the public had raised on the ground of morality. This attitude astonished me vastly, as the Swedes, of all citizens of the world, are perhaps those who are the least prudish without being too immoral. I recalled[88] the perfectly natural way in which any visitor to a Swedish hotel can, if he chooses, be scrubbed and rubbed down after his bath by women attendants, who not only perform these duties most efficiently but appear to run no risk of having their moral equilibrium upset by the experience, or the frankly indecent (to some) undressed wax figures which can be seen in the shop windows of any fashionable Stockholm costumier, posturing in silk stocking or aping fashionable gestures, and can only conclude that indecency is a question of degree, and that two nations equally moral may have two entirely different standards by which to estimate morality or the lack of it.

On returning to the central court I was shown a Madonna-looking crowned figure in a niche over the main entrance, which on inquiry proved to be that of St. Clara, a local saint, the crown having been purchased with a substantial money contribution sent by a schoolgirl of the town to Ragnar Östberg, who thought this the happiest way of recording her gift. After hearing this charming explanation I took the resolution never again to disbelieve any old legend which was equally charming. It is certain the world never changes.

If the other modern monuments of Stockholm[89] cannot be compared as works of art with Ragnar Östberg’s now famous masterpiece, there are several which are interesting examples of the same school of architecture, and others which illustrate the return to a more rational classicism which has only quite lately been seen among the younger generation of architects.

Not very far from the Town Hall is the City Court, an immense brick edifice with a grey slurred surface and a short squat tower rising above the middle of the building, which is crowned by a very large copper hood. Almost overwhelming in its massiveness, and as austere-looking as the law which is daily transacted within its precincts, this uncommon structure aims at expressing, not only in its form but even in its decorative scheme, the serious purpose to which it was dedicated, and consequently often produces an impression of grim inevitableness in the mind of even those who do not pay it a visit to undergo trial. I must confess that I found it a little too oppressing for my taste, and that I derived much keener pleasure from seeing the pieces of equally vigorous and original, but ever so much less depressing, statuary by Christian Eriksson which I was shown on the portal and in the interior.

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Of the other monumental buildings belonging to the same period as Westman’s and Ragnar Östberg are Lallerstedt’s Technical High School, Grut’s Stadium, which is a happy and original application of the forms displayed in the old city walls of Visby, and Östermalm’s Higher State Secondary School for boys, perhaps the most notable of the three. This is a dark-red brick building with a light-red tiled roof and Roman vaulting, which was completed by Ragnar Östberg in 1912 in the hope that the precedent which he had created in constructing a school that no longer wore the funereal and poverty-stricken aspect hitherto considered an indispensable adjunct to every educational establishment, would inspire other architects to follow his example. Dignified, and possessing a certain ponderous Nordic beauty of its own, this building contains a finely proportioned reception hall and staircase which are adorned with works of art of exceptional interest; among these Milles’ marble group entitled “Fanny and Selma”, Prince Eugen’s “The Town in Sunshine”, and Törneman’s “Thor’s Battle with the Giants”, this last picture a powerful and realistic piece of work.

Typical of the latest movement, the return to[91] classicism to which I have already alluded, are a number of modern buildings for whose exterior effects golden brown or dark grey roughcast have usually been selected and whose principal characteristics, apart from their severe and simple symmetry, lies in the often ingenious way in which glass and metal work have been put to new artistic effects. Houses by Bergsten and Asplund; the churches of Engelbrekts and Högalids, and lastly the New Concert Hall, the work of Tengbom, probably one of the finest concert halls in existence. Built to resemble a Greek temple and with columns that are of pure concrete (this a daring experiment), this striking building impresses, not by its size, which is nothing out of the common, but by the perfection of its acoustics, lighting, and other arrangements, and the originality and varied character of the ornamentation—even the candelabra in the vestibule being unique in their kind. I particularly admired some beautiful reliefs which were the work of Tengbom, and some equally remarkable stucco work of Olsson; but what pleased me even more were some little figures in stucco which had been designed in wet plaster by Almquist, four live pieces of statuary by Milles, the Swedish Epstein, in the corridor, and several[92] beautifully inlaid doors in the foyer, all of these in selected Swedish woods.

The larger of the two concert halls which are found in this building presents many attractive and novel features. It was opened only in April 1926, and while it has a seating accommodation of 1490, which is considerably less than that of Queen’s Hall, its lighting, stage, and other arrangements are perfection itself. A number of columns at the back of the stage, which is built in the shape of a Greek temple, give an impression of great space, while the lighting that has been obtained is so perfect that the spectator has the constant illusion of sitting in an open-air theatre and under a sky and setting sun that are so realistic that it is almost impossible for him to detect any flaw in the make-believe. The other concert hall is more intimate in character, and combines ornateness with simplicity. In both these halls I found a number of rows that were reserved for the deaf, and provided in every case with ear-trumpets. Even in Germany, that great music-loving country, I have never seen any theatre or concert hall that provides such facilities.

Another sign of the times is the renewed[93] interest that is being taken by the Swedes generally in Swedish peasant art and crafts, and several museums have been founded which attempt to give the history of Swedish civilisation from the earliest days to the present time. Of these the Nordiska, or Northern Museum, is perhaps the most interesting; it is certainly the most original. Early in the seventies a distinguished antiquarian and collector, called Arthur Hazelius, determined to form a collection that would be representative of every condition of life that had existed in the country since the beginning of the sixteenth century, and after many years’ patient industry and labour succeeded in forming a collection that as a record of the various stages of civilisation which the country went through is unsurpassed in any part of the world, many foreign experts holding the view that the clever manner in which the exhibits are displayed to the general public might with advantage be copied in other countries. In one of the largest halls is found the Swedish Royal Armoury, which contains almost as fine a collection of old and modern weapons as the Spanish collection in Madrid. I saw many flags and banners which had been captured from the Russians, Germans, Saxons,[94] Danes and Austrians, and also swords and suits of armour which had once been worn by famous Swedish warriors; among these was the armour of Gustavus Adolphus, the sword and pistols which he carried at the battle of Lützen, and the shirt riddled with bullets that he wore in his last battle. The Museum also possesses many well-preserved cannon, rifles, and even a mitrailleuse which is said to have been invented during the reign of Charles XII., while its annexe, the equally celebrated open-air museum of Skansen, also a creation of Hazelius, presents scenes typifying Sweden’s life in the past and present, and affords the most comprehensive study of old Swedish architectural modes and of the life and customs of the varied elements constituting the Swedish nation that can be found anywhere. Here may be seen many wild and tame animals indigenous to the soil, and a number of wooden houses of varied architecture, which have either been transported en bloc from their original resting-places or constructed on the spot according to plan. Two-storied houses from Dalecarlia or turf-roofed stone cabins from Jämshög, these last representing a very common type of dwelling among labourers in parts of north-eastern Scania; curious-looking straw-roofed[95] four-sided farms from Oktorp, or farmyards from Ravlunda covered over with thatched roofs and with woven brushwood end-walls; cabins of forest dwellers or old mediæval wooden churches, some of these with decorative slatted church steeples; pyramidal huts from Lapland, or sepulchral and runic monuments. All these are found at Skansen with all the indispensable appurtenances of peasant life and inhabited, moreover, by people who have either been imported to give the necessary atmosphere or been induced to transport their very homes with all their chattels and household gods to the wooded plateau in the Djurgården (Deer Park) for a financial consideration. I paid a visit to several of these attractive peasant dwellings and found them all stocked with old implements, vessels, and antique furniture, and was particularly impressed by their wall decorations, which in many instances were painted direct on the whitewashed wall timbers. Like those which I have seen in Dalecarlia, they usually represented scenes from the Scriptures, or country scenes that were enclosed in decorated frames in rococo, probably after the prototypes of old copper-plate prints. If these peasant buildings are not as flamboyantly picturesque as the wooden[96] buildings of Norway, they are in their way even more attractive.

Of the many other collections and museums that abound in the city only the National Museum, an unattractive building just facing the Royal Palace, presents any particular interest. It contains a large collection of Scandinavian antiquities and is especially rich in objects of the Bronze Age, many of these having been made in Sweden over a thousand years before Christ. I was shown jewellery and arms that dated from the age of Beowulf, and a beautifully ornamented statue of Thomas à Becket dating from the fourteenth century which is one of its most cherished art treasures, while the museum, in addition to its ceramic sculpture and archæological collections, has a picture gallery that is particularly rich in examples of the older Dutch masters. Not only Rubens but also Van Dyck (A.), Jordaens, and Rembrandt are represented here, the last-named by a striking picture entitled “Claudius Civilis,” which was originally painted for the Town Hall in Amsterdam in 1662, while I also saw one or two good Cranachs and old French masters. The more modern painters include several fine Corots, Delacroix, Manets, and an Orpen (a picture of himself painted as a jockey),[97] while the modern Swedish school is represented by Zorn (painter of portraits), Liljefors, the most powerful Swedish painter of animals to-day, Prince Eugen (landscapes), Milles (sculpture), Lafiensen (miniaturist), Cederström (the Swedish Detaille), and Carl Larsson, whose large al fresco paintings in the vestibule of the Museum long held my attention.

DROTTNINGHOLM PALACE, STOCKHOLM

One of the principal attractions of Stockholm, and the one which perhaps lends it its greatest charm, is the system of waterways which gives it all the picturesque glamour of an important port. It matters little whether the traveller has visited the city once or many times; he will rarely tire of loitering amid its many pleasant quays or docks, or of watching the rapid ebb and flow of a traffic that is as varied as it is picturesque.

Here is the daily market which lies on the very water edge behind the royal palace, where the market people can be seen coming by boat, tram, or cart to sell their wares; here the docks that are frequented by those hundreds of diminutive steamers which maintain constant communication between the islands of the Skärgård and the metropolis; here the quays where the larger steamers and also the fuel and timber boats are[98] berthed, or those past Kastellholmen and near Djurgårdsstaden, under whose shelter the great ice-breaking steamers lie moored during the summer months. Plying the swiftly flowing waters are vessels of every kind, from the tiny ferries, that for a few öre will carry you across a strait, to the large looming ships whose very lines are redolent with weight and power, while scores of barges with high castles apoop are passing through the locks, and wooden ships whose graceful lines evoke a time when poetry of motion was not confined to pleasure yachts are discharging their cargoes in the very centre of the old town. Follow this pleasant shore line where you will and you will find an abundance of things to engage and captivate your attention, and everywhere you meet something that carries with it a subtle suggestion of that remoter Sweden which lies to the north and south of the capital.

At least half if not more of the feeling of beauty that is inherent in Stockholm lies in the many associations that are evoked in the mind by these waterways, and they are always equally beautiful, whether one sees them in the early morning as the white skerry steamers are speeding out to sea or casting their mooring lines over the[99] stately stone stanchions which border the stream, or if viewed in the evening when thousands of lights along the shore and from the boats are throwing shafts and pools of glimmering brilliance on their dark waters.

THE SKERRIES OF STOCKHOLM

Interspersed here and there among the countless waterways of Stockholm’s Skärgård, and interposing between it and the Baltic, are some twelve to thirteen hundred islands, many splendidly wooded, others mere rocks, on which the good citizens of the capital have built their summer residences. Islands of every conceivable shape and size, some uninhabited, the others with picturesque villas and cottages nestling among the pines and rocks. A scenery that is typical of Swedish landscape at its best with grey-green hilly country on the mainland covered here and there with fir and birch and flecked with white or even vivid vermilion houses, and pleasant little emerald-green islands, among which a vast flotilla of diminutive small steamers are darting to and fro, as they link up the many villages and summer residences to the capital.

ISLANDS IN THE BALTIC, NEAR STOCKHOLM

[101]

It is from the Stream, the pulsating centre of Stockholm, where large vessels come up from the Baltic to dock on the very city street, that a passage can be taken on one of those many little passenger steamers that cruise about the picturesque littoral of the Skärgård; and whether one embarks on a ship whose destination is some locality famous in Swedish history or selects haphazard the boat that is to convey you east or west, the journey that is taken is worth while, since every steamer route that radiates from Stockholm is one of charm and beauty.

Of the many interesting excursions which can thus be made by water from Stockholm there are several which should obtain precedence whenever the time that can be devoted to them is limited. And taking those which can be made in an easterly direction, the first that I would select is undoubtedly Saltsjöbaden, the most fashionable watering-place of the capital. Here on a narrow peninsula that juts out into the Skärgård and along a circular bay luxuriously wooded, commanding views on the surrounding islands that are memorable, are large hotels and stately villas set in beautiful grounds; an excellent restaurant greatly patronised by the gay and fashionable in[102] which late dancing is a characteristic feature, and swimming pavilions in which the merchant and middle classes of the capital spend their summer months bathing, fishing, or boating. Saltsjöbaden is undoubtedly an attractive resort, yet what endeared it to me, even more than its charm and animation or the beauty of its setting, was the opportunity which it afforded me of seeing the city of Stockholm at midnight as we returned to it by the watercourses that have given it its unique character. Bathed in moonlight and illumined by myriad yellow points of fire whose gleams were mirrored in the waters of the Ström, the city seemed transfigured, almost unrecognisable, like one of those magic towns that you see in dreams. If I remember nothing else about Sweden, I shall remember that experience as long as I live.

Of the other beautiful excursions that may be made in the direction of the Baltic from the City of Bridges there are two or three which are almost equally attractive.

To the south-east of Stockholm is Gustafsberg, a journey of nearly two hours through countless watercourses and past many winding canals and the large fjord of Baggensfjärden. Gustafsberg,[103] which is beautifully situated on Värmdö, the largest island in the archipelago, has the oldest and most renowned pottery and china factories to be found in Sweden. Inland, and only a short distance from Stockholm, of which it was formerly the oldest and most important suburb, is Djursholm, now an independent city. Beautifully situated in North Värtan on pretty undulating ground among groves of fine oak trees, it is a picturesque little town which is in winter a great centre of skating and ice-yachting. It formerly belonged to the Banér family, whose old palace is still to be seen in a restored condition. Equally distant from the capital is Vaxholm, another well-known but less fashionable watering-place. A little fishing town of fifteen hundred people with several restaurants and hotels, it is patronised largely by Swedish-Americans, and is the Mecca of motor-boats and small yachts. The old fortress of Vaxholm stands on the foreground on a small island in the little Sound two hundred yards from the shore. Built by Gustavus Vasa in the middle of the sixteenth century, it has been the scene of many historic events and has for centuries guarded the approach to the capital.

If the excursions that can be made in a westerly[104] direction from Stockholm are not as numerous as those that abound in the Skärgård, they certainly make up qualitatively for their quantitative deficiencies; and within easy distance from the capital are two historic old castles and a city whose historic tombs and monuments single out among their fellows.

Five miles from Kungsholmen, and facing Lake Mälar, is Drottningholm, a royal castle built in the French style after the designs of the two Tessins, father and son, by the old Dowager Queen of Sweden, Hedvig Eleonora, the wife of Charles X., in the seventeenth century, which is perhaps “the most comprehensive and perfect picture of what Sweden’s period of greatness could produce in the field of art”. The main part of the building was erected in the decade beginning 1660 by Nicodemus Tessin the elder, but remained unfinished till the beginning of the next century, when under the active supervision of the old Queen it rapidly took on its present form, Nicodemus Tessin the younger being responsible for the greater part of the designs. And as in the case of the royal castle in the capital, no effort was spared and no expenditure thought too great to make the new royal residence worthy of the[105] pre-eminence which had been attained by Swedish leadership and Swedish armies in the allied fields of diplomacy and war.

Before laying out the park, Nicodemus Tessin the younger made a special journey to Versailles to receive instruction in the formal French school of gardening from the celebrated Lenotre, Louis XIV.’s garden architect, while the staircase, hall and interior were decorated with a magnificence hitherto unknown in Sweden.

French influence was at that time strongly marked, French standards in furniture and architecture generally predominating; and though the Swedes were unable to reproduce all the lightness and elegance characterising French house decorations and furniture, they succeeded on this occasion in giving their country a royal residence whose magnificence almost equalled that of the château of Versailles. The furniture which I saw in many of the apartments belonged to the Louis XIV. period, with ancient chair coverings, many of these hand-painted and in an admirable state of preservation, while the interior, which has lately been restored by the best Swedish art experts, is equally pleasing. Drottningholm contains many valuable tapestries, paintings, and works of art and at least[106] two rooms that are in themselves worth a special visit.

Designed by Nicodemus Tessin the younger, who in this instance worked in collaboration with Burchardt Precht, the celebrated wood carver, Queen Hedvig Eleonara’s bedroom, if a little pompous and over-ornate, is decorated with such magnificence that it never fails to extort admiration from even those who usually prefer a more simple and sedate ornamentation. Profusely adorned with wood carvings, its ceiling and walls are set in with paintings by Ehrenstrahl, while it forms a complete architectural composition, in which the Queen’s very ornate state bed high on an estrade behind high Ionic gilded columns acts as unifying centre.

The other room, Queen Louisa Ulrika’s Library, belongs to a later period and was executed by the celebrated Swedish cabinet-maker Jean Erik Rehn, the founder of the Gustavian Swedish Louis XVI. style. Artistically designed and combining ornateness with simplicity, this room possesses one of the most artistic interiors which I have seen in Sweden, and is in every way worthy of the great name that this artist won for himself in the second half of the eighteenth century, as pioneer[107] of Swedish art industry, while it certainly bears out the words that Tessin engraved, not only in this library, but over one of his frescoes in the National Museum of Stockholm, that “By art the senses were attuned to mildness and harshness put to flight”. If these words faithfully reflect the cultural tendencies of the eighteenth century, then certainly Rehn was successful in his aim.

