Chapter II: Part 2

Up along the river Dalälfven and its glens till its two sources, penetrated thousands of years ago the forefathers of the _Dalkarlar_ (Dalecarlians), who now live in Dalarne. The men who grew up amid the straight white-trunked Dalecarlian birches lived in village communities, but were almost isolated from the rest of Sweden. Dalarne came to be the source from which the country drew her strength, and was for hundreds of years the heart of Sweden, sending warm red Swedish blood pulsating through the sickening body of the state; and the part which the _Dalkarlar_ played in Engelbrekt’s war of independence about 1430, and in that of Gustaf Vasa about 1520, told of unimpaired power and strength. The judgment which the old king Gösta (Gustaf) passed on the Swedes, that they are a stubborn race, inclined for great achievements, holds good first and foremost of the Dalecarlians. “Säkert” (I am sure) is an expression which they are very fond of, and the Dalecarlian dialect has a particularly manly and pure ring. In certain districts they have retained a language which is unintelligible to other Swedes. In the villages on the banks of Lake Siljan, in the parishes of Mora, Rättvik, and Leksand, they still retain, more than in any other place in our country, the beautiful old costumes. And even if new levelling movements have tended to do away with the beautiful lace and the artistic weavings, so that even the women are dressed in the way they call “slimsklädd” i. e. half town, half country, even if the seething social discontent in the south part of Dalarne makes itself felt with unusual emphasis--, yet there are in these parishes round Lake Siljan both men and women, hardy, healthy and strong like old birchwood (page 36). From ancient times there have been no gentlefolk in Dalarne other than the parsons and judges. Now-a-days we find there the two classes which are socially and ethically furthest apart: peasant-farmers and proletarians. The strongly pronounced character of the people, their brightly-coloured costumes, and the hilly country (hilly at least from the point of view of south and central Sweden) round the beautiful lake has always attracted the artists to Dalarne. At Sundborn in the Falun district +Carl Larsson+ has built up for himself a home with a personal and genuinely Swedish character, such as one might expect from a man who is himself the embodiment of much that is essentially Swedish. His series of water-colours, “The Larssons”, “Spadarfvet” (our own soil) and “Åt solsidan” (on the sunny side) give us, in picture and text, in word and truth, the finest essence of Swedish family life. His pictures are warm in feeling, and crammed with beauty, full of fun, yet at the bottom serious. No one, perhaps, has painted the Swedish children like +Carl Larsson+. In Sweden we do not like old-fashioned, affected, molly-coddled children: we want our children to be out in the open air as much as possible; in our elementary schools, which, unlike those of other countries, are cheap and impart a good deal of free instruction, the children of the different classes mix with each other; and in the country one likes them to play with the farmer’s children and the crofter’s children. The shyness of the little peasant children has already been remarked on. The town children, and the children of the higher classes, are as a rule frank and lively and look respectfully and confidingly on the stranger. +Carl Larsson+ has painted and drawn the children, those precious treasures in whose hands the future of our country will one day lie, in a great variety of different ways: struggling with their lessons, bathing, fishing, rowing, and trudging through the snow, sturdy little things in grey clothes and red pointed caps, or sweet fair-haired girls, mothering with true womanly instinct their dirty little baby brothers and sisters (page 35). There is a rich variety in the different costumes of the parishes in Dalarne. At the place where the river Österdalälfven on the south shore of the Siljan flows out of the lake, and cuts its way through the sand, is situated the village of Leksand. On a point one sees a whitewashed church, round whose walls the _masar_ (Dalecarlian men) in long black coats, the married women in white and the _kullor_ (unmarried girls) in red or flowery caps, have been gathering for hundreds of years. The Leksand costume tends to give the girls a somewhat podgy figure.

It is an extraordinarily beautiful sight when the long church boats come rowing over Lake Siljan, and the country-people assemble on the church hill under the huge birches, enjoying the rest and sociability of the Sunday. An artist who thoroughly knows the Dalecarlian usages and the Dalecarlian costumes is +Emerik Stenberg+, who lives in a little village in the parish of Leksand. His “Wake in Leksand” (in the Museum at Gothenburg), represents those hale and hearty old men and fine old women assembled round an open coffin. The types have been admirably hit off, and the mourning colours, black and yellow, are very effective in the candle-light. +Stenberg’s+ “Björs-Mia” which represents a _Leksandskulla_ (peasant-girl from Leksand) sitting with her feet firmly planted on the ground, with an air of broad assurance, ready for one of those humorous, sarcastic answers which are so characteristic of the peasantry of Dalarne, is one of the most instructive Dalecarlian pictures in existence. It interprets admirably both the outward and inner life of this type of peasant-girl. Her attitude of careless ease is particularly effective.--Rättvik, which is also situated on Lake Siljan, has not been depicted by any really eminent artists, though +Zorn+ has sometimes taken _Rättvikskullor_ (peasant-girls from R.) as models for his etchings. Their tall conical hats and the motley cross-striped patch on the front of their skirts are well-known all over Sweden, and one often sees these smart powerful-looking girls working in the gardens in the country-houses outside Stockholm. In no part of Sweden do we find such a highly-developed peasant culture as in Dalarne, and it is a fortunate coincidence that our perhaps greatest artist, +Anders Zorn+, was born in Mora, and, after travelling all over the world and achieving universal fame, has gone back to settle there. That elemental force which has always been found and still exists in Dalarne, whose roots extend right into heathen times, which shines forth in the blood-red colours of the peasants’ dresses, and resounds “in marrowy heathen music” in the tunes on cow-herd’s horns echoing among the hill-sides and through the forests, is also found in +Anders Zorn+. Like his friend the poet Karlfeldt, who is also a _Dalkarl_, he has with every fibre of his being sucked in all the beautiful visions which Dalarne has to offer; he has gazed over the glittering bay of Gésundaberg; he has drunk of the cool “bottle-brown” water of the Dalälfven; he has drunk in the juices of the berry-laden soil, he has chewed at the resin of the firs, and inhaled the smell of the mountain dairy, a mixture of cow-house odours and the fresh scent of the forest, with a tang of sour milk from the milk-room. It is in the same surroundings and on the same fare of hard bread and pease pancake with a sweet or two on Sundays that “Kings-Karin” (page 43) has been reared, the healthy-looking peasant-girl in the red shawl, with her unruly eyes, her slightly protruding cheek-bones, the fresh, almost too red, complexion, with a healthy, unconscious sensuality, who embodies some of the most precious characteristics of our race. She is a symbol of uncorrupted peasant life, a spring of power which it is to be hoped will never be troubled nor ever lose its force.

