TROLLHÄTTAN.
“Gefjon drew from Gylfi
Rich stored-up treasure,—
The land she joined to Denmark.
Four heads and eight eyes bearing,
While hot sweat trickled down them,
The oxen dragged the reft mass
Which forms this winsome island.”
_Skald Bragi the Old._
“It was a wondrous sight to see
Topmast and pennon glitter free,
High raised above the greenwood tree—
As on dry land the galley moves,
By cliff and copse and alder groves.”
_Lord of the Isles._
“Birger, what is the Swedish for ‘Go to the devil?’ I cannot make these
little brutes of boys understand me,” shouted the Captain, who was not
in the best of humours, having already made half a dozen slips on very
dangerous ground. In all Sweden, there is not a more slippery bit of
turf than that which clothes the cliffs and highlands of Trollhättan.
The bank along which he was scrambling to get a good view of the falls
rounded itself off gradually, getting more and more out of the horizontal
and into the vertical at every step, till at last it plunged sheer into
the foaming turn-hole of the middle fall, in which the very best of
swimmers would have had no more advantage over the very worst than that
of keeping his head above water till he went down the third leap, and
got knocked to pieces on the rocks below. There was not a root to hold
on by stronger than those of the dwarf cranberries, whose smooth leaves
only aided the natural slipperiness. Heather is not common anywhere in
Sweden; but here there was quite enough not only to give a purple brown
hue to the scenery, but also to add to the difficulty of keeping one’s
feet, in a way which any one who has walked the side of a highland
hill in very dry weather will fully be able to appreciate. It was very
irritating when one at last had attained a point of view—after traversing
what to a leather-shod stranger was really a dangerous path—to have the
current of one’s thoughts interrupted by a parcel of bare-footed urchins,
who came frolicking over the very same ground, and insisting that the
visitor should see everything, from the orthodox point of view set down
by Murray, and from no other whatever, and moreover should pay for being
tormented and unpoeticised, the regulated number of skillings.
The rush of waters was certainly very grand and very magnificent. Much
has been written about it in books of travels, and much more in the
album kept at the inn for the purpose of enshrining and transmitting to
posterity the extasies of successive generations of travellers; but the
Parson, who ought to have been lost in admiration—to his shame be it
spoken—appeared chiefly solicitous to procure bait, which he and Torkel
had been diligently hunting for in the shallows. It was not without
considerable difficulty that a trout sufficiently small to fit the
snap-hooks of the trolling-litch could be found, and when it was found,
we are happy to say, it met with no more success than it deserved; for
though at very considerable personal risk he tried as much of the rushing
water as his longest trolling-rod would command, he was not rewarded with
a single run.
But for all that, there certainly are fish in all the pools about these
tremendous falls, and that he had the opportunity of satisfying himself
about before he left off; for just as he was giving it up for a bad job,
Torkel, who had an eye for a fish like that of a sea-eagle, caught sight
of something alive that had poked itself into one of the runs from the
saw-mills, a place not three feet across; and unscrewing the gaff which
he was carrying, and substituting for it the five-pronged spear, he
plunged it into the water and brought out a black trout (_salmo ferox_)
of ten pounds weight at the end of it. From the nature of the water it
is impossible that trout can abound at Trollhättan in any great numbers.
The river has scarcely any tributaries below the falls; and as it is
absolutely impossible for a fish to surmount them, the breeding ground
is very limited; but, on the other hand, the clearness of the water is
precisely that which best suits the constitution of a trout; bleak and
gwinead, which form their principal food, are very plentiful, and from
the depth of the water, there is scarcely any limit to the growth of
the fish; a man, who is satisfied to catch now and then a monster, will
do very well at Trollhättan, and in the course of the season will have
a few stories to tell, which in England will be set down as altogether
fabulous,—but it does not answer for a day’s fishing. The traveller may
as well make up his mind to admire the scenery at his leisure,—it will
not answer his purpose to wet a line there.
The Parson having convinced himself of this, and, moreover, having had
one or two very narrow escapes, reeled up his line and contentedly sought
out his friends, who, by this time, had succeeded in explaining to the
swarms of guides that their services were not required, and were sitting
on a heathery bank feathered with birch, exactly in front of the middle
falls, comfortably eating gooseberries, which grow there in such plenty
that, though the place swarms with children—a whole regiment of soldiers
with their wives and families being hutted in the vicinity,—the bushes
were still full of them.
