Chapter I: Part 1

SWEDEN

SWEDEN

THROUGH THE ARTIST’S EYE

+by CARL G. LAURIN+

STOCKHOLM, P. A. NORSTEDT & SÖNER

PRINTED AT
_CENTRALTRYCKERIET_
STOCKHOLM 1911

THE COLOUR AND AUTOTYPE PLATES
HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED BY
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STOCKHOLM

PRINTED ON PAPER
FROM
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————

_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED._
_Copyright 1911 by P. A. Norstedt & Söner, Stockholm_

_Englished by +Mr Grenville Grove+._

_+Mr Grenville Grove’s+ translation of +Mr Carl Laurin’s+ text has
been edited, the Swedish form and spelling of Swedish geographical
names carried through and the verses rendered metrically by +Dr
Henry Buergel Goodwin+. A French and a German translation will be
published simultaneously._

Fall, Christmas snow, and blow, ye North and West,
O’er fen and moor your deepest, richest sound,
Burn, star of the East, in the June night blest,
Sweden, our mother, be our strife, our rest,
Land, to our sons be thou our dear bequest,
Earth, where our fathers sleep in sacred ground.

So sings a poet who has entered deeply into Swedish nature and Swedish life. “Sweden, our mother!” We love our mother, but we do not find it easy to dilate on her merits to any passing stranger. We know full well that there are other mothers, more beautiful, mightier, wiser than ours. We do not claim from others anything beyond respect for our mother, but we ourselves know what treasures we have received from her. Great painters have often been strikingly successful in painting or drawing their mothers. Love and reverence have guided their hands, and given birth to creations of immortal beauty. Think of Dürer’s drawing, of Rembrandt’s, Whistler’s and +Carl Larsson’s+ paintings of their mothers. The pent-up springs gush forth, loosened by love’s warmth, and, as Dürer has it, “the secret treasure of the heart is made manifest in the work”. And thus it is when the artist paints the land which gave him birth. He discovers and points out beauties and grandeurs which no other eye has discerned, and thus deepens and enriches the feelings of his countrymen towards their common fatherland.

In Sweden we are now passing through a period of reaction, firstly from an era of false national pride with its cheap pathos and bombastic phrases, secondly from the tendency towards national self-effacement and undue depreciation of things Swedish which followed in the wake of the former movement, and was, if that be possible, still more baneful in its effects. We have acquired a wholesome dread of the big words and the grand gestures, but we are equally averse to barren criticism and petty heckling, and we are longing for a genuine, and ardent, yet at the same time discreet, patriotism.

Fructified and inspired by the impulses received from foreign art, particularly French, our art, which is now in its golden age, has centred round that which is distinctively Swedish in nature and people, and has gone far to deepen our knowledge of our own country and ourselves. If it be true that self-knowledge is the principal thing, Swedish art must be said to have played an important rôle in our national life.

Sweden, which occupies the east and largest part of the Scandinavian peninsula, is about 1,150 miles in length, a distance which would correspond to that say from Malmö to Naples. It is obvious that a country with this enormous extension from North to South must have a very varied climate. More than a seventh part lies within the arctic circle, while the fertile and thickly populated province of Skåne has a mean temperature like that of Central Europe.

“Gamla Sverige”, Old Sweden, we call her, and that rightly, for the Teutonic race which peoples, though but too sparsely, this enormous region, almost as big as France, has been settled in our forests since time immemorial; the kingdom of the “Svear” is the oldest surviving state in Europe, and the actual soil and rock are among the oldest formations in the world. Granite knobs, polished by the glaciers of the ice period, and partially covered with moss and forest, occupy nearly three-fourths of Sweden, and give a distinctive aspect to the landscape. Some of our merits, such as the almost total absence of illiterates and an unusually low rate of mortality, we can not show the foreigner, much though we delight in them ourselves. On the other hand, there is too little marrying and multiplying amongst us, and emigration robs the country annually of thousands of young healthy, active people, who have been fed and educated while they were unproductive, only to have them go and employ their skill and energy in foreign countries. There are a variety of causes, psychological and economical, for this constant drain on our population. The most laudable is the old Viking spirit of daring and adventure, the most unworthy is the want of appreciation of our own national personality. The calm feeling of superiority which we meet with in Englishmen, Norwegians, Frenchmen, Hungarians, and Americans, is, unfortunately, still lacking in Sweden.

* * * * *

If we except the Norwegian frontier and the rivers which separate us from the Russian Empire, Sweden is bounded on all sides by the sea. Both our navy and our mercantile fleet are manned by men of the very highest quality, who are coveted in foreign navies for their presence of mind and their courage. The “Sea-wolves”, who in the ninth century were the terror of the coasts of France and England, have now been transformed into dauntless sea-bears, not unlike the Vikings in outward appearance, apart from a little swelling on the under lip, caused by chewing-tobacco (page 12).