No painter has ever been able to render the peasant nature in all its fulness and strength, like +Zorn+. His buxom naked peasant-girls are products of a natural mode of life, but there is no attempt to convey a lesson on the evils of town-life, or to advocate a more hygienic manner of existence. He presents them to us in the bath, their powerful bodies glistening with the warm water, or at the loft-door, or as they wade out into the brook, fair-haired and full of health and youth, the sweetest and juiciest berries which the Swedish soil has brought forth. +Zorn+ paints the crafty face of the peasant watch-maker, working away at his Mora-clock, a kind of grandfather’s clock, deeply absorbed in his mechanical improvements, with that inventive genius which is natural to us Swedes, and has given birth to such famous inventors as John Ericsson, the constructor of the Monitor and inventor of the screw-propeller, de Laval, the inventor of the de Laval Separator, and L. M. Ericsson, the great telephone-constructor.

Once in a while +Zorn+ depicts the character of our people from the seamy side. In “A Fair at Mora”, we see a Dalecarlian peasant lying on the grass dead-drunk. By his side sits in gloomy apathy a flaxen-haired woman, waiting for him to recover.--Whether the fellow will be a nicer customer then, is another matter.

If mid-summer with its warm evenings and its smell of dried hay is the grand festival of the year in Dalarne, yet when the snow crackles under the runners of the sleighs, and its passengers are muffled up in sheepskins and red rugs, whose bright colour stands out against the white snow, and the jingle of the bells resounds over the dazzling white landscape, one realizes pretty strongly that one is living, as a Dalarne peasant once expressed it, in a ‘nice North’. +Anselm Schultzberg+ in his winter pictures from the southern part of Dalarne has set forth the wintry beauty of this country, which has also been rendered by +Arborelius+. In +Schultzberg’s+ great picture “Walpurgis-night Bonfires in Bergslagen”, one sees how the bonfires are blazing on the hills, while the snow-drifts which are still to be seen on their slopes tell that the reign of winter is not yet completely shattered. Those who know their history will recollect, when they see these fires, that it was just in Dalarne that the trials of witches in the 17th and 18th century were most prevalent. The old hags were burnt at the stake, and the victims, who were themselves blinded by the dark superstition around them, confessed to having had intercourse with the Prince of Darkness himself. From Käringberget (the Hag Hill) in Leksand, these unfortunate victims to the cause of light and truth lighted up the region round them. Just as the church bells, which once in times of dark superstition rang to scare away the powers of evil, now with their deep memory-laden voice admonish us to ‘lift our hearts’, an admonition which all need and all are willing to bow to; so now do those symbolic fires shine forth, themselves purified from wailing and corruption, full of memories from olden times and promises for the future, ushering in the summer, whose great festival is perhaps never celebrated with greater splendour than round the maypoles by the side of the churches in Dalarne.

Mora lies on the north side of Lake Siljan, where the Österdalälfven falls into the lake, on a rather low promontory separating it from the Lake of Orsa which has been drawn and painted by +Aron Gerle+.

Above the great expanse of Lake Siljan rises in the west the Gesunda Hill. It was from the church mound at Mora that Gustaf Vasa in 1521 spoke the words of earnest admonition which took root in the hearts of the men of Mora. It was here that the spirited resolution was formed which laid the foundations of a free and independent Sweden. This, the most important moment in the life of Sweden, has been immortalized by +Zorn+ in his masterly picture of Gustaf Vasa, standing on a hill in Mora, where the young Uppland nobleman laid his whole soul into his words to the men of Dalarne. After some decades he and his descendants were to cover the emblem of the ‘Sheaf’ (_Vase_) with greatness and glory, as the poet sings:

“The sheaf of pallid grains no longer
Which once in Uppland stood on ploughed ground;
It ranketh now with fleur-de-lys and eagle,
The wide world over honoured and renowned.”

On Midsummer Eve 1523 King Gustaf marched in triumph into the festively decked capital. The work of liberation was accomplished. From that time we can celebrate midsummer with great joy, and when we see the leafy boughs in the halls, on the stems of boats and dancing-floors, and smell the scent of the birch leaves, we are filled with a feeling of mingled joy over the great festival of the summer and over our land and people. The Swede is much addicted to melancholy brooding, but also to the opposite extreme, rowdiness and fights with knives and brandy bottles. It is fortunate for us, when these contrasts work themselves out in singing and dancing. The fanaticism of the pietistic schools has frequently been succeeded by a social hate, fanned into fiercer flame by the envy which is inherent in the Swedish character. But there are also friendly powers at work in our people’s disposition, a sense of justice and fairness, respect for man as a man no matter what his position and circumstances, and a healthy sensuality and joy of life, which loves nature and what is natural. The joy of being together, of eating, drinking, dancing and singing in the open air, this is the real spirit in which to celebrate midsummer. +Zorn+ has painted the midsummer dance on the green, the men at first rather more solemn than they are further south, but later on when the girls begin to shout with delight and the men’s hearts are set beating, there is rapture over the present and all that one promises to each other on the warm summer eve of the lightest night in the year (page 40).