Fifty yards from the Castle and built in the years 1764-1766 for King Adolph Frederick, by the Court architect Adelcrantz, is a theatre whose collection of theatre costumes and stage décors is perhaps unique in the world. This theatre was used for theatrical performances during the reign of Gustavus III., but at his death in 1792 was converted into a lumber room, in which condition it remained until 1922 when it was restored to its original state.

The interior is a beautiful example of a style that is a blend of the Swedish Gustavian and rococo, and while the auditorium is comparatively small, as befits a theatre that was only intended for the Royal Family, the Court and their invited guests, the stage, which was decorated by Masreliez during the seventeenth century, is unusually deep even for the present day (about twenty-two[108] yards), and provided with a set of machinery and décors that are of extraordinary interest from the artistic and scenic points of view. Both stage and auditorium are practically in the same condition as they were in the eighteenth century, and even the footlights of that time have been preserved and are still in use. The stage mechanism is in perfect working order, and there are no less than thirty scenic decorations which are of engrossing interest for the light which they cast on the stage decorative art of the old regime. Among the stage properties which date from that time I noticed, in addition to some of the original footlights and a clavecin that could still be played upon, many quaint fire appliances and stage weapons such as hatchets, swords, and Hercules clubs, as well as the tail and head of a Viking ship which had been found in a neighbouring pond.

GRIPSHOLM CASTLE, NEAR STOCKHOLM

The auditorium, which like the stage has been left untouched, contains many attractive cut-glass chandeliers and wall brackets which, originally adapted for wax candles, have now been wired for electric light, as well as the carefully preserved place-marks which used to indicate the seat which every guest was to occupy. The first row appears to have been reserved to the Royal Family, the[109] Court and diplomatic world; and behind, those of minor degree were seated, from the King’s body-guard to his second valets or barbers. As was usual in the eighteenth century, the royal party and their invited guests always retired for supper to the foyer after the performance, while the ladies and gentlemen of the Court strolled or waited about in the top gallery, in case their presence should be required by their august masters.

In the rooms adjoining the theatre are several interesting collections of pictures and costumes illustrating the history of scenic art from mediæval times to the age of Gustavus III. I was shown a number of particularly beautiful costume sketches by Primaticcio which had been designed for a fête given at the Court of King Francis I. of France, and also some original sketches by Desprez, the chief stage painter of Gustavus III., and a series of rare Italian and French theatrical designs dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which undoubtedly constitute invaluable material for the student of stage history, yet the clou of the whole collection, in my opinion, lies in the exquisite little model theatre which I found relegated in one of the smaller rooms. Designed by Tessin some time before the theatre had been[110] completed, this little gem reveals this artist at his best and is in every sense admirable.

Picturesquely situated on the most southerly shore of Lake Mälar near the small town of Mariefred, and within three hours by steamer from the capital, is the mighty brick-built fortress of Gripsholm, historically and romantically perhaps the finest castle in the whole of Sweden. It was originally built by a knight called Bo Jonsson Grip, who was the most powerful subject of his time, and was named after the grip or griffin which he bore as his arms.

Mirroring its huge tower-crowned walls in the placid waters of Mälarviken, this castle embodies in every line the rugged strength of its founder, while nowhere in Sweden have I seen an edifice which, in its solitary grandeur, stately aloofness from the world and picturesqueness of situation, is more pervaded by the atmosphere of the remote days when Gustavus Vasa and his successors were carving a nation out of chaos and paving the way for the prosperity that was to follow. Here Gustavus planned and organised the machinery that was destined to bring an almost unparalleled prosperity to his country, and here in turn his two sons, Erik and Johan, kept each other prisoner, Erik dying[111] ultimately in another prison at Örbyhus in 1577. For centuries, in fact, there was little of national importance that was not transacted in Gripsholm; and if it had a chequered history, its days of glory more than adequately compensated, its heyday probably coinciding with the reign of Gustavus III., during the time this monarch was expending vast sums in adorning its halls with beautiful frescoes and decorations. On the 29th of March 1809, moreover, it was the scene of the abdication of Gustavus IV. Adolphus.

The castle has been restored so often, however, that only in portions of its exterior and interior does it really date back to the time of its founder, while many rooms have been wainscoted and illumined with coloured woods and frescoes in order to house the portraits of the kings, queens and famous men who contributed to the history of the last three centuries. The collection of royal paintings which has thus been formed is consequently of unique character, while the stately proportions of those parts of the building which have remained unchanged since the sixteenth century enable us to imagine what a princely effect the whole must have presented when its walls were hung with damask and filled with masterpieces of art. As[112] all the rooms contain, moreover, many pieces of the original furniture which were used by Gustavus Vasa and his successors, it is easy to reconstruct in one’s mind the manner in which Swedish royalty lived in those remote days. Of the oldest portions of the castle no room impressed me more than the one in which lived Duke Charles of Södermanland, the younger brother of Princes Erik and Johan, and which is supposed to have been fitted up by him as far back as 1596. Practically unchanged from those early days, it is an interesting example of an interior of the sixteenth century, and while its woodwork is pure Renaissance, though very simple in character, the paintings adorning its walls and ceilings are by Hans, a painter who hails from the town of Strängnäs, the capital of Charles’ duchy. In all the older rooms I noticed window recesses which were so long and narrow that they formed almost a corridor, the thickness of the walls (usually five to eight or even ten feet) often making such recesses a necessity.

THE KINGS’ MOUNDS, UPSALA

Lying north of the lake and picturesquely situated on the banks of the river Fyris is the old town of Upsala, the residence of the Archbishop of Sweden and the oldest and most[113] important university town in the country. It can be reached in less than five hours by the waterways of Lake Mälar or in one hour by train from Stockholm, though a stop should certainly be made on the way to it at Skokloster, if only to visit the magnificent turreted castle that lies on the forested fringe of Lake Mälar. This imposing edifice, which was erected in 1649 on the very site of a mediæval monastery which Gustavus Adolphus once presented to one of his generals, contains valuable collections of furniture, portraits, tapestries and arms which illustrate the Thirty Years’ War, its collection of old weapons being probably the largest private collection to be found in Europe. Upsala, in addition to being a celebrated university town, is also a city that presents many attractive features from the antiquarian and artistic points of view. A few minutes’ drive from the centre of the town brings you to Old Upsala, which was the seat of the early pagan monarchs of the country, and here to this day are to be seen tumuli of three kings, the Mounds of Odin, Thor, and Freyr. Excavations made during the second half of the nineteenth century in the mounds of the first two have brought to light remains of charred bodies as well as many gold[114] ornaments, which conclusively prove that Odin and Thor were buried here about five centuries before the Christian era, while similar excavations made as early as the seventeenth century on the alleged site of Upsala Temple, the great holy place of the Svea race (as Swedes were once called), unearthed bones of horses and ravens that had once been offered by the Svea people as expiatory offerings to Freyr, the god of yearly crops. Here was held the Witan of the Sveas, when, with great clanging and clashing of swords and shields, their leaders would debate and decide the wars that they would wage; and here too, not only men and animals were offered up to Freyr, but even kings if times were bad or pests came to lay waste the land or deplete the nation of its fighting men.

Upsala itself is a pleasant and picturesque town which, if a little marred architecturally by the unnecessary restorations that have been made to its old Cathedral, the largest church in Sweden, presents many attractive and beautiful features. On the highest point of the town stands the castle, a huge red-bricked building with two round towers erected by Gustavus Vasa in the sixteenth century, which dominates not only the city but also the surrounding countryside, while other[115] buildings which are worthy of notice include the somewhat severe but attractive neo-classical University Library called Carolina Rediviva, the dome-covered building Gustavianum, and Deprez’ Orangery in the Botanical Gardens, which was opened in 1807 during the centenary celebration of Linnaeus’ birthday. There are also a number of old bridges on the river Fyris which have not been replaced by modern ones, while the town has generally an old-world atmosphere which predisposes the traveller and student to regard it with friendly eyes. Though lacking in the architectural beauty that has given Oxford such an unique position among the universities of the world, Upsala possesses a tradition that is almost as venerated among Swedish students as Oxford is among Englishmen.

As will be seen, therefore, there are few capitals that have at their doors surroundings more picturesque or more easily accessible than Stockholm, the combination of attractions that it affords to the traveller, its beautiful site and historic associations, its old-world buildings and sparkling waterways being unsurpassed anywhere. There is but one thing lacking to the Swedish capital, and that is cheap, good accommodation.[116] The town is almost entirely bereft of hotels that are both good and inexpensive, and its charm would be immeasurably increased by their presence. Many commodities, too, are far dearer than in England. Cigarettes, shoes and articles of clothing cost nearly twice as much as in London, while whisky and wine are almost prohibitive, an ordinary whisky costing as much as one shilling and sixpence and being unobtainable if you do not take food with it, though in fairness I must add that the quality of the wine, and especially the Burgundy, that may be bought in the best hotels is exceptional. The best hotel in the capital is the Grand Royal, and while there are others that are also first-class there are none which possess as good a cuisine; its dining-hall, moreover, being one of the finest in the world. The tables are arranged on two sides of a court in the centre of what was the old Royal Hotel, and under the high glass roof there is a lawn of perpetually green grass with a fountain in the centre and flower-beds, palm trees, and shrubs. Sometimes tables are set out on the grass. One side of the court is fashioned to represent the tower of an old royal castle.

TIMBER ON THE RIVER ÅNGERMAN, HARNÖSAND

It would be ungracious, however, to insist on a single defect in a spot so rich in varied beauties,[117] and throughout the north of Europe it would be difficult to find a town so full of attractions as the Swedish capital. At the same time the intending visitor will do well to choose his time for seeing it. The pleasantest time to visit it is undoubtedly June, before the Swedes take their yearly holiday; but in winter, as I will show in a subsequent chapter, it may also be seen to advantage, the thermometer being usually so low and the sun’s rays so ineffective, that winter sports can be practised almost continuously for several months of each year.

GOTHLAND

Scarcely more than fifty miles from the Swedish mainland, with which communication is maintained by comfortably appointed steamers which run daily from Nynäshamn, and boasting a mild and delightful climate, is an island whose history reads like a romance, and whose many relics of a prehistoric culture mark it out among all time. Forgotten by the world of commerce and almost unknown to the present-day tourist, the town of Visby, capital of the island of Gothland, was once an important commercial centre, the splendour of its churches, merchant houses and town walls evidencing great wealth, and bearing witness to the artistic imagination of Swedish master-masons and builders. And as you steam into its harbour you see a city which for picturesque beauty has few rivals in the world: tall, graceful spires and city walls built on natural rock terraces, whose[119] rugged outline of masonry appear to have been fashioned by a giant of fable, and a coast-line which seems to rise up in one single sheer cliff, or in terraces with yellow or blue-grey rocks that tower like mighty ramparts against the sea.

It is not known when the first city of Visby was built, but archæologists tell us that there was a town on the present site more than 2000 years before Christ, and only a few years ago men digging in the market-place near the ruins of St. Catherine’s Church found large blocks of stone, and under these the ruins of another town, evidently of the Stone Age.

Long before Visby was born, however, Gothland was already an island empire and occupied a position in the trade of the Baltic identical to that occupied by Rhodes or Crete in the Mediterranean.

Of this old Visby we have little record apart from a mention that is made of it by the Guta Saga when relating certain incidents that occurred in Gothland during the tenth century, at the time Christianity was first introduced into the island.

“When the Gothlanders were heathen,” the Saga says, “they sailed with cargoes to every land, both Christian and heathen. Then saw the[120] merchants Christian ways in Christian lands, some of them being baptized and even bringing back priests with them to Gothland. Bothair of Akeback built a church on the place now called Külstade. But as the people of the island would not suffer the church but set fire to it and burned it, he built yet another with feasts and sacrifices at Vi, which when the people also tried to burn, he climbed upon and said: ‘If ye will burn the church, then shall ye burn me also’. This the people would not do, as Bothair had as wife the daughter of Likkair Snälle, who was their ruler at that time, and Likkair enjoined them not to do this deed. Whereupon the church was left to stand unburned. It was built in the name of All Saints on the place that is now called Peter’s Church, and was the first church in Gothland which was left to stand....”

Vi means place of sacrifice, and Visby means therefore village by the place of sacrifice, it being evident that the village must even before this period have enjoyed a certain importance as a religious centre for a larger or smaller portion of the island population, its inhabitants being the ancestors of those Teutonic races which fifteen hundred years ago overthrew the might of imperial[121] Rome and revolutionised the world. That Gothland was even then a sea power of considerable importance is proved by the vast treasures in gold and silver which have been unearthed in the island, and many of the gold coins which have been found are minted with the profiles of Greek emperors or inscribed in Roman or Arabic, this evidence showing that the Goths were as adept in the arts of commerce as they were in those of war. Gothland was inhabited by a race of bold sea rovers and traders, who sailed down the rivers of Russia, carrying far and wide their cargoes of pitch, tar, limestone, and salt, the products of their island. Marauding and looting as they went, they were hardly welcome guests in the countries which they visited, and accordingly, not only were able to exchange or barter their cargoes most profitably for the precious wares, furs, skins, and honey of Russia, and the woven fabrics, spices, food-stuffs, and silver ware of the east, but also returned home, their war chests well replenished with the gold and silver tribute which their unwilling hosts had paid to rid themselves of their importunate presence.

Of the treasures thus accumulated, part was melted down and fashioned into ornaments and[122] vessels, and part was buried in hiding-places in the island, only a small proportion having so far come into the possession of archæologists. Of the many tens of thousands of coins which have been discovered more than half have been dug up in Gothland, the majority of these being of Arabian, Greek, or Roman origin, and the remainder of Saxon, Rhine and South German, Turkish, Polish, and even Hungarian extraction. Of the English coins many date from the reigns of Kings Edgar and Ethelred, and the Cyfic or Arabian coins, of which over 25,000 have been discovered, were brought from the Caspian Sea during the eighth and ninth centuries; they were struck principally at Cufa on the Tigranes. As a Chinese cup and a shell from the Indian Ocean have, moreover, also been found in graves not far from Visby, it is clear that the light Viking barques which set sail periodically from this northern island carried out far-reaching and extensive expeditions to most parts of the world, and that Gothland can therefore justifiably claim to have possessed a prosperity which in its own time unfolded itself in almost fabulous splendour.

Of the early history of the island we have, unfortunately, apart from what archæology teaches[123] us, nothing but the most hazy traditions, though the Guta Saga of the thirteenth century tells us that when the population of Gothland reached a certain figure one-third of the inhabitants was selected by lot and bidden to leave the country with all their goods and chattels. “Then were these loth to go,” so the Saga writes, “but went they to Thor’s stronghold and lived there. Then would the country not suffer them there but drove them thence. Then went they forth to Fårö and remained there a time. Even there, however, they were not permitted to remain but went out to an island near Esthonia called Dagö, where they lived and built a stronghold for themselves which is still to be seen. Also there they were unable to subsist, but went by water called Düna up through Russia. And they proceeded so far that they finally came to Greece, where they lived until now and still speak in a tongue somewhat similar to our own.”

There is a hill which is called Torsburgen (Thor’s stronghold), on which one can still see the remains of the castle where the banished men of Gothland made their last stand against their countrymen. The mountain is broad—a huge plateau which is crowned by a forest; and so[124] steep that on three sides of it, it is almost unscaleable. On the fourth, approach to it is barred by mighty mile-long walls constructed of rough boulders, which represent so prodigious an amount of labour, with their hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of stone, that the mind is almost staggered by it. In the middle of the forest lies the castle of Thor, where the last desperate remnant of the rebels made their final stand before being overpowered by force of numbers, a mass of fallen stones and boulders and crumbling walls, most of which have fallen, testifying to the homeric age of which we possess so little record. When these incidents took place we do not know. We have, however, been able to estimate that as early as the sixth century before Christ at the beginning of the Iron Age, the inhabitants of Gothland began to migrate to other countries, the climate of the island having suddenly and rapidly become exceedingly cold, and that by the third century before Christ the island had become almost entirely depopulated. During the next centuries, however, the population increased so rapidly that when the Great Migration took place, Gothland was able to send thousands of Viking auxiliaries to swell the ranks of the mighty armies[125] that were marching south to make a mass attack on the Roman Empire.

KALMAR CASTLE

The Great Age of Gothland did not, however, begin till the twelfth century, by which time the commercial supremacy of the island had become so firmly established that not only the northern states of Europe, but even England, began to adopt the sea laws and coinage of the enterprising Gothlanders, while the greater part of the more lucrative trade of northern Europe passed into their hands. The old steel-yard in London near Blackfriars Bridge was the yard of the Gothland merchants where they stored their iron and steel merchandise, while merchants from the island are mentioned as purveyors of miniver and wax to Henry III. of England. Soon Visby began definitely to take up its place as the leading commercial settlement of Gothland, while many foreign merchants settled in the town in the hope of rivalling the prosperity of the native traders, the Germans coming in such numbers that at one time more than half the town council and two of the principal magistrates belonged to that nationality. In 1163 Henry the Lion, Duke of Lübeck, granted the merchants of Gothland peaceful entry into his land and extensive trading[126] privileges on condition that his subjects enjoyed similar rights and immunities in theirs, while a similar trade alliance was gradually signed between Visby and no less than thirty other cities which was ultimately to lead to the formation of the Hanseatic League.