It is +Carl Wilhelmson+ and +Albert Engström+ that have depicted these types, walking the decks with their rolling gait and a humourous twinkle in the eye. Almost the entire coast of Sweden except Skåne (Scania) and Halland is protected by the _skärgård_, with its islands, rocks, and skerries, dangerous in time of peace for our own boats, but in time of war, let us hope, still more dangerous for the enemy’s. The coast population sail about amid breakers and shallows, in Bohuslän in _Koster_-boats, broad and cock-sure like the skippers themselves, in Blekinge in punts called _Blekingsekor_, along the coast of Norrland in the kind of boats called _skötbåtar_; in the neighbourhood of Stockholm the “Rospiggar”, as the inhabitants of Roslagen (the North part of Uppland facing the sea) are called, trade along the coast in their beautiful smacks, sailing with timber and sand among the firths and bays, as bold and skilful sailors as any of the sportsmen who in their white or mahogany-brown cutters cruise among the reefs past the hundreds of landing-places and bathing-boxes. In summer-time the landing-places are thronged with girls in light summer dresses, and boys clamber agilely about the railing, waiting for the steamer. It is a pretty sight to watch the boat sailing along in her smart coating of white paint, and by a skilful manoeuvre brought to shore at one landing-place after the other. A pretty sight too, as on an autumn night she glides along the dark waters, a little moving world ablaze with light, illuminating with her search-lights the mooring-places and the narrow passages between the holmes. In winter-time the empty and shuttered summer-villas, and the bathing-basins drawn up on the beach and now almost covered up with snow, intensify the sense of solitude and desolation, and give a certain tone of severe melancholy to the landscape. And yet it is in just this mood that nature most appeals to the skaters or skiers (page 22), as they speed along over the ice, running through in memory the events of the summer; how they surprised shrieking girls at the bathing-place or listened to some beloved soul reading poems by Fröding or Karlfeldt aloud on the veranda; or, if they had reached a little more advanced stage in life, how they enjoyed the sight of the children coming in from bilberrying with their mouths all blue and their clothes torn by fences and their skin by gooseberry bushes; what a beseeching look their faces wore, as they asked for permission to go out rowing, and how they seemed to revel in the liberty of their summer-holiday existence. It is +Axel Sjöberg+ and +Richard Lindström+ who have perhaps best depicted the _skärgård_ in winter. In a country like Sweden where the winters are so long, people want to make the most of the summer, and we realize instinctively what a great thing it is for the little folks to be allowed to disport themselves at will on the green grass, and climb and swim, as they please, forgetting the winter cold, and enjoying a long spell of liberty from school discipline. Our long summer holidays are a national boon, and, though attempts are being made to cut them short, there are plenty of zealous champions to start up in their defence. No Swede has done as much as +Carl Larsson+ to show what a glorious time the children have in the country “in lovely summer when the ground rejoices”, as one of our poets has so aptly expressed it. To the question, “what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”, someone has answered: “a flowery meadow”, and we have plenty of that kind of beauty in Sweden. Like in +Liljefors’+ “A Family of Foxes”, where the young foxes are shewn disporting themselves amid the white chervils and yellow buttercups, the children delight in plucking cowslips in the light-green June grass, and in summer they love to hunt out places where the strawberries are hiding, and they shout with joy when in the baking sun by the side of the ditch they discover the purple berries in which the whole perfume and sweetness of the summer seems to be concentrated. One of the greatest privileges we enjoy in Sweden is that there is plenty of space, and that everything is not enclosed. One may sit on the grass without being driven away, one may bathe by the shore without getting fined, and that’s a grand thing for the children, and for grown-ups too, for the matter of that. One is allowed to fish anywhere one likes, for sport; there are plenty of fish for everybody, anyway. +Carl Larsson+ has painted fishing on a rainy day in his picture “When the Fish bite well”; he has also painted the kind of fishing which the children most enjoy, fishing for crayfish, that great event in the height of summer, when they scramble about bare-legged with their small landing-nets and pick up the blackish-green crawling crayfish with loud shouts of delight (page 19). Their elders, on the other hand, deem the supreme moment of the fishing to have arrived when the scarlet crayfish are lying in state on a huge dish in the middle of the table, and their funeral rites are inaugurated by drinking a glass of old Swedish brandy. A more wholesome fluid, which is a source of great joy to us in summer, is water, and I suppose there are few countries where people bathe so much in the open as in Sweden. The loneliness of the country often permits of a freedom from costume which inspires the artists. Two fine pictures in the Gothenburg Museum, one by +Acke+, representing naked male bodies standing out against the breezy dark-blue sea, and +Zorn’s+ picture “Out in the Open” (page 20), which is so highly esteemed in Sweden, are no doubt the best specimens of this kind of art. In the latter picture, one of +Zorn’s+ very best, we see a typically Swedish scene, which everyone must be capable of appreciating: on a grey granite rock polished by the action of the water, a couple of fair-haired girls are creeping down towards the warm glittering water. The soft bodies set off against the hard rock, the rowing-boat, the feeling of freedom and breeziness away out in virgin nature; all this has been expressed by the artist in a way which makes us thoroughly pleased with what is ours.

