[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, STOCKHOLM]
SWEDEN
BY
DUDLEY·HEATHCOTE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A·HEATON·COOPER
[Illustration]
A&C BLACK LTD
4.5.6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.1.
_Published in 1927_
Printed in Great Britain
TO
LOUISA BLANDFORD
IN TOKEN OF ESTEEM
NOTE
I record my acknowledgement to the Editors of the following journals in
which a few of the chapters of this book have already appeared: _The
Fortnightly Review_, _The Spectator_, _The Field_, _The
Westminster Gazette_, _Eve_, _Country Life_.
DUDLEY HEATHCOTE.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE LAND AND PEOPLE 1
II. GOTHENBURG 16
III. BOHUSLÄN 32
IV. THE GÖTA CANAL 44
V. STOCKHOLM 70
VI. THE SKERRIES OF STOCKHOLM 100
VII. GOTHLAND 118
VIII. DALECARLIA 147
IX. LAPLAND 166
X. A NIGHT IN A LAPP HUT 176
XI. AN IMPRESSION OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN 187
XII. AN IMPRESSION OF A SWEDISH CHRISTMAS 194
XIII. SWEDISH WINTER SPORTS 213
INDEX 223
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
1. The Town Hall, Stockholm _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. The Kullen Rocks, Mölle, on the Kattegatt 5
3. Arild, a Fishing Village near Mölle 12
4. Gothenburg, the Harbour 21
5. Gothenburg, the City 28
6. Marstrand 38
7. The Trollhättan Falls 49
8. Sjötorp Locks, Göta Canal 53
9. Jönköping 60
10. Vadstena Castle, Lake Vättern 64
11. The Royal Palace, Stockholm 81
12. Drottningholm Palace, Stockholm 96
13. Islands in the Baltic, near Stockholm 101
14. Gripsholm Castle, near Stockholm 108
15. The Kings’ Mounds, Upsala 113
16. Timber on the River Ångerman, Harnösand 117
17. Kalmar Castle 124
18. Ruins of Borgholm Castle, Öland 128
19. The Walls of Visby 133
20. The City of Visby 140
21. Sunday at Rättvik, Dalecarlia 145
22. Lake Siljan 149
23. Mora Church 156
24. Leksand Church 160
25. Sundsvall, a Great Baltic Timber Port 165
26. Luleå, Lapland 172
27. Midnight Sun over Lake Torne Träsk, from Abisko 177
28. A Lapp Hut on Lake Torne Träsk, Midnight 181
29. View from Tourist Station, Saltoluokta, Lapland 188
30. Stora Sjöfallet, Great Lake Falls, Saltoluokta 192
31. Lake and Village of Åre 213
32. The Tännforsen Waterfall, Åre 220
_Sketch Map on page xii_ xii
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF SWEDEN]
SWEDEN
CHAPTER I
THE LAND AND PEOPLE
For those who wish to wander a little further afield than France,
Belgium, or Italy, there are few more delightful places in which to
spend a holiday than Sweden, for not only is this country a paradise
for the lover of open-air life and every kind of summer and winter
sport, but it is a land especially favoured in the variety and beauty
of its scenery and unique character of its climate and geological
formation, the peculiar charm of its atmospheric effects, and the
appeal that lies in its strong national characteristics.
The Swedes hold of course that they were the originators of the various
kinds of sport that are practised in Europe to-day, though they confess
that the supremacy which they originally exercised in this field of
human activity soon passed to other countries; in fact, that it is only
comparatively of recent years that they have made any serious attempts
to regain their lost laurels. Idrott, or sport, is an old Swedish name,
and it cannot be denied that among the ancestors of the present-day
Swedes sports were in vogue even in times beyond the reach of history,
no ancient literature in the world containing so many descriptions
of sport as the old Norse sagas. We read that greater assiduity was
shown by the Vikings in perfecting themselves in strength, suppleness
of limb, and courage than in promoting the culture of their mind by
“exercise in the art of poetry and jurisprudence”. Their principal
sports consisted of racing (either with or without armour), running
and leaping of various kinds, wrestling, ski-running, tugs-of-war and
throwing the spear, skating, swimming, riding, archery, and fencing
with sword and shield play, and also many ball games. Every one of
these sports, and also such typically British games as Association
football and ice or ground hockey, are now played extensively in their
proper season, the great importance that is attached to athletics
being more than justified by the brilliant results which Swedish
athletes have lately been attaining in the Olympic games. More truly
characteristic of Swedish life, however, than any field game, or even
than pure athletics, are certain branches of sport which perhaps thrive
in Sweden better than in any other country in Europe owing to her
peculiar climatic and geographical conditions; and also that system of
physical culture which is associated with the name of P. H. Ling, the
creator of modern movement therapeutics.