There is no doubt that these were halcyon days for Visby, and that owing to its position as foremost commercial power in the north it was able to exercise an authority and prestige in the Councils of the League that made it almost the sole arbiter of its destinies, while its wealth was so fabulous that, as an old ballad ran:

The Gothlanders weighed gold with twenty-pound weights
And played with the rarest gems;
The pigs ate out of silver troughs,
And the women spun with distaffs of gold.

To guard against attack, imposing walls were constructed around the city built on natural rock terraces which soon converted Visby into one of the strongest fortresses of the age, while it began to rival the finest towns in Europe in the splendour of its churches, public and private buildings, and the wealth of its merchant princes.

This being the case, it was no wonder that the city soon began to attract the cupidity of kings[127] and pirates, and that during these centuries there were many occasions on which her burghers were called upon to defend their city, though the time was to come when even her massive walls and the staunch hearts of her defenders proved inadequate to ward off attack. Her decline and fall began as soon as internecine strife arose between her citizens and those of the countryside, and when open warfare arose between the two camps owing to the resentment that was felt by the country merchants against those of the town for claiming the exclusive right to the commerce of the island, her fate was really sealed. In the spring of 1288 the peasant merchants took up arms and marched on Visby, the war that ensued proving so indecisive that King Magnus, who had hitherto exercised a purely nominal suzerainship on the island, was encouraged to interfere. He invaded it with a powerful army, put an end to the war, and converted Gothland into a Swedish province after suppressing all its privileges and exemptions from taxation. This curtailment of her liberties, coupled with the displacement of commercial routes owing to the crusades, the rapid rise of Lübeck as mistress of the Baltic, and the further wars that were waged against her,[128] hastened the downfall of the city, though she continued for a time to mint her own coinage and even to oppose successfully (in 1313) by force of arms the attempts made by Swedish and other kings to extort fresh taxation from her coffers or gain possession of her citadel. Then misfortunes began to crowd in upon the town. Smaller and smaller became its commerce, and thinner and thinner the streams of silver that poured in from the lands beyond the sea, while bitterly cold winters and dry summers came with cattle pests and plagues which mowed down rich and poor alike, the dead and dying lying in street or square uncared for, polluting the air. Then finally the end in 1361, when Valdemar, King of the Danes, determined to take possession of Visby and of what still remained of its wealth. Landing at Västergarn, where a few hundred peasants who offered resistance were defeated, he advanced upon the town between burning homesteads, and after slaughtering 1800 peasants who fought to the last in defence of the capital, entered the city. Whether or not the legend is true according to which the burgomaster’s daughter fell in love with the Danish king and delivered up to him the key of the town, or that other legend which[129] relates that Valdemar was admitted into the city through a breach made by the burghers themselves in the hope of so gaining the whole commerce of the island, now that their rural competitors had been wiped out, the fact remains that Valdemar looted the town in spite of its unconditional surrender and compelled the authorities to hand him over three hogsheads filled with gold, silver, and precious stones.

RUINS OF BORGHOLM CASTLE, ÖLAND

In the church of St. Nicholas are two sightless rose windows, each of which, so a legend tells us, contained a carbuncle so large and luminous that it served as a beacon to mariners as they steered their vessels into Visby Harbour. And these King Valdemar carried away with him when returning home with his booty, only to encounter a storm off the coast of Gothland, when every ship foundered. To this day the inhabitants of the island declare that when the sea is calm they have seen these carbuncles glowing from their resting-place in the deep.

Visby’s star of destiny now set for ever, though it continued to struggle on in the hope of better things, and again and again the town was besieged, looted or even burned, Dane, Swede, and pirate gradually encompassing its ruin. Faster and[130] faster its power on the sea waned and drew to its end, while its ships were taken and plundered till none would venture out to sea. At last came the Reformation, when the treasures of its churches were confiscated and its convents dissolved, while the decayed and ruined churches which had been its proud boast were allowed to go to rack and ruin, only the cathedral of St. Mary being maintained and restored for the new worship. Gradually their roofs blew asunder, their rafters rotted and their arches crumbled away, while from the walls stone fell after stone, religious iconoclasts completing the ruin that others had begun.

Of all the mediæval splendour attained by Gothland there are consequently nothing but ruins, but these ruins are in themselves so wondrous, and the Visby of to-day reflects so many of the features of the merchant city of Hanseatic times, that few cities are more interesting to visit. With its many picturesque red-tiled houses and gables, its many architectural treasures and imposing castellated walls, its lovely gardens yielding every summer roses of luxuriant abundance, and its mild climate and many recreational[131] facilities, Visby is in fact an ideal spot for a holiday.

The first thing that impresses as you land on the island is the mighty wall that dominates all the surrounding country and encloses the city almost in its original perfection; vast grey battlemented walls, mellowed by age and the touch of ivy, with thirty-eight towers which rise some of them to a height of 70 feet and recall those of Cracow or Carcassonne, and between them a picturesque series of bartizans supported by corbels, the whole being among the most perfect specimens that are still preserved of mediæval fortress architecture.

Of these walls the west or shoreward are considerably older than the others, it being probable that on the land side the town was at first only protected by a palisade-crowned rampart which was in course of time replaced by a wall with crenellated coping and a banquette along the inner side surmounting a row of pointed blind arches, but towards the close of the thirteenth century it was still further heightened and the greater part of the towers erected, the new superstructure of wall between the towers resting upon the parapet and being only broken by a series of[132] bartizans. In earlier times, moreover, a number of moats partly hewn out of the solid rock provided additional security to the city, though few of these water defences are now visible.

The oldest and most interesting of these towers is undoubtedly the Powder Tower, the only remaining fortification of the old port, its heavy barred vaultings and sturdy walls probably dating back to the eleventh century; but the lover of legend should also linger for a moment near the Tower of Jungfrutornet, or the Maiden’s Tower, and hear how the burgomaster’s daughter fell in love with Valdemar and gave him the key of the city which she had stolen at night from under her father’s pillow. The story goes that as soon as he sailed for Denmark the citizens built this tower and immured her alive as a punishment for her treachery.

The wall undoubtedly owes its imposing effect in a large measure to the fact that the land outside it is for the most part desolate and devoid of vegetation, and its vast grey fortifications, which extend their battlemented tops around the town for more than two and a half miles, are exceedingly impressive. Before entering the town, however, you should pass by a certain field lying just outside[133] the walls, where a very old stone cross is to be found, and also pay a visit to the mediæval scaffold which is situated to the north of the town near the old Lepers’ Church of St. Göran. Both are worth visiting.

THE WALLS OF VISBY

The first, Valdemar’s Cross, which is engraved with the likeness of the Saviour, and a Latin inscription reading as following:

is in spite of its old age almost in a perfect state of preservation, only one arm having been destroyed. It was erected on the very spot where the peasants of Gothland made their final stand in defence of Visby against the might of the Danish crown, and near it lie buried many of the peasants and Danish soldiers who fell on that historic occasion. Some twenty years ago excavations in this old burial-place brought to light several hundred skeletons in rusted armour, many of the shields being pierced with arrows or dented by sword-cuts. It is believed that these skeletons are the remains of the Danish invaders, as only the Gothlanders were buried under the cross itself.

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The second consists of a mediæval scaffold, three stone pillars once joined by wooden rafters upon which malefactors were wont to be hanged in olden times. Grim and menacing, they stand on a high cliff so that all may see, a lasting memorial of an age when evil-doers were exposed even in death to the public eye pour effrayer les autres.

Between these imposing walls the life of the town, now a ghost of its former self, pulses lazily through narrow and crooked cobbled streets which are lined with low-eaved and small windowed wooden or stone houses;[3] and along these disused byways of travel, whose very name is an inspiration, are ruins of churches and abbeys, cathedrals and dwellings, that date from the Hanseatic age and attest the glory of Visby’s past. The whole effect is extremely picturesque, in spite of the intrusion here and there of certain houses, products of more recent times; while interspersed among these and brightened, moreover, in many places by greenery and the famous rose gardens that you will find sandwiched in the most unlikely places, are high and stately gabled houses, the residences of the[135] merchant princes of the Middle Ages. And the ruins of ten wondrous stone churches, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose yellow ivy-clad walls and graceful arches and columns provide the most convincing of testimonies not only of Visby’s former greatness and prosperity but of the hold which religion then occupied in the heart of her citizens.

Of the older houses many are well preserved and had their origin in the prosperous days of the town in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They are characterised by high narrow façades and gables with corbel steps, and arches that span the streets and provide the city with one of its characteristic features. The stateliest of these old mansions are those that are found along the Strandgatan in close proximity to the mediæval harbour, one of their typical features consisting of church-like cellars which are canopied by cross vaultings on slender, graceful columns, and usually divided into two stories by a flooring of beams placed at half the height of the ceiling. The house containing the museum of the town, a magnificent collection of Gothlandic mediæval art, “Gothlands fornsal,” possesses such a cellar, a portion of the floor originally dividing it into two stories having been[136] removed to suit the requirements of the museum; but this mansion, unlike many of the mediæval buildings of the town, shows nothing on its exterior to betray its great age. Among those who have preserved their old-world exterior best are the well-known Old Apothecary’s shop “Gamla apoteket”, also in the Strandgatan, which dates from the days of King John of England, the Liljehorns’ house, and the hotel Visby Börs in the same street, and certain groups of houses in Hansgatan, as again the woodshed of the bishop’s palace in Drottensgatan and the Burmeister House.[4] Many of these mediæval houses were obviously utilised for business purposes and occasionally contained as many as eight stories.

Even more striking, however, are the ruins of the splendid stone churches which are dotted here and there through the irregular streets and lanes, the view that these command from their towers being one of surpassing loveliness; an interesting cathedral which was consecrated in 1225 and is still in use to-day, and ten wonderful old ruins, relics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries which represent every style of architecture in the Middle Ages except the late Gothic. I doubt if any town[137] in Europe of anything like the size of Visby or even much larger can present anything architecturally of so engrossing an interest.

The Cathedral of St. Mary was originally built as a basilica, i.e. with three aisles, of which the middle one was the highest. It also had a vaulted transept with an apse adjoining, and was lighted by windows which perforated the clerestory above the roof of the side aisles. Of this original building only the lower part of the great west tower and part of the transept are preserved, the remainder of the church having undergone many alterations. Shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century the original chancel was replaced by the present choir, while the beautiful and still preserved Bridal Porch was constructed in the south gable of the transept. New side aisles were then substituted for the old, corresponding in height and width with the nave, their roofs being so arranged that every vaulted square had its own saddle roof with the gable facing the length of the building, while every second column separating the aisles was pulled down, these changes having the effect of converting the entire interior into a single whole except for the chancel and tower chapels. Some time before 1400 a large hall, whose walls were superimposed[138] directly over the colonnades, was erected over the vaulting of the nave and another roof laid over it, to whose walls new slanting roofs were joined for the side aisles. In this manner the exterior of the cathedral was considerably heightened and again looked like a basilica, though nothing was changed in the interior of the church itself. About the same period the towers, now altogether too low for the remainder of the church, were raised to their present height.

Interesting as is the Cathedral of St. Mary, the ruins of the other houses of worship that once served the spiritual needs of Visby’s thirty thousand people are, in my opinion, infinitely more arresting in their loveliness. The force of their appeal lies, I imagine, in the picture which they afford of an age when religion was not a hollow sham but a reality to which every man readily turned, not only in those moments of trial when even the careless remember the claim of the Deity, but also in those more prosperous times when men rapidly develop an illusory sense of their own power and might. Visby in her heyday supported no less than sixteen churches and the island nearly a hundred, many of these being vast structures of mediæval splendour, to whose adornment many[139] precious metals and jewels had been lavished and many great artists had contributed a quota.

Near the walls are the beautiful towers of St. Drotten and St. Lars, sister churches which are said to have been built by two maiden sisters who hated one another so heartily that each erected her own church in order not to sit together in the same place of worship.

St. Drotten has a square tower which is reminiscent of the western tower of the cathedral and is built in one piece with an almost quadrate nave, while St. Lars, which is cruciform in shape and shows a marked Byzantine influence, impresses by virtue of its majestic proportions, its characteristically high arched paired windows, and its massive vaulted rooms that fill in the corners of the cross and open to its arm, no ingenuity having so far accounted for the triforia that are hollowed in its walls at various heights and facing the nave of the church.

St. Nicholas, which like St. Lars has wonderful long slender windows, is a three-aisled church, with a square chancel and a pentagonal apse, which was originally built as a basilica, and then so altered that the height of the three aisles is now the same. It was taken over by the Dominicans about 1220[140] when they arrived in Visby, the decorative sculptures of the doorways being very similar to those found in the bridal porch of St. Mary’s.

St. Clement’s, as it stands to-day, also belongs to the same period, i.e. about the middle of the thirteenth century, but within its walls are the foundations of three, if not more, older church edifices, the first probably dating back to about 980, a circumstance that speaks eloquently of the wealth and love of building that characterised the Great Age of Visby, since it is clear that none of these churches were destroyed by human agency, this period being then almost the only one during which the island remained at peace with the world.

The other ruined churches of Visby include the churches of St. John and St. Peter, which was the successor of Botair’s wooden church to which I have already alluded, and also St. Olaf’s Tower, which is almost identical to the western tower of the cathedral, all these being interesting specimens of twelfth-century architecture, but none that I have mentioned, except perhaps St. Lars, are as quickening to the imagination, or as remarkable for the beauty of their architectural features, as the churches of St. Catherine and the Holy Ghost.

THE CITY OF VISBY

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The first, which was dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria, belonged to the Franciscan friars who settled in Visby in 1233, but only acquired its definite form with its graceful columns and lofty vaultings in 1413, its beautiful columns and arches remaining to this day in an almost perfect state of preservation. The second, which belonged to the charitable institution of the Holy Ghost, consists of an octagonal tower with two vaulted stories and two separate floors, with a common chancel and an apse that is let into its eastern wall. Original in conception and better preserved than most of the ruins of the city, the Church of the Holy Ghost ranks perhaps as the finest church of the island.

Of the hundred or more churches which are to be found in other parts of Gothland, the more interesting are undoubtedly those which date back to the twelfth century or even further, such as the richly decorated wooden church of Hemse, now preserved in the Historical Museum at Stockholm, the church Garde with its plain nave and Byzantine paintings, the churches of Dalhem and Stånga, and the large Cistercian convent church in Roman constructed after the designs of the French Cistercians, the simple grandeur of[142] whose arches and columns recall those of another Rome; yet even the other more modern churches often present interesting features. Distinguished by plain wall surfaces and an almost entire lack of the buttress system that characterises Gothic architecture in the west, they possess a style that is pure Gothic and yet are strongly national in tendency. Their towers are very varied in shape, but usually tall and slender, while the interiors convey an impression of great spaciousness, thanks to the height of their slender columns, the solidity of their vaultings, and the wide span of their equally high arches. Speaking for myself, however, I confess to have derived greater pleasure from seeing the many wonderful carved portals, baptismal fonts, and well-preserved wood carvings, some of these the work of the greatest sculptors of the age, that abound in the island, many of the roods, figures of the Madonna and statues of saints, which have been preserved, possessing a very high artistic value. In this respect I rather fancy the little island of Gothland is perhaps richer than almost any country in the world save France and Germany, the beauty and originality of its wood carvings and decorative sculpture providing further proof of the exceedingly[143] high culture attained by its citizens in the days of their prosperity. No lover of beauty should therefore fail to pay a visit to a few of these old churches, and especially to Viklau and Öja. The first possesses the only known wood carving attributed to the famous cathedral workers of Chartres, the leading sculpture centre in the twelfth century; the second an equally beautiful rood that is generally held to be the work of a French sculptor of the thirteenth century.

The three masters who are principally responsible for the building of the churches of Gothland are Le Frans, Botwid and Sighafr, all three justly reputed in their age as leaders of their art; but many other talented artists, whose names have purposely remained concealed under a nom de guerre, have contributed their quota to the embellishment and building of these splendid mediæval monuments. It has been calculated that over 400 churches would now be left standing in this tiny island as a record of the tremendous ecclesiastical building activity which took place in Gothland from the earliest Christian times to the middle of the fourteenth century, if the Goths had been spared the series of catastrophes which was destined to leave them the easy prey of pirates and[144] marauders, and I should say that this figure is probably underestimated.

There is one further characteristic found in these churches, moreover, that should appeal to the lover of folk-lore. It appears that Gothland, like Scandinavia and Great Britain, was in the Bronze Age a great centre of sun worship, and that this adoration of the Sun god (Bal) lingered on in spite of Christianity among the many customs that have survived to show a pagan influence.

Many of the dances, for instance, which are given round the Beltane fires on Midsummer Eve are 3000 years old and date from that period, while the remains of a sun chariot have also been discovered not far from Visby; but what is even more interesting is the fact that the chief door of practically every church in the island faces south and yet lies as near to the west as possible. This has undoubtedly to do with the cult of the sun, as the good people of Visby sought in this manner to conciliate both their new and old convictions. Even to-day the peasants of the island never dance or spin on Thursday (the day of Thor, the god of thunder), this being the one day of the week when in pagan times they were unable to pay their worship to the Sun god.