The _skärgård_ right away from the outermost skerries where +Axel Sjöberg’s+ gulls dream under the starry heavens, and where +Liljefors’+ eiders in the light of the morning sun creep down into the water from the outermost rock (page 13), where the fishermen’s herring-nets are hung out to be dried and mended by the rotted landing-places, all this has been masterfully delineated in Strindberg’s “The People of Hemsö” and in +Albert Engström’s+ drawings. Other artists have painted the bays and inlets nearer Stockholm, with their leafy banks. The spirit of summer is wonderfully well expressed in +Richard Bergh’s+ great picture “Summer Evening” (page 15) in the Gothenburg Museum. The scene is the church bay in the island of Lidingö, on the upper veranda. A young couple are looking out over the luxuriant verdure below them. Down by the water, we see the landing-stage. It is a moment of happiness. One fancies one hears the humming of bees in the summer heat, and that it is their monotonous chant which makes one feel the fulness of the moment still more intensely.

The Stockholmers look upon the _skärgård_ with loving eyes; it is difficult for them to imagine how it must affect the stranger who approaches the capital from the East gazing from the deck of a large steamer over the rocks where the seals crawl, gliding past the holmes where stunted firs blasted by the storm are struggling for life, and travelling along broad bays, now dark-blue, now bluish-grey, through narrow sounds, past leafy banks, not seldom disfigured with villas of a more than doubtful architectural beauty, finally arrives at Stockholm. Can the foreigner, who sees this for the first time from the high deck of the steamer, can he understand and appreciate all the delightful, beautiful, touching things, all the grandeur which we see who have been familiar with the _skärgård_ from our childhood, who have lived in it, sailed on it and bathed in it, and have had our eyes opened by Sehlstedt’s popular songs and +Carl Larsson’s+ illustrations to them, by Strindberg’s stories and novels, and by +Liljefors’+, +Axel Sjöberg’s+ and +Richard Lindström’s+ paintings?

The _skärgård_ in Bohuslän assumes more imposing forms and has a severer beauty, at any rate in its seaward parts, for in the interior Bohuslän fjords the vegetation is luxuriant. The travellers who come from England to Göteborg (Gothenburg) by boat, first catch sight of rocks as bare as the walls of a fortress, but with more beautiful forms, emerging from the breakers. +Karl Nordström+, born in the island of Tjörn in Bohuslän, has in an austere and manly style painted these granite rocks with the undulating lines, now with the foam dashing at their feet, now with bonfires flaming on their crests. +Nordström’s+ art is of a piece with the nature mysticism of our remotest ancestors, and when we see his picture “Easter Bonfires” in Thiel’s Gallery (page 23), where flames shoot out to greet the coming light, we think how for thousands of the years Swedes have made merry around these fires, rejoicing that the reign of cold and darkness has once more been shattered. It is +Karl Nordström+ and +Carl Wilhelmson+ who have depicted the nature and people of the West coast, the former the hills and the decorative cloud masses against which they stand out, or the sequestered valleys, where the sun is baking hot, and dense thickets of bushes, sheltered from the blast, fill the crevices. The latter is the painter of the serious-looking people who inhabit these parts, and in winter gain their livelihood by converting the glittering shoals of herring into silver coins.

In looking at +Wilhelmson’s+ pictures, there comes upon us something of the earnestness which is natural to this coast population, who have to risk their lives in order to gain their subsistence. +Wilhelmson+ loves the high colours which occur in the landscape when the sun shines on the pink-tinged hills, and broad, light-brown boats with white sails standing out against the red fishermen’s cottages. For these people who have been brought up in the hard and narrow religious school of Schartau, the church is the object to which their thoughts turn with longing in the midst of their toil and drudgery; particularly the women in their black silk kerchiefs with their prayer-books wrapped up in their handkerchiefs look as sorrowful as if they were going to a funeral, as they repair to the sanctuary on foot or in boats (page 25).

* * * * *

Most foreigners come to Sweden from the south with the Danish or the gigantic Swedish-German ferry steamers, and then they see that part of the Swedish coast which is not surrounded by skerries. Skåne and Halland are the only provinces that lie directly on the sea, and even at some distance from Malmö or Trelleborg one can discern from the sea the vast green plain with its white churches and black wind-mills. Curiously enough, none of our great living artists has depicted the Öresund, one of the most beautiful fair-ways in the world, with its deep-blue waters, oftentimes filled with hundreds of white gleaming sails, and its banks fringed with beech woods. The shallow Halland firths and the great lines and high colours of this now deforested district have found in +Nils Kreuger+ an admirer and delineator of high rank.