“That is a curious cave,” said the Captain, pointing to a hole which
seemed to enter the face of the precipitous rock by the side of the
great fall, and to penetrate it for some distance; at least, the depth
was sufficiently great to be lost in darkness; the bottom of it was on a
level with the water, and was not accessible without a boat.
“That!” said Birger, “that is Polheim’s grave.”
“Do you mean to say that any man was buried there?”
“Not the man himself, only the best part of a man—his reputation.
Polheim was an engineer, and when the first idea of making a practicable
communication between the Wener and the sea was entertained, he
attempted to carry it into effect by burrowing out that hole. If he had
succeeded in boring through the rock, he would have accomplished the
largest _jet d’eau_ in the world. However, Government were wise enough to
put a stop to it, and to employ a cleverer man. Polheim died—it is said
of grief,—his body buried at Wenersborg; what became of his soul, I will
not take upon me to say; but as for his reputation, there is no doubt
about that—that lies buried there.”
“That canal certainly is a wonderful work for a country like yours, where
the extent of land is so great, and the produce from it so small.”
“It would have been more wonderful still,” said Birger, “for it would
have been done when the country was still poorer, had it not been for the
Reformation.”
“The Reformation!” said the Captain. “What, in the name of Tenterden
Steeple and the Goodwin Sands, has the Reformation to do with the Gotha
Canal?”
“Not much with the canal, but a good deal with Bishop Brask who planned
it—the man whom Geijer calls, and very deservedly, ‘the friend of
liberty, and the upright friend of his country.’ The present canal,
nearly as you see it now, was sketched out in a letter still preserved,
which was written in the year 1526, by the Bishop, to stout old Thurè
Jensen, whom men called King of East Gothland—that gallant old fellow,
who, when he saw how the Diet of Westeras was going, struck up his
drums and marched forth, swearing that no man in Sweden should make
him heathen, Lutheran, or heretic. Before the Bishop’s scheme could be
converted into a reality, stout old Thurè was a headless corpse, and
Brask a voluntary exile. But the good which men do, lives after them.
Gustavus, who had always respected Brask, and would fain have retained
him in his See of Linköping, carried out many of his plans—and in the
course of time this, as you see, was carried out too, though it was not
for a hundred years or more after the successful king and the deprived
bishop had gone to their respective accounts.”
“Jacob has just been giving us another version of the story,” said the
Captain, “something about Gefjon and Gylfi.”
“O, the Gylfa-Ginning. Stupid old fool!—that did not happen here, but
down in the south, between Sweden and Denmark. So far, however, he is
quite right,—at least, if you believe the Prose Edda; the Goddess Gefjon
was the first canal maker in Sweden, and the event happened in the reign
of King Gylfi.
“Thus it was:—
“King Gylfi ruled over the land of Svithiod (Sweden), and at that
uncertain date which is generally known as ‘once upon a time,’ he
recompensed a strange woman, for some service she had done him, with as
much land as she could plough round with four oxen in a day and a night;
but he did not know, till the share struck deep into the earth and tore
asunder hills and rocks, that it was the Goddess Gefjon that he was
dealing with. So deep were the furrows, that the place where the land had
been became water, for the oxen, which had come from Jötenheim (the land
of the Goths), were really her sons, whom she had yoked to her plough.”
“Phew-w-w,” whistled the Parson.
“What is the matter?” said Birger.
“Only that as Gefjon is the northern Diana, I thought you might have made
a mistake; her nephews, possibly, not her sons?”
“O, that goes for nothing in Sweden,” said the Captain, laughing; “there
are plenty of cases in point. I have no doubt Birger is quite right.”
“Well, if you come to scandalising national divinities,” retorted
Birger, “I am sure that story about Endymion was never cleared up very
satisfactorily.”
“Clear up your own story, at all events, and place the oxen in any
relationship to the maiden goddess which you may think best suited to her
fair fame.”
“Then I will call them what the Edda calls them,” said Birger, gallantly,
“her sons, and never sully the fair fame of the maiden Gefjon either. The
whole is an allegory. Sweden achieved the sea-path, or inland navigation
by the labour of her own sons, and that is what the old Skald Bragi
means when he likens them to oxen, and says—
“‘Four heads and eight eyes bearing,
While hot sweat trickled down them,
The oxen dragged the reft mass
That formed this winsome island.’