SUNDAY AT RÄTTVIK, DALECARLIA

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Apart from the churches and a few well-preserved merchant houses dating from Hanseatic times, such as the famous merchant mansion of Kattlunda in the south of the island, which was obviously designed for defence against an enemy, the interior of Gothland has little to offer in the way of scenic attractions, if we except the luxuriantly beautiful groves and “leafy meadows” which are found interspersed here and there among the desolate fen and woodland, and occasional patches of wheat and beet sugar characterising the scenery. With these exceptions, everything worth seeing is concentrated along the coasts. Along the west are romantically wild cliffs and downs, with here and there a pleasant little cove or inlet, and the two lonely Karl islands with their steep cliffs and a bird life so varied that it is difficult to believe any human being has ever set foot on the island; along the east, broad open bays, sandy shores, and rocky promontories worn away by the sea and moulded into strange fantastic shapes recalling those seen in the wildest parts of the Breton coast or the Giant’s Causeway; to the south a low shore and headland fringed with Hoburgen’s mighty rocks; and to the north the large island of Fårö with its[146] impressive drift sands and the wild-looking Isle of Sandö, where forest and sand are ever waging a fight for existence: a scenery, in short, which for sheer grandeur and picturesqueness resembles no other in the world, and over which I have seen sunsets flaming with almost southern splendour. Truly Gothland is an ideal spot for a holiday, and with its many imposing ruins of a vanished culture, its wild scenery and coast line, its mild climate and its pleasant seaside resorts of Snäckgärdsbaden, Kneippbyn and Slite, all easily accessible from Visby by rail or motor, combines a sufficiency of attractions that should make it a favourite resort for any traveller who is desirous of exploring new and strange ground.

DALECARLIA[5]

I know few parts of Europe where traditions, costumes and customs have remained so little affected by the levelling process of civilisation as Dalecarlia, and here amid surroundings that reproduce all the characteristic features of Swedish scenery, with the exception of the mountainous regions of Lapland, is found a race of virile and independent men and women characterised by ready wit, good humour, and great bodily strength who have contributed more to the shaping of their country’s history than all the rest of Sweden put together.

To know Dalecarlia is, therefore, almost as good as knowing Sweden, for not only the scenery but also the characteristics of the population inhabiting it are typically Swedish.

In the centre of the province are rich smiling[148] pasture and farm-land alternating with wooded hills and lakes, great pine forests and birch groves; in the south, mining and industrial districts which are among the most productive regions of the country. Dalecarlia is intersected by the Dalälven river, which flows down from the mountains of the border in two branches, Öster Dalälven, its eastern branch, flowing through Lake Siljan. Here, and scattered around its pleasantly wooded shores, are ten little towns which are each the centre of a distinctive community that possess not only remarkable historical memories, but individual costumes which their inhabitants have continued to wear unchanged from the Middle Ages.

Like all independent and liberty-loving races, the Dalecarlians have never been able to tolerate oppression or the yoke of the foreigner, and it was this same proud national spirit which has always induced them to take the lead, whenever the liberties of their country were at stake.

So runs an old Dale song, and again and again the peasants of the province have risen to arms to defend the liberties of the Fatherland.

LAKE SILJAN

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In 1435, under the leadership of Engelbrecht, a prominent miner, they succeeded in temporarily freeing Sweden from the tyranny and misrule of the successors of Queen Margaret of Denmark, their subsequent defeat at the hands of their oppressors being more than avenged by the remarkable success which crowned their efforts at liberating the country in the years immediately following the accession of King Christian II. of Denmark to the Swedish crown in 1520. Self-willed and obstinate, this able but short-sighted monarch signalised his advent to power by treacherously murdering eighty-two leading Swedish noblemen who had assembled in the capital for the coronation festivities. This cold-blooded murder so fired the imagination of Gustavus Vasa, the son of one of its victims, that breaking away from the prison in which he had been confined as hostage for Christian’s safe keeping, he dashed across to Sweden by way of Lübeck, and started on a long 900-mile tramp northward, with the vague idea of rousing his countrymen to arms. Hotly pursued by the King of Denmark’s followers, he finally reached the district of Lake Siljan in Dalecarlia, and on the last Sunday in Advent proceeded to address[150] the good people of Rättvik after the morning service, as they were gathering on the shores of the lake. He described the incidents which had occurred, and laying stress on the many unjust and tyrannical measures which had been perpetrated by the Danish monarch, urged them to rally to his standard and free the country from its oppressors. The Dalecarlians sympathised with the young leader, but refused to do anything definite until they had received confirmation of the massacre. Then as Gustavus saw his pursuers closing once again upon him, he continued his flight towards the Norwegian frontier and had proceeded some ninety miles when he was overtaken by the swift ski runners whom the Dalecarlians had sent after him as soon as they had received tardy confirmation of the news. He then turned back, and after a succession of marvellous escapes that recall the exploits of Alfred the Great, succeeded in warding off his pursuers and in organising armed resistance to the Danish king.

Backed by a numerous army, whose principal mainstay consisted of the peasantry in the district of Rättvik and the mining population of the south of Dalecarlia, he declared Sweden independent[151] of Danish sovereignty, and by a succession of rapid triumphs on the field of battle converted this declaration into a reality, his coronation in 1528 as King of Sweden inaugurating a new epoch in the history of the country and consecrating the rule of a dynasty which was destined to produce some of the ablest rulers in Scandinavia.

The district surrounding Lake Siljan is consequently intimately associated with the name of Gustavus Vasa, for not only Rättvik, where a stately monument has been erected to commemorate his memory, but many other towns and villages, can point to homely farms or other buildings in which the national hero is supposed to have lain concealed from his pursuers. I have seen at Ornäs a well-preserved farmstead with overhanging balconies in which the fugitive is said to have taken refuge, disguised as a simple labourer, and also the kitchen in which he was discovered sitting near the hearth by the pursuing Danes. The story relates that the farmer’s wife, seeing that the suspicions of the Danes had been awakened, suddenly turned towards Gustavus and, after rebuking him violently for his laziness, struck him a hard blow on the back with a shovel, this[152] action having the effect of convincing the soldiers that the Swedish labourer was not the man whom they were looking for. Every year a ski Marathon race is held from Mora to commemorate the athletic feat of the ski runner whom the Dalecarlians sent post-haste after Gustavus to recall him to Rättvik, and the course that is followed by the runners of to-day is almost identically the same as that which was followed by the sixteenth-century ski runner. The race is the most important sporting event of the year.

Apart from these many historical memories and legends, the district of Lake Siljan possesses an appeal which is quite its own and which lies not only in the loveliness of its scenery and light salubrious air, but in the faithful observance of ancient tradition and the old-world style of dress that have ever characterised its people.

Nowhere in Dalecarlia are these characteristics so strongly marked as in Siljansdalen, the district surrounding the lake.

Of the ten little towns that lie on its verdant shores the three largest and perhaps the most beautiful are Rättvik, Leksand, and Mora.

Rättvik, which lies on an inlet of the most eastern portion of the lake, has an exceptionally[153] beautiful situation on the slopes of wooded ridges that command a splendid view, its sixteenth-century white church being finely placed on a point projecting in the lake and being surrounded by so-called ‘Kyrkstallar,’ i.e. a number of makeshift buildings built of timbers placed roughly one above the other which possess no windows but are usually provided with a stove for making coffee. These structures, it is interesting to note, are largely used as rest-houses on Sundays by those church-goers who have had to come many miles by foot, cycle, or horse, in order to attend divine service. No visitor to Rättvik should fail to attend one of these celebrations, for the opportunities that it will provide him of seeing the farmers and townsfolk of the locality coming to worship apparelled in their picturesquely becoming national dress. On week-days you may occasionally come across workers in the fields or even housewives wearing the costume of their forefathers, but on Sundays and feast days you will see thousands of men and women each in the costume peculiar to his or her own district. These dresses are made by the women themselves or are often heirlooms to which each successive generation has afforded its quota and, if substantially[154] the same, differ slightly in details, certain fixed variations depending on whether the wearer is married or single, or on the particular feast day that is being commemorated. In imagery of colour and beauty of design, the level of excellence reached by these peasant artists often approaches that attained by the Slovaks and Roumanians, though they evince less concern for effect and bold colouring than either of these two races.

The characteristic dress of the Rättvik peasant women consists of a lofty, pointed conical bonnet, a corseted skirt which is usually flowered, and a horizontally striped and rainbow-coloured strip that, sewn in the front of the skirt, recalls the gaily striped aprons that are found in Ragusa, while a flowered kerchief held in front by a brooch is fastened around the neck. Extremely fair of complexion and with hair that is usually straw-coloured, the good-looking women of Rättvik are among the finest specimens of the Swedish race which I have seen, and are so strong and energetic that even the hardest manual labour presents no difficulty to them.

The costume of the Rättvik men consists of a very long blue coat that is very similar to an old-fashioned[155] frock-coat, only that it is cut high in the neck and single-breasted; a waistcoat, with two rows of brass buttons, of the same colour; yellow leather knee-breeches that reach half-way up the waistcoat, and a blue soft felt hat recalling a harlequin. Only the older men continue, however, to wear the attractive apparel of their ancestors, the younger men preferring the more drab fashions of to-day.

Apart from its lovely scenery, its many historical memories, and its quaint peasant costumes, Rättvik possesses many attractions. Its beautiful pine forests, high bracing situation and invigorating air, combine to make it an ideal spot for those who need rest and recuperation, while its position half-way down the lake renders it the best starting-point for the various excursions which can be made in any direction.

Lying at the very northernmost point of Siljan and easily accessible from Rättvik by rail or water, the village of Mora is not as famous as Rättvik for the beauty of its costumes, but has played as distinguished a part in the history of the country. It was the men of Mora who were the first to flock to the standard of Gustavus Vasa as soon as confirmation of the Swedish massacre had arrived,[156] and it is from here that Sweden’s national ski race, the Vasaloppet, is run every year to commemorate the stirring athletic feat which undoubtedly started the War of Liberation. In Mora church-yard, moreover, can be seen the tomb of Anders Zorn, the great Swedish painter, sculptor, and pioneer of old Swedish peasant culture, even more than Ankarcrona, who not only enriched his native town, and especially its parish church, by presenting it with a statue of Gustavus Vasa that is representative of the best Swedish sculpture of to-day, but has founded a People’s High School which contains a collection of paintings by Prince Eugen, Liljefors, Tiren, and other famous Swedish masters that is in every respect a notable one.

MORA CHURCH

Across the lake, and at its most southernmost point, lies Leksand, which with Rättvik and Floda shares the distinction of being a centre of old mediæval Swedish peasant folklore and costume. The excursion to it is particularly interesting on a Sunday morning, if one travels to it by the special church boat. On these occasions the steamer calls in at various localities on the way to Leksand to collect the more distant parishioners, all clothed in their most becoming costumes, and her deck soon presents a very picturesque and animated[157] appearance. On arrival at Leksand the crowd makes its way to the fine birch-tree avenue leading to the quaint Russian-looking steepled church in which the service is to be held, and here the visitor should follow them and either join the worshippers inside the building, or await them as they come out after service. Of the two alternatives I found the second infinitely the more agreeable, as a Swedish Protestant service is an interminable affair, and sermons of thirty minutes’ duration appear to be lasting hours when one does not understand a word of what is being spoken. Nowhere, except perhaps in Slovakia and Roumania, have I seen such an array of picturesque and colourful costumes as those which are to be seen in Leksand on these occasions; and the scene that the people present in church as they troop down the nave preliminary to leaving it, or the kaleidoscope of colour which they make as they emerge into the avenue and stroll about or talk in groups, forms an unforgettable picture.

The bodices of the women are mostly fashioned of flowered and gaily-coloured velvet or are embroidered with many colours, while the apron-looking material which is sewn in the front of the plain cloth black or white skirt is often beautifully[158] embroidered, but more usually attractively striped in either red, black, or white, there appearing to be endless variations of these colours and of the size and direction of the stripes; the caps or bonnets are sometimes conical with striped trimming, or very similar to a Breton coiffe, and held together by a black or white embroidered ribbon which is fastened with a bow at the back of the head; at other times plain white like a hospital nurse’s cap or the same colour but beautifully edged with lace. And if the women’s dress is picturesque that of the men wearing national costume is almost equally so; blue or plum-coloured is the old-fashioned single or double-breasted tunic or frock-coat that is cut high in the neck and sometimes reaches to the knee, while yellow buckskin knee breeches, blue or red stockings with the most attractive red tassels imaginable peering merrily from the turned-up tops, and a hat which when not large-brimmed and of felt is red or of an equally vivid colour strongly reminiscent of a romantic opera, complete the costume. As for the children, they are an exact replica of their elders.

Leksand Church, which was originally built in the Middle Ages and given its present form and[159] bulb-shaped dome after a fire in 1709, is distinctly Russian in character, its tower having been rebuilt by Russian prisoners of war according to a model which Lars Siljeström, a military chaplain and the architect who had been entrusted with the rebuilding of the church, had brought back from Russia, after accompanying Charles XII. to that country.

Dalecarlian peasant art as revealed in the attractive costumes which the peasants continue to wear on all festive occasions reveals an innate artistic talent and a striving after beauty that mark it out among all peasant artistic productions, while it proves how easy it is to acquire technique if one only seeks to give faithful expression to one’s inspiration. And just as in the peasant art of other countries, this striving after beauty shows itself, not only in the painstaking and loving care that is lavished in the making and adorning of the peasant costumes, but in the equally unstinting thought and labour that is devoted to the embellishing of the home and to making life beautiful even for the poorest. I visited several small farms and cottages and found in even the humblest abode walls that had been adorned with peasant drawings and paintings. Produced with house-painter’s[160] colours and obviously intended to decorate in conjunction with woven material, these quaint and artless paintings often convey an original and pleasing effect, while they depict Biblical personages and events whose general colour scheme, like those of the costumes, are dictated by district and devised with surprising skill.

If Dalecarlia is therefore an ideal land for tourists during every season of the year, with its many beautiful excursions and fascinating peasant costumes and cottages, the quaintly picturesque customs of its people and the opportunities that it offers in winter for every kind of winter sports, it is also the home of industries which have long been famous in the history of Sweden. There is an old legend which relates that about 700 years ago a goat-herd, while tending his goats on a mountain in Dalecarlia south of Lake Siljan, noticed that one of his flock had suddenly become dyed red, and that the only plausible explanation that he could find of the phenomenon lay in the fact that the surrounding rock contained quantities of copper which had become oxidised by the atmosphere and converted into red ochre by the action of a forest fire.

LEKSAND CHURCH

This incident, it is alleged, led to the discovery of important copper deposits in the neighbourhood of Falun and ultimately to the formation of the Stora Kopparberget, or Falun copper mine, one of the most remarkable mining undertakings in the world and probably the oldest. Whether this explanation is correct or not, the fact remains that the Falun Mine Company was certainly founded in 1284, as a purchase deed recording the sale of the mine to its present owners has been in existence from that year. And from that day it has never changed ownership in spite of the many vicissitudes through which it has passed. The first owners floated a company in which not only the greatest nobles of the age, but even the miners actually employed in the mine, were represented, and very soon the mine became the richest copper-producing concern in the world, the industry being at its height in the seventeenth century, when it constituted Gustavus Adolphus’s principal source of revenue during the Thirty Years’ War.

The Falun Mine has been very productive in the past, and up to the year 1900 there has been mined in it some 35 million tons of copper ore, while its extensive galleries are more than twelve miles in length and nearly a mile in depth in its[162] deepest part. Its present copper output is insignificant, however, as it is no longer copper ore which is mined but principally pyrites, this ore constituting raw material for the manufacture of sulphuric acid and the other chemical products of the company or being utilised in its extensive sulphite pulp industry. It is only on the strength of its glorious historical traditions, therefore, that one should visit the mine, or for the insight that a visit paid to it will afford of the pump-houses, hoisting machinery, and other obsolete contrivances that satisfied our ancestors’ requirements, though an hour spent in the interesting museum of the company could be employed far more profitably.

The Stora Kopparberg’s principal activities being only indirectly concerned with the Falun mine, we must look elsewhere for an explanation of the prominent position which it continues to hold among Swedish industrial concerns of this century. Already before the copper ore was running short owing to excessive mining, it had started those fields of activity which now constitute its principal strength, such as iron and steel, forestry and wood, all these industries being located in the basin of the river Dalälven.

[163]

In 1735 the company built its first ironworks, and by 1870 it possessed no less than twenty furnaces and ironworks in different parts of the province. The company then established the Domnarvet Iron and Steel Works on the Dalälven river south of Falun, and closed down the smaller works, with the exception of the Korsa works, which still continued to manufacture hammered Lancashire iron. In addition to these works the Stora Kopparberg Company owns the Dannemora and over half the Grängesberg iron-ore mines in Central Sweden, from which raw material is obtained for the iron industry, and enormous forest tracts which provide its large sulphate and sulphite pulp mills at Skutskär and paper mill at Kvarnsveden with the necessary timber.