Skåne (Scania) differs both in natural scenery and culture from the rest of Sweden, with which, like Halland and the winsome Blekinge, it has been united only 250 years. The Skåningar (Scanians) are well-pleased with themselves and their country. They possess the most stately castles, the most well-fed peasants, the richest trades-unions, and the most violent socialists--all gauged by a modest Swedish standard. This has not been denied, and talented Swedish authors have admirably delineated this _milieu_, with the exception of the castles, surrounded by gigantic trees and with their images reflected in the ponds. In some of these castles a life is led such as even an English country-gentleman would consider fit for a human being, with huntsmen in red coats, and munificent hospitality; and the gay lieutenants and elegant ladies are perhaps not quite so hard-hearted here as in the more northerly parts of the realm. In our country one has been a little unfair to the higher classes, and that in spite of the fact that the heads of society have eagerly participated in the national work, and spared neither energy nor money when the public welfare has been at stake. If we except a few excellent portraits of +Georg v. Rosen+, +Anders Zorn+ and +Oscar Björck+, modern Swedish art has not taken its subjects from castles and parks. Otherwise the “Skåneland”, as the inhabitants of this rich district affectionately style it, has in recent times found very good interpreters. The old +Gustaf Rydberg+, and quite recently +Ernst Norlind+ and +Axel Kulle+, have shown us the white farmhouses (page 17), which are so solidly built, that their very outward appearance gives us an inkling of what their inmates must be like. Sometimes one may catch sight on the roof of the long-legged aristocratic figure of the stork, while the more plebeian characteristics of self-complacency and _embonpoint_ come out in the cocks and hens and geese in the court-yard. The beauty of the Scanian plain landscape has often been described in novels and lyric poetry; Ernst Ahlgren, K. G. Ossian-Nilson and Ola Hanson are no doubt its foremost portrayers. However, Skåne has still to wait for its conclusive interpretation in modern art. Skåne has not yet received in painting all the homage it deserves. The solid ancient culture of the Scanian peasant has formed the subject of +Hugo Salmson’s+ pictures; scenes from melancholy avenues of pollard willows, from expanses of green fields with decorative groups of trees, standing like sacred groves on the _åsar_ (ridges) which bound the horizon, these and many other things have been attempted by the talented Scanian painters; but they have never attained the greatness displayed by a +Nils Kreuger+ or a +Karl Nordström+ in their pictures from Halland and Bohuslän. Even the picturesque seaside life on the sandy beach of Falsterbo or the steep rocky shores of Kullen has not yet found a portrayer. The huge rock projecting many miles out into the sea is one of the most beautiful things in the whole of Sweden. A whole swarm of young artists have striven to render the huge weathered blocks, and the luxuriant beech-woods; or the sea, now roaring and dashing its foam up against a fantastically formed rocky shore, or as it is seen from the Kullen light-house--which has now for well-nigh 400 years lighted up the mouth of Öresund--, lying calm and smooth as a mirror in the evening, when the flashes from the light-houses along the coast of Sjælland intensify the impression of the vast expanses one surveys. One realizes that corn and sugar, beer and _brännvin_ (brandy) are produced in plentiful quantities on the Scanian plains, when one sees the tall chimneys rising up alongside of each other right away in the country in the very midst of the well-cultivated fields. The Scanians believe that good food, and perhaps also good commonsense, is properly speaking only to be found in Skåne. That is perhaps going too far, but certainly the well-nourished, energetic and shrewd population of this district with their broad burring dialect has a natural self-reliance, which would not be amiss for the other inhabitants of the realm.

If the traveller coming from abroad makes as soon as he sets foot in Malmö acquaintance with things Swedish, in the shape of a “sober-minded porter”, to use Heidenstam’s exquisite phrase, nevertheless it must be said that Skåne with its fertile fields, its yellow tile-factories, and the whitewashed farms makes an un-Swedish impression. It is not until the train begins to whirl through the pine woods of Småland, and there appear at the stations small flaxen-haired, shy-looking, blue-eyed girls, mute as fishes and with beseeching looks offering for sale raspberries and bilberries in birch-bark baskets, it is not till then that one feels one is home in Sweden. +Richard Bergh+ has painted one of these little girls, a quiet, timid little girl, busy gathering flowers in the meadow. There are in Sweden many little girls like that, who stand by the gates to open them in the hope of receiving a copper, and would rather bite off their tongues than answer the friendly question “What’s your name, little girl?”. Småland is a large province, as big as the whole of Switzerland. Its inhabitants are considered sly and stingy; and it’s no wonder they are mean, for most of them certainly have to work for all they are worth to get something nourishing and the food doesn’t drop ready-cooked into their mouths: nay, but they have to quarry stone, and burn woodland, and struggle hard, and yet they remain as lean as the kine.

If one wants to understand Småland properly, one ought to read +Albert Engström’s+ recollections from childhood and study his drawings. Then one realizes how the world goes in the little red cottages, how warm and cosy it is in winter, when they mull a pint of brandy, and the air is thick with vapour from the damp clothes; or how strengthened in spirit and lifted above the petty worries of every-day life one feels at the revival meeting with its coffee, alleluja rejoicings, and more or less brotherly and sisterly love. One of the greatest of modern artists is +Herman Norrman+. He has shown us what a glorious thing the forest can be, and he has painted it so that one literally feels the scent of the _Ledum_, the resin, and all the strong, fresh scents which fill the air on a hot summer’s day, and are carried to one’s nostrils by a cool breeze from the marsh with its cotton-grass and mystic plant- and insect-world. There is a kind of passionate warmth, both physical and psychical, in +Norrman’s+ landscapes, where both heaven and forest are ablaze with red. In gazing at these pictures of +Norrman+, the heart is filled with a kind of half-defiant bliss.

Along the coast of Kalmar Sound the fields are covered with rippling corn. Far in the north lies the beautiful Tjust and its _skärgård_, which has been painted by +Gottfrid Kallstenius+. Singularly enough, the vast, romantic Kalmar Castle, once called the “key to Sweden”, has not yet found an artist to depict it. Even making allowance for the painting of “views” having gone out of fashion, one cannot but find it strange that the next largest lake in the country, the curious long and narrow Lake Vättern, which plays such a great part in Heidenstam’s poems, and whose shores in Småland have an almost southern character, has not been painted by our greatest artists. Omberg and the district about Jönköping and Grenna, the little cosy town from which one looks out over the easily ruffled surface of the gigantic blue lake, is one of the sights of Sweden.

