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diff --git a/78746-h/78746-h.htm b/78746-h/78746-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f30fc0a --- /dev/null +++ b/78746-h/78746-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2315 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no"> + <title> + Sweden; through the artist's eye | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding-right: 1em; } + +.tdl {text-align: left; padding-top: 10px;} +.tdli {text-align: left; text-indent: 1em;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} +.tdc {text-align: center;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; margin-right: 0; text-align: right;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} +/* comment out next line and uncomment the following one for floating figleft on ebookmaker output */ +/* .x-ebookmaker .figleft {float: none; text-align: center; margin-right: 0;} */ +.x-ebookmaker .figleft {float: left;} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} +/* comment out next line and uncomment the following one for floating figright on ebookmaker output */ +/* .x-ebookmaker .figright {float: none; text-align: center; margin-left: 0;} */ +.x-ebookmaker .figright {float: right;} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +/*.poetry-container {text-align: center;} */ +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + + +/* Transcriber's notes (includes pagebreak before) */ +.transnote {background-color: #EAFEEA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; + page-break-before: always; +} + +/* TOC */ +.toc-container { + display: flex; + justify-content: center; +} + +/* faux-h2 for front matter */ +.front { + font-size: x-large; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center; + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +/* faux-h3 centered */ +.fh3 { + display: block; + font-size: 1.17em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-left: 0; + margin-right: 0; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center; + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +/* illustrations */ +.illowp40 {width: 40%; max-width: 20em;} +.illowp50 {width: 50%; max-width: 25em;} +.illowp65 {width: 65%; max-width: 32em;} /* portrait image */ +.illowp80 {width: 80%; max-width: 40em;} +.illowp100 {width: 100%; max-width: 50em;} /* landscape image */ + + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} + + </style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78746 ***</div> + + +<div class="chapter"> + <p class="front">SWEDEN</p></div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<h1>SWEDEN</h1> +</div> + +<p class="front">THROUGH THE ARTIST’S EYE</p> + +<p class="fh3"><span class="smcap">by CARL G. LAURIN</span></p> + +<br><br> +<p class="center">STOCKHOLM, P. A. NORSTEDT & SÖNER</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"></div> +<p class="center">PRINTED AT<br> +<i>CENTRALTRYCKERIET</i><br> +STOCKHOLM 1911</p> +<br> + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<td class="tdc">THE COLOUR AND AUTOTYPE PLATES</td> +<td class="tdc">PRINTED ON PAPER</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdc">HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED BY</td> +<td class="tdc">FROM</td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdc">A. BÖRTZELL’S PRINTING CO., LTD.</td> +<td class="tdc">J. H. MUNKTELL’S PAPER MILL</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdc">STOCKHOLM</td> +<td class="tdc">GRYCKSBO</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p class="center">————</p> + +<p class="center"><i>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.</i><br> +<i>Copyright 1911 by P. A. Norstedt & Söner, Stockholm</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"></div> +<blockquote> +<p><i>Englished by <span class="smcap">Mr Grenville Grove</span>.</i></p> + +<p><i><span class="smcap">Mr Grenville Grove’s</span> translation of <span class="smcap">Mr Carl +Laurin’s</span> text has been edited, the Swedish form and +spelling of Swedish geographical names carried through +and the verses rendered metrically by <span class="smcap">Dr Henry +Buergel Goodwin</span>. A French and a German translation +will be published simultaneously.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"></div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i007.jpg" id="i007" alt="OUR COUNTRY"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">OUR COUNTRY</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by OTTO HESSELBOM</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">NATIONAL MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<br><br> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Fall, Christmas snow, and blow, ye North and West,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’er fen and moor your deepest, richest sound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Burn, star of the East, in the June night blest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweden, our mother, be our strife, our rest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Land, to our sons be thou our dear bequest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth, where our fathers sleep in sacred ground.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson’s</span> 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.</p> + +<p>In Sweden we are now passing through a period of reaction, firstly from +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i009.jpg" id="i009" alt="ENTERING THE HARBOUR"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">ENTERING THE HARBOUR</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by PRINCE EUGEN</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 (<a href="#i010">page 12</a>).