Falun itself is a clean and tidy little town which has gradually grown up around the mine, in which many attractive-looking workmen’s cottages, painted with the red ochre produced from the mine, can be seen. It boasts two interesting churches, those of Christine and Kopparberg, this last dating from the early Middle Ages, and a Town Hall dating from the seventeenth century, but possesses little else of interest apart from the collection that is housed[164] in the Head Office buildings of the Stora Kopparberg Company in the eastern corner of the Market Square, and the museum of the same company, “Stora Gruvstugan”, one of the finest industrial museums of its kind to be found in Sweden.

The first contains many notable portraits of Swedish monarchs or of distinguished Swedes who at one time or another have been connected with the general management of the company; the second, not only a number of tools that were used at various times in mining operations and a very interesting selection of the copper coins formerly used in Sweden (all manufactured from the copper of the Falun mine), and among them the huge 10-daler silver coin, the largest in the world and weighing over 50 lb., but also many valuable pictures, prints, plans, and models illustrating the history of the Stora Kopparberg Company from its birth and the subsequent development of the Swedish iron, timber, paper, pulp, and water-power industries. The workmen of this immense undertaking, which is splendidly organised, possess their own club, libraries, wash-houses, technical and evening schools and sport grounds, while their wives are trained in house-keeping[165] and children management, and the young receive the best education available. I have never seen any institution run more efficiently than the Falun Copper Company.

SUNDSVALL, A GREAT BALTIC TIMBER PORT

The surrounding country is fertile and in places almost pretty, except in the district immediately surrounding the mine-fields. Here are numerous slag-fields, in which the copper ore used to be worked by repeated processes of roasting and smelting, the sulphurous fumes that were thus generated soon killing off all vegetation and giving the neighbouring houses a very scorched appearance.

LAPLAND

Psychologists tell us that man is naturally of a jealous and envious temperament, and that in spite of centuries of civilisation the cave man or woman propensity that is manifested whenever a crime passionnel takes place is to be found in practically every race and at every period of history. This popular conception is, however, only a half-truth, for while jealousy may be said to be found generally among mankind, there is one race in which it is never met with, and probably several others (ethnologically related to it) who rarely manifest any sign of it. Scattered over Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, north of the sixth degree of latitude, and therefore well within the Arctic circle, are a nomadic people belonging to the Mongolian race, the Laplanders, who, like the Red Indians of North America, have been in close contact with civilisation for[167] centuries, without being more than superficially affected by it. Indeed, the Lapps are among the most primitive nations in the world, and, living their lives in the uncultured ways of their remote ancestors, have remained so fundamentally averse to the ways of civilisation that untimely death has almost invariably been the portion of any member of their race who has made essay of them. A less discontented nation does not, however, exist than the Laplanders, and, unperturbed by the vicissitudes of life, good fortune, or weather, they appear to lead serenely happy and contented lives, which prove how little happiness has to do with material comfort or wealth.

The popular conception of Lapland is that of a vast desolate waste in the extreme north, perpetually snow-bound, and of the Lapps as a kind of Eskimo whose lot is as hard and cold as the bleak mountains where they tend their herds of reindeer. But this is hardly the case. Lapland is doubtless one of the parts of the world where the winter is the longest and the most trying. The temperature during the greater part of the year usually averages thirty or more degrees of frost, and for over three months the fleeting gleams of the aurora borealis and the light of the moon and[168] the stars are the only substitute for sunlight; yet the Lapps are not without a summer, and for a period of six weeks the sun never sets, while emerald green meadows and leafy woodlands, radiant lakes and wild flowers that are as profuse as they are short-lived, bring a little pleasure and respite to a race whose existence would otherwise be terribly grey and barren.

A visit to these timid and peace-loving people is a comparatively easy matter in this season of the year, as during this time they momentarily abandon their nomadic life and erect their huts on the slopes of the mountains or the shores of lakes. Here they can be observed living in conditions that are almost identical to those under which they were existing in the beginning of civilisation.

Short but sturdily built, the Lapps, like all Mongolian races, have high cheek-bones, oblique eyes, black hair, and dark complexions. When they arrived in Europe is uncertain; probably before the dawn of modern history. Their life, which is spent in contact with Nature, gives them great endurance and hardihood, but they are not hard workers, and once they have made provision for the day or the morrow, they spend most of[169] their time sitting in their huts smoking plug tobacco. Before their conversion to Christianity they were believed to be wizards and to hold dealings with the devil, to whom, and other gods, they were wont to sacrifice reindeer.

The welfare of the Laplanders is inseparably bound up with that of their flocks, and any dwindling in the number of these cattle is invariably attended by a corresponding decrease in their own numbers. In the last two decades many Lapps have died owing to the loss of their reindeer, which have perished in thousands for want of a suitable pasturage. As the last few years have, however, been less arduous, the number of reindeer has shown an appreciable increase, and consequently the threatened extinction of the Lapp race, which a few years ago appeared to be only a question of a few years, has momentarily been arrested, the total number of Lapps inhabiting Sweden being 10 per cent greater than what it was five years ago (the Lapps have increased from 6200 to about 7000), this increase in population being occasioned by a corresponding increase of 30 per cent among the reindeer. (There are over 300,000 reindeer at present in Lapland.)

For the subsistence of a Lapp family a large[170] herd of deer is, however, required, and many Laplanders own from 500 to 1000 or more of these cattle. The meat and milk constitute their principal food, while the hide is tanned for skin and clothes, and many of the smaller household requisites are fashioned out of the bones and antlers.

Last year over 60,000 reindeer were sold in North Lapland, with prices varying from 45 to 60 crowns, mostly to Southern Sweden, Germany, and Hungary, where their meat is highly appreciated. In exchange for these animals and their products the Lapps purchase such necessities as salt, cloth, coffee, tobacco, and flour, their requirements being extraordinarily simple. Their meals consist principally of reindeer meat, which they eat sometimes uncooked, but more usually stewed, fried, or smoked, coffee which they sprinkle with salt, unfermented bread or cake, and brandy, to which some are often immoderately addicted.

No race lives as strenuous or hard an existence for the greater part of the year as this unfortunate people, over which hangs interminably the tragic suggestion of the inevitableness of the grind of life. And except for certain months when they have abundant leisure for making their articles of[171] reindeer horn and clothing, or for taking a well-earned rest basking in the July sunshine, they are almost continually on the move, breaking up camp almost daily in order to find a suitable grazing ground for their reindeer and the moss without which they could not possibly live through the winter. Throughout this period and the spring and autumn months they are exposed almost unceasingly to the most rigorous of climates and to a cold that is almost lethal, their patience and good humour being as exemplary as their fortitude.

Like most nomads, they are treated as a privileged race by the Swedish Government, which fully realises the value of their wholly distinctive industry in the utilisation of enormous territories that are absolutely unsuitable for any other purpose. They consequently pay no taxes or rent, are excused military service and political or civil obligations, and are allowed to roam or to camp at will within the very extensive areas that have been allotted to them, while the most ample protection is afforded to their lives and their industry. They have, however, often proved a bone of contention among the several northern nations in which they are to be found, and regulations have often had to be formulated governing[172] the inter-State migrations of their flocks, the latter resolutely refusing to confine their wanderings to any particular country, while their owners on their side have proved equally powerless to prevent their incursions in foreign territory. But I must also mention the attempts which have been made to provide the Laplanders with a groundwork of education, and the Swedish State has appointed teachers, frequently of Lapp birth, who, moving about among the nomads and residing with them at their various winter and summer encampments, have diligently sought to render them more amenable to modern ways.

LULEA, LAPLAND The export harbour for iron ore.

For over six years, in fact, every Lapp child is now compelled to receive instruction in Lapp and Swedish, and is taught the scientific raising and management of reindeer and the rudiments of natural history, nature study, and hygiene. The Lapps make good and exemplary pupils, and frequently reach a higher level of education than Swedish children of the same age; but on reaching the age of thirteen their mental development suddenly ceases, and they become incapable of progressing any further. Their thirst for acquiring knowledge then rapidly transforms itself into a tendency to revert to the prejudices and customs[173] of their race and a corresponding inability to appreciate the benefits of civilisation so complete that no amount of persuasion ever succeeds in inducing them to modify their natural aversion to water or to cleanliness. The Lapps, in short, live like animals, and neither wash nor take off their clothes even at night. After their evening meal, and with about as much formality as is displayed by a dog which is weary of eating and sinks into sleep, they quickly remove their raw-hide moccasins, drop down on the soft deerskins that are spread on the ground, and are asleep almost in the very act of falling. As their mode of eating is usually characterised, moreover, by an equal disdain of refinement and a way of attacking the meat or bone that is very reminiscent of a savage devouring his food, it is abundantly clear that the great majority of the Laplanders have little progressed beyond the first stage of civilisation, and, consequently, that it is waste of time trying to induce them to modify their traditional way of living. Highly significant, moreover, is the fact that the medical authorities of the hospital which has been built at Kiruna for those Lapps who are unable to find a cure for their ailments only retain their patients for a[174] period of two months. They tell me that if a Lapp does not mend in that space of time it is useless keeping him any longer, as he invariably succumbs after two to three months’ experience of civilisation, or becomes a victim to consumption. There is, however, one danger to the race which the Swedish authorities are determined to stamp out, and that is the heavy child mortality which is prevalent in all Lapp settlements, and every effort is being made to induce the Lapp mother to adopt a less Spartan and antiquated method of dealing with her progeny. The problem offers almost insurmountable difficulties, however, as the Lapp mother refuses to countenance modern methods of rearing children, and consequently only the hardiest infant continues to survive. The only apparent good, therefore, which has so far resulted from the Lapps’ contact with civilisation has been their conversion to Christianity. They are now a deeply religious nation, and hold Sunday in such respect that they absolutely refuse to have any money transaction on that day, while their standard of morality stands higher than that of far more civilised communities. They belong to the Laestadian sect, and their Lutheran aversion to graven images is such that they are inclined to[175] regard any image wrought by the magic of the camera as an insult to the Deity. It is only, however, when they worship their god that they cast off all reserve and display any marked exuberance, and they should be seen when possible after their services, as they sing their folk-songs and talk animatedly together. Laestadianism, if a somewhat repellent and sombre creed, would appear, therefore, to concord with the prevailing temper of the Laplanders, which probably accounts for the fact that it has spread throughout the entire race and is the dominating influence in their lives. Such are the principal characteristics of the curious people which I have endeavoured to describe, and of all the races which I have come across none have proved of more engrossing interest.

A NIGHT IN A LAPP HUT

MIDNIGHT SUN OVER LAKE TORNE TRÄSK, FROM ABISKO

It was a wonderful night in June when I set out by motor launch one evening from Abisko to Pålnoviken, where I was to spend a night in a Lapp hut. And as I approached the small jetty that lies at the very extremity of the park of the Tourist Hotel, I had once again the unforgettable spectacle of the midnight sun, as it crept along the mountain crests to the north-west and illumined Lake Torne Träsk with a broad shimmering band of gold. The clear atmosphere peculiar to Sweden brought out every contour and object so vividly that even the most distant mountain summits appeared to be close at hand, while rising over the plain behind Abisko, which was covered with dense clusters of white-stemmed birch and juniper bushes, were the snow-clad Abisko Alps, and the strangely shaped semi-circular mountain pass called the Lapgate, through[177] which it is said that the Laplanders originally invaded the country. The contrast between the dazzling snow and mountain-tops, now coloured blood-red by the sun, and the verdant meadows and brawling rivulets, whose gurgling as they rolled over the stones was almost the only audible sound, was one of exceeding impressiveness, while the realisation that barely one hour before midnight conditions of light and sun prevailed identical to those existing in broad daylight in western countries created a sense of unreality in my mind that was as novel as it was pleasing. As we left the shore, however, a cold, bleak polar wind arose, whose freezing blast effectively recalled me to reality. It was one of those winds which chill you to the marrow; and as I was totally unprepared for it, it unmercifully settled on my person, percolated into my neck, up my arms and legs, and through my clothes, while it hovered persistently and pervasively in my wake. The realisation of the glorious sunshine above me, and the engrossing thought of the visit that I was contemplating, were too strong, however, to be weakened by such minor discomforts. And experiencing some of the sensations of virtuousness which are invariably felt whenever one[178] indulges in an exceptionally cold bath, I began to stride up and down the minute deck of the launch, full of the sense of well-being which is caused by reasonable bodily exercise under uncomfortable conditions. After more than an hour and a half of this constant buffeting, during which the Jake developed all the symptoms of a roughish sea, and the boat began to pitch and roll as if to the manner born, the wind suddenly flagged, tired, while the rumble and clatter of the engine announced that we had arrived. Creeping out of the deck chair into which I had finally found refuge and oblivion from the storm, I saw a little cove with a meadow in the background that sloped gently towards us, and behind it steep mountain-sides that were clothed with pine and birch. Gathering up my knapsack, I waited until the captain was ready to land, and then, preceded by him, went down the ladder and climbed up the incline leading to the meadow above. A hundred yards away were the Lapp huts of the settlement which I was to visit, and in almost as short a time as it takes to write down these words, we had arrived at the one in which I was to spend the night.

Facing me was a hut made of curved birch[179] trunks, set closely together and covered with turf and earth, which were kept in place by cross beams. And opening a door which swung outwards on a wooden hinge, I entered after my guide had acquainted my hosts of my arrival. I found myself in a large circular room whose walls sloped inwards, and in the centre of which I saw a large open hearth bordered by stones that were placed in a circle. Over this fire was a pot which was suspended from an iron chain above, while there was a large hole in the roof to enable the smoke to escape, and a smaller one on the floor level near the door for the dogs to pass in and out. The ground was covered with spruce birch twigs on both sides of the hearth, while all around the wooden walls I noticed reindeer skins, and there were also two or three chests likewise made of birchwood to hold the family trinkets and the principal household implements, as well as an inverted wooden box which was obviously used as a sideboard, since I noticed lying on it a tin of the familiar Lyle’s Golden Syrup, and two china cups and saucers. As I entered the hut, my host, N——, a typical Laplander with a hooked nose, prominent cheek-bones, and tangled dark hair, courteously waved me to a log on the right near[180] the hearth, the place of honour, and I sat down, while he began to talk concerning me to the captain. Opposite to him and on the left were a woman and two young girls who sat cross-legged against the side of the hut, and two youths of indefinite age who were smoking pipes made of mazur birch. There were also two black Lapp dogs, one of which was watching one of the younger girls as she chewed a large chunk of smoked reindeer, which she had sliced off a reindeer leg with a clasp-knife, while a large very pale-faced Lapp baby, wrapped in mummy-like swaddling-clothes, was lying in a most attractive-looking reindeer-skin cradle which was slung from the roof and shaped like a miniature poulka (sledge).

Nowhere have I met with a more fantastic and weird-looking costume than that which was worn by N—— and his family on this occasion.

N—— himself wore a blue cloth tunic ornamented with red and yellow borders and gathered in at the waist by a leather belt, skin-tight cloth breeches, moccasins turned up at the toes, and a high pointed cap that, decorated with a bright red tassel and worn at a rakish angle, gave him the appearance of a court buffoon. His womenfolk[181] were attired in blue cloth dresses trimmed with a kind of gold braid, tight breeches, I believe, of the same material, coloured kerchiefs which were fastened by quaint brooches, and attractive red and blue lace caps.

A LAPP HUT ON LAKE TORNE TRÄSK, MIDNIGHT

I found N—— quite ready to answer my questions, though some of these appeared to cause him vast amusement. On being told that the Laplanders were never known to quarrel, I inquired what would happen if two Lapps fell in love with the same woman. This question had to be repeated several times before N—— realised what I was asking, but when once he and his friends understood the drift of my query, they began to laugh so uproariously that no answer was forthcoming for at least three or four minutes. At last the captain informed me that my question had caused the greatest merriment among the natives, as they were totally unable to conceive of such a possibility ever arising. Here, then, is a community of men and women who, in spite of their comparatively recent conversion to Christianity and the attainment by them of a thoroughly organised social life, in which the rights of property and marriage ties are scrupulously respected, have, emotionally speaking, never evolved beyond[182] the state where sex has neither the aureole nor even suspected the halo of romance. I say, in spite of their conversion to Christianity and their organised life—as it cannot be denied that while the primitive man’s possession of woman depends ultimately on his power to hold her against any other man, his appreciation and love of woman as such, and his capacity of romance, invariably grow with every effort made by religion or law to control or check his amatory or possessive instincts. Contrary to the general tendency of mankind, the Laplanders have, however, little changed from what they were in the dawn of civilisation, and they continue to afford the spectacle of a race in which, in spite of restrictions, sex attraction is no more discriminating than the universal craving for food. I rather fancy that when a Lapp takes a wife he uses hardly more judgment than that which is shown by the average man or woman who is sampling a piece of bread, and that consequently, if only the woman is a fair example of the race, such trifles as good looks or complexion, charm or fine physique, are absolutely of no consequence.

As I talked to my guide and endeavoured to obtain further information with regard to this[183] very strange people, my hosts were proceeding unconcernedly with their work. N—— was carving a knife handle out of the horn of a reindeer, while his wife was busy fashioning thread for sewing the family winter garments out of reindeer sinews, and was pulling the strands through her teeth in order to soften them and make them more pliable.

