STOCKHOLM
Of all the capitals of Europe there are few which are more beautifully
situated, or that have grown up by a more natural process, than
Stockholm, and yet none that appear at first sight to have been built
more deliberately on a site especially chosen for its beauty.
Very little is known of its early history before the thirteenth
century, except that the heathen monarchs of Svea then holding sway
over the greater part of central Sweden erected a stronghold on one
of a group of three islands found on the banks of the Norrström, that
foaming stream hardly three-quarters of a mile long, which serves as
connecting link between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic, and that around
this fortress, originally constructed as a defence for the important
merchant centres of Upsala and Sigtuna, a village community arose that
was destined to become the capital of the land.
It was on these three islands, and in the midst of the watercourses
connecting Lake Mälar with the Baltic, that Duke Birger Jarl, a
powerful chieftain who was then ruler of Sweden, elected to build
his capital in 1255. And taking into account the way in which the
surrounding islands were being repeatedly harassed and laid waste by
the rovers and pirates then infesting these seas, he strongly fortified
the site of his new city, and so made it secure from any molestation.
Stockholm soon outgrew the site of Birger Jarl’s original settlement.
First the wall which had been built around it was moved outward
until it eventually encompassed the whole of Stadsholmen; then other
islands were included within the city, which by the Middle Ages had
become a typical fortified town of the age, its commerce being now
controlled by German merchants who obeyed the ruling of the Hanseatic
town of Lübeck. It was only under the Vasa dynasty, however, that
Stockholm freed itself from the tutelage of the foreigner, and almost
concurrently with the further expansion of the town, whose old wall was
now destroyed as the city began to encroach on the mainland on its
northern side, Norrmalm, Gustavus Vasa liberated the country from its
Danish oppressors, broke away from Lübeck, and laid the foundations of
Stockholm’s greatness. The seventeenth century was the Great Age of
the new capital, and during this period the town grew so rapidly that
it had to be laid out afresh, while her citizens made every effort and
sacrifice to convert their city into a really splendid capital town;
a task which, given the almost unequalled situation of Stockholm,
afforded unlimited possibilities. The city, which then occupied more
than a dozen islands connected one with another by bridges, now
witnessed a period of extraordinary building activity, and with the aid
of the great riches which the victorious Swedish armies had brought
home from the Continent, many stately buildings were erected which were
in the main inspired from foreign models.
As was natural in an age when Italy and France exercised a supremacy
in the world of manners, art, and architecture that was almost
unquestioned, the ambitious city magnates turned almost exclusively to
these two countries for their architectural ideas. In 1641 was begun
the building of the Riddarhuset, the Assembly Hall of the nobility,
one of the most exquisite Franco-Dutch Renaissance buildings which can
be seen in Sweden, while towards the close of the century Nicodemus
Tessin drew up the plans for a new late Renaissance palace which on
its completion was acclaimed by all as Sweden’s and Tessin’s proudest
architectural masterpiece.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, and following a period
when architecture was at a low ebb, the city of Stockholm entered
upon a new stage of development. The plan of the town was revised
and numerous magnificent buildings projected which sought to create
a purely national style of architecture as well as to make good an
undeniable deficiency in monuments of first-rate artistic importance.
Only during the Renaissance have municipalities or other public bodies
expended on art and public buildings sums in any way comparable to
those which the Stockholm municipality now lavishly began to devote
to the embellishment of their city. In modern times it has never been
equalled.
The best way to approach Stockholm is from the sea, and the view that
one then has of it is memorable. On the left, the southern part of
the city rising perpendicularly from the water towers like another
Edinburgh, while between the northern and southern sides the Old Town,
with its many quaint Hanseatic buildings and old palaces, recalls parts
of old Amsterdam. Dominating the whole and facing the new Stockholm is
the imposing Royal Palace, a massive rectangular Italian Renaissance
pile of grey stone with a central courtyard and lower wings projecting
east and west, which many architects consider the most beautiful
building in Scandinavia.