</p> + +<figure class="figleft illowp40"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i010.jpg" id="i010" alt="SEA-BEAR"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">SEA-BEAR</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by A. ENGSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>It is <span class="smcap">Carl Wilhelmson</span> and <span class="smcap">Albert Engström</span> 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 <i lang="sv">skärgård</i>, 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 <i lang="sv">Koster</i>-boats, broad and cock-sure like the skippers themselves, in +Blekinge in punts called <i lang="sv">Blekingsekor</i>, along the coast of Norrland in the kind of +boats called <i lang="sv">skötbåtar</i>; in the neighbourhood of Stockholm the “Rospiggar”, as the +inhabitants of Roslagen (the North part of Uppland facing the sea) are called, trade +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>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 (<a href="#i020">page 22</a>), 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 <span class="smcap">Axel +Sjöberg</span> and <span class="smcap">Richard Lindström</span> who have perhaps best depicted the <i lang="sv">skärgård</i> +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 <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span> to show what a +glorious time the children have in the country “in lovely summer when +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span> “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. <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span> +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 (<a href="#i017">page 19</a>). Their elders, on the other +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Acke</span>, representing naked male bodies standing out against +the breezy dark-blue sea, and <span class="smcap">Zorn’s</span> picture “Out in the Open” (<a href="#i018">page 20</a>), which +is so highly esteemed in Sweden, are no doubt the best specimens of this kind +of art. In the latter picture, one of <span class="smcap">Zorn’s</span> 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i011.jpg" id="i011" alt="SUNRISE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">SUNRISE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>The <i lang="sv">skärgård</i> right away from the outermost skerries where <span class="smcap">Axel Sjöberg’s</span> +gulls dream under the starry heavens, and where <span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span> eiders in the light +of the morning sun creep down into the water from the outermost rock (<a href="#i011">page 13</a>), +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 <span class="smcap">Albert Engström’s</span> drawings. Other artists +have painted the bays and inlets nearer Stockholm, with their leafy banks. The +spirit of summer is wonderfully well expressed in <span class="smcap">Richard Bergh’s</span> great picture +“Summer Evening” (<a href="#i013">page 15</a>) 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i013.jpg" id="i013" alt="SUMMER EVENING"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">SUMMER EVENING</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painted by RICHARD BERGH</span></div><br> +<div style="float: left"><span class="smcap">Scene from Lidingön</span></div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>The Stockholmers look upon the <i lang="sv">skärgård</i> 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>touching things, all the grandeur which we see who have been familiar with +the <i lang="sv">skärgård</i> 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 <span class="smcap">Carl +Larsson’s</span> illustrations to them, by Strindberg’s stories and novels, and by +<span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span>, <span class="smcap">Axel Sjöberg’s</span> and <span class="smcap">Richard Lindström’s</span> paintings?</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i014.jpg" id="i014" alt="MY FAMILY"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">MY FAMILY</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by CARL LARSSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Karin Larsson and her children at Sundborn</span></div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. THORSTEN LAURIN. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>The <i lang="sv">skärgård</i> 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. <span class="smcap">Karl +Nordström</span>, 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. <span class="smcap">Nordström’s</span> +art is of a piece with the nature mysticism of our remotest ancestors, +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a><a id="Page_17"></a>[Pg 17]</span>and when we see his picture “Easter Bonfires” in Thiel’s Gallery (<a href="#i021">page 23</a>), 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 <span class="smcap">Karl Nordström</span> and +<span class="smcap">Carl Wilhelmson</span> 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.</p> + +<figure class="figright illowp50"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i015.jpg" id="i015" alt="FARM IN SKÅNE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">FARM IN SKÅNE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Engraving by ERNST NORLIND</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>In looking at <span class="smcap">Wilhelmson’s</span> +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. <span class="smcap">Wilhelmson</span> +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 (<a href="#i023">page 25</a>).</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Nils Kreuger</span> an admirer and delineator of high rank.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i017.jpg" id="i017" alt="FISHING FOR CRAY-FISH"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">FISHING FOR CRAY-FISH</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Water-colour by CARL LARSSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 <i lang="fr">milieu</i>, 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 <span class="smcap">Georg v. Rosen</span>, +<span class="smcap">Anders Zorn</span> and <span class="smcap">Oscar Björck</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Gustaf Rydberg</span>, and quite recently <span class="smcap">Ernst Norlind</span> and +<span class="smcap">Axel Kulle</span>, have shown us the white farmhouses (<a href="#i015">page 17</a>), 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 <i lang="fr">embonpoint</i> 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 <span class="smcap">Hugo Salmson’s</span> pictures; scenes from melancholy avenues +of pollard willows, from expanses of green fields with decorative groups of +trees, standing like sacred groves on the <i lang="sv">åsar</i> (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 <span class="smcap">Nils Kreuger</span> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>or a <span class="smcap">Karl Nordström</span> 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 <i lang="sv">brännvin</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>their broad burring dialect has a natural self-reliance, which would not be +amiss for the other inhabitants of the realm.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i018.jpg" id="i018" alt="OUT IN THE OPEN"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">OUT IN THE OPEN</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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. <span class="smcap">Richard Bergh</span> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>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.