* * * * *

+Gustaf Ankarcrona+ has painted several of the Småland manors, places which have a homelike atmosphere about them both summer and winter. One is received with overwhelming hospitality, various kinds of sausages and cakes, such as have been eaten in Swedish farms since time immemorial, are laid before one; and the late major, the proprietor, as he comes out on the front steps to welcome his friend who has driven up in a sledge, gives him a sly wink that he has been successful in making a good brew of punch according to the good old receipt (page 34).

* * * * *

Central Sweden is characterized by a number of lakes; amongst them is Lake Vänern, which is a regular inland sea, being the third largest lake in Europe. North of the Småland plateau, there extend round and along the shores of the two great lakes, the primitive settlements of the provinces of Östergötland and Västergötland. Quaintly-shaped hills rise from the plains of Västergötland, Kinnekulle, Halleberg and Hunneberg, Billingen, and Ålleberg, which latter has been painted by +Karl Nordström+. It was in this district that Christianity first struck root. It was here, at the foot of mount Kinnekulle, that Olof Skötkonung (O. the Lapking) was baptized in Husaby. It was here, at Billingen, that the beautiful cloister church of Varnhem arose and on the plain that ancient seat of learning, Skara, in the shadow of the Cathedral.

If one takes one of the canal boats from Trollhättan (where now as of yore the troll is still a-roaring savagely from his abode in the Toppö Falls--though he has now to yield up some of his power to the turbines), and sails past the ancient Leckö Castle, where Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, the great Swedish Maecenas of the 17th century, once held court, one sees, on the Västergötland shore of Lake Vänern, mount Kinnekulle looming blue in the distance. Through the Västergötland branch of the Göta Canal one comes out into Lake Vättern, and directs one’s course to the ancient 16th-century castle of Vadstena, whose massive masonry and historic walls have fallen to +Oscar Björck’s+ brush (page 33).

Östergötland has not yet received its due share of attention from the artists. Östergötland is rich in historical associations and legends, which, for us Swedes at least, throw a yet greater spell about the beautiful scenery round the shores of the Göta Canal. Slowly and peacefully the boat glides along over the canal, and every now and then the boughs of the trees brush against the deck. There is something quiet and soothing about a canal trip through Östergötland, past Lake Boren with Ulfåsa Castle and its reminiscences of the Folkungar, down through the Berg locks to Lake Roxen, where lies Vadstena cloister church, which was consecrated by Magnus Ladulås. North of the high banks of Bråviken extends the forest region of Kolmården, where the young +Alfred Wahlberg+ painted the magnificent landscape in the romantic style of the Düsseldorf school.

* * * * *

In the district around Lake Mälaren, the heart of Sweden, south, west, and north of the “Lögaren”, as it was then called, lived the Svear, whom we find mentioned as far back as Tacitus. This tribe was in possession of the chief place of sacrifice in the country, at Uppsala, and gradually subdued the other tribes, united the kingdom, and gave it their name. The artist who has best rendered the country round Mälaren is +Gunnar Hallström+. Although he has only painted the land and people as they are now, he has painted it in such a way that we have a feeling as if we and ours had lived round the shores of Mälaren for thousands of years, gazing out over the islands and seeing the same ragged fringe of pine wood stand out against the summer-night sky, seeing the birches turning yellow in the autumn, assuming a mantle of white in the winter, emerging in black lustre in the early spring, in order once more to don their garb of green. White, tall, with a noble bearing, and a dreamy soughing about their crowns, they stand on the ancient barrows of Björkö Isle, where in the midst of the distant firth the ancient royal town of Birka received the Franconian Ansgar, the apostle of the North, among its turbulent men and silver-bedizened women. Everything that +Hallström+ has drawn and painted has about it a certain distinctively Swedish flavour; no mere superficial veneer, but penetrating to the very root of Swedish life, right down to its primordial source in mother nature, which woke our people to consciousness of itself. His pictures conjure up before us visions of the Sörmland “_hagar_” (see below), where the girls listened to the notes of the cuckoo in the spring nights, and of the wintry plains of Uppland, where the people rejoiced at the blood-stains of the victims on the white snow, and in wild frenzy offered up sacrifices to propitiate the god of the harvest.

When one has taken the night train from the south and wakes up one summer morning, to find oneself at some Sörmland station, a delicious breath is wafted towards one from the forest and the granite soil. One feels that one is in Sweden.