Sweden, thanks to the severity of her winter, is perhaps the country
in Europe where winter sports can be practised to the best advantage;
and not only is ski-ing the Swedes’ national pastime even more truly
than it is that of the Swiss, through it having become in many
northern provinces of their country the only method by which the
people can conveniently travel from one district to another, but it
can be practised with even greater frequency than in any part of the
Swiss Alps, and for a far longer period in the year. The Swedes also
excel in figure-skating, tobogganing, and bobsleighing, while I have
seen nothing as exhilarating as ice-yachting among the skerries of
the Baltic when a good breeze is blowing, the speed attained by the
ice-yachts often exceeding that of any express train. To mention only
a few places where Swedish winter sports can be played under ideal
conditions, the ski-ing on the fjells of Jämtland, the skate and ice
yachting among the skerries of Stockholm, rival, if they do not excel,
any that can be found in other regions of Europe.
Thanks to her long indented coast-line, tideless seas, and a
superabundance of large inland lakes, on the other hand, Sweden can
offer ideal conditions during the summer months to those who like an
open-air life and are not in need of the usual conventional amusements;
and not only the Skärgård and the extensive Stockholm archipelago, but
the coast of Bohuslän, stretching right up to the coast of Norway,
provide ideal water playgrounds for those who are fond of swimming,
boating, and yachting, the innumerable rocky islands surrounding
the southern coast being perhaps unsurpassed for the opportunities
which they offer in these respects. As sailing and motor boats can,
moreover, easily be hired, and the air is magnificent, an extended stay
during the summer months in this part of Sweden has much to recommend
it, while there is always plenty of good and not too expensive
accommodation to be found at such seaside resorts as Marstrand,
Särö, Lysekil, or Fiskebäckskil, if only the prospective visitor
applies for it in seasonable time.
[Illustration: THE KULLEN ROCKS, MÖLLE, ON THE KATTEGATT]
In the domain of gymnastics proper, lastly, the Swedes have long
exercised supremacy, and not only has the system of physical culture
which Ling devised during the time that he was teaching fencing and
gymnastics at Lund University proved to be one of the main contributory
causes of Sweden’s subsequent athletic prowess, but it has been
generally adopted in other countries of the world, and more especially
in this country and the United States, Swedish gymnastics having come
to be recognised as the most efficient and valuable physical culture
system so far devised by man. Physical culturists, in fact, hold the
name of Ling in such esteem that when the Olympic Games were last held
at Stockholm many of the foreign and all the Swedish athletes who had
flocked to the Swedish capital to participate in the games paid a
special visit to his grave in order to offer their floral tributes of
affection and regard.
The climate of Sweden is almost unique. Lying between the 55th and 69th
degrees of latitude, it stretches nearly two hundred miles north of
the Arctic circle and in line with the south of Greenland, while its
most southerly point is not far north of Hamburg, and somewhat lower
than parts of Northumberland, this length of coast implying great
extremes of climate; yet so magical is the potency of the Gulf Stream,
which fortunately flows in a north-eastern direction right across the
Atlantic towards Scandinavia, that the lower layers of air are able to
absorb sufficient heat to make even the extreme north habitable in the
winter months, the weather north of the Arctic circle being, moreover,
often delightfully warm during the summer. The average July temperature
in Kiruna, the most northerly town in Sweden, for instance, is well
over 55 degrees: that is to say, equal to the mean May temperature
in England; and the sun never sets here or in Northern Lapland for
a period of six weeks. Stockholm, on the other hand, has days which
last nearly eighteen hours in June, with a temperature equalling that
found in Paris at the same time of the year. Swedish climate possesses
consequently the dual advantage of being sufficiently warm in summer
to attract even the most exacting lover of sunshine and warmth, and
yet of being cold enough in winter to provide an ideal playground for
winter sports of every description, the period during which these can
be safely practised being appreciably longer than in Switzerland or any
other region of Europe.