</p> + +<p>If one wants to understand Småland properly, one ought to read <span class="smcap">Albert +Engström’s</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Herman Norrman</span>. 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 <i lang="sv">Ledum</i>, 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 <span class="smcap">Norrman’s</span> landscapes, +where both heaven and forest are ablaze with red. In gazing at these pictures +of <span class="smcap">Norrman</span>, the heart is filled with a kind of half-defiant bliss.</p> + +<p>Along the coast of Kalmar Sound the fields are covered with rippling +corn. Far in the north lies the beautiful Tjust and its <i lang="sv">skärgård</i>, which has +been painted by <span class="smcap">Gottfrid Kallstenius</span>. 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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gustaf Ankarcrona</span> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>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 (<a href="#i032">page 34</a>).</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Karl Nordström</span>. 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp80"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i020.jpg" id="i020" alt="A MAN BINDING ON HIS SKIS"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">A MAN BINDING ON HIS SKIS</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 17<sup>th</sup> 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 16<sup>th</sup>‑century castle of Vadstena, whose +massive masonry and historic walls have fallen to <span class="smcap">Oscar Björck’s</span> brush (<a href="#i031">page 33</a>).</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i021.jpg" id="i021" alt="EASTER BONFIRES"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">EASTER BONFIRES</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by KARL NORDSTRÖM</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Alfred Wahlberg</span> +painted the magnificent landscape in the romantic style of the Düsseldorf school.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Gunnar Hallström</span>. Although he has +only painted the land and people as they are now, he has painted it in such a way +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Hallström</span> 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 “<i lang="sv">hagar</i>” (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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<figure class="figleft illowp40"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i022.jpg" id="i022" alt="OLD PEASANT WOMEN"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">OLD PEASANT WOMEN</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>pastures and “<i lang="sv">hagar</i>”, 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 <span class="smcap">Edvard Bergh</span> painted, nay, I may say, discovered, +the beauty of the <i lang="sv">hage</i>. In the eighties Strindberg described the +<i lang="sv">hage</i>, that cross between a meadow and a wood, as something distinctively +Swedish. The soil of the <i lang="sv">hage</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>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 <i lang="sv">hage</i>, +fiery-red flybane gleam +in the wet grass.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i023.jpg" id="i023" alt="CHURCH-GOERS IN BOATS"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">CHURCH-GOERS IN BOATS</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by CARL WILHELMSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: left"><span class="smcap">Picture from Bohuslän</span></div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE ARTIST’S HOME</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p><span class="smcap">Reinhold Norstedt</span> +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 <i lang="sv">hagar</i> studded with +birches now wild, now +more parklike, as in +the great picture in the +Dramatic Theatre at +Stockholm.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp65"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i024.jpg" id="i024" alt="BIRCHES"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">BIRCHES, “HAGE”,</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by REINHOLD NORSTEDT</span></div><br> +<div style="float: left">IN SÖRMLAND</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. H. WALDENSTRÖM. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>A gentle melancholy +tone of peace and happiness, +a touch of pensive +dreaminess, which +is one side of our national +character, pervades +<span class="smcap">Norstedt’s</span> 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 +<span class="smcap">Eugen</span>. There is a touch of lyric feeling in the Swedish temperament, a desire +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Eugen</span> 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 +<span class="smcap">Eugen</span>, 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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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. <span class="smcap">Bruno Liljefors</span> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>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 <span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span> +“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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp65"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i027.jpg" id="i027" alt="HUNTSMAN ON THE ALERT"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">HUNTSMAN ON THE ALERT</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 <i>linnéa</i>, 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 (<a href="#i040">page 42</a>), 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 <span class="smcap">Liljefors</span>: +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 <span class="smcap">Liljefors</span> from the artistic aspect, and a few visits to +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a><a id="Page_30"></a>[Pg 30]</span>Thiel’s Gallery, where the largest and best collection of <span class="smcap">Liljefors’</span> 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i028.jpg" id="i028" alt="MARCH EVE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">MARCH EVE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by EDVARD ROSENBERG</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<figure class="figright illowp50"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i029.jpg" id="i029" alt="LUCIA"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">LUCIA</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>From south Uppland and Öråker <i lang="sv">herrgård</i> (manor) <span class="smcap">Georg Pauli</span> 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. <span class="smcap">Georg +Pauli</span> 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>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 “<i lang="sv">stämning</i>”, 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 <i lang="sv">hagar</i> +and amid glittering lakes. A great work of art, with a ring of steel about it, +which is also characteristically Swedish, is <span class="smcap">Edvard Rosenberg’s</span> “March Eve” +(<a href="#i028">page 30</a>). 