Soon the captain rose up to go. He told me that, as had been arranged, I would sleep in the hut, also that in accordance with my desires I would not be expected to share my host’s evening meal, though the latter had expressed the hope that I would accept a cup of coffee before retiring to sleep. I replied that I would be pleased to take coffee with the family, though I knew that the Lapps were hardly noted for their cleanly habits, and while my host’s daughter began to prepare it, said good-bye to my guide, who promised to return for me next morning.

Unsavoury as have been some of the foods which I have tasted during many wanderings, few have proved more repugnant than the compound of inferior moka and reindeer milk which was now handed to me, though I will allow that the Lapp girl endeavoured to serve it in a clean[184] receptacle. Taking one of the cups which had evidently already been used by one of the company, she poured in some water and diligently started scraping the inside of it with her grubby fingers. Then throwing out the water, she wiped and polished the cup, poured in the coffee and milk, and handed it to me.

After this experience I was ready for anything, and until bed-time amused myself watching the antics of my room-mates as they now started to eat their evening meal preliminary to retiring for the night. The menu on this occasion consisted of smoked reindeer, unfermented bread, and coffee taken with salt instead of sugar, the informality which dominated the feast reminding me irresistibly of feeding time at the Zoo. Two large reindeer bones were produced, one of which N—— commandeered as head of the family, while the other went the round of the others; and sitting on the ground, they all produced clasp-knives and began to munch large chunks of meat which they pared off the bones. The dogs ran from one to the other, getting a stray morsel, or when sated lay back contentedly by their master, the latter every now and then wiping his knife on one of their backs before[185] cutting a fresh morsel for himself. Spellbound I watched the orgy until suddenly, without any more formality than that which is shown by a dog who tires of eating and sinks into sleep, they quickly removed their moccasins and dropped down on the deerskins that were nearest them, appearing to fall asleep almost in the very act of falling.

It was some time before I began to realise that I too was expected to follow the general example; but when looking behind me I saw a large reindeer skin that had obviously been placed there for my benefit, I gathered up my knapsack and made for my improvised bed. Never shall I forget that night, for try as I would I was unable to reconcile myself to the strangeness of my surroundings, or to forget the horde of insects that had apparently found a home in my rug. The excruciating itching which they occasioned, coupled with the occasional visit of the very smelly Lapp dogs, who persisted in treating my prostrate body as a couch, and the yelping of the baby, whom neither the milk-bottle nor a large reindeer bone which was thrust into its mouth was able to pacify, converted what would otherwise have been a pleasing experience into a long-drawn agony, and it was a very disillusioned[186] and weary traveller who greeted the captain on the next morning. Thanking my host for the hospitality which he had shown me, I gladly followed my guide to the boat and hastened back to Abisko.

AN IMPRESSION OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN

As we left the Abisko Tourist Hotel, the solitary birch tree which stood as sentinel opposite the main entrance and garden of the hotel swayed and rustled in the wind, and fitful gleams of sunshine percolated through the grey clouds in the direction of Pålnoviken, while the genial manageress wished us God-speed.

It was half-past eight, and we estimated that we would reach the summit of Mount Njulja in about three and a quarter hours, that is to say, just in time to view the midnight sun, assuming the sky cleared sufficiently to enable us to see it. And walking down the path which branches off to the right, as you turn your back to the hotel and Lake Torne Träsk, we soon reached and crossed the first level crossing over the railway, which leads to the mountain. It was not too warm to allow of strenuous walking, and not too[188] cool to prevent the dew of perspiration from becoming perceptible, but unlike my friend Mr. L——, who was accompanying me, I had no spikes to my shoes, a circumstance which proved a considerable handicap.

The path which we now followed wound up the mountain slope, through a wood which at this season of the year was a perfect dream of wild flowers, and to my astonishment I noticed, in addition to the wild geranium, several varieties of Alpine flora which I had never expected to find in Lapland, such as the primula (primrose) and the deep blue Gentiana carinata, as well as a fascinating pink flower to which I was unable to find a name. After nearly an hour’s strenuous going, during which the birch and juniper bushes became gradually more and more stunted, we came across several snow-drifts which delayed us considerably, the track that we followed proving so insecure that I began to stumble repeatedly, and on at least two occasions to find myself up to my waist in snow. On reaching a certain point where there was a clear view of the valley and lake in all its widening expanse, we stopped a moment to enjoy the view, but suddenly perceiving at least two other ridges beyond the one immediately above us,[189] decided to complete the climb before taking any further rest.

VIEW FROM TOURIST STATION, SALTOLUOKTA, LAPLAND

“We must hurry,” I said. “We are not even half-way.”

“How high is Njulja?”

“Just over 4000 feet.”

“What is the time?”

“A quarter past ten.”

Feeling that all our labour would be wasted if we were not in time, we set out once again over difficult ground which in spite of its arid and troublous character was not without a certain grandeur, while we felt a magic quality in the atmosphere which drew us on and exhilarated. It became a race with the clock, in which, owing to certain muscles which I had strained in the snow-drifts, and the lack of proper paraphernalia, which caused me usually to be yards behind my friend, we should logically have been marked out from the first as second-best, yet we trudged on undaunted, the thought of the successive ridges remaining to be climbed so dominating our pedestrian world that we made no endeavour to talk. I shall never forget that climb, nor the effort which I made to disregard the strain which with almost every fresh step became gradually more[190] painful, nor finally how, after a period of time which, though only three hours, seemed more like six, my friend, who was ahead, climbed the last ridge and waved his arm towards me to tell me we had reached the summit. More quickly then, and with a spurt of almost uncanny energy, I rushed forward to where he stood, a tall slim figure silhouetted against the sky, and stumbling forward reached the highest point of the mountain. Never shall I forget the radiant glory of the vision which gradually began to unfold itself before my eyes, and how magically it seemed to dispel all recollection of the fatigue and strain which I had undergone.

Before me, and encompassing not only Lake Torne Träsk to the north and west but also the Abisko valley to the south, were range after range of serrated snow-topped mountains which the clearness and mystery of the Swedish air were surrounding with a veil that was almost luminous, while above, pure clarity, illimitable, boundless, soared; with in the west over Pålnoviken, long bars of grey clouds tipped with gold which the night breeze was chasing northward. Suddenly, as if in answer to my hidden prayer, a spray of crimson light shot swiftly from behind a[191] cloud to the west and glittered through the air. It transformed every peak and headland into a glimpse of fairyland and illumined the lake with a shimmering band of gold, while the distant peak of Kebnekaise began to glow like a pyramid of frosted silver. Speechless I gazed spellbound at a sunset which, rivalling the most beautiful southern twilights which I have seen, in the glow and variety of colour that it displayed, afforded even greater pleasure in that, unlike any other, its changing tones did not pass rapidly into darkness, but lasted many hours without any real diminution of splendour. Purple and mauve and even blood-red was the sky, with here and there an island of rosy-tinted cloud which appeared to be floating in the empyrean; and as these colours slowly faded or changed to every variation of blue, the midnight sun continued to creep along the mountain crests which lay to the north-west, and the lake to turn to glittering silver wherever it was not shot with gold. It was like the gradual unveiling of a dim enchanted region where colours were softer and less troubled than a moment’s thought, and the air of so choice and rare a quality that one felt strangely invigorated by it. And only the sudden stirring of a chilly northern wind which swept[192] along the brow of the mountain recalled me to reality. We then remembered that we were cold and weary, that I had strained a leg muscle, and accordingly that steep as had been the ascent, the descent would probably prove even more arduous. And having accepted and drunk a cup of very warming coffee which two friendly Swedes, who had also accomplished the climb, insisted on forcing on us, we set our faces once more towards the valley and began the descent.

STORA SJÖFALLET, GREAT LAKE FALLS, SALTOLUOKTA

What I suffered on the journey back to Abisko words cannot adequately describe, for whereas the thought of what I had set out to accomplish when starting out to climb Njulja had enabled me to put up with some very real discomfort, not even the enticing prospect of the comfortable bed awaiting me on my return sufficed to make me overlook the very excruciating pain which my leg occasioned for the greater part of our crawl home. I say crawl, for our progress, from being fairly brisk as we started out, soon degenerated into a veritable shamble, while we were continually obliged to halt in order to rest my foot. I shall never forget, however, the glory of the view that opened before us when we reached the last ridge before entering the wood which covers the lower[193] slope of the mountain, or the vivid contrast that was presented between the dazzling snow and mountain-tops now coloured blood-red by the sun, and the green clusters of white-stemmed birch and juniper and brawling rivulets whose babbling as they hurtled down to the lake, and the piping of a solitary bird, were the only perceptible sounds. Like the memory of the supreme moment during which the midnight sun first pierced the clouds above Pålnoviken, it is one of those recollections which the mind always conjures up whenever it would evoke beauty.

AN IMPRESSION OF A SWEDISH CHRISTMAS

Cold, bleak, and uninviting is the outlook as my taxi speeds through the City towards Millwall Docks, where awaits the steamer that is to take me to Sweden, and, wreathed in grey swirls of smoke and rain clouds, London seems hardly the kind of city that one should deplore leaving, yet as I reach the wharf where lies the Saga and feel the full force of the gusty north-east wind that is lashing my face like a steel whip, I almost regret my decision to see what a Swedish Christmas is like, so distinct are the possibilities of even more inclement weather out at sea. It being too late to turn back, however, I determine to make the best of a bad job and hurry on board, the captain informing me that the crossing is likely to be a good one and that, though the force of the wind and the direction in which it is blowing are unfavourable, the first is gradually subsiding and[195] the second very likely to be changed. I remember many occasions when similar prophecies have been as confidently made without justification, yet attempt to delude myself into believing that at least this one will prove correct, and consequently follow the stewardess to my cabin, hoping for the best. As we reach the open sea, however, I soon realise that the captain’s optimism has hardly been justified. It is a black night with clouds covering the sky and a haze low down on the horizon. It is not thick enough for the fog-horns to be sounding, but the shore soon becomes invisible, while the wind continues in the same unfavourable quarter without showing any sign of diminution.

Like all Swedish Lloyd ships, the Saga is everything that a steamer should be where good accommodation and cuisine are concerned, but, unlike the majority of boats belonging to the same line, she is hardly an ideal vessel to be on under adverse conditions, and very soon I become acutely conscious of a rolling and pitching that send me flying down to my berth, while the boat begins to slow down appreciably owing to the head-wind that is blowing against us. For the first twelve hours, however, apart from the rolling[196] and pitching, which are sufficiently prolonged to spell disaster to any traveller at all prone to sea-sickness, the discomfort which I experience is neither greater nor less than that which usually characterises a crossing of the North Sea undertaken in winter. But a few hours before daybreak the gale increases in volume and intensity, and the boat begins to sway and rock much as I have seen a row-boat do when among breakers, while the waves start beating violently against the boat, booming like heavy guns, and the hull quivers as if sorely hit. It is impossible to sleep and nearly as difficult to take any nourishment, as the slightest movement that I make from recumbency is immediately followed by rapidly increasing nausea, and, impotent to do aught but suffer patiently, I await until such moment as the fury of the wind and storm will have spent itself, while fog-horn and wave combine to make a music whose clamour is so incessant that even the most seasoned traveller would, I fancy, find it difficult to sleep soundly through it all. Then, on the morning of the third day, as the first sickly light of morn is streaking the dingy, pallid sky, the wind suddenly flags. I look out from my porthole and see that, though the waves are still rather too[197] boisterous for my liking, there is every prospect of a quieter termination to our journey. Arising, I go up on deck, hoping to hear that we are nearing Gothenburg, but am told that owing to the adverse wind of the previous day there is no possibility of reaching the Swedish port until about seven that evening, which means to say that I shall have to travel nearly twenty-four hours across country and without a break if I wish to be in time for the Christmas festivities. Deploring my ill-fortune, I turned to the Swedish Bradshaw and with the assistance of sympathetic Swedes try to devise a way or means of reaching Rättvik in a more expeditious fashion, but, soon realising that there is no alternative route, decide to spend the day as pleasantly as possible, and so beguile the time whenever not occupied in partaking of the generous meals that are such a feature of life on board a Swedish steamer, playing bridge with my Swedish friends, a game that they usually play with variations that make it as great a gamble as cut-throat bridge. And so the day passes pleasantly enough, the sea growing calmer and calmer from the moment we come in sight of the Danish coast, though we naturally resent the way in which the North Sea has added insult to injury[198] by not only providing us with one of the roughest passages of the year, but also robbing us of the one redeeming feature that would have made us forget our sufferings—that is to say, made it impossible for any of us to see the approach to Gothenburg, which is that city’s chief claim to beauty.

Soon the Saga reaches the rocky archipelago of the Skärgård and begins to forge her way through the innumerable islands that lie at the mouth of the river Göta älv, with a fair wind to help and a white ribbon of foam trailing from both her sides. Then, after exchanging signals with the shore, we pass various lighthouses and are soon fast to a large wharf with lights gleaming all about us. Lights fringing the river and harbour or running up the low-lying hills that surround the city; shipping of every kind, from great, imposing liners to freight steamers or fishing-smacks; whistles sounding, bells ringing, while all around is that mysterious undercurrent of sound that attests the presence of a large city. Quickly we land and notice the snow that lies thick on the ground, while there is a nippiness in the dry night air so invigorating that, though I realise the temperature is considerably below[199] freezing-point, I am hardly conscious of it. And, following my porter, I hail a taxi and hasten to the main station to take the night train to Stockholm.

Half a dozen coaches, all spotlessly clean and splendidly heated, with doors and windows that shut so hermetically that it is impossible for any draught to penetrate, most of these third class with corridors and even sleepers, where for an inconsiderable sum even the poorest can be assured of a comfortable berth; a profusion of water-jugs whose water is changed every two or three hours and that are within easy reach of every carriage; rails that are so well laid that there is as little jolting as on the best English or American lines, and, coupled with this, a number of second-class Pullman carriages that are as comfortable as any in England, and a service that is run efficiently and up to time. Though the train starts at an hour when the majority of people are just beginning to think of dinner, I retire almost immediately, in view of the very early hour at which I have to change trains at Hallsberg, and after a restful night am awakened in good time and alight without being unduly hurried at the junction, where I am to take another train for the[200] north. It is too dark to see the country, but the line, quays, and station are thick with snow, and I see to the left of the main station building a huge Christmas tree that is already lit with many electric candles and gaily decorated with a profusion of tiny Swedish flags and the customary Christmas ornaments. I then remember that the next day is Christmas Eve, the great day in Sweden, and congratulate myself on my foresight in having wasted so little time in Gothenburg. It is considerably colder than when I left the steamer, but as I follow my porter to the train which is to convey me to Krylbo I feel a dryness in the air that is so exhilarating that the prospect of even lower temperatures to be encountered in Dalecarlia no longer frightens me, and so remain for a time on the platform watching the fur-coated and fur-capped Swedes who are passing to and fro.

For the greater part of the next day we travel through a countryside whose soil is now chilled to stone and yet resplendent with the imagery of the snow that is covering it, snow as dazzling as white marble and with the sheen of satin, inconceivably pure and exquisite in its transparency. We pass innumerable forests of silver-boled birches, pines[201] and fir trees, to which the snow has lent the most fantastic shapes, and over great streams that are frozen on either bank with only a narrow ribbon of open water. And interspersed at comparatively rare intervals—for Sweden is one of the most thinly populated countries in Europe—are small towns and villages with red houses that gleam out from among the snow. At every station the customary Christmas tree, brilliantly illuminated, greets us, and the impression is left me of a robust race of men and women whose vital spark feeds on the frozen air in which it lives, while shortly after three I see the sun setting in the east and tier upon tier of trees and forest-clad hill that are tinged with rose-pink. A memorable sight. Then shortly after sunset I enter Dalecarlia, and after two and a half hours’ further journey reach my destination.