Geologically, too, Sweden is one of the oldest parts of the world,
its formation differing materially from that found in other European
countries. It is, generally speaking, a very rich land, but its wealth
usually entails a considerable amount of work to become productive,
as the greater part of it consists of granite, timber, lime, and
iron-stone. Everywhere, except perhaps in the south of Skåne, you will
come across towns that are built on granite or even iron-stone rock,
there being such a profusion of the latter that there are actually some
localities like Kiruna where the iron mines serving as foundation do
not consist of underground veins, but of mountains of ore from which
the iron has to be blasted from the surface almost in its natural
state. The spring water issuing from these rocks is strongly tonifying,
moreover, and at such places as Porla has been converted to practical
uses, its healing and curative qualities in all cases of debility or
anæmia being remarkable. Next to iron, Sweden’s greatest asset lies
in her timber land, and dense forests abound which cover an area
greater than the British Isles. It is estimated that over 52 per cent
of the soil is covered by trees the greater part of which consist of
pine, fir, and birch, while immense quantities of timber are cut every
year for the wood pulp and other industries. Much more than the above
might here usefully be written concerning Sweden’s great industrial
resources, but as the writer of the present volume is not concerned
with writing a book on Swedish industries but is merely seeking to
offer some illustration and account of the many beauties and points of
interest, artistic, historic, and social, of this little-known country,
we will readily leave off considering such matters to find ourselves
upon more congenial and, we will venture to say, more artistic ground.
The greatest appeal which Sweden makes on all those who pay it a visit,
however, lies in the beauty of its scenery, this being as varied as the
climate or the character and appearance of the people that are found on
its shores.
Fringing the southern coast are the principal seaside resorts of the
country, mostly in the province of Skåne, this province being the most
fertile and thickly populated district of the kingdom. Skåne, which
is called the granary of Sweden, not only produces enough sugar-beets
to supply the whole of Sweden with sugar, but boasts a vegetation
and flora that are usually only found in more southern climes, its
climate being so mild that peaches, apricots, and even grapes are
found ripening to perfection, while it also abounds in old historic
castles and manor-houses as well as dolmens and archæological remains
that, like those found in Brittany and Cornwall, evoke prehistoric
ages. Further north we come to Bohuslän and Halland, provinces that
if a little barren in vegetation nevertheless possess a coast-line
whose rugged wildness of scenery never fails to make a special appeal
to the mind of those who are attuned to its beauty: dense groups of
bare and often treeless red granite islands which when illumined by
the setting sun become visions of beauty and hold the eye as surely as
does the silver of the moon on running water. North of these provinces
is Gothenburg, the second city of the kingdom and the starting-place
of the famous Göta Canal that takes you through the very heart of
the country, linking up in one continuous waterway of river and
lake the capital of Sweden with the west coast; an idyllic journey
that, lasting three days, conveys you along peaceful rivers, across
shimmering lakes and past lush meadows overgreen from the bounty of the
waterways near by. Then, after passing Stockholm, most beautifully
situated of all cities, we proceed north through Dalecarlia, the home
of folk-lore and peasant costume, a smiling, fertile country of rich
farm-land and pleasant homesteads, until we reach the province of
Norrland with its great wide valleys and undulating plains, boundless
forests, roaring waterfalls, and barren mountain-tops on whose surface
the colours of the sunset are ever playing in constantly varying
flushes of crimson and rose, silver or grey. Here is the home of
the timber industry, and here too winter sports and game of every
description abound, the landscape evoking in turn the endlessness of
the Russian steppes or the mountain scenery prevailing in Canada or
Norway. And continuing our way north we finally reach the province of
Lapland, a vast barren country of high mountains and immense forests,
iron hills and foaming waterfalls, where live the strangest and perhaps
the most primitive people to be found west of the Caucasus, and where,
incidentally, a nine months’ bleak and bitter winter is followed by a
delightful summer, during six weeks of which the sun never sets.