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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i030.jpg" id="i030" alt="TUG OF WAR"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">TUG OF WAR</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN MARIA BOARD-SCHOOL. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>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 13<sup>th</sup> 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. <span class="smcap">Gunnar Hallström</span> +has drawn this beautiful symbolical custom (<a href="#i029">page 31</a>), 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i031.jpg" id="i031" alt="VADSTENA CASTLE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">VADSTENA CASTLE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN REALLÄROVERKET. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>Our greatest lyric poet since Bellman, Gustav Fröding, is also a Värmland +man. He writes about his forests and <i lang="sv">hagar</i>, 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 <i lang="sv">hagar</i> and sought for raspberries in the pile of stones. “Yon copse +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i032.jpg" id="i032" alt="THE SLEIGH-BELLS TINGLE ON THE UP-DRIVE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">THE SLEIGH-BELLS TINGLE ON THE UP-DRIVE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by GUSTAF ANKARCRONA</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF F. BÜNSOW ESQ. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p><span class="smcap">Carl Wilhelmson</span> has painted Värmland peasants in his picture “Labourers” +(<a href="#i035">page 37</a>) 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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i033.jpg" id="i033" alt="A VIKING EXPEDITION"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">A VIKING EXPEDITION. <span class="smcap">The artist’s children</span></div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Water-colour by CARL LARSSON</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fjæstad</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Björn +Algrensson</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Georg Pauli</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Otto Hesselbom</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Hesselbom</span> +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” (<a href="#i007">page 9</a>), +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>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. “<i lang="sv">Bergslagen</i>” 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i034.jpg" id="i034" alt="INTERIOR OF A COTTAGE AT RÄTTVIK"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">INTERIOR OF A COTTAGE AT RÄTTVIK</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Water-colour by CARL LARSSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i035.jpg" id="i035" alt="LABOURERS"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">LABOURERS</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by CARL WILHELMSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>Up along the river Dalälfven and its glens till its two sources, penetrated +thousands of years ago the forefathers of the <i>Dalkarlar</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>part which the <i>Dalkarlar</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>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 (<a href="#i034">page 36</a>). 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 <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span>. 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. <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span> +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 (<a href="#i033">page 35</a>). There is a rich variety in the different costumes of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>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 <i lang="sv">masar</i> (Dalecarlian +men) in long +black coats, the married +women in white +and the <i lang="sv">kullor</i> (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.</p> + +<figure class="figright illowp65"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i037.jpg" id="i037" alt="BJÖRS-MIA"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">BJÖRS-MIA.</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by EMERICK STENBERG</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF MRS. ANNA LEVIN. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Emerik Stenberg</span>, 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. <span class="smcap">Stenberg’s</span> “Björs-Mia” which represents a <i lang="sv">Leksandskulla</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a><a id="Page_41"></a>[Pg 41]</span>ease is particularly effective.—Rättvik, which is also situated on Lake +Siljan, has not been depicted by any really eminent artists, though <span class="smcap">Zorn</span> +has sometimes taken <i>Rättvikskullor</i> (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, <span class="smcap">Anders Zorn</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Anders Zorn</span>. Like his friend the poet Karlfeldt, who is also +a <i lang="sv">Dalkarl</i>, 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” (<a href="#i041">page 43</a>) 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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp65"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i038.jpg" id="i038" alt="MID-SUMMER DANCE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">MID-SUMMER DANCE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>No painter has ever been able to render the peasant nature in all its fulness +and strength, like <span class="smcap">Zorn</span>. 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. <span class="smcap">Zorn</span> 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, +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a><a id="Page_43"></a>[Pg 43]</span>the inventor of the de Laval Separator, and L. M. Ericsson, the great telephone-constructor.