To my left is the wide frozen expanse of Lake Siljan, looking eerie and mysterious in the moonlight, and to the right and running up low wooded hills of firs and pines the villas and town of Rättvik, picturesquely situated on an inlet of the lake. And as soon as I alight from the train an old coachman in white sheepskin and fur cap comes forward to greet me. A few words are exchanged[202] between us that neither can understand, but very soon he realises that I am indeed the traveller whom he is expecting, and seizing my handbag he bids me follow to where a low sledge is waiting, a long flat box on runners, in which I am asked to lie full length and then enveloped in a Dalecarlian fur-lined rug. A crack of the whip and soon we are driving down an avenue of snow-laden trees, among which I see the lights of houses twinkling at every turn, while the horse’s bells are jingling merrily, and the transforming touch of snow and moon is so magical that every object that we pass becomes imbued with indescribable beauty and poetry. In ten minutes we turn sharply to the left and, following a short drive, see some thirty yards before us a brilliantly illuminated log-built house whose inmates are evidently expecting me, for as soon as the sledge draws up before the front door it is immediately opened and a woman whom I guess to be my hostess steps forward to greet me with a smile that is so infectious that I immediately feel at home. From the drawing-room just opposite the entrance hall I hear the sound of merry laughter, and am told that everybody is lending a helping hand in decorating the Christmas tree for the evening,[203] and that if I am not too tired they would be delighted if I came down to help after going to my room. And hearing that it is a time-honoured Swedish custom, I express my pleasure and readiness to do so, and after going upstairs to repair the damages of the journey, return to the drawing-room. As I enter, the laughter subsides for a time, and very formally presentations are made, the men invariably standing up stiffly, putting out their hands, bowing, and giving their surnames, the girls, equally formally but with far more grace, extending their hands towards me as I am presented to them. Then, the claims of ceremony having been satisfied, I approach the Christmas tree and am handed a seal and some sealing-wax and several small packages, obviously Christmas gifts, which I am asked to seal as neatly as possible. All, I notice, are accompanied by dedications in verse, and hearing that no present can be offered at Christmas without a rhymed dedication, thank my stars that I have no present to offer. By this time the Christmas tree is almost fully dressed, and my charming hostess informs me that except for the Christmas gifts that are decorating its branches it will remain much as it is at present until twenty days[204] after Christmas. We then go up to our respective rooms and dress for dinner, while I recall to mind the many conflicting reports which I have heard with regard to a Swedish Christmas Eve meal and fervently hope I shall not have too many novel dishes to sample, so great is my fear of offending the susceptibilities of my hostess. Half an hour later and we are all assembled in the dining-room, and I have my first taste of the Christmas fare of the country. The first course is a kind of soup that evokes familiar memories but to which I am unable to give a name, then the pièce de résistance is brought in, a large fish called lutfish, which is prepared from a species of stockfish that is caught in large numbers in the North Sea. It is usually eaten boiled, and is taken with Russian green peas, sauté potatoes and white sauce, being greatly appreciated in the south of Sweden. Pleasant to the taste and slightly reminiscent of the cod, of which it is a kind of cousin, it is kept in water and soda and steeped in lye or wood-ash for a period of at least two and a half weeks, and is afterwards taken out two days before eating and laid in a cold-water bath, where it remains until required. Following the fish course is the traditional ham[205] and sausage, which in Scandinavian countries usually takes the place of the turkey or goose of the West, the meal concluding with a kind of porridge made of rice, a wonderful concoction of sugar and eggs that is called spettekaka, or spit-cake, and an abundant dessert in which nuts and raisins predominate.

As accompaniment or subsequent to the above, the inevitable snaps cocktail at the beginning of dinner, followed by a light French wine with the fish, Swedish punsch at the coffee stage, and a very delectable hot beverage called glögg, which is almost as comforting a drink to take after a long, cold outing as the mulled claret for which the high table of St. John’s College, Oxford, has become so famous. Compounded of wine, sugar, brandy, almonds and raisins, and flavoured with nejlika, or pinks, glögg is, of the many gastronomic experiments that I have made abroad, one of the few which I have really appreciated.

After dinner we proceed to the drawing-room and the presents are duly handed to each in turn, after which young and old link hands and dance round the tree, the son of my hostess suddenly breaking the chain apart and conducting us in a mad, frenzied chase through the house, up and[206] down the stairs, and past corridors, which only terminates when all are breathless with laughter and exhaustion. Recalling certain opinions which I had often heard being expressed regarding the inability of the Swedes to enjoy their pleasures in any way but sadly, I marvel at the facility with which such misconceptions arise, and conclude that those who created them had never visited Sweden at Christmas-time nor even watched Swedes at play, a more jolly and amusing party than that which I am attending it being impossible to imagine. Then, hearing that Christmas Day opens with a service in the town church that is to take place at an hour when most people are still sound asleep and that it is imperative that I should be present, if only to see the Dalecarlian peasants wearing their national costumes, plead the fatigue of the journey and retire to my room, my sleep being long haunted by memories of the merry throng which I have left dancing in the room below. Early next morning, and before the stars have paled in the sky, I am awakened by a loud knock at the door, and, dressing hurriedly, find steaming hot coffee awaiting me in the dining-room, while the choice is given me of going to church by horse or chair sledge, ski-ing[207] being out of the question owing to my lack of the proper paraphernalia. I recall the wonderful drive of the previous evening, but feel that it is up to me to essay every kind of vehicle, and accordingly decide to utilise the chair sleigh as soon as I gather that it presents no particular difficulties—in fact, that it is very similar to a glorified hobby-horse. Then fur coats and skis are produced, and we sally forth in the direction of Rättvik, my hostess’s son staying behind to show me the way. And, like my guide, I place the left foot on the pedal of one of the runners of my chair and start kicking backwards repeatedly with my right, the sledge moving forward with every kick that I give. Obviously, the kick sleigh is almost as great a necessity in Scandinavian countries as the ski itself, and though it cannot be compared to the latter as a sport and even less as a vehicle, in spite of the considerable speed at which it will carry you downhill unaided, it is much used by the very old and the very young, as it can always be checked when proceeding too rapidly by the brakes with which it is provided, or by simply trailing the foot on the ground. In about a quarter of an hour we reach the town of Rättvik and, turning to the right, suddenly hear the bells[208] of the old white church summoning the people to worship. And as we draw nearer we see that the greater part of the congregation has already gathered near Gustavus Vasa’s monument, most of them clad in old-world costume, the scarlet, green and gold worn by the women standing out in vivid patches of colour against the snow and lending the scene an air of pageantry and romance. Prominent among these are the women of Rättvik with their embroidered green bodices, dark blue skirts, quaintly striped aprons, and picturesque peaked caps, while among the men the most striking are those hailing from the same town, half a dozen sturdy peasants who are wearing as costume a long dark blue coat cut high in the neck, yellow chamois knee-breeches, a blue waistcoat edged with bright red piping, and red stockings held up by rosetted garters. And though the moon is shining brightly we all proceed to church to the flare of large torches which are held up high by the men, and after hearing a long and wearisome sermon, during which I doze repeatedly and even dream that I, too, am wearing Dalecarlian dress, return once again to the large granite stone inscribed in gold whence Gustavus Vasa had summoned the Dales to arms. On the[209] way back to the house, and just before ascending the last slope leading to it, I stop to watch the sun rising over the hills, and for a few minutes enjoy an unforgettable sight. Cresting the ridge that the sun is now illuminating are tier upon tier of pines, all of such exquisite fineness that for at least two degrees on each side of the sun they become transfigured into trees of light that are not only clearly outlined in flame against the sky behind them, but that are almost as dazzling as the sun itself, while the snow that is mantling the countryside begins to assume a blue transparency and the pines among which we are standing to appear almost olive wherever their branches are not hung with great white nightcaps. Then, hearing that a deliciously hot glögg is awaiting us at the house, I automatically replace one foot on one of the runners of the chair sledge and with the other impel my vehicle into movement.

After so early a beginning to our day I am hardly surprised to find life moving a little more leisurely. And for the greater part of the day even the more active of our party content themselves with making the best of the rich fare that characterises a Swedish Christmas and doing one or two hours’ ski-ing in the neighbourhood.[210] Once again I make essay of chair sledging, and as I proceed, again accompanied by my guide, in a northerly direction towards Mora, come across a veritable army of men, women, and children sallying forth on their slender, feathery skis up the dales and through the forest glades. Everywhere I see ski tracks that are crossing one another and laughing parties of merrymakers who are inquiring the way, while the gaiety is so infectious that I soon begin to realise the charm and fascination that lie in ski-ing on the level. Here is a favoured district which, if not comparable to Jämtland or Switzerland for the joy of a swift descent with a possible death waiting on every side that is so characteristic of these more celebrated ski-ing countries, affords, nevertheless, the most delightful and varied possibilities of lengthy ski tours on the level or in forest country without the smallest risk of avalanches or bad-weather dangers, this form of ski-ing being not only conducive to the development of initiative by the constant call that it makes on even the most nervous novice if he would avoid the many pitfalls that lie in his path, but that is equally exhilarating and utilitarian. If once a sportsman really becomes bitten with its craze, he often[211] ends by preferring it to any other form of ski-ing.

Though space forbids my making more than casual mention of the other charming dances and excursions which my hostess and other Swedish friends kindly arranged for my benefit during the happy days that I was privileged to remain in Dalecarlia, one of the pleasantest memories which I will ever retain of a Swedish Christmas will always centre around the “släd parti” to which I was invited on Boxing Day by Miss Rehnström, of Persborg, an unforgettable drive in horse sledges that, conveying some thirty of the guests of her hotel and myself to a picnic lunch at Röjeråsen, a little village that lies some twenty or more miles west of Rättvik, conducted us across a magnificent snow-bound pine and fir forest whose humblest tree and shrub the touch of the sun had transformed into fanciful beings such as children conjure up when dreaming of Fairyland, while equally eerie and mysterious was the drive back by torchlight and the wreaths of frost mist that I saw gliding through the pine glades just after the sun had set across the lake. Of the many novel and delightful excursions which I have made in Sweden, there are few which have left[212] me with as happy memories, and none that have so effectively stilled the little hidden craving for novelty and change which I share with most mortals. For any traveller, therefore, who looks for these things when taking a holiday, I can imagine none that is more attractive than those which I have endeavoured to portray in these pages.

LAKE AND VILLAGE OF ÅRE

SWEDISH WINTER SPORTS

Never have more English ski runners visited Switzerland or shown greater excellence in winter sports than during the last two or three years, and all those who like myself have tasted the joys of Davos or Pontresina will hardly cavil at either the exodus or the proficiency attained, sun and sport together forming a combination that is not only conducive to boisterous health, but very likely to restore that contentment of mind which any prolonged experience of an English winter usually causes you to lose utterly. That those who have means, leisure, and robustness should take up ski-ing is not, therefore, any more surprising than that Switzerland should enjoy the reputation of being the homeland of winter sports, the secret of Swiss supremacy lying as much in efficient organisation and propaganda as in natural attractions. But Switzerland has many serious rivals[214] which all ski runners should make a point of visiting, and Sweden in particular possesses many excellent winter sport resorts in which good ski-ing can be practised much as it is done in the Alps, though the visitor should not expect to find there the material comforts, hotels de luxe, and even the funiculars that are so characteristic of Switzerland. The country will commend itself, however, to all those who have a craving for novelty and change, and any ski runner who visits it will not only come into touch with the greatest exponents of the art, but will obtain an insight into certain forms and schools of ski-ing that demand just as specialised a technique as those which he will have studied in the Alps.

There are three great centres of winter sport in Sweden: Rättvik in Dalecarlia, Stockholm and Åre in Jämtland, each with its own distinctive variant of winter sport; and I had far rather spend a winter in any of these three than in either Davos or St. Moritz. This may seem to argue a certain inexpertness on skis which I would be the last to deny, but your master of the Cresta run would be a mere novice at Rättvik.

Through the country roads, leaving the furrows of their skis in the snow of shallow dales and gently[215] sloping plateaux—furrows which vanish into the pine woods on the hills or wind among the silver-boled birches fringing the frozen lake of Siljan—a multitude of men, women, and children are swiftly gliding. Some are using their skis for the utilitarian purpose of getting from place to place, but many of them are making lengthy ski tours across country or through the forests; and the gaiety and spontaneous enjoyment of each little party is one of the most exhilarating things that I have ever witnessed. One of the pleasantest memories which I retain of Sweden undoubtedly centres round a particular cross-country ski-ing expedition to which I was invited by some Swedish friends during my stay in Rättvik this winter, of which I will now proceed to give a description. On joining the party of some dozen men and women, all in male attire, I was surprised to see horse sleighs, but I supposed that these would go ahead and wait for us at some rendezvous.

My experience on skis at Davos and Pontresina had made me somewhat contemptuous of the use of sticks—of course every one had a stick in each hand—I had thought of them merely as supports; but as soon as we moved off, I found I had a great[216] deal to learn. Before we had reached the end of the drive of my host’s house, I had realised that the use of sticks is an art in itself.

The skiers started off using their sticks in a way that reminded me of punting; and though the horses set off at a brisk trot, several of the more energetic young people shot ahead on their skis, leaving the sledges behind. I toiled painfully in the rear, my host and a fair Swedish girl who spoke English politely keeping me company. I was particularly mortified when my host’s daughter, aged ten, shot blithely alongside one of the horse-drawn sledges.

I could see across the immense ice sheet of Lake Siljan, fringed with silver-stemmed birches, as we made our way down the drive, but when we came out into the road at the end, we turned away from it into the pine forest. The sleighs were by this time out of sight, the sound of their bells had faded on the frosty air; and we followed over the deep snow carpet, beside their trails.

My calves and ankles were already beginning to ache, and I was as far as ever from using my sticks properly; the pace was very slow. It was so slow indeed that my host, with charming courtesy, asked if ski-ing was new to me, and in[217] the same breath complimented me on picking up the art so quickly. I alluded casually to the ski runs at Pontresina, but I am afraid my host was not impressed. The fact is that cross-country ski-ing is as difficult to master as ski-ing down hill, and that whereas the average Swiss trained ski runner is averse to using his sticks and proud of being able to control his skis without their use, the Swedes have raised the science of using sticks to a fine art. Cross-country ski-ing, as it is practised in Sweden, would of course be an impossibility in Switzerland, which accounts, I fancy, for the rudimentary knowledge which the Swiss skiers often display of the manner in which sticks should be used, and also for their consequent condemnation of them. The speed at which Swedes travel on the level with the help of their sticks is amazing, and I noticed time after time skiers who could keep pace with a horse trotting at fair speed.

Fortunately for me, a horse-drawn sledge had started late, and my host, seeing my exhausted condition, shouted a few words as it swept up beside us. I was intensely relieved to exchange my skis for a seat, or rather a couch in the sledge. In this position I made much better speed, while my host swept forward with the sledge’s previous[218] occupants, the girl who spoke English keeping me company, to rejoin the party before us.

I was now in a position to appreciate half the joy of cross-country ski-ing, my previous efforts having blinded me to the surrounding scenery. The snow-laden trees between which we were gliding assumed the most fanciful shapes. There were aisles leading into mysterious caverns, where the olive of the pines mingled with the virgin whiteness and blue transparency of the snow. Bushes took on the shapes of prehistoric monsters, glades of small trees became an eerie army of ghosts; there must have been goblins and sprites....

When we arrived at the log-built house that was our destination, there was glögg served steaming hot ... and it was nectar.

But ski-ing across country is not by any means the only winter sport of Dalecarlia, for besides tolkning or being towed on skis behind a horse or its sledge, there are good toboggan runs and ski jumps on fairly steep country; and for the lazily inclined long-distance drives in horse-drawn sledges such as I have described, through forest glades of enchanting beauty. Of all these delights, however, there is none to compare with cross-country[219] ski tours; and I should certainly prefer them to the pastime of one Swedish ski runner who for a wager was towed on skis behind the train from Rättvik to the next station ... and arrived intact.

Åre combines the fascination of Swedish winter sports with the thrill peculiar to the Swiss; and while the surrounding country is almost as suitable for cross-country ski-ing as Dalecarlia, it possesses the additional advantage of enabling the winter sport enthusiast to practise almost every variant of ski-ing and winter game. At Storlien, Snasahögarna, and Merakar, there are gradients of every kind, the steepest of these rivalling those of Davos. Åre in certain respects recalls Swiss resorts. Like Davos, it is situated in a mountainous country with high mountain tops in the immediate vicinity. From the lake at the base of Mount Åreskutan (4600 feet) a funicular railway runs up 600 feet, and from this point a bobsleigh run three-quarters of a mile long, with curves as sharp as those of the Cresta, winds down to the hotels below. There are slopes here for every taste: rounded hills, steep slopes, and the famous Tännforsen waterfall, one of the finest in Europe, all within easy distance.

Wandering about here I came upon a lovely[220] place: before me a sheet of ice opened into a broad white field, hard and dry, forming a majestic causeway paved as with white marble. It was evening, and in those solitudes were caverns of deep blue ice lit with the twilight’s after-glow; in the distance, mountains, sombre with pines or glittering white with snow, raised gleaming turrets and dark pyramids up to the smoke-blue sky.

Stockholm lacks nothing. Within forty-five minutes’ walk is the famous jumping course of Fiskartorpet and the ski and toboggan runs of Saltsjöbaden in the Stockholm Archipelago, while the winter-sport enthusiast will find at Djursholm, and within easy distance of the capital, two variants of winter sports that are particularly indigenous to the soil and unknown to other countries. The Ice Yachting and Skate Sailing clubs are located in a greatly indented and island dotted bay, where even the most blasé winter-sport enthusiast may reckon to regain some of the lost thrills of his novitiate. There he may cling to the stern sheets of an ice-boat, heeling over to the sea breeze and driving along at 50 knots an hour, while a fearless Swedish girl sits astride the[221] stern and laughs at the tiller, with the main sheet in one hand, and another leans out to windward as she tends the fore sheet.

THE TÄNNFORSEN WATERFALL, ÅRE

Ice-yachting has its risks, but the novice learns the art by starting as a passenger, or at least by obeying orders at the fore sheet. Skate-sailing is like a leap in the dark: there can be no passenger on one pair of skates. Armed with ice-pole and life-line, the skier sets forth on his maiden voyage clinging to an unmanageable kite-shaped sail, while he tries to use his body as a mast, at the mercy of the elements.

The great difficulty lies, of course, in trimming the sail to the wind, and I found that the best way to learn was by practising sailing to windward, tacking. The yard, which stretches from the apex of the kite to its truncated tail, is held over the left shoulder, the right arm extending backwards till the hand grips the yard, the left hand holding on to one of the two cross-pieces. To trim the sail the yard must be pushed forward or backward across the shoulder, just as you trim a boat by increasing the area of the foresail to the wind. When the wind blows the sail round, it must be pushed back until the weight is behind, and the foretip of the yard must be held down to prevent it[222] slipping off. When a gust blows aslant, filling the sail, you must drive to windward till the sail flies into the wind.

