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Title: Sweden
Through the artist's eye
Author: Carl G. Laurin
Editor: H. Buergel Goodwin
Translator: Grenville Grove
Release date: May 24, 2026 [eBook #78746]
Language: English
Original publication: Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Soner, 1911
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78746
Credits: Paul Fatula and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWEDEN ***
SWEDEN
SWEDEN
THROUGH THE ARTIST’S EYE
+by CARL G. LAURIN+
STOCKHOLM, P. A. NORSTEDT & SÖNER
PRINTED AT
_CENTRALTRYCKERIET_
STOCKHOLM 1911
THE COLOUR AND AUTOTYPE PLATES
HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED BY
A. BÖRTZELL’S PRINTING CO., LTD.
STOCKHOLM
PRINTED ON PAPER
FROM
J. H. MUNKTELL’S PAPER MILL
GRYCKSBO
————
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED._
_Copyright 1911 by P. A. Norstedt & Söner, Stockholm_
_Englished by +Mr Grenville Grove+._
_+Mr Grenville Grove’s+ translation of +Mr Carl Laurin’s+ text has
been edited, the Swedish form and spelling of Swedish geographical
names carried through and the verses rendered metrically by +Dr
Henry Buergel Goodwin+. A French and a German translation will be
published simultaneously._
[Illustration: OUR COUNTRY
+Painting by OTTO HESSELBOM+
+NATIONAL MUSEUM+]
Fall, Christmas snow, and blow, ye North and West,
O’er fen and moor your deepest, richest sound,
Burn, star of the East, in the June night blest,
Sweden, our mother, be our strife, our rest,
Land, to our sons be thou our dear bequest,
Earth, where our fathers sleep in sacred ground.
So sings a poet who has entered deeply into Swedish nature and Swedish
life. “Sweden, our mother!” We love our mother, but we do not find it
easy to dilate on her merits to any passing stranger. We know full
well that there are other mothers, more beautiful, mightier, wiser
than ours. We do not claim from others anything beyond respect for our
mother, but we ourselves know what treasures we have received from
her. Great painters have often been strikingly successful in painting
or drawing their mothers. Love and reverence have guided their hands,
and given birth to creations of immortal beauty. Think of Dürer’s
drawing, of Rembrandt’s, Whistler’s and +Carl Larsson’s+ paintings
of their mothers. The pent-up springs gush forth, loosened by love’s
warmth, and, as Dürer has it, “the secret treasure of the heart is
made manifest in the work”. And thus it is when the artist paints
the land which gave him birth. He discovers and points out beauties
and grandeurs which no other eye has discerned, and thus deepens and
enriches the feelings of his countrymen towards their common fatherland.
In Sweden we are now passing through a period of reaction, firstly
from an era of false national pride with its cheap pathos and bombastic
phrases, secondly from the tendency towards national self-effacement
and undue depreciation of things Swedish which followed in the wake of
the former movement, and was, if that be possible, still more baneful
in its effects. We have acquired a wholesome dread of the big words and
the grand gestures, but we are equally averse to barren criticism and
petty heckling, and we are longing for a genuine, and ardent, yet at
the same time discreet, patriotism.
Fructified and inspired by the impulses received from foreign art,
particularly French, our art, which is now in its golden age, has
centred round that which is distinctively Swedish in nature and
people, and has gone far to deepen our knowledge of our own country
and ourselves. If it be true that self-knowledge is the principal
thing, Swedish art must be said to have played an important rôle in our
national life.
Sweden, which occupies the east and largest part of the Scandinavian
peninsula, is about 1,150 miles in length, a distance which would
correspond to that say from Malmö to Naples. It is obvious that a
country with this enormous extension from North to South must have a
very varied climate. More than a seventh part lies within the arctic
circle, while the fertile and thickly populated province of Skåne has a
mean temperature like that of Central Europe.
“Gamla Sverige”, Old Sweden, we call her, and that rightly, for the
Teutonic race which peoples, though but too sparsely, this enormous
region, almost as big as France, has been settled in our forests since
time immemorial; the kingdom of the “Svear” is the oldest surviving
state in Europe, and the actual soil and rock are among the oldest
formations in the world. Granite knobs, polished by the glaciers of
the ice period, and partially covered with moss and forest, occupy
nearly three-fourths of Sweden, and give a distinctive aspect to the
landscape. Some of our merits, such as the almost total absence of
illiterates and an unusually low rate of mortality, we can not show the
foreigner, much though we delight in them ourselves. On the other hand,
there is too little marrying and multiplying amongst us, and emigration
robs the country annually of thousands of young healthy, active people,
who have been fed and educated while they were unproductive, only to
have them go and employ their skill and energy in foreign countries.
There are a variety of causes, psychological and economical, for
this constant drain on our population. The most laudable is the old
Viking spirit of daring and adventure, the most unworthy is the want
of appreciation of our own national personality. The calm feeling of
superiority which we meet with in Englishmen, Norwegians, Frenchmen,
Hungarians, and Americans, is, unfortunately, still lacking in Sweden.
* * * * *
[Illustration: ENTERING THE HARBOUR
+Painting by PRINCE EUGEN+]
If we except the Norwegian frontier and the rivers which separate us
from the Russian Empire, Sweden is bounded on all sides by the sea.
Both our navy and our mercantile fleet are manned by men of the very
highest quality, who are coveted in foreign navies for their presence
of mind and their courage. The “Sea-wolves”, who in the ninth century
were the terror of the coasts of France and England, have now been
transformed into dauntless sea-bears, not unlike the Vikings in outward
appearance, apart from a little swelling on the under lip, caused by
chewing-tobacco (page 12).
[Illustration: SEA-BEAR
+Drawing by A. ENGSTRÖM+]
It is +Carl Wilhelmson+ and +Albert Engström+ that have depicted
these types, walking the decks with their rolling gait and a humourous
twinkle in the eye. Almost the entire coast of Sweden except Skåne
(Scania) and Halland is protected by the _skärgård_, with its islands,
rocks, and skerries, dangerous in time of peace for our own boats, but
in time of war, let us hope, still more dangerous for the enemy’s. The
coast population sail about amid breakers and shallows, in Bohuslän in
_Koster_-boats, broad and cock-sure like the skippers themselves, in
Blekinge in punts called _Blekingsekor_, along the coast of Norrland
in the kind of boats called _skötbåtar_; in the neighbourhood of
Stockholm the “Rospiggar”, as the inhabitants of Roslagen (the North
part of Uppland facing the sea) are called, trade along the coast in
their beautiful smacks, sailing with timber and sand among the firths
and bays, as bold and skilful sailors as any of the sportsmen who in
their white or mahogany-brown cutters cruise among the reefs past
the hundreds of landing-places and bathing-boxes. In summer-time the
landing-places are thronged with girls in light summer dresses, and
boys clamber agilely about the railing, waiting for the steamer. It is
a pretty sight to watch the boat sailing along in her smart coating
of white paint, and by a skilful manoeuvre brought to shore at one
landing-place after the other. A pretty sight too, as on an autumn
night she glides along the dark waters, a little moving world ablaze
with light, illuminating with her search-lights the mooring-places
and the narrow passages between the holmes. In winter-time the empty
and shuttered summer-villas, and the bathing-basins drawn up on the
beach and now almost covered up with snow, intensify the sense of
solitude and desolation, and give a certain tone of severe melancholy
to the landscape. And yet it is in just this mood that nature most
appeals to the skaters or skiers (page 22), as they speed along over
the ice, running through in memory the events of the summer; how
they surprised shrieking girls at the bathing-place or listened to
some beloved soul reading poems by Fröding or Karlfeldt aloud on the
veranda; or, if they had reached a little more advanced stage in life,
how they enjoyed the sight of the children coming in from bilberrying
with their mouths all blue and their clothes torn by fences and their
skin by gooseberry bushes; what a beseeching look their faces wore,
as they asked for permission to go out rowing, and how they seemed to
revel in the liberty of their summer-holiday existence. It is +Axel
Sjöberg+ and +Richard Lindström+ who have perhaps best depicted the
_skärgård_ in winter. In a country like Sweden where the winters are
so long, people want to make the most of the summer, and we realize
instinctively what a great thing it is for the little folks to be
allowed to disport themselves at will on the green grass, and climb
and swim, as they please, forgetting the winter cold, and enjoying a
long spell of liberty from school discipline. Our long summer holidays
are a national boon, and, though attempts are being made to cut them
short, there are plenty of zealous champions to start up in their
defence. No Swede has done as much as +Carl Larsson+ to show what a
glorious time the children have in the country “in lovely summer when
the ground rejoices”, as one of our poets has so aptly expressed it. To
the question, “what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”, someone
has answered: “a flowery meadow”, and we have plenty of that kind of
beauty in Sweden. Like in +Liljefors’+ “A Family of Foxes”, where the
young foxes are shewn disporting themselves amid the white chervils
and yellow buttercups, the children delight in plucking cowslips in
the light-green June grass, and in summer they love to hunt out places
where the strawberries are hiding, and they shout with joy when in the
baking sun by the side of the ditch they discover the purple berries
in which the whole perfume and sweetness of the summer seems to be
concentrated. One of the greatest privileges we enjoy in Sweden is
that there is plenty of space, and that everything is not enclosed.
One may sit on the grass without being driven away, one may bathe by
the shore without getting fined, and that’s a grand thing for the
children, and for grown-ups too, for the matter of that. One is allowed
to fish anywhere one likes, for sport; there are plenty of fish for
everybody, anyway. +Carl Larsson+ has painted fishing on a rainy day in
his picture “When the Fish bite well”; he has also painted the kind of
fishing which the children most enjoy, fishing for crayfish, that great
event in the height of summer, when they scramble about bare-legged
with their small landing-nets and pick up the blackish-green crawling
crayfish with loud shouts of delight (page 19). Their elders, on the
other hand, deem the supreme moment of the fishing to have arrived when
the scarlet crayfish are lying in state on a huge dish in the middle
of the table, and their funeral rites are inaugurated by drinking a
glass of old Swedish brandy. A more wholesome fluid, which is a source
of great joy to us in summer, is water, and I suppose there are few
countries where people bathe so much in the open as in Sweden. The
loneliness of the country often permits of a freedom from costume which
inspires the artists. Two fine pictures in the Gothenburg Museum, one
by +Acke+, representing naked male bodies standing out against the
breezy dark-blue sea, and +Zorn’s+ picture “Out in the Open” (page 20),
which is so highly esteemed in Sweden, are no doubt the best specimens
of this kind of art. In the latter picture, one of +Zorn’s+ very best,
we see a typically Swedish scene, which everyone must be capable of
appreciating: on a grey granite rock polished by the action of the
water, a couple of fair-haired girls are creeping down towards the warm
glittering water. The soft bodies set off against the hard rock, the
rowing-boat, the feeling of freedom and breeziness away out in virgin
nature; all this has been expressed by the artist in a way which makes
us thoroughly pleased with what is ours.
[Illustration: SUNRISE
+Painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS+
+THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+]
The _skärgård_ right away from the outermost skerries where +Axel
Sjöberg’s+ gulls dream under the starry heavens, and where +Liljefors’+
eiders in the light of the morning sun creep down into the water from
the outermost rock (page 13), where the fishermen’s herring-nets are
hung out to be dried and mended by the rotted landing-places, all this
has been masterfully delineated in Strindberg’s “The People of Hemsö”
and in +Albert Engström’s+ drawings. Other artists have painted the
bays and inlets nearer Stockholm, with their leafy banks. The spirit of
summer is wonderfully well expressed in +Richard Bergh’s+ great picture
“Summer Evening” (page 15) in the Gothenburg Museum. The scene is the
church bay in the island of Lidingö, on the upper veranda. A young
couple are looking out over the luxuriant verdure below them. Down by
the water, we see the landing-stage. It is a moment of happiness. One
fancies one hears the humming of bees in the summer heat, and that
it is their monotonous chant which makes one feel the fulness of the
moment still more intensely.