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp65"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i040.jpg" id="i040" alt="ELKS"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">ELKS</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by BRUNO LILJEFORS</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>Once in a while <span class="smcap">Zorn</span> 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.</p> + +<figure class="figright illowp50"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i041.jpg" id="i041" alt="KINGS KARIN"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">KINGS KARIN</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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’. +<span class="smcap">Anselm Schultzberg</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Arborelius</span>. In <span class="smcap">Schultzberg’s</span> +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 17<sup>th</sup> and 18<sup>th</sup> century were most prevalent. The old hags were burnt at +the stake, and the victims, who were themselves blinded by the dark superstition +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i042.jpg" id="i042" alt="MINERS ON THE ORE MOUNTAIN AT KIRUNA"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">MINERS ON THE ORE MOUNTAIN AT KIRUNA</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by CARL WILHELMSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Aron Gerle</span>.</p> + +<figure class="figright illowp40"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i043.jpg" id="i043" alt="LAPP"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">LAPP</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Zorn</span> 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’ (<i lang="sv">Vase</i>) with greatness and glory, as the poet sings:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The sheaf of pallid grains no longer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which once in Uppland stood on ploughed ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It ranketh now with fleur-de-lys and eagle,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The wide world over honoured and renowned.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>and singing in the open air, this is the real spirit in which to celebrate midsummer. +<span class="smcap">Zorn</span> 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 (<a href="#i038">page 40</a>).</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 17<sup>th</sup> century, and <span class="smcap">Ludvig Nordström</span> +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.</p> + +<p>The scenery of Gästrikland, which corresponds to that of Dalarne, and, +strictly speaking, does not belong to Norrland, has been described by <span class="smcap">Erik +Hedberg</span>. He seizes hold of the beauties which for an understanding mind +may lie in mean things.</p> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Anton Genberg</span> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>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.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i045.jpg" id="i045" alt="THE ALFVAREN IN ÖLAND"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">THE ALFVAREN IN ÖLAND</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by NILS KREUGER</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">AT THE ARTIST’S</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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. <span class="smcap">Carl +Johansson</span> 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.</p> + +<p>For thousands of years the forest has been left to grow and rot uncared +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>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. “<i lang="de">Mir nichts und dir nichts, +so haben wir alle beide nichts</i>” (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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Höckert’s</span>, <span class="smcap">P. D. Holm’s</span> and <span class="smcap">J. Tirén’s</span> pictures. As to <span class="smcap">Höckert</span>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>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. <span class="smcap">Carl Wilhelmson</span> has on a large canvas +represented the blasting of the ore in the open air (<a href="#i042">page 44</a>). 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. <span class="smcap">Karl Nordström</span> 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. <span class="smcap">Prince Eugen</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Albert Engström</span>, whose +temperament is in a quite extraordinary degree attuned to the spirit of the +wilderness and the inner life of a primitive people.</p> + +<p>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 (<i>Aurora borealis</i>) in his <i lang="sv">pulka</i>, 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 <span class="smcap">Albert Engström’s</span> words:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Rise, curfew, up to the sun, to the North-Light’s circles wide,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rouse sleeping fields, wake slumbering moor and heath,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And bless the fields whose fertile soil doth bide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The ploughman’s toil, and grant them peace hereafter.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p> + +<figure class="figleft illowp50"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i048.jpg" id="i048" alt="AUGUST STRINDBERG"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">AUGUST STRINDBERG</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by RICHARD BERGH</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE POSSESSION OF THE PUBLISHER K. O. BONNIER</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Axel Herman Hägg</span> and <span class="smcap">Robert Haglund</span> 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.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Hanna Pauli</span>, and more particularly <span class="smcap">Richard Bergh</span>, have painted the town +wall of Visby, one of the most remarkable historic relics in the whole of Scandinavia.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>writer, who in 1741 undertook his celebrated journey to Öland. The Ölander, +<span class="smcap">Per Ekström</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Eugen</span>.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i049.jpg" id="i049" alt="STOCKHOLM CASTLE"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">STOCKHOLM CASTLE</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by PRINCE EUGEN</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE CLUB-ROOM OF THE STOCKHOLM ‘NATION’, AT UPPSALA</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>But <i>the</i> painter of Öland is <span class="smcap">Nils Kreuger</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Kreuger’s</span> +paintings (<a href="#i045">page 47</a>).