It faces the water and the North Bridge, “Norrbro”, from which approach
is made to it by a stately carriage drive that is called Lejonbacken
from the two massive bronze lions that adorn it, and in its Carolean
sternness of exterior seeks to give expression to the very spirit of
the country and to the express wish of its royal builder, Charles XII.,
even if the thought behind it was borrowed from Versailles, while its
lavish interior decoration and its Gobelin tapestries evoke the days
when strong bonds of friendship united the Royal Houses of France and
Sweden. Its northern façade is almost entirely without decoration,
yet strangely impressive by virtue of that very simplicity, while its
southern façade, which, like the western, is richly decorated, has in
its centre a triumphal arch with six massive columns, and also four
groups of statuary in bronze, and a row of niches containing statues of
distinguished Swedes on both sides of the entrance.
The original designs of the palace were drawn up by Nicodemus Tessin
the younger, the greatest architect which northern Europe has produced,
but the building operations, owing to the delays inseparable from an
almost constant state of warfare, had constantly to be suspended, with
the result that the Royal Family was only able to move into their
new quarters about the middle of the eighteenth century. During all
this period, however, and in spite of the unrest and turmoil that
characterised this age, which incidentally was almost entirely due
to Charles XII.’s romantic and adventurous temperament, the Royal
Family and the nation as a whole continued to manifest so absorbing
an interest in the building of the New Palace that everything was
done to make it really representative of the best Swedish art and art
industries of the period, while an equal measure of love, industry,
and discrimination was lavished on its interior decoration, of which
Masreliez was the principal designer.
Severe and solemn-looking, this massive building possesses a
_cachet_ and beauty of its own, while it certainly gives the city
that transforming touch without which it would hardly have the aspect
of a capital.
Not far from the Palace is the Stortorget, or Great Market, which
is flanked by interesting old gabled houses recalling those seen in
Dantzig. On the façade of one of these, and below the doorway on which
the builder’s coat of arms and the year 1650 are sculptured, are a
number of iron crosses which are said to be a relic of the famous Blood
Bath of 1520, in which over eighty Swedish noblemen were beheaded. Each
one of these crosses enshrines the memory of one of the noblemen who
died as a martyr for his country.
Almost everything worth seeing is found in this ancient quarter of
Stockholm, and within easy distance from the Palace are a number of old
churches and buildings that are among the best which Sweden possesses
architecturally, if the island of Gothland is excepted. At the top
of the Palace Hill is Storkyrkan, Stockholm’s oldest and principal
church, supposed to have been founded by Birger Jarl in 1264, although
the present building was renovated in 1736. This is an attractive
red brick edifice in which I especially noted a somewhat ornate but
interesting baroque pulpit in the Royal Chapel, with canopy which was
the work of Burchardt Precht, and a group of statuary called “St.
George and the Dragon”, the masterpiece of Bernt Notke of Lübeck,
which commemorates the victory won over the Danes at Brunkeberg in
1471, when Sweden was freed from her long subjection to the national
enemy. Crossing over to Riddarholmen, the Knights’ Island (formerly
called Gråmunkeholmen, the Grey Friars’ Isle, after the monastery of
that order which was founded here by King Magnus Ladulås at the end
of the thirteenth century), I see immediately facing the city between
the bridges the old Riddarholmskyrkan (the Church of the Knights),
originally built in 1280 by the Franciscans—a plain red brick
three-aisled building, with a long polygonal choir and a number of
burial chapels on its northern and southern aspects, that was built
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which all the great
men of Sweden and all her kings have been buried since the reign of
Gustavus Adolphus.
Here are tombs innumerable, enclosed in exquisite chapels and
shrines, in which are treasured the relics of the old dynasties and
patrician families of the country, while the floor of the church is
almost entirely paved with the gravestones of its illustrious dead.
I found much to admire in the beautiful green marble sarcophagus of
Gustavus Adolphus, or in the almost equally attractive crypt of the
Bernadottes, where lie buried the departed members of the present
dynasty; but I confess that my footsteps quickly led me to forsake
their historical appeal after I had seen Charles XII.’s chapel, on
the north side, a stately and pompous baroque mortuary chapel with
sandstone columns and copper-covered cupola, in which I was shown the
grey-black marbled sarcophagus in which the much-loved hero knight of
the Swedish people lies buried, his head shot through and through. The
lid of this sarcophagus is adorned with a lion’s skin, a laurel wreath
in hammered gilt bronze, and a Hercules club; and while Nicodemus
Tessin the younger himself was responsible for the designs, the stone
and bronze work were executed in Holland, where the sarcophagus was
finally completed about 1735. Among the other chapels and sarcophagi
which abound in the Swedish Pantheon are those belonging to King
Magnus Ladulås, the ill-starred Gustavus III., and many other kings,
while such families as the Banérs, Lewenhaupts, and Thorstensons, all
connected with the Great Age of Swedish history, are represented.