The silence is complete, except for the brawny, fair-complexioned workmen quietly toiling away with spades and crowbars on the railway track. By the lake (there always is one), stands a little white church. If one follows the high road, one comes upon another lake with a venerable manor-house nestling in its orchard. The soil of the meadows and ploughed fields is no doubt stony, but the clover thrives, and the fields stand so thick with rye, that the thought is borne upon one that there are very few countries where one gets so much out of the soil as in Sweden, thanks to the intensity with which agriculture has of recent years been carried on. More than a third part of all the cultivated land in Sweden has been brought under cultivation during the last 30 to 40 years; but fortunately--and this is the special charm of the scenery of central Sweden--there is a great deal of land, which is incapable of cultivation, pastures and “_hagar_”, where the cows peep out from among the alder bushes by the brook, and shy horses browse at liberty, hindered only by the fences and gates which shut them out from the enticements of the clover meadows. In the seventies +Edvard Bergh+ painted, nay, I may say, discovered, the beauty of the _hage_. In the eighties Strindberg described the _hage_, that cross between a meadow and a wood, as something distinctively Swedish. The soil of the _hage_ consists now of granite knobs, now of short cropped greensward; or else it is ornamented with white lilies-of-the-valley or pink bitter-vetches in the shady spots or in the sunny places with great patches of colour made by the blue and yellow Wood Melampyrum, standing in serried ranks like soldiers. In the autumn, when the mists come sweeping in through the birches of the _hage_, fiery-red flybane gleam in the wet grass.

+Reinhold Norstedt+ has painted this Sörmland scenery with the most delicate touch and fine intuition: the sparkling brooks running over the roots shaded by the dark-green smooth foliage of the alders, the proud Eriksberg Castle peeping forth amid umbrageous groups of trees, the _hagar_ studded with birches now wild, now more parklike, as in the great picture in the Dramatic Theatre at Stockholm.

A gentle melancholy tone of peace and happiness, a touch of pensive dreaminess, which is one side of our national character, pervades +Norstedt’s+ pictures, which, though often small, are always crammed with feeling. The Swedish landscape is generally lacking in plasticity. The lakes and rivers afford vast perspectives, but, if we except Norrland, there are no great altitudes to speak of. “Smiling”, “pleasing”, “inviting” are the words which first rise to one’s lips, especially as to the landscape round the Lake Mälaren. One of those who has entered most deeply into the very soul of that kind of Swedish landscape, is Prince +Eugen+. There is a touch of lyric feeling in the Swedish temperament, a desire to see both the outer and inner being of things brought down to one tone; it is in the light of this trait that the desire for the cups that inebriate, which has from of old been a part of the national character, is no doubt to be explained. This Swedish trait has found its fullest expression in the personality of the poet Bellman, in whose poems wild revelry is mingled with dreamy pensiveness, and boisterous mirth with deep melancholy. This desire to see the landscape “in tone”, no doubt also explains the many Swedish pictures with the night as their subject, particularly the summer night when the dim gloaming covers over all imperfections and tones down all glaring colours. The various features of the landscape blend together and melt into a full-toned harmony. Just as the fragrant orchis in our woods emits a richer perfume in the night, so does many a shy and sensitive heart in Sweden give forth its best and deepest feelings, when the landscape appears in that weird light when things seem strange, yet at the same time familiar, and reality and dreamland blend into one another. Prince +Eugen+ has in his picture “Summer Night” in the National Museum, and also in a number of other pictures, best perhaps in “Night Cloud” (in Thiel’s Gallery), expressed in an unusually forcible manner what we other Swedes feel--perhaps not so intensely as the artist himself--of the happiness and the momentousness of existence when a huge greyish-white cloud comes slowly trailing along over the landscape which lies steeped in the pale light of the summer night. The district round Stockholm, especially the parts about the ancient Tyresö Castle in Södertörn, have been rendered by Prince +Eugen+, sometimes passionately, sometimes dreamily, so that he has enriched us with new hitherto unappreciated beauties. Most imposing is his huge picture “Even Landscape from Tyresö”, in Norra Latin Grammar School, Stockholm.

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The scenery of Uppland, which is characterized by small knobs of protruding rocks, interrupted here and there by loamy plains, has, if we except the coast towards the sea and Lake Mälaren, perhaps not so much to entice the painter, though indeed the new landscape school of painting has shown that the greatest beauty can be culled out of the most insignificant subjects. The Swedish artist who has done more than any other to teach us how to see Sweden was born in the Uppland plain. +Bruno Liljefors+ has shown us that it is simply a question of “drawing out” the beauty which is to be found everywhere. However, it is the forest and the sea that he most loves, and he paints them, we might almost say, from the animal’s point of view. It has been said that he paints a duck family as a duck would paint, if it could. Mother duck casts a wary look at her small fluffy balls, stumbling along among the tussocks or cruising among the bending rushes and quacking among the water-rings in the enchanting summer night. The forests of Uppland and Södermanland, or the Småland coast, and the animal world of both these districts, are +Liljefors’+ favourite subjects. It is to the forest amid the “solemn dirges of the pines”, that many a Swedish heart yearns; it is there they renew the memories of their own childhood, and hear the echo of the childhood of our race resounding through the ages; the forest is at once free and enclosed, silent and full of many sounds. The enchantment of the forest has seldom been described more impressively than in +Liljefors’+ “Huntsman on the Alert” (next page). This peasant sportsman, with the alert, nay almost devotional, expression on his face, is a symbol of what the forest means to us Swedes.

