Pictures of Sweden

In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are sagas of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind; up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.

The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and transformed cultivated fields and towns—nay, whole parishes, into barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest; no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came, sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"

Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession?—paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough here—the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and rots.

But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile—he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames run from tree to tree—it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame leaps to the tops of the trees—what a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm, rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and opened paths.

The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest.

FAHLUN

We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish—it was the town Fahlun.

The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara, filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive green.

Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a crater.

We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name of "Stora Kopparberget," (the great copper mountain). According to the legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were fighting—they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore adhered to them.

From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green, yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked, black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that the sparks flew around and about:—one was reminded of Schiller's "Fridolin."

The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps, as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around. Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual motion.

We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stöten," (the great mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley: the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above, like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch, appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying gulf—from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up merry enough. Habit makes one daring.

They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun, and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."

One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed; and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.

We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.

By one of the large openings, called "Fat Mads," there are rich copper mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it: it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that very day, so unchanged did the body seem—but no one knew him. An old woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time nearly half a century before.20

We went to "The Plant House," as it is called, where the vitriolated liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here penetrated our tongues—it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.

Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses. One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Zäther.

The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and they did so—they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: "Now turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom quite round, the bride a little nearer!" And the bridal pair turned and turned—nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do not please the public, or if they have something to say against the match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom—that was their right.

Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled, the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted, hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there was dead silence and solitude.

The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of morn—it was the Midsummer time.

WHAT THE STRAWS SAID

On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch, sat four young girls—so pretty—so sylph-like! and they each plucked up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two together, at the top and the bottom.

"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled," and they bound them, and they thought.

No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the others. But yet a little bird sings about it.

The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains, where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. "Thither, thither! shall I ever get there?" That was the wish, that was the thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they appeared only two and two bound together.

And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed—return to Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.

The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See—that is what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were separated—consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. "It may, however, happen nevertheless," she certainly thought: it was apparent in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the straws away.

"There is nothing I would know—nothing that I am curious to know!" said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one guesses it.

Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the straws said as before—"without hope!"

"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from Sweden. "What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not happen!—tell us the wish!"—"If the oracle speaks well for me," said he, "then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success than you have had, I will then be silent!" and he bound straw to straw, and as he bound, he repeated: "it signifies nothing!" He now opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The straws formed a square! "It will happen, it will happen!" cried the young girls. "What did you wish for?" "That Denmark may soon gain an honourable peace!"

"It will happen! it will happen!" said the young girls; "and when it happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand."

"I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for victory and peace!" said the stranger; "and if the oracle speaks truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Zäther's blue mountains, each of us binding straw to straw."

A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of Fredericia.

THE POET'S SYMBOL

If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets the stories for the Sultan—Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will decapitate Scherezade.

Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!

The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.

There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths have got into the inside—and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young, intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand, sans remorse.

There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind—she knows and loves the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so much of life's prose, gasp after romance.

"Behead her!" says the dress-maker.

There sits a figure in a dressing gown—this oriental dress of the North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son, &c., &c., &c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.

Scherezade is beheaded!

Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and art a child again,—do not behead Scherezade!

Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French, that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet, absolving charmant!

Mighty annihilator and elevator!—the newspapers' Zeus—thou weekly, monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger! Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a suite of thine own clique. Do not behead her!

We will see one figure more—the most dangerous of them all; he with the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell—the blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis becomes her scaffold.

This is the poet's symbol—paint it:

"THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."

But why none of the worthier figures—the candid, the honest, and the beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye. Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in man's heart.

That will not clearly show the symbol:

"THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."

The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates—and the Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich, victorious—even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours. There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away. The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is; he is victorious, he is mighty. Imagination adorns his walls with tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; feeling makes the beauteous chords sound to him from the human breast; understanding raises him, through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol, dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain it most comprehensibly from

"THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."

See—that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!

THE DAL-ELV

Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable. Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness.

Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.

Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Bålstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly pastoral—idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.

The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.

We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.

We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green sea-weed, and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer days.