Close by and lying almost opposite Riddarholmen in the north-west
corner of Gamla Staden is the House of Knights, also built by Gustavus
Adolphus, an imposing building which, in spite of some pavilions that
were added to it in 1672 that are architecturally poor, remains a fine
example of Franco-Dutch late Renaissance style and the most exquisite
seventeenth-century building in Sweden.
Begun in 1641 from the designs of the two brothers De La Vallée,
the Palace contains among several finely proportioned rooms a
very spacious ceremonial hall with a beautiful ceiling painted by
Ehrenstrahl, on whose walls I saw displayed among other relics the
coats of arms of nearly 3000 Swedish noble families, quite a fair
proportion of these being of Scotch descent. Here can be seen the
armouries of the Hamilton, Lewis, Bruce, Leslie, Stewart and Bennet
families, descendants of the many Scotch soldiers of fortune who had
distinguished themselves on many a Swedish battle-field, while a few
hail from England, their ancestors having fled from that country after
the Wars of the Roses.
In no ancestral picture gallery have I felt so supremely conscious
of the prestige and glamour inherent in long lineage as when I was
confronted by these countless coats of arms insolently blazoning the
privileges and eminence which their holders had won in olden times
through superior valour or might, good fortune or statecraft. Even
the beautifully carved ivory arm-chair occupied by the Speaker of the
House and originally presented to Gustavus Vasa by the town of Lübeck,
and the long rows of comfortable velvet chairs facing the Presidential
throne, seemed to possess an air and a dignity which were quite their
own. One felt that one was walking on almost sacred ground, and that
the plebeian foot that would tread it unceremoniously would probably
be seized by the spirit of the place and hurled ignominiously from
the hallowed precincts. The Assembly of the Knights is, however, only
a shadow of its old self, and of the original 2890 families whose
arms are displayed in its Hall only 660 remain to-day. It has lost,
moreover, all its right and privileges except that which its members
still possess of being able to claim death by the sword instead of
by the more contumelious hanging or guillotine,[2] while it now only
meets once every three years to discuss economic affairs or to render
help to those of its members who require financial assistance.
[2] Capital punishment was abolished in Sweden in 1921, but the last
capital execution took place long before that date.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE, STOCKHOLM]
Though the Riddarhuset is consequently only a survival of an age that
is no more, it is impossible to visit it without feeling supremely
conscious of the sense of continuity that is bred by old institutions,
even when, like the Assembly of Knights, they have outlived their
utility, while in few buildings have I felt so close to the past or
experienced a keener regret at that past being gone for ever.
Old Stockholm, and especially “the City between the two bridges”,
contains a number of old fifteenth- and sixteenth-century houses which
remain much as they were when originally erected, but fire has swept
this old city so many times during the past four hundred years that
the greater part of the old timber buildings which gave distinction
to its streets have made way for the stone and plaster structures
of a later period. Among the interesting older buildings that were
spared by fire in this part of the town the most noteworthy are
the Palace of Count Bonde (the old Rådhuset) near Strömmen, and the
house belonging to the Petersen family in Munkbron, erected in the
middle of the seventeenth century in the Dutch style, while there are
a number of gabled houses pointing to a later Hanseatic period in
Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan, two narrow and tortuous streets
which are well worth visiting. These thoroughfares are so narrow and
their houses so high that you feel when walking through them almost as
if you were traversing a deep canyon, while their many windings and the
innumerable equally crooked and narrow alleys which are continually
crossing them have proved the downfall of these imprudent travellers
who elect to put their trust in their own bump of locality rather
than in a guide. The doorways of many of these houses are surmounted
by interesting sculptured coats of arms and other decorative details
bearing testimony to the artistic taste of these times, and there is a
certain seventeenth-century house in Västerlånggatan, erected by the
wealthy burgher Van Linde, whose carved portal is perhaps the finest
and best-preserved memorial of the period to be found in Stockholm.