In Sweden we have still a primeval forest. The forest is not tame like a domestic animal, nor trimmed and raked like a decently kept park. There is something of fairyland about it, and it is full of mysteries and awful things. The inner mysteries do not reveal themselves to anyone: here, as in all things, the one who can understand and love sees and hears more than others. The tiny, crimson, almond-scented _linnéa_, which was given that name by the Swedish King in the Realm of Flowers, Carl von Linné (Linnæus), and which grows in the moss under the firs, is found only by the keen-eyed; and it is still more difficult to see something of the animal world, to be a witness to the dramas enacted among the elks (page 42), or see the loves of the big forest birds when with curious cries and strange antics they experience the great frenzy which is the acme of life, or when the animals of prey, panting with passion and hunger, slay their victims. When we ordinary folks go through the forest, we do not see anything. Some of us can doubtless tell whether a pine is worth a crown a root, and give directions for cutting the trees to the right lengths with the least possible loss of cubic space, and this is certainly a most important matter in our plank-producing country. But how many can in the course of a few hours’ ramble through the forest come upon the tracks of an elk, catch sight of a black cock, find a fox’s den, or who is lucky enough to witness the wooing of a pair of capercailzies? But all this has been seen and painted many times over by +Liljefors+: The Horned Owl (Gothenburg Museum), with glowing eyes, hissing and puffing, perched on its rock in the forest; the wily Foxes (Thiel’s gallery) hiding in the clefts of the rocks, while the pale crescent of the moon shines in the sky; the fat grey-hen which sits torpid and complacent on its perch in the fir, and unwillingly leaves its place in order with clumsy flight and a crash which scares all the little birds, to alight on the ground and be wooed by the black cock; the elegant wading birds, which with the subdued grey-brown hue of their feathers look so well against the silvery and brown tones of the marshy ground; all this has been revealed to us by +Liljefors+ from the artistic aspect, and a few visits to Thiel’s Gallery, where the largest and best collection of +Liljefors’+ pictures is to be seen, together with the study of the valuable pictures of the same artist in Gothenburg Museum and in the National Museum at Stockholm, will be full of instruction for those who desire to know something of what is deepest in Swedish nature.

From south Uppland and Öråker _herrgård_ (manor) +Georg Pauli+ has taken the subject for his fresco painting “Decorating the May-pole”. In midsummer, when the sun is at the zenith, when the lilac blooms, the may-pole is decked with leaves, and then even the most surly “blossom out”. At midsummer time, just as at Christmas, people grow a little kinder to each other. Friendly feeling often rises one or two degrees, and not seldom reaches the boiling point, as is shown by the announcements of engagements, which are unusually frequent at this time. In honour of the lightest night in the whole year, it is the custom all over Sweden for the young people, when they have danced to exhaustion round the May-pole, to await the coming dawn on some beautiful point of outlook. +Georg Pauli+ has in a very romantic picture “Midsummer Watch” (in the possession of Esq. Erik Frisell Stockholm) immortalized a midsummer watch on a hill near Skurusund, not far from Stockholm. The sharp contrast between the harshness of winter and the mildness of summer, causes us to cling more passionately, perhaps, than more southern races, to nature, when she reveals herself to us in her full glory; and do not our flowers smell sweeter, our grass grow thicker, are not our forests more luxuriant, and are not our berries, surely, richer in flavour than further south? On the other hand, the beauty of the Swedish landscape, as has been said before, is not of a kind which obtrudes itself on one; but, when one has once been captivated by the union of modesty and pride in the Swedish nature, one learns to love it so much the more fervently; even if in order to express our feelings we must have recourse to the untranslatable word “_stämning_”, that which we seek first and foremost in our nature, our lyric poetry, and our paintings; the nearest equivalent is “mood”; but it has often to be rendered by “feeling”, “tone”, “sentiment”, “atmosphere”. In music the best interpreter of true Swedish feeling is no doubt August Söderman in his “Peasant Wedding”, which has about it the atmosphere of a sunny midsummer morning in birch-studded _hagar_ and amid glittering lakes. A great work of art, with a ring of steel about it, which is also characteristically Swedish, is +Edvard Rosenberg’s+ “March Eve” (page 30). The scene is a valley in the district round Stockholm. A flame-coloured light still lingers on the rocky knobs and the bare tops of the birches. Wind and sun have formed the snow-drifts into ramparts now congealed by the night frost, where the dark-blue shadows are thickening. In spite of the cold and the harshness there is something which bodes of spring. He who sees this landscape in the right way, experiences a feeling of complex character, just as in a full-toned chord joy and pain may be united, filling our whole soul to overflowing.

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“O Värmeland, thou beautiful, thou glorious land, crown of the lands of the Swedish realm”, so run the words of the song, and even if most of the other provinces of Sweden feel themselves to be the most beautiful gem in the crown of Sweden, yet none of them have been able to express their love for their home like the people of Värmland. Their song, vibrating with intense passion, has rushed forth like a mighty river over the land of Sweden. “There is a belt of iron round Svea’s waist”, and from the mines of Värmland much iron has been fetched up, but still nobler metals have been gathered from the hearts of Värmlanders. “In the greater part of Sweden it is iron that has paved the way for culture”, writes Erik Gustaf Geijer of his native land, and from his manly heart there resounds a genuine Swedish note, which reminds us of Tegnér’s words on our language, “Pure as the ore is thy ring”. Geijer has also been a pioneer of culture. There is a breezy atmosphere about his spirit.