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Norrland does not make a figure in Swedish history till late; it is only in recent times that its forests and mines have been exploited, and it is only very lately indeed that it has been discovered from the literary and historical point of view. The poetry of Ådalen has been described by Pelle Molin, Olof Högberg has portrayed life in Norrland in the 17th century, and +Ludvig Nordström+ has in his broad humorous way depicted the life that goes on in the Norrland coast towns, and the simplicity of the petty tradesman coming into conflict with the blustering superiority of the upstart. Norrland is larger than the whole of the rest of Sweden put together, but it has a population of only 950,000 souls. On its northern frontier it is hilly and mountainous, while the rest of the country, which slopes down to the sea, consists of river valleys and interminable forests and marshes. Only a little more than a hundredth part of Norrland has been cultivated; thus almost the whole country is still in a wild state. As has just been mentioned it has only recently been ‘discovered’. Out of the ‘slumbering millions’ a good many have certainly woken up and travelled on the Ofoten line to Narvik or down the rivers to the saw-mills in order to be transformed into the gold which the country is so much in need of, but those beauties of inestimable value which the Norrland Nature possesses are still slumbering. The rivers may have rolled along down to the sea for thousands of years, but, before a poet or artist has sung or painted the sense of eternity which is aroused by the water quietly flowing by in the shadow of the pine forest, these mysteries do not reveal themselves in their fulness to us ordinary folk.

The scenery of Gästrikland, which corresponds to that of Dalarne, and, strictly speaking, does not belong to Norrland, has been described by +Erik Hedberg+. He seizes hold of the beauties which for an understanding mind may lie in mean things.

Härjedalen and Jämtland, which from 1111 to 1645 belonged to Norway, also resemble that country in character. The desolate beauty of the former province has still to wait for its discoverer. Nor has Jämtland played the part in Swedish art which it deserves. It is true that +Anton Genberg+ has painted the white-patched hills, standing out in violet against the sunset sky; but the fertile country round Storsjön (the Great Lake), the characteristic form of Mount Åreskutan, and the Tännforsen Falls booming in the stillness of the mountain region, though known all over Sweden, have not yet enticed our artists, who look askance on too easily intelligible ‘view’ motives. It is as if they thought that their beauty was obvious enough anyway.

Northern Sweden is of such enormous extent that, geographically speaking, the district round Lake Storsjön lies in the centre of Sweden. When one speaks of the beautiful Norrland, it is really these three things one thinks of. Mount Åreskutan with the Tännforsen Falls, the rivers, flowing down the valleys, cutting their way through earth and sand, and the mountains and Torneträsk marshes in Lappland. All this has, of course, been rendered in picture during the last decades, but not in such a manner that it bears comparison with what has been painted in the more southerly parts of the kingdom. +Carl Johansson+ has painted the quiet, serious lines of the river landscape, the edges of the åsar (ridges) against the sunset sky, and, most often of all, the beautiful river, Indalsälfven, which flows through Jämtland and Medelpad. A trip up either of the two rivers Indals- or Ångermanälfven, first by boat, when the logs of timber, sliding down to the saw-mills on the coast, knock against the sides of the boat, and afterwards by carriage through the river valley, is one of those things one must do, if one wants to get to know Norrland. One sometimes hears miles off the booming of the falls, like an ‘organ chord’, as Pelle Molin has it, emphasizing the sense of eternity.

For thousands of years the forest has been left to grow and rot uncared for. Now a new America has burst into the stillness, carrying in its train unexpected profits and equally unexpected crashes, stripped and devastated regions, spoliation, and social and political strife. Recklessness and savagery have doubtless always been found in Sweden. People had ravenous appetites, and they eat ravenously too when there is food to be had. When the timberwork of the cottage groaned under the severe cold, people longed for something to warm them up. In good times the Norrland woodmen drank champagne from time to time with their American pork, and the peasants who had, for a few thousand kronor, parted with their farms, worth, with their forest land, hundreds of thousands of kronor, kept the notes locked up in the drawer only for a short time, and then spent them before they knew what they were about. The Swedes are not a commercial people, and in that respect the Norrlanders are true Swedes. As early as 1600 Anders Buraeus wrote of his country-men, the people of Ångermanland, that they are ‘slow in all their commerce’, and it is still almost impossible to bring a Norrland peasant to the scratch over the smallest commercial transaction. “_Mir nichts und dir nichts, so haben wir alle beide nichts_” (Nought for me and nought for thee, so there’s nought for both you and me), was the motto which king Charles IX deemed applicable to Swedes, and the Norrland peasant would rather let his ptarmigans go rotten than let the buyer make any profit on them himself; but hospitality, that beautiful barbarian virtue, is exercised more in Luleå than in Paris.

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However, the beauties of Norrland scenery are greater than those of its civilization. Stora Harsprånget, the most powerful water-fall in Europe, in Jockmock parish in Lappland, is a thing of greater beauty than the modern Sundsvall architecture, but there is a province in Norrland, the largest in the whole of Sweden, which possesses both an exquisite nature of unfading charm and a grand ancient culture. It is Lappland. In Swedish art Lappland has been rendered in +Höckert’s+, +P. D. Holm’s+ and +J. Tirén’s+ pictures. As to +Höckert+, though his paintings are excellent from the purely technical point of view, in his “Lapphut” in the National Museum, we see that the Lapp mother bears far too much resemblance to a Paris model; on the other hand his “Wedding at Hornavan” renders admirably the wild carousals of a primitive people, when the bride on the leaf-decked boat lands by the shore. In “Lapp Chapel” in the museum at Lille he has painted the Lapps, a people readily and powerfully affected by religious impulses, listening to a sermon.