</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p> + +<figure class="figleft illowp40"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i050.jpg" id="i050" alt="LEJONBACKEN"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">LEJONBACKEN</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by LOUIS SPARRE</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Reinhold Norstedt</span> and <span class="smcap">Axel Erdman</span>. On the main canal stands +the Gothenburg Museum, accommodated in a house in which in the 18<sup>th</sup> 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 <span class="smcap">O. Holmström</span>.</p> + +<p>Some little distance above Gothenburg, and +like it on the river Göta älf, lies Kungälf, in the +shadow of the Bohuslän hills, painted by <span class="smcap">Hanna +Pauli</span> in what is perhaps the most beautiful +picture representing a Swedish country-town.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>towns, has the somewhat unusual advantage of “being in the country”. <span class="smcap">Alfred +Bergström</span> and <span class="smcap">Lennart Nyblom</span> have painted the Grenna district. In Vadstena, +whose ancient castle has been painted by <span class="smcap">Oscar Björck</span> (<a href="#i031">page 33</a>), there +are still preserved some relics of the Middle Ages. Blåkyrkan (the Blue Church) +built by S<sup><span class="u">t</span></sup> Birgitta (Bridget) in bluish limestone after the directions of Christ +himself, carries the thoughts to the cloister founded by S<sup><span class="u">t</span></sup> Birgitta and reminds +one of that Swedish woman of the 14<sup>th</sup> century, with her powerful personality, +who with Teutonic frankness was not afraid to speak her mind even to the Pope.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i051.jpg" id="i051" alt="VERNER von HEIDENSTAM"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">VERNER von HEIDENSTAM IN HIS HOME AT DJURSHOLM</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 +12<sup>th</sup> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>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.</p> + +<figure class="figleft illowp50"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i052.jpg" id="i052" alt="RIDDARHOLM CHURCH ON A SPRING EVENING"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">RIDDARHOLM CHURCH ON A SPRING EVENING</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Drawing by KARL NORDSTRÖM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>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. <span class="smcap">Hesselbom</span> has +painted the old town of +Strängnäs, and its red cathedral +towers, round which +the daws flutter.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i lang="sv">Valborgsmässoafton</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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, <span class="smcap">Carl Larsson</span>, Oscar Levertin, +Hjalmar Söderberg, <span class="smcap">Prince Eugen</span>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, <span class="smcap">Prince Eugen</span>, who has rendered +“the venerable cube” in a large picture, in which one sees Stockholm Castle on +a summer evening (<a href="#i049">page 51</a>). Over the dark waters of <i lang="sv">Strömmen</i> (‘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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">In pulleys and ropes you hear not a creak;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The morn is young, round the masts you spy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">High up in the air so breezy and bleak</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sea-gulls soar and fly.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>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 +<i lang="sv">Saltsjön</i> (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 <span class="smcap">G. V. Palm</span>, 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 <i lang="sv">Riddarhuset</i> (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 <i lang="sv">Strömmen</i> has been painted by <span class="smcap">Axel Lindman</span> 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 (<a href="#i048">page 50</a>), 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. <span class="smcap">Anders Zorn</span> 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, <i lang="sv">Skeppsholmen</i>. In the foreground one sees some ladies walking +on the holm, and the background is taken up by the <i lang="sv">Strömmen</i>, 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 <i lang="sv">Strömparterren</i> go to join the murmur +of the stream. The harbour in winter-time has been painted by <span class="smcap">Oscar Björck</span> +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 <span class="smcap">Alfred Wahlberg</span>, and finally <span class="smcap">Per Ekström</span> +has rendered the majestic lines of the Palace seen through the snowstorm +over <i lang="sv">Norrström</i> (the northstream).</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i055.jpg" id="i055" alt="RIDDARFJARDEN ON A SUMMER NIGHT"> + <figcaption> +<div style="float: left">RIDDARFJARDEN ON A SUMMER NIGHT</div> +<div style="float: right"><span class="smcap">Oil painting by EUGEN JANSSON</span></div><br> +<div style="float: right"><span class="allsmcap">IN THORSTEN LAURIN’S COLLECTION. STOCKHOLM</span></div> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>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 <i lang="sv">skärgård</i>, crowded +with merry people. The Stockholmer considers himself, let us hope rightly, to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>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 <i lang="sv">Kungsträdgården</i>, when the water sparkles and foams over the shell-shaped +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>edge of the fountain, but also among the narrow alleys leading to the crooked +old streets called <i lang="sv">Västerlånggatan</i> and <i lang="sv">Österlånggatan</i>. The latter has been +painted by <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 ‘<i lang="sv">vichy-vatten</i>’ in front of one to look +out on the world, or at any rate on <i lang="sv">Torget</i> (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. <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Axel +Erdman</span>. He has painted the street Götgatan, where the peasants come driving +in from the country to sell their wares in Kornhamnstorg market-place. <span class="smcap">Erdman</span> +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.