[Illustration: SUMMER EVENING
+Scene from Lidingön+
+Painted by RICHARD BERGH+
+IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+]
The Stockholmers look upon the _skärgård_ with loving eyes; it is
difficult for them to imagine how it must affect the stranger who
approaches the capital from the East gazing from the deck of a large
steamer over the rocks where the seals crawl, gliding past the holmes
where stunted firs blasted by the storm are struggling for life, and
travelling along broad bays, now dark-blue, now bluish-grey, through
narrow sounds, past leafy banks, not seldom disfigured with villas of a
more than doubtful architectural beauty, finally arrives at Stockholm.
Can the foreigner, who sees this for the first time from the high deck
of the steamer, can he understand and appreciate all the delightful,
beautiful, touching things, all the grandeur which we see who have
been familiar with the _skärgård_ from our childhood, who have lived
in it, sailed on it and bathed in it, and have had our eyes opened
by Sehlstedt’s popular songs and +Carl Larsson’s+ illustrations to
them, by Strindberg’s stories and novels, and by +Liljefors’+, +Axel
Sjöberg’s+ and +Richard Lindström’s+ paintings?
[Illustration: MY FAMILY
+Mrs. Karin Larsson and her children at Sundborn+
+Painting by CARL LARSSON+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. THORSTEN LAURIN. STOCKHOLM+]
The _skärgård_ in Bohuslän assumes more imposing forms and has a
severer beauty, at any rate in its seaward parts, for in the interior
Bohuslän fjords the vegetation is luxuriant. The travellers who come
from England to Göteborg (Gothenburg) by boat, first catch sight of
rocks as bare as the walls of a fortress, but with more beautiful
forms, emerging from the breakers. +Karl Nordström+, born in the island
of Tjörn in Bohuslän, has in an austere and manly style painted these
granite rocks with the undulating lines, now with the foam dashing at
their feet, now with bonfires flaming on their crests. +Nordström’s+
art is of a piece with the nature mysticism of our remotest ancestors,
and when we see his picture “Easter Bonfires” in Thiel’s Gallery
(page 23), where flames shoot out to greet the coming light, we think
how for thousands of the years Swedes have made merry around these
fires, rejoicing that the reign of cold and darkness has once more
been shattered. It is +Karl Nordström+ and +Carl Wilhelmson+ who have
depicted the nature and people of the West coast, the former the hills
and the decorative cloud masses against which they stand out, or the
sequestered valleys, where the sun is baking hot, and dense thickets
of bushes, sheltered from the blast, fill the crevices. The latter is
the painter of the serious-looking people who inhabit these parts, and
in winter gain their livelihood by converting the glittering shoals of
herring into silver coins.
[Illustration: FARM IN SKÅNE
+Engraving by ERNST NORLIND+]
In looking at +Wilhelmson’s+ pictures, there comes upon us something of
the earnestness which is natural to this coast population, who have to
risk their lives in order to gain their subsistence. +Wilhelmson+ loves
the high colours which occur in the landscape when the sun shines on
the pink-tinged hills, and broad, light-brown boats with white sails
standing out against the red fishermen’s cottages. For these people
who have been brought up in the hard and narrow religious school of
Schartau, the church is the object to which their thoughts turn with
longing in the midst of their toil and drudgery; particularly the
women in their black silk kerchiefs with their prayer-books wrapped up
in their handkerchiefs look as sorrowful as if they were going to a
funeral, as they repair to the sanctuary on foot or in boats (page 25).
* * * * *
Most foreigners come to Sweden from the south with the Danish or the
gigantic Swedish-German ferry steamers, and then they see that part
of the Swedish coast which is not surrounded by skerries. Skåne and
Halland are the only provinces that lie directly on the sea, and even
at some distance from Malmö or Trelleborg one can discern from the sea
the vast green plain with its white churches and black wind-mills.
Curiously enough, none of our great living artists has depicted the
Öresund, one of the most beautiful fair-ways in the world, with its
deep-blue waters, oftentimes filled with hundreds of white gleaming
sails, and its banks fringed with beech woods. The shallow Halland
firths and the great lines and high colours of this now deforested
district have found in +Nils Kreuger+ an admirer and delineator of high
rank.
[Illustration: FISHING FOR CRAY-FISH
+Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+
+IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+]
Skåne (Scania) differs both in natural scenery and culture from the
rest of Sweden, with which, like Halland and the winsome Blekinge,
it has been united only 250 years. The Skåningar (Scanians) are
well-pleased with themselves and their country. They possess the most
stately castles, the most well-fed peasants, the richest trades-unions,
and the most violent socialists--all gauged by a modest Swedish
standard. This has not been denied, and talented Swedish authors
have admirably delineated this _milieu_, with the exception of the
castles, surrounded by gigantic trees and with their images reflected
in the ponds. In some of these castles a life is led such as even
an English country-gentleman would consider fit for a human being,
with huntsmen in red coats, and munificent hospitality; and the gay
lieutenants and elegant ladies are perhaps not quite so hard-hearted
here as in the more northerly parts of the realm. In our country one
has been a little unfair to the higher classes, and that in spite of
the fact that the heads of society have eagerly participated in the
national work, and spared neither energy nor money when the public
welfare has been at stake. If we except a few excellent portraits of
+Georg v. Rosen+, +Anders Zorn+ and +Oscar Björck+, modern Swedish
art has not taken its subjects from castles and parks. Otherwise the
“Skåneland”, as the inhabitants of this rich district affectionately
style it, has in recent times found very good interpreters. The old
+Gustaf Rydberg+, and quite recently +Ernst Norlind+ and +Axel Kulle+,
have shown us the white farmhouses (page 17), which are so solidly
built, that their very outward appearance gives us an inkling of what
their inmates must be like. Sometimes one may catch sight on the roof
of the long-legged aristocratic figure of the stork, while the more
plebeian characteristics of self-complacency and _embonpoint_ come out
in the cocks and hens and geese in the court-yard. The beauty of the
Scanian plain landscape has often been described in novels and lyric
poetry; Ernst Ahlgren, K. G. Ossian-Nilson and Ola Hanson are no doubt
its foremost portrayers. However, Skåne has still to wait for its
conclusive interpretation in modern art. Skåne has not yet received in
painting all the homage it deserves. The solid ancient culture of the
Scanian peasant has formed the subject of +Hugo Salmson’s+ pictures;
scenes from melancholy avenues of pollard willows, from expanses of
green fields with decorative groups of trees, standing like sacred
groves on the _åsar_ (ridges) which bound the horizon, these and many
other things have been attempted by the talented Scanian painters; but
they have never attained the greatness displayed by a +Nils Kreuger+
or a +Karl Nordström+ in their pictures from Halland and Bohuslän.
Even the picturesque seaside life on the sandy beach of Falsterbo or
the steep rocky shores of Kullen has not yet found a portrayer. The
huge rock projecting many miles out into the sea is one of the most
beautiful things in the whole of Sweden. A whole swarm of young artists
have striven to render the huge weathered blocks, and the luxuriant
beech-woods; or the sea, now roaring and dashing its foam up against
a fantastically formed rocky shore, or as it is seen from the Kullen
light-house--which has now for well-nigh 400 years lighted up the mouth
of Öresund--, lying calm and smooth as a mirror in the evening, when
the flashes from the light-houses along the coast of Sjælland intensify
the impression of the vast expanses one surveys. One realizes that
corn and sugar, beer and _brännvin_ (brandy) are produced in plentiful
quantities on the Scanian plains, when one sees the tall chimneys
rising up alongside of each other right away in the country in the very
midst of the well-cultivated fields. The Scanians believe that good
food, and perhaps also good commonsense, is properly speaking only to
be found in Skåne. That is perhaps going too far, but certainly the
well-nourished, energetic and shrewd population of this district with
their broad burring dialect has a natural self-reliance, which would
not be amiss for the other inhabitants of the realm.
[Illustration: OUT IN THE OPEN
+Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+
+IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+]
If the traveller coming from abroad makes as soon as he sets foot in
Malmö acquaintance with things Swedish, in the shape of a “sober-minded
porter”, to use Heidenstam’s exquisite phrase, nevertheless it must be
said that Skåne with its fertile fields, its yellow tile-factories,
and the whitewashed farms makes an un-Swedish impression. It is not
until the train begins to whirl through the pine woods of Småland,
and there appear at the stations small flaxen-haired, shy-looking,
blue-eyed girls, mute as fishes and with beseeching looks offering
for sale raspberries and bilberries in birch-bark baskets, it is not
till then that one feels one is home in Sweden. +Richard Bergh+ has
painted one of these little girls, a quiet, timid little girl, busy
gathering flowers in the meadow. There are in Sweden many little girls
like that, who stand by the gates to open them in the hope of receiving
a copper, and would rather bite off their tongues than answer the
friendly question “What’s your name, little girl?”. Småland is a large
province, as big as the whole of Switzerland. Its inhabitants are
considered sly and stingy; and it’s no wonder they are mean, for most
of them certainly have to work for all they are worth to get something
nourishing and the food doesn’t drop ready-cooked into their mouths:
nay, but they have to quarry stone, and burn woodland, and struggle
hard, and yet they remain as lean as the kine.
If one wants to understand Småland properly, one ought to read +Albert
Engström’s+ recollections from childhood and study his drawings. Then
one realizes how the world goes in the little red cottages, how warm
and cosy it is in winter, when they mull a pint of brandy, and the air
is thick with vapour from the damp clothes; or how strengthened in
spirit and lifted above the petty worries of every-day life one feels
at the revival meeting with its coffee, alleluja rejoicings, and more
or less brotherly and sisterly love. One of the greatest of modern
artists is +Herman Norrman+. He has shown us what a glorious thing the
forest can be, and he has painted it so that one literally feels the
scent of the _Ledum_, the resin, and all the strong, fresh scents which
fill the air on a hot summer’s day, and are carried to one’s nostrils
by a cool breeze from the marsh with its cotton-grass and mystic plant-
and insect-world. There is a kind of passionate warmth, both physical
and psychical, in +Norrman’s+ landscapes, where both heaven and forest
are ablaze with red. In gazing at these pictures of +Norrman+, the
heart is filled with a kind of half-defiant bliss.
Along the coast of Kalmar Sound the fields are covered with rippling
corn. Far in the north lies the beautiful Tjust and its _skärgård_,
which has been painted by +Gottfrid Kallstenius+. Singularly enough,
the vast, romantic Kalmar Castle, once called the “key to Sweden”, has
not yet found an artist to depict it. Even making allowance for the
painting of “views” having gone out of fashion, one cannot but find it
strange that the next largest lake in the country, the curious long
and narrow Lake Vättern, which plays such a great part in Heidenstam’s
poems, and whose shores in Småland have an almost southern character,
has not been painted by our greatest artists. Omberg and the district
about Jönköping and Grenna, the little cosy town from which one looks
out over the easily ruffled surface of the gigantic blue lake, is one
of the sights of Sweden.
* * * * *
+Gustaf Ankarcrona+ has painted several of the Småland manors, places
which have a homelike atmosphere about them both summer and winter.
One is received with overwhelming hospitality, various kinds of
sausages and cakes, such as have been eaten in Swedish farms since time
immemorial, are laid before one; and the late major, the proprietor, as
he comes out on the front steps to welcome his friend who has driven up
in a sledge, gives him a sly wink that he has been successful in making
a good brew of punch according to the good old receipt (page 34).
* * * * *
Central Sweden is characterized by a number of lakes; amongst them is
Lake Vänern, which is a regular inland sea, being the third largest
lake in Europe. North of the Småland plateau, there extend round and
along the shores of the two great lakes, the primitive settlements
of the provinces of Östergötland and Västergötland. Quaintly-shaped
hills rise from the plains of Västergötland, Kinnekulle, Halleberg
and Hunneberg, Billingen, and Ålleberg, which latter has been painted
by +Karl Nordström+. It was in this district that Christianity first
struck root. It was here, at the foot of mount Kinnekulle, that Olof
Skötkonung (O. the Lapking) was baptized in Husaby. It was here, at
Billingen, that the beautiful cloister church of Varnhem arose and on
the plain that ancient seat of learning, Skara, in the shadow of the
Cathedral.