When the Swedish people for a generation or so had been interesting themselves in what “the new Sweden” looked like when looked at through the eye of a banker, and had been reading so much about interest yielded by waste land, and vexing their souls at the profits which energy and far-sightedness had at length succeeded in wringing from the great iron ore mountains at Gellivare and Kirunavara, towering aloft above the plain, people began to discover these regions also from the artistic point of view. The curious contrast between the primitive people who had had the desert-like stillness of their country disturbed by blasts of dynamite, who, as they made their way over the snow-covered plains saw the electric light shining on the mountains, is rendered still more striking by the silence and desolation which envelopes these mining communities within the arctic circle. +Carl Wilhelmson+ has on a large canvas represented the blasting of the ore in the open air (page 44). Below, one sees the surface of Lake Luossajärvi and a more extensive view than is generally afforded when the ore is mined within the bowels of the earth. The air is also considerably fresher on Mount Kiruna. In winter it is dark in the middle of the day, and then one has to work by electric light. +Karl Nordström+ has painted the beautiful lines of Mount Kiruna, when the great iron ore mountain is aglow like red-hot iron in the light of the setting sun. +Prince Eugen+ has rendered the same mountain, when covered with snow; and the whole of the district where the Lapps drive their herds of reindeer along the railway, and the trains passing along it laden with ore have been drawn by +Albert Engström+, whose temperament is in a quite extraordinary degree attuned to the spirit of the wilderness and the inner life of a primitive people.

Our civilization is death to the Lapps. When from Abisko one gazes out over the Torneträsk marshes and on the banks sees the grey herds of reindeer browsing on the plains, and amid the mountain birches catches a glimpse of some dark-blue Lapp costumes, one thinks sorrowfully how ere long the last Lapp with his quaint gait will be waddling along among the dwarf-birches, shrunk and shrivelled like himself, and disappear under the flaming Northern Lights (_Aurora borealis_) in his _pulka_, leaving the Swedish hut, where he so contentedly and cheerfully carved his roast reindeer joint with an ornamented knife, driven forth by forces which he cannot comprehend, much less resist. Then Sweden will have suffered an irreparable loss. Civilization has forced its way, riches have increased, and then one day our hour will come, when the cold has increased and driven us south again. It is this thought which is voiced from Kiruna church-tower in +Albert Engström’s+ words:

Rise, curfew, up to the sun, to the North-Light’s circles wide,
Rouse sleeping fields, wake slumbering moor and heath,
And bless the fields whose fertile soil doth bide
The ploughman’s toil, and grant them peace hereafter.

* * * * *

The two large islands in the Baltic, Gottland and Öland, are both in their nature and their culture of a peculiar beauty, which is appreciated by the artists. With its mild climate, and consequently southern vegetation, with its rocky soil of limestone and sandstone, the Gottland landscape differs from what we are accustomed to on the main land of Sweden. In Gottland is situated the most picturesque of Swedish towns, Visby. Even if Gottland’s greatness is now historic, yet many old traditions from ancient times survive among the people; ancient traditional games and old folksongs and melodies still live a vigorous life on the romantic island. The artists have been attracted first and foremost by the peculiar architecture that flourished in the Middle Ages not only within the stately ancient walls of Visby, which with their hanging towers and bastions still stand erect and almost intact, but also in the romantic ruins of the churches of the transition period, which are an ornament to the island. Like a Northern Cyprus or Sicily, Gottland was once the centre of the Baltic, where currents of culture from different quarters ran together, and the trading fleets of Visby collected gold on all the coasts of the Baltic. Gottland is from the architectural point of view the most interesting province in Sweden. In the rural parts of the island there are an extraordinarily large number of churches erected during the Middle Ages with architectural details peculiar to this island. The Gottlander +Axel Herman Hägg+ and +Robert Haglund+ in their etchings have depicted the Visby ruins, which it was proposed in 1783 (a period which was lacking in historical sense) to pull down, a proposal which fortunately was not put into execution for want of funds. Even poverty may have its blessings.

+Hanna Pauli+, and more particularly +Richard Bergh+, have painted the town wall of Visby, one of the most remarkable historic relics in the whole of Scandinavia.

Öland, the smallest province in Sweden, the long and narrow island off the coast of Småland, has been described with keen power of observation and powerful realism by Carl von Linné (Linnæus), perhaps our best descriptive writer, who in 1741 undertook his celebrated journey to Öland. The Ölander, +Per Ekström+, the painter of the glittering sunshine has painted a number of scenes from that poorly-wooded island, from which one sees the sun and the sea almost from all parts. The mediæval castle of Borgholm, which was rebuilt by Nicodemus Tessin the elder by order of Karl Gustaf, was never properly finished. Up on the citadel, where sea-walls sloping precipitously down to the sea afford an extensive view over the water and over the bare plateau of Alfvaren (Chalk-heath), stands the old castle, which has been rendered by several artists, amongst others Prince +Eugen+.

But _the_ painter of Öland is +Nils Kreuger+, one of the foremost artists in Sweden, who has shown us the richly-coloured beauties of the remarkable scenery of Öland, and painted the horses wading in the dark-blue water, the cattle clipping the short grass on the parched brown plains, and the sheep seeking shelter from the wind behind the red limestone walls. There is something of the desolate grandeur of the desert landscape about the plateau of Alfvaren, and both the latter and the luxuriant vegetation on the strip of shore below the citadel have received the most artistic interpretation in +Kreuger’s+ paintings (page 47).