</p> + +<p><i lang="sv">Staden inom broarna</i> (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 <span class="smcap">Carl Wilhelmson’s</span> “Scene from Skeppsbron”, a fresco +painting in the post-office. The baroque façades of the 17<sup>th</sup> century have +been painted by <span class="smcap">Louis Sparre</span>, who has also depicted the imposing entrance to +the Palace, Lejonbacken (the lion hill) (<a href="#i050">page 52</a>), with its bronze lions, which +as early as the 17<sup>th</sup> 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.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sparre</span>, <span class="smcap">Erdman</span>, and <span class="smcap">Gerda Wallander</span> have painted Kornhamnstorg with +its stalls and gables. In a large picture in a board-school in Stockholm +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span><span class="smcap">Nils Kreuger</span> 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.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Kreuger</span> 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 19<sup>th</sup> century, owes its origin to <span class="smcap">Adelcrantz</span>, 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 +<i lang="sv">Strömparterren</i>. No less beautiful is the view afforded a few hours later from +the northern part of the bridge, where one sees <i lang="sv">Strömmen</i>, 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 <i>quite</i> so used to. <span class="smcap">Reinhold Norstedt</span> +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 <span class="smcap">Boberg’s</span> 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 <i lang="sv">Strömmen</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Albert Engström’s</span> 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 <span class="smcap">Zorn’s</span> +amusing picture of the <i lang="sv">Delsbostintan</i> (peasant-girl from Delsbo) telling a story; +but from all our Stockholm theatres there is nothing at all, not even from +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>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, <span class="smcap">Gösta von Hennings</span> has given us some very valuable pictures, +but this has little to do with Sweden seen through artist eyes. <span class="smcap">Hennings</span> 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 “<i lang="sv">Skål i alla fall!</i>” (your health, anyway).</p> + +<p>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 <i lang="sv">Riddarhuset</i> +(the house of nobles), <i lang="sv">Börsen</i> (the Exchange) in Stortorget and the old <i>Riksbank</i> +(Bank of Sweden) in Järntorget. There is a good deal of ‘<i>stämning</i>’ in +<span class="smcap">Karl Nordström’s</span> drawing “Riddarholmen on a Spring Evening” (<a href="#i052">page 54</a>). +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: +“<span lang="la">SVECOS EXALTAVIT. MORIENS TRIVMPHAVIT</span>”, 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.</p> + +<p>Many beautiful buildings have been erected in recent times. Among the +best are the <i>General Post-office</i>, designed by <span class="smcap">Ferdinand Boberg</span>, the building +of the <i>Trygg Insurance Company</i>, whose massive forms are descried over the +tops of the trees in Humlegården Park, designed by <span class="smcap">Lallerstedt</span>, <i>Nordiska +Museet</i> designed by <span class="smcap">Gustaf Clason</span>, where the style of the Vasa Period is connected +in a beautiful and ingenious manner with the style of our old belfries, +<i>Läkaresällskapets hus</i> (the premises of the Society of Physicians), designed by +<span class="smcap">Carl Westman</span>, in the old Klara churchyard, where reposes Bellman, the +poet who has seen the most beautiful visions of Stockholm, and finally the +<i>Östermalm High School</i> by <span class="smcap">Ragnar Östberg</span>, 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 <span class="smcap">Karl Nordström</span>, <span class="smcap">Aron Gerle</span>, and <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson</span>. These +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>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 (<a href="#i051">page 53</a>), of Lilla Värtan from Lidingö island, and of the inlet +to Stockholm from the park Djurgården. It is in Djurgården that <span class="smcap">Prince Eugen</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson</span>. 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 <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson’s</span> 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,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Bright starry firmament, vault around me now”,</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>so does one of <span class="smcap">Eugen Jansson’s</span> pictures arouse in us a feeling of the temporal +seen <i lang="la">sub specie aeternitatis</i>. He has made many pictures of the view from his +windows high up on the hilly ground in the South (<a href="#i055">page 57</a>). 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Pictures">PICTURES.</h2> +</div> + +<div class="toc-container"> +<table class="autotable"> + +<tr><td class="tdl">GUSTAF ANKARCRONA (b. 1869)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">The Sleigh-bells tingle on the Up-drive</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i032">34</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">RICHARD BERGH (b. 1858)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Summer Evening. Scene from Lidingön</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i013">15</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">August Strindberg (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i048">50</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">OSCAR BJÖRCK (b. 1860)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Vadstena Castle</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i031">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Verner von Heidenstam in his Home at Djursholm</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i051">53</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">ALBERT ENGSTRÖM (b. 1869)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Sea-bear. Drawing (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i010">12</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Old Peasant Women. Drawing (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i022">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Lapp. Drawing (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i043">45</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">PRINCE EUGEN (b. 1865)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Entering the Harbour</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i009">11</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Stockholm Castle</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i049">51</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">GUSTAF FJÆSTAD (b. 1868)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Is the Spring never coming? (In the possession of the sculptor</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Christian Eriksson.) See the cover.