[Illustration: A MAN BINDING ON HIS SKIS
+Drawing by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+]
If one takes one of the canal boats from Trollhättan (where now as
of yore the troll is still a-roaring savagely from his abode in
the Toppö Falls--though he has now to yield up some of his power
to the turbines), and sails past the ancient Leckö Castle, where
Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, the great Swedish Maecenas of the 17th
century, once held court, one sees, on the Västergötland shore of
Lake Vänern, mount Kinnekulle looming blue in the distance. Through
the Västergötland branch of the Göta Canal one comes out into Lake
Vättern, and directs one’s course to the ancient 16th-century castle
of Vadstena, whose massive masonry and historic walls have fallen to
+Oscar Björck’s+ brush (page 33).
[Illustration: EASTER BONFIRES
+Oil painting by KARL NORDSTRÖM+
+IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+]
Östergötland has not yet received its due share of attention from the
artists. Östergötland is rich in historical associations and legends,
which, for us Swedes at least, throw a yet greater spell about the
beautiful scenery round the shores of the Göta Canal. Slowly and
peacefully the boat glides along over the canal, and every now and then
the boughs of the trees brush against the deck. There is something
quiet and soothing about a canal trip through Östergötland, past Lake
Boren with Ulfåsa Castle and its reminiscences of the Folkungar, down
through the Berg locks to Lake Roxen, where lies Vadstena cloister
church, which was consecrated by Magnus Ladulås. North of the high
banks of Bråviken extends the forest region of Kolmården, where the
young +Alfred Wahlberg+ painted the magnificent landscape in the
romantic style of the Düsseldorf school.
* * * * *
In the district around Lake Mälaren, the heart of Sweden, south,
west, and north of the “Lögaren”, as it was then called, lived the
Svear, whom we find mentioned as far back as Tacitus. This tribe was in
possession of the chief place of sacrifice in the country, at Uppsala,
and gradually subdued the other tribes, united the kingdom, and gave it
their name. The artist who has best rendered the country round Mälaren
is +Gunnar Hallström+. Although he has only painted the land and people
as they are now, he has painted it in such a way that we have a feeling
as if we and ours had lived round the shores of Mälaren for thousands
of years, gazing out over the islands and seeing the same ragged fringe
of pine wood stand out against the summer-night sky, seeing the birches
turning yellow in the autumn, assuming a mantle of white in the winter,
emerging in black lustre in the early spring, in order once more to don
their garb of green. White, tall, with a noble bearing, and a dreamy
soughing about their crowns, they stand on the ancient barrows of
Björkö Isle, where in the midst of the distant firth the ancient royal
town of Birka received the Franconian Ansgar, the apostle of the North,
among its turbulent men and silver-bedizened women. Everything that
+Hallström+ has drawn and painted has about it a certain distinctively
Swedish flavour; no mere superficial veneer, but penetrating to the
very root of Swedish life, right down to its primordial source in
mother nature, which woke our people to consciousness of itself. His
pictures conjure up before us visions of the Sörmland “_hagar_” (see
below), where the girls listened to the notes of the cuckoo in the
spring nights, and of the wintry plains of Uppland, where the people
rejoiced at the blood-stains of the victims on the white snow, and in
wild frenzy offered up sacrifices to propitiate the god of the harvest.
When one has taken the night train from the south and wakes up one
summer morning, to find oneself at some Sörmland station, a delicious
breath is wafted towards one from the forest and the granite soil. One
feels that one is in Sweden.
[Illustration: OLD PEASANT WOMEN
+Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM+]
The silence is complete, except for the brawny, fair-complexioned
workmen quietly toiling away with spades and crowbars on the railway
track. By the lake (there always is one), stands a little white church.
If one follows the high road, one comes upon another lake with a
venerable manor-house nestling in its orchard. The soil of the meadows
and ploughed fields is no doubt stony, but the clover thrives, and the
fields stand so thick with rye, that the thought is borne upon one
that there are very few countries where one gets so much out of the
soil as in Sweden, thanks to the intensity with which agriculture has
of recent years been carried on. More than a third part of all the
cultivated land in Sweden has been brought under cultivation during the
last 30 to 40 years; but fortunately--and this is the special charm of
the scenery of central Sweden--there is a great deal of land, which is
incapable of cultivation, pastures and “_hagar_”, where the cows peep
out from among the alder bushes by the brook, and shy horses browse at
liberty, hindered only by the fences and gates which shut them out from
the enticements of the clover meadows. In the seventies +Edvard Bergh+
painted, nay, I may say, discovered, the beauty of the _hage_. In the
eighties Strindberg described the _hage_, that cross between a meadow
and a wood, as something distinctively Swedish. The soil of the _hage_
consists now of granite knobs, now of short cropped greensward; or else
it is ornamented with white lilies-of-the-valley or pink bitter-vetches
in the shady spots or in the sunny places with great patches of colour
made by the blue and yellow Wood Melampyrum, standing in serried ranks
like soldiers. In the autumn, when the mists come sweeping in through
the birches of the _hage_, fiery-red flybane gleam in the wet grass.
[Illustration: CHURCH-GOERS IN BOATS
+Picture from Bohuslän+
+Oil painting by CARL WILHELMSON+
+IN THE ARTIST’S HOME+]
+Reinhold Norstedt+ has painted this Sörmland scenery with the most
delicate touch and fine intuition: the sparkling brooks running over
the roots shaded by the dark-green smooth foliage of the alders, the
proud Eriksberg Castle peeping forth amid umbrageous groups of trees,
the _hagar_ studded with birches now wild, now more parklike, as in the
great picture in the Dramatic Theatre at Stockholm.
[Illustration: BIRCHES, “HAGE”, IN SÖRMLAND
+Painting by REINHOLD NORSTEDT+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. H. WALDENSTRÖM. STOCKHOLM+]
A gentle melancholy tone of peace and happiness, a touch of pensive
dreaminess, which is one side of our national character, pervades
+Norstedt’s+ pictures, which, though often small, are always crammed
with feeling. The Swedish landscape is generally lacking in plasticity.
The lakes and rivers afford vast perspectives, but, if we except
Norrland, there are no great altitudes to speak of. “Smiling”,
“pleasing”, “inviting” are the words which first rise to one’s lips,
especially as to the landscape round the Lake Mälaren. One of those
who has entered most deeply into the very soul of that kind of Swedish
landscape, is Prince +Eugen+. There is a touch of lyric feeling in the
Swedish temperament, a desire to see both the outer and inner being
of things brought down to one tone; it is in the light of this trait
that the desire for the cups that inebriate, which has from of old been
a part of the national character, is no doubt to be explained. This
Swedish trait has found its fullest expression in the personality of
the poet Bellman, in whose poems wild revelry is mingled with dreamy
pensiveness, and boisterous mirth with deep melancholy. This desire to
see the landscape “in tone”, no doubt also explains the many Swedish
pictures with the night as their subject, particularly the summer
night when the dim gloaming covers over all imperfections and tones
down all glaring colours. The various features of the landscape blend
together and melt into a full-toned harmony. Just as the fragrant
orchis in our woods emits a richer perfume in the night, so does many
a shy and sensitive heart in Sweden give forth its best and deepest
feelings, when the landscape appears in that weird light when things
seem strange, yet at the same time familiar, and reality and dreamland
blend into one another. Prince +Eugen+ has in his picture “Summer
Night” in the National Museum, and also in a number of other pictures,
best perhaps in “Night Cloud” (in Thiel’s Gallery), expressed in an
unusually forcible manner what we other Swedes feel--perhaps not so
intensely as the artist himself--of the happiness and the momentousness
of existence when a huge greyish-white cloud comes slowly trailing
along over the landscape which lies steeped in the pale light of the
summer night. The district round Stockholm, especially the parts about
the ancient Tyresö Castle in Södertörn, have been rendered by Prince
+Eugen+, sometimes passionately, sometimes dreamily, so that he has
enriched us with new hitherto unappreciated beauties. Most imposing is
his huge picture “Even Landscape from Tyresö”, in Norra Latin Grammar
School, Stockholm.
* * * * *
The scenery of Uppland, which is characterized by small knobs of
protruding rocks, interrupted here and there by loamy plains, has, if
we except the coast towards the sea and Lake Mälaren, perhaps not so
much to entice the painter, though indeed the new landscape school of
painting has shown that the greatest beauty can be culled out of the
most insignificant subjects. The Swedish artist who has done more than
any other to teach us how to see Sweden was born in the Uppland plain.
+Bruno Liljefors+ has shown us that it is simply a question of “drawing
out” the beauty which is to be found everywhere. However, it is the
forest and the sea that he most loves, and he paints them, we might
almost say, from the animal’s point of view. It has been said that he
paints a duck family as a duck would paint, if it could. Mother duck
casts a wary look at her small fluffy balls, stumbling along among the
tussocks or cruising among the bending rushes and quacking among the
water-rings in the enchanting summer night. The forests of Uppland
and Södermanland, or the Småland coast, and the animal world of both
these districts, are +Liljefors’+ favourite subjects. It is to the
forest amid the “solemn dirges of the pines”, that many a Swedish heart
yearns; it is there they renew the memories of their own childhood,
and hear the echo of the childhood of our race resounding through the
ages; the forest is at once free and enclosed, silent and full of
many sounds. The enchantment of the forest has seldom been described
more impressively than in +Liljefors’+ “Huntsman on the Alert” (next
page). This peasant sportsman, with the alert, nay almost devotional,
expression on his face, is a symbol of what the forest means to us
Swedes.
[Illustration: HUNTSMAN ON THE ALERT
+Oil painting by BRUNO LILJEFORS+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM+]
In Sweden we have still a primeval forest. The forest is not tame
like a domestic animal, nor trimmed and raked like a decently kept
park. There is something of fairyland about it, and it is full
of mysteries and awful things. The inner mysteries do not reveal
themselves to anyone: here, as in all things, the one who can
understand and love sees and hears more than others. The tiny, crimson,
almond-scented _linnéa_, which was given that name by the Swedish King
in the Realm of Flowers, Carl von Linné (Linnæus), and which grows
in the moss under the firs, is found only by the keen-eyed; and it
is still more difficult to see something of the animal world, to be
a witness to the dramas enacted among the elks (page 42), or see the
loves of the big forest birds when with curious cries and strange
antics they experience the great frenzy which is the acme of life, or
when the animals of prey, panting with passion and hunger, slay their
victims. When we ordinary folks go through the forest, we do not see
anything. Some of us can doubtless tell whether a pine is worth a crown
a root, and give directions for cutting the trees to the right lengths
with the least possible loss of cubic space, and this is certainly a
most important matter in our plank-producing country. But how many can
in the course of a few hours’ ramble through the forest come upon the
tracks of an elk, catch sight of a black cock, find a fox’s den, or who
is lucky enough to witness the wooing of a pair of capercailzies? But
all this has been seen and painted many times over by +Liljefors+: The
Horned Owl (Gothenburg Museum), with glowing eyes, hissing and puffing,
perched on its rock in the forest; the wily Foxes (Thiel’s gallery)
hiding in the clefts of the rocks, while the pale crescent of the moon
shines in the sky; the fat grey-hen which sits torpid and complacent on
its perch in the fir, and unwillingly leaves its place in order with
clumsy flight and a crash which scares all the little birds, to alight
on the ground and be wooed by the black cock; the elegant wading birds,
which with the subdued grey-brown hue of their feathers look so well
against the silvery and brown tones of the marshy ground; all this has
been revealed to us by +Liljefors+ from the artistic aspect, and a few
visits to Thiel’s Gallery, where the largest and best collection of
+Liljefors’+ pictures is to be seen, together with the study of the
valuable pictures of the same artist in Gothenburg Museum and in the
National Museum at Stockholm, will be full of instruction for those who
desire to know something of what is deepest in Swedish nature.