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The small rural towns of Sweden have, owing to the outrageous way in which they have been treated lost much, sometimes all, of the homely charm which once distinguished them. Being, until quite recent times, built of wood, they have been devastated by fire more thoroughly than towns built of stone. The rapid development which Sweden has undergone during the last forty years, has also fostered an inclination for violent innovations, and it is not until recently that æsthetic considerations have won the ear of practical men. Our architects, who by their restorations of the cathedrals of Uppsala and Lund and other towns have almost entirely spoilt these venerable monuments of the past, are now devoting themselves with keen interest to preserving what still remains. Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, has managed to preserve a number of the canals which remind us of the Dutch ideal which prevailed when the town was built in 1619 with the aid of Dutchmen. The canals have been painted by +Reinhold Norstedt+ and +Axel Erdman+. On the main canal stands the Gothenburg Museum, accommodated in a house in which in the 18th century the East Indian Company had its main office. It was this company that introduced the large quantities of Chinese porcelain, which still lend a refined old-fashioned tone to many a Swedish dinner-table. The Museum is specially rich in modern Swedish art, and those who are interested in Swedish paintings will have to patronize it thoroughly. Swedish painting is deeply indebted to patrons of art in Gothenburg, most of all to Pontus Fürstenberg. On the heights round the town there still stand the picturesque redoubts, Göta Lejon and Kronan, the latter erected from designs by Erik Dahlberg, the man who guided the Swedish army over the Belt. The harbour of Gothenburg, with the largest mercantile fleet in Sweden, has been painted and drawn by +O. Holmström+.

Some little distance above Gothenburg, and like it on the river Göta älf, lies Kungälf, in the shadow of the Bohuslän hills, painted by +Hanna Pauli+ in what is perhaps the most beautiful picture representing a Swedish country-town.

On Lake Vättern lies the garden-city Grenna, where the gardens among the white rows of houses along the high road, which is the main street of the town, groan under pears and cherries. Grenna, like one or two more of our smaller towns, has the somewhat unusual advantage of “being in the country”. +Alfred Bergström+ and +Lennart Nyblom+ have painted the Grenna district. In Vadstena, whose ancient castle has been painted by +Oscar Björck+ (page 33), there are still preserved some relics of the Middle Ages. Blåkyrkan (the Blue Church) built by St Birgitta (Bridget) in bluish limestone after the directions of Christ himself, carries the thoughts to the cloister founded by St Birgitta and reminds one of that Swedish woman of the 14th century, with her powerful personality, who with Teutonic frankness was not afraid to speak her mind even to the Pope.

A cluster of our most interesting small towns lies around Lake Mälaren. Sigtuna boasts of being older than Stockholm. Its period of glory was in the 12th century, and its numerous church ruins give the melancholy of fallen greatness to the little homely town, whose grass-grown market-place has now been gravelled, in order that the inhabitants of Sigtuna might escape hearing the awkward question: “Has there been good pasture for the cows in the market-place this year?” Mariefred lies dreaming with her small wooden houses at the foot of Gripsholm, the most imposing castle in Sweden. The high walls tower aloft defiantly, and the castle, which was erected by Gustaf Vasa and where his sons held each other confined, where Gustaf III had his dainty theatre erected, and where the side-scenes, against which the figures of the courtiers, as they acted, once stood out, are still preserved, is one of the most remarkable monuments of the past in Sweden.

For Swedish ears the very names Strängnäs, Arboga, Köping, Västerås have a ring of idyl and of history, and it is remarkable that they have not been more frequently depicted by our artists. +Hesselbom+ has painted the old town of Strängnäs, and its red cathedral towers, round which the daws flutter.

Inestimable beauties have been irreparably lost through the irreverent way in which our cities have been handled, but one can still say of the homely old town of Ystad, which, as Linné writes, “lies right in the middle of the south side of Skåneland”, that there are “quite a number of old houses in the town”. It will be the chief duty of our times to preserve as far as possible the old-fashioned half-timber houses, and the old town-plot.

The two university towns of Uppsala and Lund are richer in historic memories than in remarkable architecture. The cathedrals of these towns have lost their interest for the artists after their restoration, and it is chiefly with lyric poetry and music that Uppsala is associated. On _Valborgsmässoafton_ (eve of Walpurgis Night) the white-capped students march in procession through the avenue of Odinslund, and the hymn to spring mounts up on the clear frosty evening, up to the few stars which are to be seen twinkling in the sky, and the bonfires gleam here and there on the Uppland plain.

* * * * *

Stockholm is the largest and most beautiful town in the peninsula. It is worshipped, as is only right, like a beautiful queen, and treasured by the whole of Sweden like a gem. It has been described with most insight by those who have passed their childhood in its islands and played in its market-places, by Stockholm’s own children, Bellman, Strindberg, +Carl Larsson+, Oscar Levertin, Hjalmar Söderberg, +Prince Eugen+. Even if we do not always see “that Stockholm woven of sun and songs -- -- --, which one may see for brief moments, if one is youthful and a poet”, at any rate the poets and artists have with their magic wands revealed to us many of the beauties which now enhance our love of the lovely city, which above others is the possession of the whole of Sweden.

Of that Stockholm which in 1523 decked itself out in birch-leaves to greet young King Gösta (Gustaf Vasa), not much is preserved. The old palace--“the main-building”, as it was then modestly called, where Gustaf Vasa ruled in the literal sense of the word, is no longer in existence. When Gustaf Adolf left this palace in order to defend Sweden at Breitenfeld and Lützen, and give his life, as he said himself, “for the glory of the fatherland and God’s church which therein rests”, he wished on behalf of the citizens of Stockholm “that your small huts may become large stone houses, your small boats large ships and vessels, and that the oil in your cruses may not run dry”. And in fact Stockholm made enormous strides during the period of Sweden’s greatness.