Another characteristic of this part of the town is the number of small
shops which indicate the nature of their calling by the quaint symbolic
signs that are displayed over their doorways or shop fronts. Here a
pewter pot indicates a café or beer-house, and a pair of wings topping
a pole that is itself entwined with diminutive serpents, a bakery;
there a maiden milking her cow suggests a dairy, and a gold pretzel
a pastry-cook or confectioner. There appears in reality to be no end
to the ingenuity that is shown by those tradesmen who would thus make
known their particular craft or trade.
Crossing the bridge where lies the newer Stockholm, one finds the main
shopping centre of the capital and the more modern of its streets and
buildings. Everything here is of an orderly symmetry that is quite
lacking in our countries of the west, and perhaps a little monotonous.
The shops are nearly all of uniform size and so similar in their
outward aspect and in the style of dressing of their windows that it
is often difficult to differentiate between them; the buildings are
mostly austere and dignified as befits a Nordic race, but a little
lacking in that poetry and imagery of line and wealth of architectural
ornamentation that past standards of architecture have made us love
and admire.
All these characteristics, coupled with the fact that, compared with
other large capitals, Stockholm is a little lacking in historic
monuments of first-rate importance, might well predispose the casual
observer to regard the Swedish capital mainly as a city whose only
claim to distinction lies in its beauty of site, atmosphere, and
accident, if it were not for the new generation of technically
well-equipped architects who have lately grown up in the country and
the princely patronage of art that continues to be displayed by the
Swedish municipalities whenever the embellishment of their cities is in
question.
Of this new spirit in architecture I. G. Clason and Ferdinand Boberg,
who is Sweden’s Norman Shaw, and more especially Carl Westman and
Ragnar Östberg, are the leading exponents, the architecture which they
preconise being characterised not only by certain distinctive forms
in towers, panelling, and decorative _motifs_ often borrowed
wholesale from Swedish scenery, but by the grouping of the chief
decorative designs round the entrances and a happy blending of old
Swedish forms and new western tendencies which aims at creating a
really national style. In many of these modern buildings one notices
a strongly marked cubic effect, while the dark-toned brick hailing
from Skåne that is used in their construction gives them a distinction
and individuality which mark them out among their contemporaries.
Assuming a measure of encouragement and financial support in any degree
comparable to that which was so lavishly extended by the municipality
of Stockholm to the building of their new Town Hall, it would be
astonishing if the next two or three decades do not witness a striking
development in Swedish architecture.
Almost equally visible from any part of the city, this tall and
imposing edifice, with its mighty square bell-tower and splendid
colonnades evoking the portico of the Doge’s Palace at Venice,
represents all the best tendencies of the new Swedish style, while
it seeks to reproduce in many of the details of its exterior, and
especially in its galleries and Central Court, the old castle of
Stockholm “Tre Kronor”. Beautifully situated at the most southerly
point of Kungsholmen, on the shores of Lake Mälar, its building history
is one of the most remarkable of modern times, Ragnar Östberg, its
architect, being so determined to make it a living expression of the
capital’s mystical individuality that its conception long remained
an arduous one, plan after plan being devised only to be replaced by
a better one. It has taken over ten years to build and has cost the
municipality seventeen million crowns, Ragnar Östberg being given
practically carte blanche in order that he might give of his best.
Built in the form of a large rectangle, it encloses two beautiful
courts: one the open and more severe Citizens’ Court, “Borgargården”,
with its double portico looking out on garden and water, and its three
gilded statues standing out from the red brick; the other the lighter
Blue Hall with its glowing red and blue tiled walls and marble floor,
while the tower which gives unity to the various parts of the building
is capped by a lantern structure on top of which are the three crowns
of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Apart from the general perfection of the building when viewed as a
whole, which is perhaps its chief claim to distinction, the _clou_
of the Town Hall is undoubtedly the magnificent frieze under the
cornice, with its many beautiful gilt reliefs of distinguished citizens
of the city, though its handsome copper cupolas, engraved with the
names of their donors, are almost equally memorable. These cupolas,
and also the warm Tudor-looking red brick used in the building, give
quite a southern warmth and atmosphere to a monument that in its
rich-hued and stately style is a reversion in part to Swedish mediæval
modes, while it is impossible not to commend the superb fashion in
which Ragnar Östberg has succeeded in poising what is really a massive
edifice on the most slender and graceful of arcades without these
appearing even slightly overweighted.