[Illustration: MARCH EVE
+Painting by EDVARD ROSENBERG+
+IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+]
[Illustration: LUCIA
+Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+]
From south Uppland and Öråker _herrgård_ (manor) +Georg Pauli+ has
taken the subject for his fresco painting “Decorating the May-pole”.
In midsummer, when the sun is at the zenith, when the lilac blooms,
the may-pole is decked with leaves, and then even the most surly
“blossom out”. At midsummer time, just as at Christmas, people grow
a little kinder to each other. Friendly feeling often rises one or
two degrees, and not seldom reaches the boiling point, as is shown
by the announcements of engagements, which are unusually frequent
at this time. In honour of the lightest night in the whole year, it
is the custom all over Sweden for the young people, when they have
danced to exhaustion round the May-pole, to await the coming dawn on
some beautiful point of outlook. +Georg Pauli+ has in a very romantic
picture “Midsummer Watch” (in the possession of Esq. Erik Frisell
Stockholm) immortalized a midsummer watch on a hill near Skurusund, not
far from Stockholm. The sharp contrast between the harshness of winter
and the mildness of summer, causes us to cling more passionately,
perhaps, than more southern races, to nature, when she reveals herself
to us in her full glory; and do not our flowers smell sweeter, our
grass grow thicker, are not our forests more luxuriant, and are not our
berries, surely, richer in flavour than further south? On the other
hand, the beauty of the Swedish landscape, as has been said before, is
not of a kind which obtrudes itself on one; but, when one has once been
captivated by the union of modesty and pride in the Swedish nature,
one learns to love it so much the more fervently; even if in order to
express our feelings we must have recourse to the untranslatable word
“_stämning_”, that which we seek first and foremost in our nature, our
lyric poetry, and our paintings; the nearest equivalent is “mood”;
but it has often to be rendered by “feeling”, “tone”, “sentiment”,
“atmosphere”. In music the best interpreter of true Swedish feeling
is no doubt August Söderman in his “Peasant Wedding”, which has about
it the atmosphere of a sunny midsummer morning in birch-studded
_hagar_ and amid glittering lakes. A great work of art, with a ring of
steel about it, which is also characteristically Swedish, is +Edvard
Rosenberg’s+ “March Eve” (page 30). The scene is a valley in the
district round Stockholm. A flame-coloured light still lingers on the
rocky knobs and the bare tops of the birches. Wind and sun have formed
the snow-drifts into ramparts now congealed by the night frost, where
the dark-blue shadows are thickening. In spite of the cold and the
harshness there is something which bodes of spring. He who sees this
landscape in the right way, experiences a feeling of complex character,
just as in a full-toned chord joy and pain may be united, filling our
whole soul to overflowing.
* * * * *
“O Värmeland, thou beautiful, thou glorious land, crown of the lands
of the Swedish realm”, so run the words of the song, and even if
most of the other provinces of Sweden feel themselves to be the most
beautiful gem in the crown of Sweden, yet none of them have been able
to express their love for their home like the people of Värmland. Their
song, vibrating with intense passion, has rushed forth like a mighty
river over the land of Sweden. “There is a belt of iron round Svea’s
waist”, and from the mines of Värmland much iron has been fetched
up, but still nobler metals have been gathered from the hearts of
Värmlanders. “In the greater part of Sweden it is iron that has paved
the way for culture”, writes Erik Gustaf Geijer of his native land,
and from his manly heart there resounds a genuine Swedish note, which
reminds us of Tegnér’s words on our language, “Pure as the ore is thy
ring”. Geijer has also been a pioneer of culture. There is a breezy
atmosphere about his spirit.
When the Värmlander Tegnér one summer night in 1811 was driving a load
of ore from Rämen works to Filipstad, his mind gave birth during his
wanderings in the depths of the forest to the poem “Svea”, in whose
ringing rhymes and flaming images all his present unrest and good
resolutions for the future were given a form which called forth the
enthusiastic applause of the whole country.
In the works, manors, parsonages, and farms of Värmland, song and
legend flourish more than in other parts of Sweden. Festival customs,
survivals from primitive rites, which have attached us with such strong
bands to our native soil and to those who have lived there before us,
have been retained more faithfully in Värmland than in other places.
[Illustration: TUG OF WAR
+Painting by GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM+
+IN MARIA BOARD-SCHOOL. STOCKHOLM+]
Christmas is the greatest Swedish festival, when one wishes that all
eyes may shine and all hearts burn to vanquish the darkness and the
cold. This is the time when families gather together, when one feels
the comfort of having someone to love and rejoice with, and of showing
them what one feels for them, it is a time when one’s thoughts turn
to the dead, and yet are full of hope for the future, most of all
when we see children rejoicing over the Christmas tree, the lights
and the presents; and then to the tune of some old Christmas reel,
whose melancholy passion arouses slumbering memories, one dances
round the tree of life with its lights and apples, and the star at
the top. It is still the custom in the old forest settlements to go
to matins on Christmas morning by torchlight. Some rejoice most at
the old hymn “Hail, lovely morning hour”, while others look forward
most eagerly to the “brandy” and cold ham, which will afterwards be
served. Those who celebrate Christmas in the true spirit are pleased
with everything. A beautiful Värmland custom is the Lucia celebration.
To inaugurate Christmas, the festival of light, it is the custom on
the 13th December, before it is yet day, for the lady of the house or
one of the girls, garbed in white and with lighted candles stuck in
a green chaplet of fir twigs in the hair, to treat all the members
of the household to coffee in bed. +Gunnar Hallström+ has drawn this
beautiful symbolical custom (page 31), in which one feels a warm breath
wafted towards one and a ray of light proceeding from both heathen
and Christian ritual. Much the same feelings are aroused in us by the
imaginary world of the great Värmland authoress, Selma Lagerlöf. This
prophetess, who sees visions of Värmland, who conjures up all good
powers, has taught not only Sweden but the whole world, how things are
in Gösta Berling’s native land.
[Illustration: VADSTENA CASTLE
+Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK+
+IN REALLÄROVERKET. STOCKHOLM+]
Our greatest lyric poet since Bellman, Gustav Fröding, is also a
Värmland man. He writes about his forests and _hagar_, so that we
literally feel the scent of fir twigs, of lilies-of-the-valley and
of birch leaves, and all we Swedes feel, when we read Fröding, how
strongly we are attached to our rocky knobs and dwarf pines. We
recollect, when as children we called out “home” at the primrose spots
in the _hagar_ and sought for raspberries in the pile of stones.
“Yon copse is to me dear, my childhood whispers there”, runs one of
Fröding’s verses, and all Swedes will echo the feeling. Fröding has
also delineated the people, the poor who beg and suffer, but also their
levity, their dances and addiction to the brandy bottle, and wild romps
with “Stina Stursk” and other red-cheeked tittering girls in shawls,
who forget everything for the present and do not consider enough what
the future may bear in its bosom.
[Illustration: THE SLEIGH-BELLS TINGLE ON THE UP-DRIVE
+Painting by GUSTAF ANKARCRONA+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF F. BÜNSOW ESQ. STOCKHOLM+]
+Carl Wilhelmson+ has painted Värmland peasants in his picture
“Labourers” (page 37) in Thiel’s gallery, and he makes us feel
supremely satisfied at belonging to such a trustworthy-looking people.
All the figures in the picture, down to the little boy, have a
reliable, steady, downright look about them. This boy will perhaps be
rather slow and cautious, if he is asked a question, but one can rely
on him. You may safely send him to water the horses, and if he receives
permission to go to town to buy something, he will not spend his money
on the way. In this part of the world manliness develops late. The
little fellow will no doubt be an awkward enough cub yet a good while,
but he will be a fine fellow when he has grown to manhood.
[Illustration: A VIKING EXPEDITION. +The artist’s children+
+Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+]
+Fjæstad+ has painted the moss on the tree-trunks and rocks, the water
dripping and frozen, but his favourite subject is the snow accumulating
under the stems of the fir-trees in high-piled fantastic heaps (see
the cover). And +Björn Algrensson+ shows us in his picture “Interior”
in Thiel’s Gallery, what one feels like in an out-of-the-way cottage
in the forest, as one watches through the window the big heavy flakes
slowly falling, till at last one has to use a snow-shovel to get out
through the door. It is then one feels what home really means. On
Lake Fryken, which is long and narrow like a river, lies Rottneros,
the Ekeby of Gösta Berling’s Tale. This region has been depicted by
+Georg Pauli+ in his drawings. Down by the enormous expanse of Lake
Vänern, that great inland sea, whose chief affluent is the river
Klarälfven, which runs through the whole of Värmland, lies Säffle. It
is here that +Otto Hesselbom+, who became famous in Italy before he
was appreciated in Sweden, has his residence. In modern times we have
been a little afraid of the painting of “views”, but +Hesselbom+ has
shown us what decorative grandeur there may lie in the very structure
of the landscape, seen from a high point. In his painting “Our Country”
(page 9), we see wooded ridges, shading the long and narrow lakes,
and in the far distance a glimpse of Lake Vänern. Värmland, with its
hilly contours, its nature of river valley to the Klarälfven, and its
lonely, interminable forests, forms a transition not merely to Dalarne
(Dalecarlia), on which it borders on the north-east, but also to the
genuine Norrland scenery. “_Bergslagen_” is the name given to the
districts in Värmland, Västmanland, Närke, Uppland, and Dalarne, where
mining is carried on. There ore is mined and smelted in blast-furnaces
or smelting-works, and charcoal is burnt in the lonely charring-stacks
in the forest.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A COTTAGE AT RÄTTVIK
+Water-colour by CARL LARSSON+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM+]
* * * * *
[Illustration: LABOURERS
+Painting by CARL WILHELMSON+
+IN THIEL’S GALLERY. STOCKHOLM+]
Up along the river Dalälfven and its glens till its two sources,
penetrated thousands of years ago the forefathers of the _Dalkarlar_
(Dalecarlians), who now live in Dalarne. The men who grew up amid
the straight white-trunked Dalecarlian birches lived in village
communities, but were almost isolated from the rest of Sweden. Dalarne
came to be the source from which the country drew her strength, and was
for hundreds of years the heart of Sweden, sending warm red Swedish
blood pulsating through the sickening body of the state; and the part
which the _Dalkarlar_ played in Engelbrekt’s war of independence
about 1430, and in that of Gustaf Vasa about 1520, told of unimpaired
power and strength. The judgment which the old king Gösta (Gustaf)
passed on the Swedes, that they are a stubborn race, inclined for
great achievements, holds good first and foremost of the Dalecarlians.
“Säkert” (I am sure) is an expression which they are very fond of, and
the Dalecarlian dialect has a particularly manly and pure ring. In
certain districts they have retained a language which is unintelligible
to other Swedes. In the villages on the banks of Lake Siljan, in the
parishes of Mora, Rättvik, and Leksand, they still retain, more than in
any other place in our country, the beautiful old costumes. And even if
new levelling movements have tended to do away with the beautiful lace
and the artistic weavings, so that even the women are dressed in the
way they call “slimsklädd” i. e. half town, half country, even if the
seething social discontent in the south part of Dalarne makes itself
felt with unusual emphasis--, yet there are in these parishes round
Lake Siljan both men and women, hardy, healthy and strong like old
birchwood (page 36). From ancient times there have been no gentlefolk
in Dalarne other than the parsons and judges. Now-a-days we find there
the two classes which are socially and ethically furthest apart:
peasant-farmers and proletarians. The strongly pronounced character of
the people, their brightly-coloured costumes, and the hilly country
(hilly at least from the point of view of south and central Sweden)
round the beautiful lake has always attracted the artists to Dalarne.