And now Gefjon and her sturdy sons have been at work again. The whole
south of Sweden is an island now, and it is this canal from the Cattegat
to the Baltic that makes it so.”
“Well, so it is; and though it is a long while since the days of the
Goddess Gefjon, or even of good Bishop Brask, the work is complete at
last, and a very creditable work it is. I think, by-the-way, that we
English had something to do with it.”
“England had a hand, and a very considerable one, in the other end of
it,” said Birger, “but these locks are home manufacture, and the thing
really has answered very well. See what a trade it has opened with the
Wener only, which was the original plan; the communication with the
Baltic being a sort of after-thought of the Ostergöthlanders, carried
out by Count Platen. This part of the canal, which was opened in 1800,
has made four of our inland counties, Wenersborglan, Mariestadslan,
Carlstadslan, and Orebrö, into so many maritime states; and now the other
end has done the same for Jonköping and Linköping. In national wealth,
it has paid a dozen times over. There is no one who has ever lived,
since the days of Oxenstjerna, to whom we owe so much as we do to Count
Platen. In the very heat of the war—that is to say, in 1808—he conceived
the idea of prolonging the water communication to the Baltic. He went
over to England to inspect, with his own eyes, the Caledonian canal. He
engaged Telford, returned to Sweden, and, within two months, sent in
his plans, with their specification and estimates, which, strange to
say, have not been exceeded in the execution. It is this old part of the
canal, however, which is, at all events, the most showy job; here are
two miles of solid rock cut through, and, as you see, these falls are
pretty high—not less than a hundred and twenty feet of them, besides the
rapids,—they require, therefore, a good many locks; in fact, as you see,
it looks more like a staircase than anything else.”
“It certainly was a singular sight,” said the Captain, “to see our
steamer high above our heads, and the masts of the brigs sticking out
from the tops of the rocks, and far above the highest trees.”
“This part of the canal is the most showy,” said Birger; “no doubt
but Platen’s work was not altogether so easy as it looks. Any one can
appreciate the skill of an engineer, who sees a great body of water
surmounting a steep wall of rock; but a still greater amount of skill
is evidenced in laying out a plan; so as to render such tedious and
expensive works unnecessary. When I was a youngster, I was sent by the
Kongs-Ofwer-Commandant’s Expedition, to survey, by way of practice, the
two lines from our fortress of Wanås-on-Wettern to the two seas, and I
really do not know which is the most wonderful conception. The original
plan was only eight feet deep, but they are deepening it two feet more,
and making the width of the locks twenty-two feet throughout. We shall
see the Linköping battalion at work on this to-morrow. I must go and pay
them a visit while we are staying at Gäddebäck. I know a good many of the
officers.”
“It is a military work, then?”
“Not exactly, though, like most other large undertakings, it is done by
soldiers. It is a speculation, something like those in your own country,
which is taken in hand by shareholders, with a board of directors, though
I believe Government gives them a lift of some sort or other; but in
this country, in time of peace, you can always get as many soldiers as
you want for labourers, from a corporal’s party up to a battalion, or
a brigade, for matter of that. You lodge so much money in the hands of
the Government officer appointed for that purpose, and a regiment, or a
company, or a detachment, receives orders to march and hut themselves
in such a place. Your engineer, or foreman, or bailiff, as the case may
be, gives his orders to the officer in command, who sees them carried
into effect. It costs more in hard money—and, what is a worse thing for
us Swedes, _ready_ money—than any other sort of labour, but it answers
exceedingly well for those who can afford the first outlay, for the men
are under military discipline, and Government are responsible, not only
that you shall have so many men to work, but so many _sober_ men, _fit_
to work, which, in this country, as you know, is not exactly the same
thing.”
“And how do the soldiers like it?” said the Captain, who, though he
did not say so, certainly was thinking that it was not precisely the
situation of an officer and a gentleman, to do duty as foreman of the
works for some speculating farmer, or builder, or engineer.