Passing through the arcade into the open gardens, which look out,
Swedish fashion, on to the water, I saw three of the twelve statues
which Milles originally contemplated modelling of the famous men who
have shed lustre and glory on the city of Stockholm, three powerful
nude live studies of Strindberg, Fröding, and Josephson, representing
drama, poetry, and painting respectively, and was informed that the
remaining nine had never been completed, owing to the loud outcry which
a certain section of the public had raised on the ground of morality.
This attitude astonished me vastly, as the Swedes, of all citizens
of the world, are perhaps those who are the least prudish without
being too immoral. I recalled the perfectly natural way in which any
visitor to a Swedish hotel can, if he chooses, be scrubbed and rubbed
down after his bath by women attendants, who not only perform these
duties most efficiently but appear to run no risk of having their
moral equilibrium upset by the experience, or the frankly indecent
(to some) undressed wax figures which can be seen in the shop windows
of any fashionable Stockholm costumier, posturing in silk stocking or
aping fashionable gestures, and can only conclude that indecency is a
question of degree, and that two nations equally moral may have two
entirely different standards by which to estimate morality or the lack
of it.
On returning to the central court I was shown a Madonna-looking crowned
figure in a niche over the main entrance, which on inquiry proved to
be that of St. Clara, a local saint, the crown having been purchased
with a substantial money contribution sent by a schoolgirl of the town
to Ragnar Östberg, who thought this the happiest way of recording her
gift. After hearing this charming explanation I took the resolution
never again to disbelieve any old legend which was equally charming. It
is certain the world never changes.
If the other modern monuments of Stockholm cannot be compared as works
of art with Ragnar Östberg’s now famous masterpiece, there are several
which are interesting examples of the same school of architecture,
and others which illustrate the return to a more rational classicism
which has only quite lately been seen among the younger generation of
architects.
Not very far from the Town Hall is the City Court, an immense
brick edifice with a grey slurred surface and a short squat tower
rising above the middle of the building, which is crowned by a very
large copper hood. Almost overwhelming in its massiveness, and as
austere-looking as the law which is daily transacted within its
precincts, this uncommon structure aims at expressing, not only in its
form but even in its decorative scheme, the serious purpose to which it
was dedicated, and consequently often produces an impression of grim
inevitableness in the mind of even those who do not pay it a visit to
undergo trial. I must confess that I found it a little too oppressing
for my taste, and that I derived much keener pleasure from seeing
the pieces of equally vigorous and original, but ever so much less
depressing, statuary by Christian Eriksson which I was shown on the
portal and in the interior.
Of the other monumental buildings belonging to the same period as
Westman’s and Ragnar Östberg are Lallerstedt’s Technical High School,
Grut’s Stadium, which is a happy and original application of the forms
displayed in the old city walls of Visby, and Östermalm’s Higher State
Secondary School for boys, perhaps the most notable of the three.
This is a dark-red brick building with a light-red tiled roof and
Roman vaulting, which was completed by Ragnar Östberg in 1912 in the
hope that the precedent which he had created in constructing a school
that no longer wore the funereal and poverty-stricken aspect hitherto
considered an indispensable adjunct to every educational establishment,
would inspire other architects to follow his example. Dignified, and
possessing a certain ponderous Nordic beauty of its own, this building
contains a finely proportioned reception hall and staircase which are
adorned with works of art of exceptional interest; among these Milles’
marble group entitled “Fanny and Selma”, Prince Eugen’s “The Town in
Sunshine”, and Törneman’s “Thor’s Battle with the Giants”, this last
picture a powerful and realistic piece of work.