At Sundborn in the Falun district +Carl Larsson+ has built up for
himself a home with a personal and genuinely Swedish character, such as
one might expect from a man who is himself the embodiment of much that
is essentially Swedish. His series of water-colours, “The Larssons”,
“Spadarfvet” (our own soil) and “Åt solsidan” (on the sunny side)
give us, in picture and text, in word and truth, the finest essence
of Swedish family life. His pictures are warm in feeling, and crammed
with beauty, full of fun, yet at the bottom serious. No one, perhaps,
has painted the Swedish children like +Carl Larsson+. In Sweden we
do not like old-fashioned, affected, molly-coddled children: we
want our children to be out in the open air as much as possible; in
our elementary schools, which, unlike those of other countries, are
cheap and impart a good deal of free instruction, the children of the
different classes mix with each other; and in the country one likes
them to play with the farmer’s children and the crofter’s children.
The shyness of the little peasant children has already been remarked
on. The town children, and the children of the higher classes, are as
a rule frank and lively and look respectfully and confidingly on the
stranger. +Carl Larsson+ has painted and drawn the children, those
precious treasures in whose hands the future of our country will one
day lie, in a great variety of different ways: struggling with their
lessons, bathing, fishing, rowing, and trudging through the snow,
sturdy little things in grey clothes and red pointed caps, or sweet
fair-haired girls, mothering with true womanly instinct their dirty
little baby brothers and sisters (page 35). There is a rich variety in
the different costumes of the parishes in Dalarne. At the place where
the river Österdalälfven on the south shore of the Siljan flows out of
the lake, and cuts its way through the sand, is situated the village of
Leksand. On a point one sees a whitewashed church, round whose walls
the _masar_ (Dalecarlian men) in long black coats, the married women in
white and the _kullor_ (unmarried girls) in red or flowery caps, have
been gathering for hundreds of years. The Leksand costume tends to give
the girls a somewhat podgy figure.
[Illustration: BJÖRS-MIA.
+Painting by EMERICK STENBERG+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF MRS. ANNA LEVIN. STOCKHOLM+]
It is an extraordinarily beautiful sight when the long church boats
come rowing over Lake Siljan, and the country-people assemble on the
church hill under the huge birches, enjoying the rest and sociability
of the Sunday. An artist who thoroughly knows the Dalecarlian usages
and the Dalecarlian costumes is +Emerik Stenberg+, who lives in a
little village in the parish of Leksand. His “Wake in Leksand” (in the
Museum at Gothenburg), represents those hale and hearty old men and
fine old women assembled round an open coffin. The types have been
admirably hit off, and the mourning colours, black and yellow, are
very effective in the candle-light. +Stenberg’s+ “Björs-Mia” which
represents a _Leksandskulla_ (peasant-girl from Leksand) sitting
with her feet firmly planted on the ground, with an air of broad
assurance, ready for one of those humorous, sarcastic answers which
are so characteristic of the peasantry of Dalarne, is one of the most
instructive Dalecarlian pictures in existence. It interprets admirably
both the outward and inner life of this type of peasant-girl. Her
attitude of careless ease is particularly effective.--Rättvik,
which is also situated on Lake Siljan, has not been depicted by
any really eminent artists, though +Zorn+ has sometimes taken
_Rättvikskullor_ (peasant-girls from R.) as models for his etchings.
Their tall conical hats and the motley cross-striped patch on the
front of their skirts are well-known all over Sweden, and one often
sees these smart powerful-looking girls working in the gardens in the
country-houses outside Stockholm. In no part of Sweden do we find such
a highly-developed peasant culture as in Dalarne, and it is a fortunate
coincidence that our perhaps greatest artist, +Anders Zorn+, was
born in Mora, and, after travelling all over the world and achieving
universal fame, has gone back to settle there. That elemental force
which has always been found and still exists in Dalarne, whose roots
extend right into heathen times, which shines forth in the blood-red
colours of the peasants’ dresses, and resounds “in marrowy heathen
music” in the tunes on cow-herd’s horns echoing among the hill-sides
and through the forests, is also found in +Anders Zorn+. Like his
friend the poet Karlfeldt, who is also a _Dalkarl_, he has with every
fibre of his being sucked in all the beautiful visions which Dalarne
has to offer; he has gazed over the glittering bay of Gésundaberg; he
has drunk of the cool “bottle-brown” water of the Dalälfven; he has
drunk in the juices of the berry-laden soil, he has chewed at the resin
of the firs, and inhaled the smell of the mountain dairy, a mixture of
cow-house odours and the fresh scent of the forest, with a tang of sour
milk from the milk-room. It is in the same surroundings and on the same
fare of hard bread and pease pancake with a sweet or two on Sundays
that “Kings-Karin” (page 43) has been reared, the healthy-looking
peasant-girl in the red shawl, with her unruly eyes, her slightly
protruding cheek-bones, the fresh, almost too red, complexion, with a
healthy, unconscious sensuality, who embodies some of the most precious
characteristics of our race. She is a symbol of uncorrupted peasant
life, a spring of power which it is to be hoped will never be troubled
nor ever lose its force.
[Illustration: MID-SUMMER DANCE
+Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+
+IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM+]
No painter has ever been able to render the peasant nature in all its
fulness and strength, like +Zorn+. His buxom naked peasant-girls are
products of a natural mode of life, but there is no attempt to convey
a lesson on the evils of town-life, or to advocate a more hygienic
manner of existence. He presents them to us in the bath, their powerful
bodies glistening with the warm water, or at the loft-door, or as they
wade out into the brook, fair-haired and full of health and youth, the
sweetest and juiciest berries which the Swedish soil has brought forth.
+Zorn+ paints the crafty face of the peasant watch-maker, working away
at his Mora-clock, a kind of grandfather’s clock, deeply absorbed
in his mechanical improvements, with that inventive genius which is
natural to us Swedes, and has given birth to such famous inventors
as John Ericsson, the constructor of the Monitor and inventor of the
screw-propeller, de Laval, the inventor of the de Laval Separator, and
L. M. Ericsson, the great telephone-constructor.
[Illustration: ELKS
+Drawing by BRUNO LILJEFORS+]
Once in a while +Zorn+ depicts the character of our people from the
seamy side. In “A Fair at Mora”, we see a Dalecarlian peasant lying on
the grass dead-drunk. By his side sits in gloomy apathy a flaxen-haired
woman, waiting for him to recover.--Whether the fellow will be a nicer
customer then, is another matter.
[Illustration: KINGS KARIN
+Oil painting by ANDERS ZORN+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA+]
If mid-summer with its warm evenings and its smell of dried hay
is the grand festival of the year in Dalarne, yet when the snow
crackles under the runners of the sleighs, and its passengers are
muffled up in sheepskins and red rugs, whose bright colour stands out
against the white snow, and the jingle of the bells resounds over the
dazzling white landscape, one realizes pretty strongly that one is
living, as a Dalarne peasant once expressed it, in a ‘nice North’.
+Anselm Schultzberg+ in his winter pictures from the southern part of
Dalarne has set forth the wintry beauty of this country, which has
also been rendered by +Arborelius+. In +Schultzberg’s+ great picture
“Walpurgis-night Bonfires in Bergslagen”, one sees how the bonfires are
blazing on the hills, while the snow-drifts which are still to be seen
on their slopes tell that the reign of winter is not yet completely
shattered. Those who know their history will recollect, when they see
these fires, that it was just in Dalarne that the trials of witches
in the 17th and 18th century were most prevalent. The old hags were
burnt at the stake, and the victims, who were themselves blinded by the
dark superstition around them, confessed to having had intercourse
with the Prince of Darkness himself. From Käringberget (the Hag Hill)
in Leksand, these unfortunate victims to the cause of light and truth
lighted up the region round them. Just as the church bells, which
once in times of dark superstition rang to scare away the powers of
evil, now with their deep memory-laden voice admonish us to ‘lift our
hearts’, an admonition which all need and all are willing to bow to;
so now do those symbolic fires shine forth, themselves purified from
wailing and corruption, full of memories from olden times and promises
for the future, ushering in the summer, whose great festival is perhaps
never celebrated with greater splendour than round the maypoles by the
side of the churches in Dalarne.
[Illustration: MINERS ON THE ORE MOUNTAIN AT KIRUNA
+Painting by CARL WILHELMSON+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. HJALMAR LUNDBOHM. KIRUNA+]
Mora lies on the north side of Lake Siljan, where the Österdalälfven
falls into the lake, on a rather low promontory separating it from the
Lake of Orsa which has been drawn and painted by +Aron Gerle+.
[Illustration: LAPP
+Drawing by ALBERT ENGSTRÖM+]
Above the great expanse of Lake Siljan rises in the west the Gesunda
Hill. It was from the church mound at Mora that Gustaf Vasa in 1521
spoke the words of earnest admonition which took root in the hearts of
the men of Mora. It was here that the spirited resolution was formed
which laid the foundations of a free and independent Sweden. This, the
most important moment in the life of Sweden, has been immortalized by
+Zorn+ in his masterly picture of Gustaf Vasa, standing on a hill in
Mora, where the young Uppland nobleman laid his whole soul into his
words to the men of Dalarne. After some decades he and his descendants
were to cover the emblem of the ‘Sheaf’ (_Vase_) with greatness and
glory, as the poet sings:
“The sheaf of pallid grains no longer
Which once in Uppland stood on ploughed ground;
It ranketh now with fleur-de-lys and eagle,
The wide world over honoured and renowned.”
On Midsummer Eve 1523 King Gustaf marched in triumph into the
festively decked capital. The work of liberation was accomplished.
From that time we can celebrate midsummer with great joy, and when
we see the leafy boughs in the halls, on the stems of boats and
dancing-floors, and smell the scent of the birch leaves, we are filled
with a feeling of mingled joy over the great festival of the summer
and over our land and people. The Swede is much addicted to melancholy
brooding, but also to the opposite extreme, rowdiness and fights with
knives and brandy bottles. It is fortunate for us, when these contrasts
work themselves out in singing and dancing. The fanaticism of the
pietistic schools has frequently been succeeded by a social hate,
fanned into fiercer flame by the envy which is inherent in the Swedish
character. But there are also friendly powers at work in our people’s
disposition, a sense of justice and fairness, respect for man as a man
no matter what his position and circumstances, and a healthy sensuality
and joy of life, which loves nature and what is natural. The joy of
being together, of eating, drinking, dancing and singing in the open
air, this is the real spirit in which to celebrate midsummer. +Zorn+
has painted the midsummer dance on the green, the men at first rather
more solemn than they are further south, but later on when the girls
begin to shout with delight and the men’s hearts are set beating, there
is rapture over the present and all that one promises to each other on
the warm summer eve of the lightest night in the year (page 40).
* * * * *
Norrland does not make a figure in Swedish history till late; it is
only in recent times that its forests and mines have been exploited,
and it is only very lately indeed that it has been discovered from
the literary and historical point of view. The poetry of Ådalen
has been described by Pelle Molin, Olof Högberg has portrayed life
in Norrland in the 17th century, and +Ludvig Nordström+ has in his
broad humorous way depicted the life that goes on in the Norrland
coast towns, and the simplicity of the petty tradesman coming into
conflict with the blustering superiority of the upstart. Norrland is
larger than the whole of the rest of Sweden put together, but it has
a population of only 950,000 souls. On its northern frontier it is
hilly and mountainous, while the rest of the country, which slopes down
to the sea, consists of river valleys and interminable forests and
marshes. Only a little more than a hundredth part of Norrland has been
cultivated; thus almost the whole country is still in a wild state.
As has just been mentioned it has only recently been ‘discovered’.
Out of the ‘slumbering millions’ a good many have certainly woken up
and travelled on the Ofoten line to Narvik or down the rivers to the
saw-mills in order to be transformed into the gold which the country
is so much in need of, but those beauties of inestimable value which
the Norrland Nature possesses are still slumbering. The rivers may have
rolled along down to the sea for thousands of years, but, before a poet
or artist has sung or painted the sense of eternity which is aroused by
the water quietly flowing by in the shadow of the pine forest, these
mysteries do not reveal themselves in their fulness to us ordinary folk.
