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diff --git a/78746-0.txt b/78746-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de05268 --- /dev/null +++ b/78746-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1884 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78746 *** + + + + + 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 + A. BÖRTZELL’S PRINTING CO., LTD. + STOCKHOLM + + PRINTED ON PAPER + FROM + J. H. MUNKTELL’S PAPER MILL + GRYCKSBO + + ———— + + _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._ + + + + + [Illustration: OUR COUNTRY + +Painting by OTTO HESSELBOM+ + +NATIONAL MUSEUM+] + + 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. + + * * * * * + + [Illustration: ENTERING THE HARBOUR + +Painting by PRINCE EUGEN+] + +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). + + [Illustration: SEA-BEAR + +Drawing by A. ENGSTRÖM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: SUNRISE + +Painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS+ + +THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: SUMMER EVENING + +Scene from Lidingön+ + +Painted by RICHARD BERGH+ + +IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+] + +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? + + [Illustration: MY FAMILY + +Mrs. Karin Larsson and her children at Sundborn+ + +Painting by CARL LARSSON+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. THORSTEN LAURIN. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: FARM IN SKÅNE + +Engraving by ERNST NORLIND+] + +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. + + [Illustration: FISHING FOR CRAY-FISH + +Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+ + +IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: OUT IN THE OPEN + +Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+ + +IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: A MAN BINDING ON HIS SKIS + +Drawing by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+] + +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). + + [Illustration: EASTER BONFIRES + +Oil painting by KARL NORDSTRÖM+ + +IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: OLD PEASANT WOMEN + +Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: CHURCH-GOERS IN BOATS + +Picture from Bohuslän+ + +Oil painting by CARL WILHELMSON+ + +IN THE ARTIST’S HOME+] + ++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. + + [Illustration: BIRCHES, “HAGE”, IN SÖRMLAND + +Painting by REINHOLD NORSTEDT+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. H. WALDENSTRÖM. 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. + + * * * * * + +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. + + [Illustration: HUNTSMAN ON THE ALERT + +Oil painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: MARCH EVE + +Painting by EDVARD ROSENBERG+ + +IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+] + + [Illustration: LUCIA + +Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+] + +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. + + * * * * * + +“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. + + [Illustration: TUG OF WAR + +Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+ + +IN MARIA BOARD-SCHOOL. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: VADSTENA CASTLE + +Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK+ + +IN REALLÄROVERKET. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: THE SLEIGH-BELLS TINGLE ON THE UP-DRIVE + +Painting by GUSTAF ANKARCRONA+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF F. BÜNSOW ESQ. STOCKHOLM+] + ++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. + + [Illustration: A VIKING EXPEDITION. +The artist’s children+ + +Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+] + ++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. + + [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A COTTAGE AT RÄTTVIK + +Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM+] + + * * * * * + + [Illustration: LABOURERS + +Painting by CARL WILHELMSON+ + +IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: BJÖRS-MIA. + +Painting by EMERICK STENBERG+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF MRS. ANNA LEVIN. STOCKHOLM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: MID-SUMMER DANCE + +Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+ + +IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: ELKS + +Drawing by BRUNO LILJEFORS+] + +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. + + [Illustration: KINGS KARIN + +Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA+] + +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. + + [Illustration: MINERS ON THE ORE MOUNTAIN AT KIRUNA + +Painting by CARL WILHELMSON+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA+] + +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+. + + [Illustration: LAPP + +Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM+] + +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). + + * * * * * + +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. + + [Illustration: THE ALFVAREN IN ÖLAND + +Oil painting by NILS KREUGER+ + +AT THE ARTIST’S+] + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + + * * * * * + + [Illustration: AUGUST STRINDBERG + +Painting by RICHARD BERGH+ + +IN THE POSSESSION OF THE PUBLISHER K. O. BONNIER+] + +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+. + + [Illustration: STOCKHOLM CASTLE + +Painting by PRINCE EUGEN+ + +IN THE CLUB-ROOM OF THE STOCKHOLM ‘NATION’, AT UPPSALA+] + +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). + + * * * * * + + [Illustration: LEJONBACKEN + +Painting by LOUIS SPARRE+] + +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. + + [Illustration: +VERNER von HEIDENSTAM IN HIS HOME AT DJURSHOLM+ + +Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK+ + +IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+] + +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. + + [Illustration: RIDDARHOLM CHURCH ON A SPRING EVENING + +Drawing by KARL NORDSTRÖM+] + +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). + + [Illustration: RIDDARFJARDEN ON A SUMMER NIGHT + +Oil painting by EUGEN JANSSON+ + +IN THORSTEN LAURIN’S COLLECTION. STOCKHOLM+] + +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 + + CARL WILHELMSON (b. 1866) + Church-goers in Boats. Picture from Bohuslän 25 + Labourers 37 + Miners on the Mountain at Kiruna 44 + + ANDERS ZORN (b. 1860) + Out in the open 20 + Mid-summer Dance 40 + Kings-Karin 43 + + + + +Transcriber’s Notes + + + In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate + _Italics_, +Mixed-Case Smallcaps+, and (in illustration captions) + +ALL SMALLCAPS+. Formatting for superscript and underscore have been + omitted. + Illustrations have been moved from within to between paragraphs as + needed. + Minor typographical and spelling errors have been corrected. + High/low quotes and guillemets have been changed to quotation marks. + Artists’ names have been put in +Smallcaps+ as needed. + Other inconsistencies (formatting, capitalization and hyphenation) + have been retained. +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78746 *** |