</td><td></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM (b. 1875)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">A man binding on Skis. Drawing (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i020">22</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Lucia treats to coffee on the 13th December (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i029">31</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Tug of War (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i030">32</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">OTTO HESSELBOM (b. 1848)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Our Country</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i007">9</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">EUGEN JANSSON (b. 1862)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Riddarfjärden on a Summer Night</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i055">57</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">NILS KREUGER (b. 1858)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">The Alfvaren in Öland</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i045">47</a></td></tr> + + + + +<tr><td class="tdl">CARL LARSSON (b. 1853)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">My Family</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i014">16</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Fishing for Cray-fish. Water-colour</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i017">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">A Viking Expedition. Water-colour (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i033">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Interior of a Cottage at Rättvik. Water-colour (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i034">36</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">BRUNO LILJEFORS (b. 1860)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Sunrise</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i011">13</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Huntsman on the Alert</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i027">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Elks. Drawing (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i040">42</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">KARL NORDSTRÖM (b. 1855)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Easter Bonfires</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i021">23</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Riddarholm Church on a Spring Evening. Drawing</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i052">54</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">ERNST NORLIND</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Farm in Skåne. Lithography (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i015">17</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">REINHOLD NORSTEDT (b. 1843)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Birches, “Hage”, in Sörmland</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i024">26</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">EDVARD ROSENBERG (b. 1858)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">March Eve</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i028">30</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">LOUIS SPARRE (b. 1863)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Lejonbacken at Stockholm Castle (black and white)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i050">52</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">EMERICK STENBERG (b. 1873)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Björs-Mia</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i037">39</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">CARL WILHELMSON (b. 1866)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Church-goers in Boats. Picture from Bohuslän</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i023">25</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Labourers</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i035">37</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Miners on the Mountain at Kiruna</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i042">44</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tdl">ANDERS ZORN (b. 1860)</td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Out in the open</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i018">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Mid-summer Dance</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i038">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdli">Kings-Karin</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i041">43</a></td></tr> + +</table> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="transnote"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes"> + Transcriber’s Notes + </h2> +<p> + <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Illustrations have been moved from within to between paragraphs as needed.</span><br> + <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Minor typographical and spelling errors have been corrected.</span><br> + <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">High/low quotes and guillemets have been changed to quotation marks.</span><br> + <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Artists’ names have been put in <span class="smcap">Smallcaps</span> as needed.</span><br> + <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Other inconsistencies (formatting, capitalization and hyphenation) have been retained.</span> +</p> +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78746 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78746-h/images/cover.jpg b/78746-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c677334 --- /dev/null +++ b/78746-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/78746-h/images/i007.jpg b/78746-h/images/i007.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..671928a --- /dev/null +++ b/78746-h/images/i007.jpg diff --git a/78746-h/images/i009.jpg b/78746-h/images/i009.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..919434e --- /dev/null +++ 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