It was when this period was drawing to a close that the new palace, the creation of Nikodemus Tessin, was begun. It has been painted best, perhaps, by one who was born within its walls, +Prince Eugen+, who has rendered “the venerable cube” in a large picture, in which one sees Stockholm Castle on a summer evening (page 51). Over the dark waters of _Strömmen_ (‘the stream’) hover a few gulls, descendants of the birds who flew over the town, when Bellman one morning in 1780 described the harbour of Stockholm as follows:

In pulleys and ropes you hear not a creak;
The morn is young, round the masts you spy
High up in the air so breezy and bleak
The sea-gulls soar and fly.

Most of those who have described Stockholm from the artistic side have selected for treatment the harbour and the busy life which centres around it. In contrast to other seaport towns, the large steamers anchor in the very heart of Stockholm. Imposing granite quays run along the shores both of _Saltsjön_ (the sea) and Lake Mälaren, but even if the idyllic charm which characterized the Stockholm of the ’forties and ’fifties, such as it was painted by +G. V. Palm+, has now in a great measure disappeared; and even if we do not now, as then, row about on the Riddarholm Canal and strike up ditties under the arch of the beautiful old Riddarholm bridge, where _Riddarhuset_ (the house of the nobles) mirrors its baroque façade in the canal; yet it may happen that by the clump of trees down by Riddarholm harbour, one may hear the song ‘Captain, set full steam ahead’, struck up by the societies and associations which on Sunday mornings take a trip in one of the many Mälar-boats “out to the country, out to the birds”, doing homage to nature with that somewhat bibulous sentimentality, which in our days is rendered affecting, to a certain extent, by the sanction of antiquity with which it is invested. The part of the harbour called _Strömmen_ has been painted by +Axel Lindman+ in a big picture, full of steamers and sailing-boats, of sunshine and sparkling water. When that picture was painted, August Strindberg, our greatest and most original delineator of Swedish nature (page 50), had given us in his novel “Röda rummet” (The red chamber) and the series of short stories called “Giftas” (Marrying), a new and fresher view of the beauty of Stockholm, and one appreciated more than ever the spring mornings when the vessels, painted red along the water-line, tugged at their hawsers and ropes. +Anders Zorn+ discovered and pointed out the curious rings and lines of the gurgling water, and he has immortalized a summer evening in 1890, from one of the most beautiful points, _Skeppsholmen_. In the foreground one sees some ladies walking on the holm, and the background is taken up by the _Strömmen_, which is perhaps most delightful of all on a June evening, when the scent of lilac from the hedges mingles with the fresh breeze from the running water, and when a few bars played by the orchestra in _Strömparterren_ go to join the murmur of the stream. The harbour in winter-time has been painted by +Oscar Björck+ in a brightly-coloured picture, exultant like a trumpet-note. The snow set off against the black hulls of the boats and with the picturesque silhouette of Skeppsholmen has been painted by +Alfred Wahlberg+, and finally +Per Ekström+ has rendered the majestic lines of the Palace seen through the snowstorm over _Norrström_ (the northstream).

Only on the condition that one is prepared to grant that Stockholm is a very nice place in winter, morning, noon, and evening, and at night, too, can one allow that ‘Stockholm is a summer town’. The elegant, white steam-boats go out over the green water to the country houses in the _skärgård_, crowded with merry people. The Stockholmer considers himself, let us hope rightly, to be far more lively than the man from Härjedalen, and even than the Gothenburg man. The cool sea-air blows in refreshingly not only over the lawns in the park _Kungsträdgården_, when the water sparkles and foams over the shell-shaped edge of the fountain, but also among the narrow alleys leading to the crooked old streets called _Västerlånggatan_ and _Österlånggatan_. The latter has been painted by +Eugen Jansson+ on an early morning in summer, when the sailmakers’ flag-canvas hangs motionless, and the footsteps echo on the pavement, and the old mediæval Stockholm street, which otherwise has for centuries been crowded with loafers of the most fast colour, for a few early morning hours is full of naught but mysticism.

Stockholm is a watery town, even if one often mixes something strong in the water. There is good drinking-water and excellent mineral water, which latter is copiously drunk, not tossed off in American fashion, but leisurely. It is an innocent pleasure with a glass of ‘_vichy-vatten_’ in front of one to look out on the world, or at any rate on _Torget_ (the square i. e. Kungsträdgården), from the bench, which has won literary fame through Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel ‘Doktor Glas’. The excellent bathing-establishments, with both hot and cold baths, invite one to still more revelling in water. +Eugen Jansson+ has in two sunny pictures painted the interior of one of these Stockholm swimming-baths, when the sunburnt bodies give us a strong impression of our national healthiness. The dives are often performed with such skill and agility, that an impression of real beauty is produced. Stockholm has been excellently depicted by +Axel Erdman+. He has painted the street Götgatan, where the peasants come driving in from the country to sell their wares in Kornhamnstorg market-place. +Erdman+ has a sharp eye for the picturesque charm of the old market-women, as, muffled up in their furs, they sit hour after hour at their stalls, serene and placid, till the disappearance of a chicken puts them in a passion, or an urchin who has stolen an apple makes them tremble with moral indignation.

_Staden inom broarna_ (the city within the bridges i. e. the city proper) was once all that there was of Stockholm, and in this part of the town, where now-a-days there is a busier and livelier traffic than elsewhere, we find our oldest and most beautiful buildings. The harbour-life in the present-day Stockholm has been depicted in +Carl Wilhelmson’s+ “Scene from Skeppsbron”, a fresco painting in the post-office. The baroque façades of the 17th century have been painted by +Louis Sparre+, who has also depicted the imposing entrance to the Palace, Lejonbacken (the lion hill) (page 52), with its bronze lions, which as early as the 17th century ornamented the old Stockholm Castle; and in a series of drawings, water-colours, and oil-paintings he has drawn the attention of Stockholmers to the fact that, unless we adopt as firm a tone in defending things of historical and æsthetic value, as we do in things whose value can be more easily estimated in money, there is still much that we may lose.