The scenery of Gästrikland, which corresponds to that of Dalarne, and,
strictly speaking, does not belong to Norrland, has been described
by +Erik Hedberg+. He seizes hold of the beauties which for an
understanding mind may lie in mean things.
Härjedalen and Jämtland, which from 1111 to 1645 belonged to Norway,
also resemble that country in character. The desolate beauty of the
former province has still to wait for its discoverer. Nor has Jämtland
played the part in Swedish art which it deserves. It is true that
+Anton Genberg+ has painted the white-patched hills, standing out in
violet against the sunset sky; but the fertile country round Storsjön
(the Great Lake), the characteristic form of Mount Åreskutan, and the
Tännforsen Falls booming in the stillness of the mountain region,
though known all over Sweden, have not yet enticed our artists, who
look askance on too easily intelligible ‘view’ motives. It is as if
they thought that their beauty was obvious enough anyway.
[Illustration: THE ALFVAREN IN ÖLAND
+Oil painting by NILS KREUGER+
+AT THE ARTIST’S+]
Northern Sweden is of such enormous extent that, geographically
speaking, the district round Lake Storsjön lies in the centre of
Sweden. When one speaks of the beautiful Norrland, it is really these
three things one thinks of. Mount Åreskutan with the Tännforsen Falls,
the rivers, flowing down the valleys, cutting their way through earth
and sand, and the mountains and Torneträsk marshes in Lappland. All
this has, of course, been rendered in picture during the last decades,
but not in such a manner that it bears comparison with what has been
painted in the more southerly parts of the kingdom. +Carl Johansson+
has painted the quiet, serious lines of the river landscape, the edges
of the åsar (ridges) against the sunset sky, and, most often of all,
the beautiful river, Indalsälfven, which flows through Jämtland and
Medelpad. A trip up either of the two rivers Indals- or Ångermanälfven,
first by boat, when the logs of timber, sliding down to the saw-mills
on the coast, knock against the sides of the boat, and afterwards by
carriage through the river valley, is one of those things one must do,
if one wants to get to know Norrland. One sometimes hears miles off the
booming of the falls, like an ‘organ chord’, as Pelle Molin has it,
emphasizing the sense of eternity.
For thousands of years the forest has been left to grow and rot
uncared for. Now a new America has burst into the stillness, carrying
in its train unexpected profits and equally unexpected crashes,
stripped and devastated regions, spoliation, and social and political
strife. Recklessness and savagery have doubtless always been found
in Sweden. People had ravenous appetites, and they eat ravenously
too when there is food to be had. When the timberwork of the cottage
groaned under the severe cold, people longed for something to warm
them up. In good times the Norrland woodmen drank champagne from time
to time with their American pork, and the peasants who had, for a few
thousand kronor, parted with their farms, worth, with their forest
land, hundreds of thousands of kronor, kept the notes locked up in the
drawer only for a short time, and then spent them before they knew
what they were about. The Swedes are not a commercial people, and in
that respect the Norrlanders are true Swedes. As early as 1600 Anders
Buraeus wrote of his country-men, the people of Ångermanland, that they
are ‘slow in all their commerce’, and it is still almost impossible to
bring a Norrland peasant to the scratch over the smallest commercial
transaction. “_Mir nichts und dir nichts, so haben wir alle beide
nichts_” (Nought for me and nought for thee, so there’s nought for both
you and me), was the motto which king Charles IX deemed applicable
to Swedes, and the Norrland peasant would rather let his ptarmigans
go rotten than let the buyer make any profit on them himself; but
hospitality, that beautiful barbarian virtue, is exercised more in
Luleå than in Paris.
* * * * *
However, the beauties of Norrland scenery are greater than those of
its civilization. Stora Harsprånget, the most powerful water-fall in
Europe, in Jockmock parish in Lappland, is a thing of greater beauty
than the modern Sundsvall architecture, but there is a province in
Norrland, the largest in the whole of Sweden, which possesses both an
exquisite nature of unfading charm and a grand ancient culture. It is
Lappland. In Swedish art Lappland has been rendered in +Höckert’s+,
+P. D. Holm’s+ and +J. Tirén’s+ pictures. As to +Höckert+, though his
paintings are excellent from the purely technical point of view, in his
“Lapphut” in the National Museum, we see that the Lapp mother bears far
too much resemblance to a Paris model; on the other hand his “Wedding
at Hornavan” renders admirably the wild carousals of a primitive
people, when the bride on the leaf-decked boat lands by the shore. In
“Lapp Chapel” in the museum at Lille he has painted the Lapps, a people
readily and powerfully affected by religious impulses, listening to a
sermon.
When the Swedish people for a generation or so had been interesting
themselves in what “the new Sweden” looked like when looked at through
the eye of a banker, and had been reading so much about interest
yielded by waste land, and vexing their souls at the profits which
energy and far-sightedness had at length succeeded in wringing from
the great iron ore mountains at Gellivare and Kirunavara, towering
aloft above the plain, people began to discover these regions also
from the artistic point of view. The curious contrast between the
primitive people who had had the desert-like stillness of their country
disturbed by blasts of dynamite, who, as they made their way over the
snow-covered plains saw the electric light shining on the mountains,
is rendered still more striking by the silence and desolation which
envelopes these mining communities within the arctic circle. +Carl
Wilhelmson+ has on a large canvas represented the blasting of the
ore in the open air (page 44). Below, one sees the surface of Lake
Luossajärvi and a more extensive view than is generally afforded when
the ore is mined within the bowels of the earth. The air is also
considerably fresher on Mount Kiruna. In winter it is dark in the
middle of the day, and then one has to work by electric light. +Karl
Nordström+ has painted the beautiful lines of Mount Kiruna, when the
great iron ore mountain is aglow like red-hot iron in the light of
the setting sun. +Prince Eugen+ has rendered the same mountain, when
covered with snow; and the whole of the district where the Lapps drive
their herds of reindeer along the railway, and the trains passing
along it laden with ore have been drawn by +Albert Engström+, whose
temperament is in a quite extraordinary degree attuned to the spirit of
the wilderness and the inner life of a primitive people.
Our civilization is death to the Lapps. When from Abisko one gazes out
over the Torneträsk marshes and on the banks sees the grey herds of
reindeer browsing on the plains, and amid the mountain birches catches
a glimpse of some dark-blue Lapp costumes, one thinks sorrowfully
how ere long the last Lapp with his quaint gait will be waddling
along among the dwarf-birches, shrunk and shrivelled like himself,
and disappear under the flaming Northern Lights (_Aurora borealis_)
in his _pulka_, leaving the Swedish hut, where he so contentedly and
cheerfully carved his roast reindeer joint with an ornamented knife,
driven forth by forces which he cannot comprehend, much less resist.
Then Sweden will have suffered an irreparable loss. Civilization has
forced its way, riches have increased, and then one day our hour will
come, when the cold has increased and driven us south again. It is this
thought which is voiced from Kiruna church-tower in +Albert Engström’s+
words:
Rise, curfew, up to the sun, to the North-Light’s circles wide,
Rouse sleeping fields, wake slumbering moor and heath,
And bless the fields whose fertile soil doth bide
The ploughman’s toil, and grant them peace hereafter.
* * * * *
[Illustration: AUGUST STRINDBERG
+Painting by RICHARD BERGH+
+IN THE POSSESSION OF THE PUBLISHER K. O. BONNIER+]
The two large islands in the Baltic, Gottland and Öland, are both
in their nature and their culture of a peculiar beauty, which is
appreciated by the artists. With its mild climate, and consequently
southern vegetation, with its rocky soil of limestone and sandstone,
the Gottland landscape differs from what we are accustomed to on the
main land of Sweden. In Gottland is situated the most picturesque of
Swedish towns, Visby. Even if Gottland’s greatness is now historic,
yet many old traditions from ancient times survive among the people;
ancient traditional games and old folksongs and melodies still live a
vigorous life on the romantic island. The artists have been attracted
first and foremost by the peculiar architecture that flourished in
the Middle Ages not only within the stately ancient walls of Visby,
which with their hanging towers and bastions still stand erect and
almost intact, but also in the romantic ruins of the churches of the
transition period, which are an ornament to the island. Like a Northern
Cyprus or Sicily, Gottland was once the centre of the Baltic, where
currents of culture from different quarters ran together, and the
trading fleets of Visby collected gold on all the coasts of the Baltic.
Gottland is from the architectural point of view the most interesting
province in Sweden. In the rural parts of the island there are an
extraordinarily large number of churches erected during the Middle Ages
with architectural details peculiar to this island. The Gottlander
+Axel Herman Hägg+ and +Robert Haglund+ in their etchings have depicted
the Visby ruins, which it was proposed in 1783 (a period which was
lacking in historical sense) to pull down, a proposal which fortunately
was not put into execution for want of funds. Even poverty may have its
blessings.
+Hanna Pauli+, and more particularly +Richard Bergh+, have painted the
town wall of Visby, one of the most remarkable historic relics in the
whole of Scandinavia.
Öland, the smallest province in Sweden, the long and narrow island off
the coast of Småland, has been described with keen power of observation
and powerful realism by Carl von Linné (Linnæus), perhaps our best
descriptive writer, who in 1741 undertook his celebrated journey to
Öland. The Ölander, +Per Ekström+, the painter of the glittering
sunshine has painted a number of scenes from that poorly-wooded island,
from which one sees the sun and the sea almost from all parts. The
mediæval castle of Borgholm, which was rebuilt by Nicodemus Tessin the
elder by order of Karl Gustaf, was never properly finished. Up on the
citadel, where sea-walls sloping precipitously down to the sea afford
an extensive view over the water and over the bare plateau of Alfvaren
(Chalk-heath), stands the old castle, which has been rendered by
several artists, amongst others Prince +Eugen+.
[Illustration: STOCKHOLM CASTLE
+Painting by PRINCE EUGEN+
+IN THE CLUB-ROOM OF THE STOCKHOLM ‘NATION’, AT UPPSALA+]
But _the_ painter of Öland is +Nils Kreuger+, one of the foremost
artists in Sweden, who has shown us the richly-coloured beauties of
the remarkable scenery of Öland, and painted the horses wading in the
dark-blue water, the cattle clipping the short grass on the parched
brown plains, and the sheep seeking shelter from the wind behind the
red limestone walls. There is something of the desolate grandeur of the
desert landscape about the plateau of Alfvaren, and both the latter
and the luxuriant vegetation on the strip of shore below the citadel
have received the most artistic interpretation in +Kreuger’s+ paintings
(page 47).
* * * * *
[Illustration: LEJONBACKEN
+Painting by LOUIS SPARRE+]
The small rural towns of Sweden have, owing to the outrageous way in
which they have been treated lost much, sometimes all, of the homely
charm which once distinguished them. Being, until quite recent times,
built of wood, they have been devastated by fire more thoroughly
than towns built of stone. The rapid development which Sweden has
undergone during the last forty years, has also fostered an inclination
for violent innovations, and it is not until recently that æsthetic
considerations have won the ear of practical men. Our architects, who
by their restorations of the cathedrals of Uppsala and Lund and other
towns have almost entirely spoilt these venerable monuments of the
past, are now devoting themselves with keen interest to preserving
what still remains. Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, has
managed to preserve a number of the canals which remind us of the Dutch
ideal which prevailed when the town was built in 1619 with the aid of
Dutchmen. The canals have been painted by +Reinhold Norstedt+ and +Axel
Erdman+. On the main canal stands the Gothenburg Museum, accommodated
in a house in which in the 18th century the East Indian Company had its
main office. It was this company that introduced the large quantities
of Chinese porcelain, which still lend a refined old-fashioned tone to
many a Swedish dinner-table. The Museum is specially rich in modern
Swedish art, and those who are interested in Swedish paintings will
have to patronize it thoroughly. Swedish painting is deeply indebted to
patrons of art in Gothenburg, most of all to Pontus Fürstenberg. On the
heights round the town there still stand the picturesque redoubts, Göta
Lejon and Kronan, the latter erected from designs by Erik Dahlberg,
the man who guided the Swedish army over the Belt. The harbour of
Gothenburg, with the largest mercantile fleet in Sweden, has been
painted and drawn by +O. Holmström+.