Typical of the latest movement, the return to classicism to which
I have already alluded, are a number of modern buildings for whose
exterior effects golden brown or dark grey roughcast have usually
been selected and whose principal characteristics, apart from their
severe and simple symmetry, lies in the often ingenious way in which
glass and metal work have been put to new artistic effects. Houses by
Bergsten and Asplund; the churches of Engelbrekts and Högalids, and
lastly the New Concert Hall, the work of Tengbom, probably one of the
finest concert halls in existence. Built to resemble a Greek temple
and with columns that are of pure concrete (this a daring experiment),
this striking building impresses, not by its size, which is nothing out
of the common, but by the perfection of its acoustics, lighting, and
other arrangements, and the originality and varied character of the
ornamentation—even the candelabra in the vestibule being unique in
their kind. I particularly admired some beautiful reliefs which were
the work of Tengbom, and some equally remarkable stucco work of Olsson;
but what pleased me even more were some little figures in stucco which
had been designed in wet plaster by Almquist, four live pieces of
statuary by Milles, the Swedish Epstein, in the corridor, and several
beautifully inlaid doors in the foyer, all of these in selected Swedish
woods.
The larger of the two concert halls which are found in this building
presents many attractive and novel features. It was opened only in
April 1926, and while it has a seating accommodation of 1490, which is
considerably less than that of Queen’s Hall, its lighting, stage, and
other arrangements are perfection itself. A number of columns at the
back of the stage, which is built in the shape of a Greek temple, give
an impression of great space, while the lighting that has been obtained
is so perfect that the spectator has the constant illusion of sitting
in an open-air theatre and under a sky and setting sun that are so
realistic that it is almost impossible for him to detect any flaw in
the make-believe. The other concert hall is more intimate in character,
and combines ornateness with simplicity. In both these halls I found
a number of rows that were reserved for the deaf, and provided in
every case with ear-trumpets. Even in Germany, that great music-loving
country, I have never seen any theatre or concert hall that provides
such facilities.
Another sign of the times is the renewed interest that is being taken
by the Swedes generally in Swedish peasant art and crafts, and several
museums have been founded which attempt to give the history of Swedish
civilisation from the earliest days to the present time. Of these the
Nordiska, or Northern Museum, is perhaps the most interesting; it is
certainly the most original. Early in the seventies a distinguished
antiquarian and collector, called Arthur Hazelius, determined to form
a collection that would be representative of every condition of life
that had existed in the country since the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and after many years’ patient industry and labour succeeded
in forming a collection that as a record of the various stages of
civilisation which the country went through is unsurpassed in any part
of the world, many foreign experts holding the view that the clever
manner in which the exhibits are displayed to the general public might
with advantage be copied in other countries. In one of the largest
halls is found the Swedish Royal Armoury, which contains almost as fine
a collection of old and modern weapons as the Spanish collection in
Madrid. I saw many flags and banners which had been captured from the
Russians, Germans, Saxons, Danes and Austrians, and also swords and
suits of armour which had once been worn by famous Swedish warriors;
among these was the armour of Gustavus Adolphus, the sword and pistols
which he carried at the battle of Lützen, and the shirt riddled with
bullets that he wore in his last battle. The Museum also possesses
many well-preserved cannon, rifles, and even a mitrailleuse which is
said to have been invented during the reign of Charles XII., while
its annexe, the equally celebrated open-air museum of Skansen, also
a creation of Hazelius, presents scenes typifying Sweden’s life in
the past and present, and affords the most comprehensive study of old
Swedish architectural modes and of the life and customs of the varied
elements constituting the Swedish nation that can be found anywhere.