Of such is Swedish scenery, its main appeal lying, I fancy, not so
much in the contour of its landscapes, beautiful though they be, as
in the peculiar clearness of atmosphere that appears to endow every
object with an almost magical quality of colour; and whether you visit
the more southern regions and the enchanted island of Gothland in the
Baltic, or travel north to Lapland, you will invariably find, not only
sunsets whose beauty so transfigure every crag, island, or peak, that
you begin to feel as if you have been transported from the common world
into some wondrous world of phantasy, but a crystalline limpidity of
atmosphere that makes every detail and contour of the most distant
landscape stand out with faultless definition. It is this continual
drama of surprise and delight that captures one’s very soul and that
gives a visit to Sweden its characteristic charm.
Almost as great a diversity is seen, however, among the people who
inhabit this country as in the scenery which I have just described; and
though no other nation surpasses the Swedes in the patriotism, pride,
and love of country which have always been some of their dominant
characteristics, few present as many different racial features.
In South-west Sweden, and especially in the province of Skåne, we find
a population which strongly resembles the Danes living across the
Sound in physique and character, the two races having for centuries
constituted one political unit. Further north, and extending from
Gothenburg to the Norwegian frontier, is a race of Goths who, like
the sturdy inhabitants of Gothland in the Baltic, claim descent from
the Vikings, the greater number of these famous sea-rovers having
hailed from these two localities (this province is now called Viken).
Further inland and to the north of the lake district of Vättern,
Vänern, are the Sveas, a race of Swedes who, like the Dalecarlians and
the men of Småland, constitute an element of the Swedish nation whose
ethnological purity has been little affected by either Norwegian or
Dane. The Sveas, unlike their southern neighbours, are distinguished
by a liveliness and pleasure-loving temperament that makes them ideal
hosts and boon companions, and also by a love of art and beauty which
they share in common with the Dalecarlians. Like the inhabitants of
Skåne and Viken, however, they are an easy-going and industrious folk,
but extremely combative and stubborn if roused. Even more attractive
in disposition are the Dalecarlians, who are found clustering on the
shores of Lake Siljan, and nowhere in Sweden will you come across a
finer race of peasantry or one less spoilt by the modern spirit of
industrialism.
[Illustration: ARILD, A FISHING VILLAGE NEAR MÖLLE]
As for the other branches of the Swedish nation, if exception has
been made of the Roos Swedes who are found about the capital, and the
men of Småland, to the north of Blekinge, whose proverbial honesty,
truthfulness, and hardihood are as pronounced to-day as they were
in the days of Charles XII., none can be said to be of pure Swedish
stock. Norrland is inhabited by a race which either strongly resemble
their Norwegian neighbours (in Jämtland) or ethnologically are not
unrelated to the Finns and Lapps, with whom there has been some slight
intermarriage; while you meet in Lapland a Mongolian people that are
entirely alien to the remainder of Sweden in both manner of living and
race.
In spite of ethnological distinctions which, it should be stressed,
are in any case not any more strongly marked than those at present
existing in the British Isles, the Swedish nation remains to-day as
of old one of the most united countries in the world as well as one of
the most distinctive, its highly marked national characteristics never
failing to impress the visitor.
If I were now asked for the dominating impressions which the Swedish
nation generally leaves on the mind of people visiting their country,
I would say that the first is of a highly practical, hard-working,
and cultured race, which not only considers efficiency as one of the
cardinal virtues, but also manages to ensure such a quality being the
one outstanding characteristic which any foreign observer never fails
to remark whenever he comes into contact with Swedish national or
civil life. I strongly question whether towns more efficiently run,
and citizens more profoundly imbued with civic or public spirit, are
to be found anywhere in either Europe or America than in this country,
the result being a husbanding of resources and a co-ordination of
public and private activities that certainly makes for prosperity and
contentment. Nowhere have I seen cleaner or more orderly streets,
tramway or telephone and public services better run, public squares or
parks more beautifully laid out, educational and cultural institutions
better designed to promote the welfare of the race; hospitals, prisons,
and public institutions better organised or conducted, and public
buildings and business undertakings conceived on a larger scale. The
second impression, of a general standard of living vastly superior
to that found in any country in the world outside the United States,
with the additional advantage of a comparatively small difference
between the standards attained by the rich and poor respectively; and
the third, of a people that combines an almost excessive formality of
manners with the most lavish and whole-hearted hospitality, there being
few countries, moreover, where an Englishman is more certain of being
well received wherever he may go.