Some little distance above Gothenburg, and like it on the river Göta
älf, lies Kungälf, in the shadow of the Bohuslän hills, painted
by +Hanna Pauli+ in what is perhaps the most beautiful picture
representing a Swedish country-town.
On Lake Vättern lies the garden-city Grenna, where the gardens among
the white rows of houses along the high road, which is the main street
of the town, groan under pears and cherries. Grenna, like one or two
more of our smaller towns, has the somewhat unusual advantage of “being
in the country”. +Alfred Bergström+ and +Lennart Nyblom+ have painted
the Grenna district. In Vadstena, whose ancient castle has been painted
by +Oscar Björck+ (page 33), there are still preserved some relics
of the Middle Ages. Blåkyrkan (the Blue Church) built by St Birgitta
(Bridget) in bluish limestone after the directions of Christ himself,
carries the thoughts to the cloister founded by St Birgitta and reminds
one of that Swedish woman of the 14th century, with her powerful
personality, who with Teutonic frankness was not afraid to speak her
mind even to the Pope.
[Illustration: +VERNER von HEIDENSTAM IN HIS HOME AT DJURSHOLM+
+Painting by OSCAR BJÖRCK+
+IN THE GOTHENBURG MUSEUM+]
A cluster of our most interesting small towns lies around Lake
Mälaren. Sigtuna boasts of being older than Stockholm. Its period of
glory was in the 12th century, and its numerous church ruins give
the melancholy of fallen greatness to the little homely town, whose
grass-grown market-place has now been gravelled, in order that the
inhabitants of Sigtuna might escape hearing the awkward question: “Has
there been good pasture for the cows in the market-place this year?”
Mariefred lies dreaming with her small wooden houses at the foot of
Gripsholm, the most imposing castle in Sweden. The high walls tower
aloft defiantly, and the castle, which was erected by Gustaf Vasa and
where his sons held each other confined, where Gustaf III had his
dainty theatre erected, and where the side-scenes, against which the
figures of the courtiers, as they acted, once stood out, are still
preserved, is one of the most remarkable monuments of the past in
Sweden.
[Illustration: RIDDARHOLM CHURCH ON A SPRING EVENING
+Drawing by KARL NORDSTRÖM+]
For Swedish ears the very names Strängnäs, Arboga, Köping, Västerås
have a ring of idyl and of history, and it is remarkable that they
have not been more frequently depicted by our artists. +Hesselbom+ has
painted the old town of Strängnäs, and its red cathedral towers, round
which the daws flutter.
Inestimable beauties have been irreparably lost through the irreverent
way in which our cities have been handled, but one can still say of the
homely old town of Ystad, which, as Linné writes, “lies right in the
middle of the south side of Skåneland”, that there are “quite a number
of old houses in the town”. It will be the chief duty of our times to
preserve as far as possible the old-fashioned half-timber houses, and
the old town-plot.
The two university towns of Uppsala and Lund are richer in historic
memories than in remarkable architecture. The cathedrals of these towns
have lost their interest for the artists after their restoration, and
it is chiefly with lyric poetry and music that Uppsala is associated.
On _Valborgsmässoafton_ (eve of Walpurgis Night) the white-capped
students march in procession through the avenue of Odinslund, and the
hymn to spring mounts up on the clear frosty evening, up to the few
stars which are to be seen twinkling in the sky, and the bonfires gleam
here and there on the Uppland plain.
* * * * *
Stockholm is the largest and most beautiful town in the peninsula. It
is worshipped, as is only right, like a beautiful queen, and treasured
by the whole of Sweden like a gem. It has been described with most
insight by those who have passed their childhood in its islands and
played in its market-places, by Stockholm’s own children, Bellman,
Strindberg, +Carl Larsson+, Oscar Levertin, Hjalmar Söderberg, +Prince
Eugen+. Even if we do not always see “that Stockholm woven of sun and
songs -- -- --, which one may see for brief moments, if one is youthful
and a poet”, at any rate the poets and artists have with their magic
wands revealed to us many of the beauties which now enhance our love of
the lovely city, which above others is the possession of the whole of
Sweden.
Of that Stockholm which in 1523 decked itself out in birch-leaves to
greet young King Gösta (Gustaf Vasa), not much is preserved. The old
palace--“the main-building”, as it was then modestly called, where
Gustaf Vasa ruled in the literal sense of the word, is no longer in
existence. When Gustaf Adolf left this palace in order to defend Sweden
at Breitenfeld and Lützen, and give his life, as he said himself, “for
the glory of the fatherland and God’s church which therein rests”, he
wished on behalf of the citizens of Stockholm “that your small huts may
become large stone houses, your small boats large ships and vessels,
and that the oil in your cruses may not run dry”. And in fact Stockholm
made enormous strides during the period of Sweden’s greatness.
It was when this period was drawing to a close that the new palace,
the creation of Nikodemus Tessin, was begun. It has been painted best,
perhaps, by one who was born within its walls, +Prince Eugen+, who has
rendered “the venerable cube” in a large picture, in which one sees
Stockholm Castle on a summer evening (page 51). Over the dark waters of
_Strömmen_ (‘the stream’) hover a few gulls, descendants of the birds
who flew over the town, when Bellman one morning in 1780 described the
harbour of Stockholm as follows:
In pulleys and ropes you hear not a creak;
The morn is young, round the masts you spy
High up in the air so breezy and bleak
The sea-gulls soar and fly.
Most of those who have described Stockholm from the artistic side have
selected for treatment the harbour and the busy life which centres
around it. In contrast to other seaport towns, the large steamers
anchor in the very heart of Stockholm. Imposing granite quays run along
the shores both of _Saltsjön_ (the sea) and Lake Mälaren, but even if
the idyllic charm which characterized the Stockholm of the ’forties
and ’fifties, such as it was painted by +G. V. Palm+, has now in a
great measure disappeared; and even if we do not now, as then, row
about on the Riddarholm Canal and strike up ditties under the arch of
the beautiful old Riddarholm bridge, where _Riddarhuset_ (the house of
the nobles) mirrors its baroque façade in the canal; yet it may happen
that by the clump of trees down by Riddarholm harbour, one may hear
the song ‘Captain, set full steam ahead’, struck up by the societies
and associations which on Sunday mornings take a trip in one of the
many Mälar-boats “out to the country, out to the birds”, doing homage
to nature with that somewhat bibulous sentimentality, which in our
days is rendered affecting, to a certain extent, by the sanction of
antiquity with which it is invested. The part of the harbour called
_Strömmen_ has been painted by +Axel Lindman+ in a big picture, full of
steamers and sailing-boats, of sunshine and sparkling water. When that
picture was painted, August Strindberg, our greatest and most original
delineator of Swedish nature (page 50), had given us in his novel
“Röda rummet” (The red chamber) and the series of short stories called
“Giftas” (Marrying), a new and fresher view of the beauty of Stockholm,
and one appreciated more than ever the spring mornings when the
vessels, painted red along the water-line, tugged at their hawsers and
ropes. +Anders Zorn+ discovered and pointed out the curious rings and
lines of the gurgling water, and he has immortalized a summer evening
in 1890, from one of the most beautiful points, _Skeppsholmen_. In the
foreground one sees some ladies walking on the holm, and the background
is taken up by the _Strömmen_, which is perhaps most delightful of all
on a June evening, when the scent of lilac from the hedges mingles with
the fresh breeze from the running water, and when a few bars played
by the orchestra in _Strömparterren_ go to join the murmur of the
stream. The harbour in winter-time has been painted by +Oscar Björck+
in a brightly-coloured picture, exultant like a trumpet-note. The snow
set off against the black hulls of the boats and with the picturesque
silhouette of Skeppsholmen has been painted by +Alfred Wahlberg+, and
finally +Per Ekström+ has rendered the majestic lines of the Palace
seen through the snowstorm over _Norrström_ (the northstream).
[Illustration: RIDDARFJARDEN ON A SUMMER NIGHT
+Oil painting by EUGEN JANSSON+
+IN THORSTEN LAURIN’S COLLECTION. STOCKHOLM+]
Only on the condition that one is prepared to grant that Stockholm is
a very nice place in winter, morning, noon, and evening, and at night,
too, can one allow that ‘Stockholm is a summer town’. The elegant,
white steam-boats go out over the green water to the country houses in
the _skärgård_, crowded with merry people. The Stockholmer considers
himself, let us hope rightly, to be far more lively than the man from
Härjedalen, and even than the Gothenburg man. The cool sea-air blows
in refreshingly not only over the lawns in the park _Kungsträdgården_,
when the water sparkles and foams over the shell-shaped edge of the
fountain, but also among the narrow alleys leading to the crooked old
streets called _Västerlånggatan_ and _Österlånggatan_. The latter has
been painted by +Eugen Jansson+ on an early morning in summer, when the
sailmakers’ flag-canvas hangs motionless, and the footsteps echo on the
pavement, and the old mediæval Stockholm street, which otherwise has
for centuries been crowded with loafers of the most fast colour, for a
few early morning hours is full of naught but mysticism.
Stockholm is a watery town, even if one often mixes something strong
in the water. There is good drinking-water and excellent mineral
water, which latter is copiously drunk, not tossed off in American
fashion, but leisurely. It is an innocent pleasure with a glass of
‘_vichy-vatten_’ in front of one to look out on the world, or at any
rate on _Torget_ (the square i. e. Kungsträdgården), from the bench,
which has won literary fame through Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel ‘Doktor
Glas’. The excellent bathing-establishments, with both hot and cold
baths, invite one to still more revelling in water. +Eugen Jansson+ has
in two sunny pictures painted the interior of one of these Stockholm
swimming-baths, when the sunburnt bodies give us a strong impression of
our national healthiness. The dives are often performed with such skill
and agility, that an impression of real beauty is produced. Stockholm
has been excellently depicted by +Axel Erdman+. He has painted the
street Götgatan, where the peasants come driving in from the country to
sell their wares in Kornhamnstorg market-place. +Erdman+ has a sharp
eye for the picturesque charm of the old market-women, as, muffled up
in their furs, they sit hour after hour at their stalls, serene and
placid, till the disappearance of a chicken puts them in a passion,
or an urchin who has stolen an apple makes them tremble with moral
indignation.
_Staden inom broarna_ (the city within the bridges i. e. the city
proper) was once all that there was of Stockholm, and in this part
of the town, where now-a-days there is a busier and livelier traffic
than elsewhere, we find our oldest and most beautiful buildings.
The harbour-life in the present-day Stockholm has been depicted in
+Carl Wilhelmson’s+ “Scene from Skeppsbron”, a fresco painting in the
post-office. The baroque façades of the 17th century have been painted
by +Louis Sparre+, who has also depicted the imposing entrance to the
Palace, Lejonbacken (the lion hill) (page 52), with its bronze lions,
which as early as the 17th century ornamented the old Stockholm Castle;
and in a series of drawings, water-colours, and oil-paintings he has
drawn the attention of Stockholmers to the fact that, unless we adopt
as firm a tone in defending things of historical and æsthetic value,
as we do in things whose value can be more easily estimated in money,
there is still much that we may lose.
+Sparre+, +Erdman+, and +Gerda Wallander+ have painted Kornhamnstorg
with its stalls and gables. In a large picture in a board-school in
Stockholm +Nils Kreuger+ has painted a scene from the harbour of
Stockholm on a midsummer eve, seen from “Slussen”, the lock. It is
a sunny morning. A fresh breeze is blowing over the water. In the
foreground one sees some carts decked with green in honour of the day
rumbling over the cobble-stones. There is a festive note in the air.