Here may be seen many wild and tame animals indigenous to the soil, and
a number of wooden houses of varied architecture, which have either
been transported _en bloc_ from their original resting-places
or constructed on the spot according to plan. Two-storied houses
from Dalecarlia or turf-roofed stone cabins from Jämshög, these last
representing a very common type of dwelling among labourers in parts of
north-eastern Scania; curious-looking straw-roofed four-sided farms
from Oktorp, or farmyards from Ravlunda covered over with thatched
roofs and with woven brushwood end-walls; cabins of forest dwellers or
old mediæval wooden churches, some of these with decorative slatted
church steeples; pyramidal huts from Lapland, or sepulchral and runic
monuments. All these are found at Skansen with all the indispensable
appurtenances of peasant life and inhabited, moreover, by people who
have either been imported to give the necessary atmosphere or been
induced to transport their very homes with all their chattels and
household gods to the wooded plateau in the Djurgården (Deer Park)
for a financial consideration. I paid a visit to several of these
attractive peasant dwellings and found them all stocked with old
implements, vessels, and antique furniture, and was particularly
impressed by their wall decorations, which in many instances were
painted direct on the whitewashed wall timbers. Like those which I
have seen in Dalecarlia, they usually represented scenes from the
Scriptures, or country scenes that were enclosed in decorated frames
in rococo, probably after the prototypes of old copper-plate prints.
If these peasant buildings are not as flamboyantly picturesque as the
wooden buildings of Norway, they are in their way even more attractive.
Of the many other collections and museums that abound in the city
only the National Museum, an unattractive building just facing the
Royal Palace, presents any particular interest. It contains a large
collection of Scandinavian antiquities and is especially rich in
objects of the Bronze Age, many of these having been made in Sweden
over a thousand years before Christ. I was shown jewellery and arms
that dated from the age of Beowulf, and a beautifully ornamented
statue of Thomas à Becket dating from the fourteenth century which
is one of its most cherished art treasures, while the museum, in
addition to its ceramic sculpture and archæological collections, has
a picture gallery that is particularly rich in examples of the older
Dutch masters. Not only Rubens but also Van Dyck (A.), Jordaens, and
Rembrandt are represented here, the last-named by a striking picture
entitled “Claudius Civilis,” which was originally painted for the Town
Hall in Amsterdam in 1662, while I also saw one or two good Cranachs
and old French masters. The more modern painters include several fine
Corots, Delacroix, Manets, and an Orpen (a picture of himself painted
as a jockey), while the modern Swedish school is represented by Zorn
(painter of portraits), Liljefors, the most powerful Swedish painter
of animals to-day, Prince Eugen (landscapes), Milles (sculpture),
Lafiensen (miniaturist), Cederström (the Swedish Detaille), and Carl
Larsson, whose large _al fresco_ paintings in the vestibule of the
Museum long held my attention.
[Illustration: DROTTNINGHOLM PALACE, STOCKHOLM]
One of the principal attractions of Stockholm, and the one which
perhaps lends it its greatest charm, is the system of waterways which
gives it all the picturesque glamour of an important port. It matters
little whether the traveller has visited the city once or many times;
he will rarely tire of loitering amid its many pleasant quays or docks,
or of watching the rapid ebb and flow of a traffic that is as varied as
it is picturesque.
Here is the daily market which lies on the very water edge behind
the royal palace, where the market people can be seen coming by
boat, tram, or cart to sell their wares; here the docks that are
frequented by those hundreds of diminutive steamers which maintain
constant communication between the islands of the Skärgård and the
metropolis; here the quays where the larger steamers and also the fuel
and timber boats are berthed, or those past Kastellholmen and near
Djurgårdsstaden, under whose shelter the great ice-breaking steamers
lie moored during the summer months. Plying the swiftly flowing waters
are vessels of every kind, from the tiny ferries, that for a few öre
will carry you across a strait, to the large looming ships whose very
lines are redolent with weight and power, while scores of barges
with high castles apoop are passing through the locks, and wooden
ships whose graceful lines evoke a time when poetry of motion was not
confined to pleasure yachts are discharging their cargoes in the very
centre of the old town. Follow this pleasant shore line where you will
and you will find an abundance of things to engage and captivate your
attention, and everywhere you meet something that carries with it a
subtle suggestion of that remoter Sweden which lies to the north and
south of the capital.
At least half if not more of the feeling of beauty that is inherent in
Stockholm lies in the many associations that are evoked in the mind
by these waterways, and they are always equally beautiful, whether
one sees them in the early morning as the white skerry steamers are
speeding out to sea or casting their mooring lines over the stately
stone stanchions which border the stream, or if viewed in the evening
when thousands of lights along the shore and from the boats are
throwing shafts and pools of glimmering brilliance on their dark
waters.