+Sparre+, +Erdman+, and +Gerda Wallander+ have painted Kornhamnstorg with its stalls and gables. In a large picture in a board-school in Stockholm +Nils Kreuger+ has painted a scene from the harbour of Stockholm on a midsummer eve, seen from “Slussen”, the lock. It is a sunny morning. A fresh breeze is blowing over the water. In the foreground one sees some carts decked with green in honour of the day rumbling over the cobble-stones. There is a festive note in the air.

+Kreuger+ has several times painted the most beautiful bridge in Stockholm and, in fact, in the whole of Sweden, Norrbro, which connects Norrmalm (the North End) with Staden (the City). This imposing structure, which was built during the early years of the 19th century, owes its origin to +Adelcrantz+, the architect who created the most beautiful opera hall in the world (now, alas, pulled down), where Gustaf III fell the victim of Anckarström’s pistol. Norrbro is beautiful at all times in the day, but perhaps most of all on a summer evening, when, as Snoilsky says in his poem on Stockholm, ‘from the swirling waters under the bridge a strange hushed note is heard to go piercingly through the air’, and the electric lamps cast their silvery light over the tops of the trees in _Strömparterren_. No less beautiful is the view afforded a few hours later from the northern part of the bridge, where one sees _Strömmen_, the Palace, Blasieholmen, and Skeppsholmen. Everything is ‘in tone’ in the light summer night, and it makes a mystic impression to see the façades lighted up from a quarter, which the Stockholmer, however often he may come home late at night, or rather early in the morning, is after all not _quite_ so used to. +Reinhold Norstedt+ has represented this subject on a very large picture. The same painter shows how art can cast its enchantment on the more sober façade of a business house. If one takes an outlook from +Boberg’s+ creation, Rosenbad House, which mirrors its yellowish-white walls and its green-glazed roof in the Norrström, and which is one of the most beautiful things which have in recent times been built in Stockholm, one sees on a February afternoon the ice-floes from Lake Mälaren come travelling over _Strömmen_ and sailing under Vasa Bridge. It is the hour which we moderns find so alluring, when it is not yet dark, but the lamps are beginning to be lighted. There are already lights in a couple of windows in the Norstedt printing-house.

People in Stockholm make pretty hard endeavours to enjoy themselves, and no doubt often succeed. Skansen is perhaps the nicest place of entertainment. It is not so easy to say which is the least nice place, but, if we judge by the amount of alcohol consumed, one or other of the public-houses where ‘Bobban’ and ‘Feta Fille’, and other of +Albert Engström’s+ favourites seek happy oblivion after their own fashion, will serve as a counter-poise. The haunts of pleasure have not often been rendered in art. From Skansen, however, we have +Zorn’s+ amusing picture of the _Delsbostintan_ (peasant-girl from Delsbo) telling a story; but from all our Stockholm theatres there is nothing at all, not even from the new Dramatic theatre, which itself, however, has many good works of art both outside and inside. As for the international life of the circus and music-hall artists, +Gösta von Hennings+ has given us some very valuable pictures, but this has little to do with Sweden seen through artist eyes. +Hennings+ has also painted the ‘punch-drinking’ on the Opera terrace, and it is said to be one of the most Swedish things imaginable to sit on this terrace and look out on a beautiful view, one of the most beautiful in the whole world, Stockholm’s ‘ström’, to the accompaniment of a string-band playing our melancholy folk-songs, all the while drinking punch quietly and steadily, and from time to time breaking the silence with a “_Skål i alla fall!_” (your health, anyway).

Although there are not a few old, and a great number of modern, beautiful houses in Stockholm, very few of our now-living artists have rendered _Riddarhuset_ (the house of nobles), _Börsen_ (the Exchange) in Stortorget and the old _Riksbank_ (Bank of Sweden) in Järntorget. There is a good deal of ‘_stämning_’ in +Karl Nordström’s+ drawing “Riddarholmen on a Spring Evening” (page 54). The little holm, which contains so many reminiscences, lies in proud seclusion, with its square silent. Every detail on the old brick walls of the church has a story to tell. Magnus Ladulås once wished to be allowed to sleep the eternal sleep behind the red walls of Riddarholm Church. On the Gustavian mortuary chapel one reads in faded lettering the words dedicated to Gustavus Adolphus: “SVECOS EXALTAVIT. MORIENS TRIVMPHAVIT”, and on the copper roof of the Caroline sepulchral monument the golden crown gleams in the evening sun. Down in the coffin with the lion skin and the club of Hercules lies, with head shot through, king Charles, the young hero, who once with such stubborn resolution set fate and misfortune at defiance.

Many beautiful buildings have been erected in recent times. Among the best are the _General Post-office_, designed by +Ferdinand Boberg+, the building of the _Trygg Insurance Company_, whose massive forms are descried over the tops of the trees in Humlegården Park, designed by +Lallerstedt+, _Nordiska Museet_ designed by +Gustaf Clason+, where the style of the Vasa Period is connected in a beautiful and ingenious manner with the style of our old belfries, _Läkaresällskapets hus_ (the premises of the Society of Physicians), designed by +Carl Westman+, in the old Klara churchyard, where reposes Bellman, the poet who has seen the most beautiful visions of Stockholm, and finally the _Östermalm High School_ by +Ragnar Östberg+, the most monumental school-building in our country, rich in good art both inside and outside. These buildings still lack, perhaps, the patina of time which painters deem they need before they can depict them; but the most commonplace blocks of modern houses, tenement-buildings, and straight half-finished streets have furnished motives for the art of +Karl Nordström+, +Aron Gerle+, and +Eugen Jansson+. These artists put something passionate into their colouring, they breathe a modern spirit of beautiful defiance into their pictures of these parts of the town which seem hopelessly dreary to the layman, and teach us that they too have their beauty. Many Stockholmers, artists and men of letters perhaps as much as any, live outside the town. They look out over the waters of Stora Värtan from Djursholm (page 53), of Lilla Värtan from Lidingö island, and of the inlet to Stockholm from the park Djurgården. It is in Djurgården that +Prince Eugen+ has his residence, adorned with the best things that modern Swedish art has created. Here the artist-prince paints this natural park, its oaks, meadows, and bays, at all times of the day and the year. Perhaps one might say that he has the very best historical, cultural, and above all artistic, qualifications for seeing Stockholm with artist eyes, when from Valdemarsudde (Valdemar’s point) he gazes at the town raised above the surface of the water.