+Kreuger+ has several times painted the most beautiful bridge in
Stockholm and, in fact, in the whole of Sweden, Norrbro, which
connects Norrmalm (the North End) with Staden (the City). This
imposing structure, which was built during the early years of the 19th
century, owes its origin to +Adelcrantz+, the architect who created
the most beautiful opera hall in the world (now, alas, pulled down),
where Gustaf III fell the victim of Anckarström’s pistol. Norrbro is
beautiful at all times in the day, but perhaps most of all on a summer
evening, when, as Snoilsky says in his poem on Stockholm, ‘from the
swirling waters under the bridge a strange hushed note is heard to
go piercingly through the air’, and the electric lamps cast their
silvery light over the tops of the trees in _Strömparterren_. No less
beautiful is the view afforded a few hours later from the northern part
of the bridge, where one sees _Strömmen_, the Palace, Blasieholmen,
and Skeppsholmen. Everything is ‘in tone’ in the light summer night,
and it makes a mystic impression to see the façades lighted up from a
quarter, which the Stockholmer, however often he may come home late at
night, or rather early in the morning, is after all not _quite_ so used
to. +Reinhold Norstedt+ has represented this subject on a very large
picture. The same painter shows how art can cast its enchantment on the
more sober façade of a business house. If one takes an outlook from
+Boberg’s+ creation, Rosenbad House, which mirrors its yellowish-white
walls and its green-glazed roof in the Norrström, and which is one of
the most beautiful things which have in recent times been built in
Stockholm, one sees on a February afternoon the ice-floes from Lake
Mälaren come travelling over _Strömmen_ and sailing under Vasa Bridge.
It is the hour which we moderns find so alluring, when it is not yet
dark, but the lamps are beginning to be lighted. There are already
lights in a couple of windows in the Norstedt printing-house.
People in Stockholm make pretty hard endeavours to enjoy themselves,
and no doubt often succeed. Skansen is perhaps the nicest place of
entertainment. It is not so easy to say which is the least nice place,
but, if we judge by the amount of alcohol consumed, one or other of the
public-houses where ‘Bobban’ and ‘Feta Fille’, and other of +Albert
Engström’s+ favourites seek happy oblivion after their own fashion,
will serve as a counter-poise. The haunts of pleasure have not often
been rendered in art. From Skansen, however, we have +Zorn’s+ amusing
picture of the _Delsbostintan_ (peasant-girl from Delsbo) telling a
story; but from all our Stockholm theatres there is nothing at all, not
even from the new Dramatic theatre, which itself, however, has many
good works of art both outside and inside. As for the international
life of the circus and music-hall artists, +Gösta von Hennings+ has
given us some very valuable pictures, but this has little to do with
Sweden seen through artist eyes. +Hennings+ has also painted the
‘punch-drinking’ on the Opera terrace, and it is said to be one of the
most Swedish things imaginable to sit on this terrace and look out
on a beautiful view, one of the most beautiful in the whole world,
Stockholm’s ‘ström’, to the accompaniment of a string-band playing
our melancholy folk-songs, all the while drinking punch quietly and
steadily, and from time to time breaking the silence with a “_Skål i
alla fall!_” (your health, anyway).
Although there are not a few old, and a great number of modern,
beautiful houses in Stockholm, very few of our now-living artists have
rendered _Riddarhuset_ (the house of nobles), _Börsen_ (the Exchange)
in Stortorget and the old _Riksbank_ (Bank of Sweden) in Järntorget.
There is a good deal of ‘_stämning_’ in +Karl Nordström’s+ drawing
“Riddarholmen on a Spring Evening” (page 54). The little holm, which
contains so many reminiscences, lies in proud seclusion, with its
square silent. Every detail on the old brick walls of the church
has a story to tell. Magnus Ladulås once wished to be allowed to
sleep the eternal sleep behind the red walls of Riddarholm Church.
On the Gustavian mortuary chapel one reads in faded lettering the
words dedicated to Gustavus Adolphus: “SVECOS EXALTAVIT. MORIENS
TRIVMPHAVIT”, and on the copper roof of the Caroline sepulchral
monument the golden crown gleams in the evening sun. Down in the coffin
with the lion skin and the club of Hercules lies, with head shot
through, king Charles, the young hero, who once with such stubborn
resolution set fate and misfortune at defiance.
Many beautiful buildings have been erected in recent times. Among the
best are the _General Post-office_, designed by +Ferdinand Boberg+,
the building of the _Trygg Insurance Company_, whose massive forms are
descried over the tops of the trees in Humlegården Park, designed by
+Lallerstedt+, _Nordiska Museet_ designed by +Gustaf Clason+, where
the style of the Vasa Period is connected in a beautiful and ingenious
manner with the style of our old belfries, _Läkaresällskapets hus_ (the
premises of the Society of Physicians), designed by +Carl Westman+, in
the old Klara churchyard, where reposes Bellman, the poet who has seen
the most beautiful visions of Stockholm, and finally the _Östermalm
High School_ by +Ragnar Östberg+, the most monumental school-building
in our country, rich in good art both inside and outside. These
buildings still lack, perhaps, the patina of time which painters deem
they need before they can depict them; but the most commonplace blocks
of modern houses, tenement-buildings, and straight half-finished
streets have furnished motives for the art of +Karl Nordström+, +Aron
Gerle+, and +Eugen Jansson+. These artists put something passionate
into their colouring, they breathe a modern spirit of beautiful
defiance into their pictures of these parts of the town which seem
hopelessly dreary to the layman, and teach us that they too have their
beauty. Many Stockholmers, artists and men of letters perhaps as
much as any, live outside the town. They look out over the waters of
Stora Värtan from Djursholm (page 53), of Lilla Värtan from Lidingö
island, and of the inlet to Stockholm from the park Djurgården. It is
in Djurgården that +Prince Eugen+ has his residence, adorned with the
best things that modern Swedish art has created. Here the artist-prince
paints this natural park, its oaks, meadows, and bays, at all times of
the day and the year. Perhaps one might say that he has the very best
historical, cultural, and above all artistic, qualifications for seeing
Stockholm with artist eyes, when from Valdemarsudde (Valdemar’s point)
he gazes at the town raised above the surface of the water.
The Stockholm painter who in his pictures has caught the most subtle
essence of the city’s character, an artist who in his glorious
symphonic picture-poems has shown himself to be a real innovator in
landscape painting, one of the very foremost delineators of nature
now living, is +Eugen Jansson+. He looks mostly out over Stockholm
from the heights of Söder (the South), and perhaps he has rendered the
city most beautifully and most monumentally in the masterpiece in Carl
Robert Lamm’s collection, where the afternoon sun pours its golden
rays over Riddarfjärden, Kungsholmen, and the red factories in Söder.
In +Eugen Jansson’s+ landscape-art we find many of the most Swedish
characteristics, melancholy, yearning, love of gaudy colours, a touch
of lyric and musical feeling, something at once soft, defiant, and
world-embracing. Just as one of Bellman’s drinking companions in his
death-hour sings,
“Bright starry firmament, vault around me now”,
so does one of +Eugen Jansson’s+ pictures arouse in us a feeling of
the temporal seen _sub specie aeternitatis_. He has made many pictures
of the view from his windows high up on the hilly ground in the South
(page 57). Most of them are in Ernst Thiel’s rich collection. Now
he shows us an afternoon in winter, when the boats have opened up a
channel in the ice of the bays and the last rays of the sun gleam on
the windows of the Palace: now he carries us to steep, lonely, streets
with wooden steps, mysteriously lighted by the gas-lamps; now we gaze
as in a dream upon the water gleaming in the darkness, lighted up by
the gaslight and the electric lamps, which border the quays like so
many gleaming bluish-green jewels.
If one goes on a summer night out into the streets, or into one of
the small plots of garden which are still to be found on the hilly
ground to the South of Stockholm, one has beneath one the arm of Lake
Mälaren and almost the whole city dreaming in the light night. The
houses and spires of Riddarholmen stand out against the sky, which is
ever growing lighter. Stockholm is sleeping, the noises have died down,
the workmen have left their clattering steam-winches and iron bars, the
sailors are sleeping in their fo’c’sles, the bands in Kungsträdgården
and Strömparterren have long since ceased playing. Then is heard from
the tower of Riddarholm Church, where Fredman once with trembling
hands mended the clock-works, the clock striking the hour with a sound
which rings over the water and the town. One thinks of the great who
sleep in the church vaults, of those who have fought and suffered, and
sometimes given their lives, for Sweden. The sound is carried over
the whole sleeping city, which has now for hundreds of years been the
centre and greatest treasure of the country. One remembers all those
who have thought, written, and worked down there in the town, and one’s
thoughts go out over the country to the scented haycocks of Sörmland,
to Norrland where the pale light of the midnight sun shines over the
ore mountains and the summer huts of the Lapps, to the beech-woods in
Skåne, to all our vast country lying there in the summer night, to
the people in the red cottages, to those who have toiled in the stony
ground. One thinks also with gratitude of those who in song and art
have shown us the beauty and the value of what we have owned, still
own, and still wish our descendants to preserve, and in our hearts
wells up the conviction, at once earnest and joyful: I love Sweden.
PICTURES.
GUSTAF ANKARCRONA (b. 1869)
The Sleigh-bells tingle on the Up-drive 34
RICHARD BERGH (b. 1858)
Summer Evening. Scene from Lidingön 15
August Strindberg (black and white) 50
OSCAR BJÖRCK (b. 1860)
Vadstena Castle 33
Verner von Heidenstam in his Home at Djursholm 53
ALBERT ENGSTRÖM (b. 1869)
Sea-bear. Drawing (black and white) 12
Old Peasant Women. Drawing (black and white) 24
Lapp. Drawing (black and white) 45
PRINCE EUGEN (b. 1865)
Entering the Harbour 11
Stockholm Castle 51
GUSTAF FJÆSTAD (b. 1868)
Is the Spring never coming? (In the possession of the sculptor
Christian Eriksson.) See the cover.
GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM (b. 1875)
A man binding on Skis. Drawing (black and white) 22
Lucia treats to coffee on the 13th December (black and white) 31
Tug of War (black and white) 32
OTTO HESSELBOM (b. 1848)
Our Country 9
EUGEN JANSSON (b. 1862)
Riddarfjärden on a Summer Night 57
NILS KREUGER (b. 1858)
The Alfvaren in Öland 47
CARL LARSSON (b. 1853)
My Family 16
Fishing for Cray-fish. Water-colour 19
A Viking Expedition. Water-colour (black and white) 35
Interior of a Cottage at Rättvik. Water-colour (black and white) 36
BRUNO LILJEFORS (b. 1860)
Sunrise 13
Huntsman on the Alert 29
Elks. Drawing (black and white) 42
KARL NORDSTRÖM (b. 1855)
Easter Bonfires 23
Riddarholm Church on a Spring Evening. Drawing 54
ERNST NORLIND
Farm in Skåne. Lithography (black and white) 17
REINHOLD NORSTEDT (b. 1843)
Birches, “Hage”, in Sörmland 26
EDVARD ROSENBERG (b. 1858)
March Eve 30
LOUIS SPARRE (b. 1863)
Lejonbacken at Stockholm Castle (black and white) 52
EMERICK STENBERG (b. 1873)
Björs-Mia 39
CARL WILHELMSON (b. 1866)
Church-goers in Boats. Picture from Bohuslän 25
Labourers 37
Miners on the Mountain at Kiruna 44
ANDERS ZORN (b. 1860)
Out in the open 20
Mid-summer Dance 40
Kings-Karin 43
Transcriber’s Notes
In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
_Italics_, +Mixed-Case Smallcaps+, and (in illustration captions)
+ALL SMALLCAPS+. Formatting for superscript and underscore have been
omitted.
Illustrations have been moved from within to between paragraphs as
needed.
Minor typographical and spelling errors have been corrected.
High/low quotes and guillemets have been changed to quotation marks.
Artists’ names have been put in +Smallcaps+ as needed.
Other inconsistencies (formatting, capitalization and hyphenation)
have been retained.
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