This sport requires great physical strength and prompt judgment. The expert skate sailors whom I watched attained speeds approaching those of the ice yachts; but to reach such a state of perfection a man must be in the finest physical condition and have tendons and muscles of the ankles greatly strengthened by constant practice of such figures as the Salchow rocking turn.

I do not think I would have attempted this sport if there had been much wind; but throughout my stay in Stockholm there was the usual dry sunny weather with only the lightest of breezes. Of all winter sports skate-sailing is perhaps the most exhilarating, and if once a skier masters its technique, he will probably end by preferring it to any other form of winter sport.

• Abisko, 176, 187, 190, 192
• Adelcrantz, 107
• Adolph Frederick, King, 107
• Almquist, 91
• America, 14
• Amsterdam, 74, 96
• Ankarcrona, 156
• Ansgarius, 68
• Archæological remains, 9
• Architecture, Swedish, 27, 28, 29, 73, 84, 106, 107, 136-144
• Åre, 214, 219, 220
• Åreskutan, Mount, 219
• Arkö Sound, 64
• Art Gallery, Gothenburg, 28
• Arvidsberg, 64
• Askanäs, 69
• Asplången, 62
• Asplund, 91
• Atlantic, 6
• Baggensfjärden, 102
• Baltic Sea, 11, 46, 47, 63, 67, 70
• Banérs, 79, 103
• Bathing, 41, 42
• Baths, Swedish, 88
• Becket, Thomas à, 96
• Beer, 19
• Belvedere, 26
• Bengt, Bishop, 62
• Bennet family, 79
• Beowulf, 32, 34, 35, 96
• Bergamote pears, 60
• Bergsten, 91
• Bernadotte, 55, 56, 78
• Birger Jarl, 62, 71, 76
• Birger Magnusson, 63
• Björkö, island, 68
• Blekinge, 13
• Blood Bath, 76
• Blue Church, Vadstena, 60
• Boberg, Ferdinand, 27, 84
• Bockholm Sound, 68
• Bohus Castle, 48, 49
• Bohuslän, 4, 9, 23, 29, 32-43, 67
• Bonde, Count, 82
• Boren, Lake, 60
• Borensberg, 60
• Borgargärden, 86
• Bothair, of Akeback, 120, 140
• Botwid, 143
• Brask, 46
• Brask’s Ditch, 46
• Bråviken Bay, 64
• Bridge, how played in Sweden, 197
• Brinkeberg Hill, 50
• Bruce family, 79
• Bulgerin, 58
• Burgundy, 116
• Burmeister House, Visby, 136
• Byfjord, 43
• Carcassonne, 131
• Castles in Sweden, 9
• Cattegat, 47
• Caucasus, 10
• Cederström, 97
• Characteristics, Swedish, 14, 15, 146, 148
• Charles X., 104
• Charles XII., 13, 42, 46, 74, 75, 78,
• [224] Christian II. of Denmark, 149
• Christianity in Lapland, 174, 175, 181, 182
• City Court, Stockholm, 89
• Clason, 27, 84
• Climate, 5, 6
• Continental blockade, 23
• Copper mines, 161, 162
• Corot, 96
• Costumes, Swedish, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 180, 181, 208
• Cracow, 131
• Cranach, 96
• Cresta Run, 214, 219
• Dagö, 123
• Dalälven River, 148
• Dalarna, 10, 147-165, 201
• Dalecarlia, 10, 94, 95, 147-165, 201, 218
• Dalecarlians, 12, 13
• Dalhem Church, Gothland, 141
• Danes, 12, 46, 94
• Dantzig, 76
• Davos, 213, 214, 219
• Delacroix, 96
• Desprez, 109, 115
• Djurgården, 95
• Djurgårdestaden, 98
• Djursholm, 103, 220
• Dolmens, 9
• Domnarvet, 163
• Douglas family, 61
• Drottningholm, 104, 105
• Düna, 123
• East India Company, 22, 23
• Edinburgh, 74
• Efficiency, Swedish, 14, 24
• Ehrenstrahl, 79, 106
• Eken, 52
• Eleonora, Hedvig, 104, 106
• Emerson, 42
• Engelbrekt, 64, 149
• Engelbrekts Church, 91
• Eogtheow, 34
• Erik, Prince, 110, 112
• Erik XIV., 48
• Eriksson, Christian, 89
• Epstein, 91
• Estbröte, 69
• Etter Sound, 64
• Eugen, Prince, 90, 97, 156
• Fågelö, 69
• Falun, 161-165
• Falun Museum, 164
• Fårö, 123, 145
• Finns, 13
• Fiskatorpet, 220
• Fiskebäckskil, 5, 42
• Flight of Gustavus Vasa, 149, 150
• Flora, 9
• Folkunge, Johan, 69
• Food in Lapland, 183, 184
• Francis I. of France, 109
• Frederikshald, 42
• French influence, 72, 73, 105
• Freyr, 113, 114
• Fröding, 87
• Fyris, 112, 115
• Gallows of Visby, 134
• Gamla Lödöse, 50
• Gamlestaden, 50, 79
• Garde Church, 141
• Gardeners, 25
• Geology, 7
• Glögg, 205
• Göta älv, 19, 20, 198
• Göta Canal, 9, 21, 44-69
• Götaplatsen, 28
• Göteborg, 16-31
• Gothenburg, 9, 12, 16-31, 35, 43, 46, 47, 50
• Gothland, 11, 76, 118-146
• Goths, 12;
• history of, 122-130
• Grämunkeholmen, 77
• Greenland, 6
• Grendel, 34
• Grip, Bo Jonsson, 110
• Gripsholm, 110, 111
• Grut, 90
• Gulf Stream, 6
• [225] Gullmar Fjord, 41
• Gustafsberg, 102, 103
• Gustavianum, 115
• Gustavus Adolphus, 21, 77, 78, 94, 113, 161
• Gustavus I., 46, 50, 63
• Gustavus III., 79, 107, 109, 111
• Gustavus IV. Adolphus, 11
• Gustavus Vasa, 58, 59, 80, 103, 112, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156
• Guta Saga, 119, 120, 123
• Gymnastics, Swedish, 5
• Hahr, Augustus, 58
• Halland, 9
• Halleberg, 52
• Hällekis, 53
• Hållsfjärden, 66
• Hamilton, 79
• Hans of Denmark, 59
• Hans, painter, 112
• Hanseatic League, 126, 130
• Hansgatan, Visby, 136
• Hazelius, 93, 94
• Helena, Queen, 61
• Hemse, 141
• Henry III. of England, 125
• Henry the Lion, 125
• Herring fisheries, 23, 37
• Hisingen, 49
• Hoburgen, 145
• Högalids, 91
• Holy Ghost, Church of, 140, 141
• Hotels, Swedish, 29, 116, 117
• Hronesnass, 35
• Hrothgar, 34
• Hygelacs, 34
• Ice-yachting, 3, 221
• Idrott, 2
• Inge, 61
• Iron mines, 7, 163
• Jämshög, 94
• Jämtland, 4, 13, 214
• Johan, Prince, 110, 112
• John of England, 136
• John III., 63
• Jönköping, 66, 57, 58
• Jordaens, 96
• Jordfallet, 48
• Josephson, 87
• Karl Island, 145
• Karlsberg, 55
• Kastellholmen, 98
• Kattlunda, 145
• Kebnekaise, 191
• Kettilmundsson, 64
• Kew Gardens, 26
• Kinnekulle, Mt., 53
• Kiruna, 7, 8, 173
• Knutsson VIII., Charles, 64
• Knarnsveden paper mills, 163
• Kneippbyn, 146
• Koön, 39
• Kopparberg (Stora), 162, 163
• Kristine Church, 29
• Krylbo, 200
• Kulstade, 120
• Kungalv, 39, 49
• Kungshatt, 69
• Kungsholmen, 85, 104
• Kyrkstallen, 153
• Laduslås, Magnus, King, 77, 78
• Lafiensen, 97
• Lallerstedt, 90
• Land and people, 1-15
• Långholmen, 69
• Lapgate, 177
• Lapland, 6, 10, 11, 13, 166-193
• Lapp customs, 173, 180-186
• Lapp dogs, 185, 180-186
• Lapp hut, night in a, 176-186
• Lapp huts, 178, 179
• Lapps, 13, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 179, 180-186
• Larsson, 97
• Le Frans, 143
• Lejonbacken, 74
• Leksand, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160
• Lenotre, 105
• [226] Lepers’ Church, 133
• Leslie, 179
• Lewenhaupt, 79
• Lewis, 79
• Lighthouses, 64, 65
• Likkair Snälle, 120
• Liljefors, 97
• Liljehorn’s House, 136
• Linde, Van, 82
• Ling, P. H., 3, 5
• Linköping, 46, 62
• Louis XIV. of France, 104
• Lübeck, 71, 72, 80, 127
• Lund University, 5
• Lützen, 94
• Lysekil, 5, 41, 42, 43
• Madrid, 93
• Magnus, 59, 77, 78, 127
• Magnusson, Håkon, 48
• Maiden’s Tower, 132
• Majorna, 29
• Marathon, 152, 156
• Mälar, 67, 70, 85, 109, 110, 113
• Manet, 96
• Mariefred, 110
• Margaret, Queen, 59
• Margaret, Queen of Denmark, 149
• Marstrand, 5, 38, 39, 43
• Masreliez, 75, 107
• Masthuggs Kyrka, 20, 29
• Mem, 63
• Merakar, 219
• Midnight sun, 176, 177, 187-193
• Milles, 87, 90, 91, 97
• Mongolians, 13
• Mora, 152, 153, 155
• Motala, 60
• Munkbron, 82
• Naess, 32
• Napoleon, 23
• National Museum, 96
• New Concert Hall, Stockholm, 91, 92
• Nilsson, Magnus, 61
• Njulja, Mt., 189
• Nordiska, 93
• Norrbro, 74
• Norrköping, 46, 66
• Norrland, 10, 13
• Norrmalm, 72
• Norrström, 70
• Norsborg, 68
• Norsholm, 46, 62
• North Sea, 34, 46
• Norway, 10, 96
• Norwegians, 12, 13
• Notke (Bernt), 77
• Nynäshamn, 118
• Odin, 113, 114
• Öja Church, 143
• Oktorp, 95
• Old Apothecary Shop, 136
• Old Houses, Visby, 135, 186, 145
• Old superstitions, 144
• Olympic Games, 5
• Omberg, 57
• Örbyhus, 111
• Ornäs, 151
• Orpen, 96
• Örsbaken, 66
• Östberg, Ragnar, 28, 84, 85, 87, 88-90
• Östergotland, 45
• Österlånggatan, 82
• Östermalm, 90
• Oxel trees, 55
• Oxelösund, 64, 65
• Oxford, 115
• Palnoviken, 187, 190, 192
• Passenger steamers, 16, 17
• Patriotism in Sweden, 11
• Peace, Congress of, 49, 110
• Peasant Art, 159, 160
• People, 11
• Petersen, 82
• Platen, von Baltzar, 47, 48, 60
• Polhem, 46, 47
• Pontresina, 213, 215
• Porla, 7
• Post Office, Gothenburg, 29
• [227] Powder Tower, 132
• Precht, Burchardt, 77, 106
• Public gardens, 25
• Pussyfoot, 19
• Queen’s Hall, 92
• Railways, Swedish, 199, 200
• Ramunderhäll, 63
• Ratibur, King of the Wends, 49
• Rättvik, 150, 152, 153, 154, 201-212, 214
• Ravlunda, 95
• Reception Hall, Stockholm, 90
• Rehn, J. Erik, 106, 107
• Reindeer in Lapland, 169
• Rembrandt, 96
• Restaurants, Swedish, 40, 41, 101
• Riddarholmen, 77, 79
• Riddarholmskyrkan, 77
• Riddarhuset, 73, 81
• Röjeråsen, 211
• Roman Church, 141
• Roos, 13
• Routes to Sweden, 16
• Roxen, 62
• Royal Armoury, 93
• Royal Hotel, Stockholm, 41, 116
• Royal Palace, 74, 75
• Royal Theatre, 108, 109
• Rubens, 96
• Russian steppes, 10
• Saga, 16, 195, 196, 198
• St. Bridget, Swedish saint, 58, 59
• St. Catherine’s Church, 119, 140, 141
• St. Clara, 88
• St. Clement’s Church, 140
• St. Drotten’s, 139
• St. Goran’s Church, 133
• St. John’s Church, 140
• St. Lars’ Church, 139
• St. Mary’s Church, 130, 137, 138
• St. Moritz, 214
• St. Nicholas Church, 129, 139
• St. Olaf’s Tower, 140
• St. Pancras Station, 16
• St. Peter’s Church, 25, 140
• Saltsjöbaden, 101, 220
• Sandö, 146
• Särö, 5
• Scenery, 8, 9, 10, 33, 190, 193, 200, 201, 208, 209, 218, 220
• Shaw, Norman, 84
• Shop fronts in Sweden, 83
• Sighafr, 143
• Sigtuna, 70
• Siljan, 13, 148, 149, 152, 201, 216
• Siljeström (Lars), 159
• Skåne, 7, 8, 12, 13, 85, 94
• Skansen, 94, 95
• Skärgård, 4, 19, 33, 68, 100, 101, 104, 198
• Skate sailors, 221, 222
• Skerries of Stockholm, 100-117
• Ski-ing, 3, 210, 214, 215, 217
• Skutskär pulp-mills, 163
• Slagstaholmen, 69
• Slite, 146
• Slottskogen, 26
• Småland, 12, 13
• Smörgåsbord, 17, 18, 19
• Snäckgärdsbaden, 146
• Snaps, Swedish cocktail, 18, 19
• Snasahögarna, 219
• Söderköping, 63
• Södermanland, Duke Charles of, 112
• Södertälje, 66, 67
• Södertörn, 67, 68
• Sophia, Queen, 61
• Sound, the, 46
• Spetsnäset, 54
• Sport, Swedish love of, 1
• Stadium, 90
• Stadsholmen, 71
• Stadshus, Stockholm, 28, 85
• Stage, Swedish, 108, 109
• Standard of living, 15
• Stånga Church, 141
• Stegeborg, 63
• Sten Sture, 64
• Stenbock, Catherine, 59
• [228] Stendörren, 66
• Stewart, 79
• Stockholm, 4, 6, 28, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70-100, 214, 220, 221, 222
• Stockholm Archipelago, 45
• Storkyrkan, 76
• Storlien, 219
• Stortorget, 76
• Strandgatan, 136
• Strängnäs, 112
• Stream, the, 101
• Strindberg, 87
• Ström, the, 102
• Strömmen, 82
• Strömstad, 42
• Sturehof, 68
• Summer in Lapland, 168
• Sun worship in Gothland, 144
• Sveas, 12
• Sverkersson, King Charles, 61
• Swedenborg, 42
• Swedish characteristics, 14, 15, 148
• Swedish Christmas, 194-212
• Swedish East India Company, 28
• Swedish gardens, 25
• Swedish hospitality, 15
• Swedish Lloyd, 16
• Swedish meals, 16-19, 204, 205
• Swedish steamers, 44, 45, 54, 55
• Switzerland, 213
• Tännforsen Waterfalls, 219
• Technical High School, Stockholm, 90
• Tengbom, 91
• Tessin brothers, 73, 75, 78, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 112, 124, 125
• Thirty Years’ War, 113
• Thor, 113, 114, 123
• Thorstenson, 79
• Timber, 7, 8
• Tiren, 156
• Torne Träsk Lake, 176, 187, 190
• Törneman, 90
• Torsburgen, 123, 124
• Trädgårdsföreningen Park, 26
• Trees, Christmas, 200, 201, 203
• Trollhättan, 50, 51
• Uddevalla, 42, 43
• Ulrika, Queen Louise, 106
• United States, 15
• University Library, Upsala, 115
• Upland, 35
• Upsala, 70, 112-115
• Väderhatt, King Erik, 69
• Vadstena, 58, 59, 60
• Valdemar, 61, 128, 129, 132
• Vallée, De la, 79
• Van Dyck, A., 96
• Vänern, 12, 51, 53
• Vänersborg, 52
• Vasaloppet, 152, 156
• Värmdö, 103
• Värtan, North, 103
• Västergarn, 128
• Västerlånggatan, 82
• Västergotland, 53
• Västgöte, Arvid, 64
• Vättern, 12, 55, 56
• Vaxholm, 103
• Versailles, 74, 105
• Viken, 13, 54, 55
• Vikings, 2, 12, 34
• Viklau Church, 143
• Visby, 90, 118-141, 148
• Visby Börs Hotel, 136
• Visby Museum, 135, 136
• Vising Island, 57, 58
• Vreta Abbey, 61, 62
• Walls of Visby, 130, 131, 132
• Waterfalls, 10, 219
• Westman, Carl, 84, 90
• Winter sports, 3, 210, 211, 212, 213, 222
• Zorn, 97, 156

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 224—changed Djurgårdsstaden to Djurgårdestaden

Page 226—changed Orbyhus to Örbyhus

Page 227—changed Rojeråsen to Röjeråsen

Page 227—changed Sten Stura to Sten Sture

Page 228—changed Trädgardsföreningen to Trädgårdsförengen

Page 228—changed Västgote to Västgöte

Page 228—changed Västerlanggatan to Västerlånggatan