When the Värmlander Tegnér one summer night in 1811 was driving a load of ore from Rämen works to Filipstad, his mind gave birth during his wanderings in the depths of the forest to the poem “Svea”, in whose ringing rhymes and flaming images all his present unrest and good resolutions for the future were given a form which called forth the enthusiastic applause of the whole country.

In the works, manors, parsonages, and farms of Värmland, song and legend flourish more than in other parts of Sweden. Festival customs, survivals from primitive rites, which have attached us with such strong bands to our native soil and to those who have lived there before us, have been retained more faithfully in Värmland than in other places.

Christmas is the greatest Swedish festival, when one wishes that all eyes may shine and all hearts burn to vanquish the darkness and the cold. This is the time when families gather together, when one feels the comfort of having someone to love and rejoice with, and of showing them what one feels for them, it is a time when one’s thoughts turn to the dead, and yet are full of hope for the future, most of all when we see children rejoicing over the Christmas tree, the lights and the presents; and then to the tune of some old Christmas reel, whose melancholy passion arouses slumbering memories, one dances round the tree of life with its lights and apples, and the star at the top. It is still the custom in the old forest settlements to go to matins on Christmas morning by torchlight. Some rejoice most at the old hymn “Hail, lovely morning hour”, while others look forward most eagerly to the “brandy” and cold ham, which will afterwards be served. Those who celebrate Christmas in the true spirit are pleased with everything. A beautiful Värmland custom is the Lucia celebration. To inaugurate Christmas, the festival of light, it is the custom on the 13th December, before it is yet day, for the lady of the house or one of the girls, garbed in white and with lighted candles stuck in a green chaplet of fir twigs in the hair, to treat all the members of the household to coffee in bed. +Gunnar Hallström+ has drawn this beautiful symbolical custom (page 31), in which one feels a warm breath wafted towards one and a ray of light proceeding from both heathen and Christian ritual. Much the same feelings are aroused in us by the imaginary world of the great Värmland authoress, Selma Lagerlöf. This prophetess, who sees visions of Värmland, who conjures up all good powers, has taught not only Sweden but the whole world, how things are in Gösta Berling’s native land.

Our greatest lyric poet since Bellman, Gustav Fröding, is also a Värmland man. He writes about his forests and _hagar_, so that we literally feel the scent of fir twigs, of lilies-of-the-valley and of birch leaves, and all we Swedes feel, when we read Fröding, how strongly we are attached to our rocky knobs and dwarf pines. We recollect, when as children we called out “home” at the primrose spots in the _hagar_ and sought for raspberries in the pile of stones. “Yon copse is to me dear, my childhood whispers there”, runs one of Fröding’s verses, and all Swedes will echo the feeling. Fröding has also delineated the people, the poor who beg and suffer, but also their levity, their dances and addiction to the brandy bottle, and wild romps with “Stina Stursk” and other red-cheeked tittering girls in shawls, who forget everything for the present and do not consider enough what the future may bear in its bosom.

+Carl Wilhelmson+ has painted Värmland peasants in his picture “Labourers” (page 37) in Thiel’s gallery, and he makes us feel supremely satisfied at belonging to such a trustworthy-looking people. All the figures in the picture, down to the little boy, have a reliable, steady, downright look about them. This boy will perhaps be rather slow and cautious, if he is asked a question, but one can rely on him. You may safely send him to water the horses, and if he receives permission to go to town to buy something, he will not spend his money on the way. In this part of the world manliness develops late. The little fellow will no doubt be an awkward enough cub yet a good while, but he will be a fine fellow when he has grown to manhood.

+Fjæstad+ has painted the moss on the tree-trunks and rocks, the water dripping and frozen, but his favourite subject is the snow accumulating under the stems of the fir-trees in high-piled fantastic heaps (see the cover). And +Björn Algrensson+ shows us in his picture “Interior” in Thiel’s Gallery, what one feels like in an out-of-the-way cottage in the forest, as one watches through the window the big heavy flakes slowly falling, till at last one has to use a snow-shovel to get out through the door. It is then one feels what home really means. On Lake Fryken, which is long and narrow like a river, lies Rottneros, the Ekeby of Gösta Berling’s Tale. This region has been depicted by +Georg Pauli+ in his drawings. Down by the enormous expanse of Lake Vänern, that great inland sea, whose chief affluent is the river Klarälfven, which runs through the whole of Värmland, lies Säffle. It is here that +Otto Hesselbom+, who became famous in Italy before he was appreciated in Sweden, has his residence. In modern times we have been a little afraid of the painting of “views”, but +Hesselbom+ has shown us what decorative grandeur there may lie in the very structure of the landscape, seen from a high point. In his painting “Our Country” (page 9), we see wooded ridges, shading the long and narrow lakes, and in the far distance a glimpse of Lake Vänern. Värmland, with its hilly contours, its nature of river valley to the Klarälfven, and its lonely, interminable forests, forms a transition not merely to Dalarne (Dalecarlia), on which it borders on the north-east, but also to the genuine Norrland scenery. “_Bergslagen_” is the name given to the districts in Värmland, Västmanland, Närke, Uppland, and Dalarne, where mining is carried on. There ore is mined and smelted in blast-furnaces or smelting-works, and charcoal is burnt in the lonely charring-stacks in the forest.

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