The Stockholm painter who in his pictures has caught the most subtle essence of the city’s character, an artist who in his glorious symphonic picture-poems has shown himself to be a real innovator in landscape painting, one of the very foremost delineators of nature now living, is +Eugen Jansson+. He looks mostly out over Stockholm from the heights of Söder (the South), and perhaps he has rendered the city most beautifully and most monumentally in the masterpiece in Carl Robert Lamm’s collection, where the afternoon sun pours its golden rays over Riddarfjärden, Kungsholmen, and the red factories in Söder. In +Eugen Jansson’s+ landscape-art we find many of the most Swedish characteristics, melancholy, yearning, love of gaudy colours, a touch of lyric and musical feeling, something at once soft, defiant, and world-embracing. Just as one of Bellman’s drinking companions in his death-hour sings,

“Bright starry firmament, vault around me now”,

so does one of +Eugen Jansson’s+ pictures arouse in us a feeling of the temporal seen _sub specie aeternitatis_. He has made many pictures of the view from his windows high up on the hilly ground in the South (page 57). Most of them are in Ernst Thiel’s rich collection. Now he shows us an afternoon in winter, when the boats have opened up a channel in the ice of the bays and the last rays of the sun gleam on the windows of the Palace: now he carries us to steep, lonely, streets with wooden steps, mysteriously lighted by the gas-lamps; now we gaze as in a dream upon the water gleaming in the darkness, lighted up by the gaslight and the electric lamps, which border the quays like so many gleaming bluish-green jewels.

If one goes on a summer night out into the streets, or into one of the small plots of garden which are still to be found on the hilly ground to the South of Stockholm, one has beneath one the arm of Lake Mälaren and almost the whole city dreaming in the light night. The houses and spires of Riddarholmen stand out against the sky, which is ever growing lighter. Stockholm is sleeping, the noises have died down, the workmen have left their clattering steam-winches and iron bars, the sailors are sleeping in their fo’c’sles, the bands in Kungsträdgården and Strömparterren have long since ceased playing. Then is heard from the tower of Riddarholm Church, where Fredman once with trembling hands mended the clock-works, the clock striking the hour with a sound which rings over the water and the town. One thinks of the great who sleep in the church vaults, of those who have fought and suffered, and sometimes given their lives, for Sweden. The sound is carried over the whole sleeping city, which has now for hundreds of years been the centre and greatest treasure of the country. One remembers all those who have thought, written, and worked down there in the town, and one’s thoughts go out over the country to the scented haycocks of Sörmland, to Norrland where the pale light of the midnight sun shines over the ore mountains and the summer huts of the Lapps, to the beech-woods in Skåne, to all our vast country lying there in the summer night, to the people in the red cottages, to those who have toiled in the stony ground. One thinks also with gratitude of those who in song and art have shown us the beauty and the value of what we have owned, still own, and still wish our descendants to preserve, and in our hearts wells up the conviction, at once earnest and joyful: I love Sweden.

PICTURES.

GUSTAF ANKARCRONA (b. 1869)
The Sleigh-bells tingle on the Up-drive 34

RICHARD BERGH (b. 1858)
Summer Evening. Scene from Lidingön 15
August Strindberg (black and white) 50

OSCAR BJÖRCK (b. 1860)
Vadstena Castle 33
Verner von Heidenstam in his Home at Djursholm 53

ALBERT ENGSTRÖM (b. 1869)
Sea-bear. Drawing (black and white) 12
Old Peasant Women. Drawing (black and white) 24
Lapp. Drawing (black and white) 45

PRINCE EUGEN (b. 1865)
Entering the Harbour 11
Stockholm Castle 51

GUSTAF FJÆSTAD (b. 1868)
Is the Spring never coming? (In the possession of the sculptor
Christian Eriksson.) See the cover.

GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM (b. 1875)
A man binding on Skis. Drawing (black and white) 22
Lucia treats to coffee on the 13th December (black and white) 31
Tug of War (black and white) 32

OTTO HESSELBOM (b. 1848)
Our Country 9

EUGEN JANSSON (b. 1862)
Riddarfjärden on a Summer Night 57

NILS KREUGER (b. 1858)
The Alfvaren in Öland 47

CARL LARSSON (b. 1853)
My Family 16
Fishing for Cray-fish. Water-colour 19
A Viking Expedition. Water-colour (black and white) 35
Interior of a Cottage at Rättvik. Water-colour (black and white) 36

BRUNO LILJEFORS (b. 1860)
Sunrise 13
Huntsman on the Alert 29
Elks. Drawing (black and white) 42

KARL NORDSTRÖM (b. 1855)
Easter Bonfires 23
Riddarholm Church on a Spring Evening. Drawing 54

ERNST NORLIND
Farm in Skåne. Lithography (black and white) 17

REINHOLD NORSTEDT (b. 1843)
Birches, “Hage”, in Sörmland 26

EDVARD ROSENBERG (b. 1858)
March Eve 30

LOUIS SPARRE (b. 1863)
Lejonbacken at Stockholm Castle (black and white) 52

EMERICK STENBERG (b. 1873)
Björs-Mia 39