The idea never seemed to strike Birger, who, by-the-way, belonging to
the Royal Guards, was himself exempt from such service. “It is rather
popular,” said he, “with all classes; the men like it because they have
a considerable increase of pay, and as for the officers, except one
or two who are on duty for the day, they have but a short morning and
evening parade, just to see that their men are all right, and then they
may do what they please. They lose nothing, either, for all places are
equally dull in the summer, when everybody is at work; there can be no
festivities going on anywhere, and so they shoot, or fish, or lounge, or
make love, at their leisure. But here we are at the parade-ground,” he
continued, as they came upon a cleared space in the forest, surrounded
by very neat and compactly-built huts, some of considerable pretensions,
framed with trunks of pines, and walled and roofed with outsides from
the saw-mills, arranged as weather-boards; others, more humble, were
constructed of pine-branches and heather; but all alike compact, neat,
firm, tidy-looking, and arranged in military order, in straight lines,
with their officers’ huts in front.
The sun was not far from its setting, and the soldiers having put aside
their tools, were throwing on their belts in a way that certainly would
not have satisfied an English adjutant, and were hurrying, with their
muskets in their hands, to their respective posts. There was a short
private inspection by the non-commissioned officers, while the band, a
pretty good one, were tuning their instruments; after which the companies
formed into line, faced to the west, and as the lower limb of the sun
touched the horizon, the officers saluted with their swords, the men
presented arms, and accompanied by the band, sang in chorus, every man of
them joining in and taking his part in it, the beginning of Grundtvig’s
glorious hymn to the Trinity.
“O mighty God! we Thee adore,
From our hearts’ depths, for evermore;—
None is in glory like to Thee
Through time and through eternity.
Thy Name is blessed by Cherubim—
Thy Name is blessed by Seraphim—
And songs of praise from earth ascend,
With thine angelic choirs to blend.
Holy art Thou, our God!
Holy art Thou, our God!
Holy art Thou, our God!
Lord of Sabaoth.”
The air was simple enough, though beautifully harmonized; but there is
nothing in the whole compass of music so magnificent as the combination
of some hundreds of human voices trained to sing in harmony; the band
would have injured the effect, but in truth it was hardly heard,
overwhelmed as it was by that volume of sound,—except, indeed, the roll
of drums which accompanied the final “Amen,” swelling and prolonging
the notes, and then dying away like a receding peal of thunder. The men
recovered arms, were dismissed, and in ten minutes were dispersed over
the parade ground, playing leap-frog, fencing, wrestling, foot-ball;
while not a few were lighting fires, and boiling water for their evening
gröd.
Birger stepped on, to see if he could meet with his friend, while the
other two, thinking that they should most likely be in the way among
people who, if they spoke English or French at all, spoke it with
difficulty; turned into the well-beaten track that led to the inn and
landing place of Trollhättan.
Before they arrived there the night had already closed in; that is to
say, it had faded into twilight, for that is the nearest approach which
a northern summer’s night makes to darkness. All that the travellers
then saw of the inn was the light which, glancing from every window,
beamed forth a welcome which it had evidently been beaming forth to
others before them; judging from the din which arose from the evening
relaxations of a dozen or so of jolly subalterns. These, who had money
enough, or who fancied they had money enough to spend in luxury, had
fixed their quarters at the inn, instead of the pretty looking green huts
which their less wealthy or more prudent comrades had run up in the camp.
In fact, the sitting rooms of the inn offered at that time fewer
temptations than the very clean, bare bed-rooms, with their very white
sheets, and very warm down coverlets. Winter and summer alike, the
feather bed is uppermost, and here it was still; though the only reason
why the windows were not left wide open all night, was the clouds of
musquitos which, entering by them, menaced the repose of the sleepers.
Jacob, whom the party had somewhat inconsiderately left in charge of
the baggage, had, much to their surprise, deceived them all in making
no mistake, and leaving nothing behind; the carioles had been landed,
and were ready packed for their journey on the morrow, as duly as if the
fishermen had seen to them themselves; but in his own country Jacob had
become quite a different character, and piqued himself in showing to the
Norwegians in his own person how vast was the superiority of the Swedes.
Birger was not seen again till the party was collected at a sufficiently
early hour of the morning round a magnificent breakfast of fruit and
fish, which had been laid out under the verandah of the inn,—a narrow
esplanade which looked out upon the yet quiet waters of the brimming
Gotha, at the very point where they were gathering their strength for
their first furious plunge.
Most cataracts commence with a rapid: so still and calm was the Gotha
at this point, that the esplanade in question was the general landing
place from Wenersborg, and was furnished with iron rings for the purpose
of mooring the boats, several of which, very fair specimens of Swedish
boat-building, were hanging on to them, scarcely stretching out their
respective painters, so gentle was the current. Among them lay a very
handsome gig with bright sides, well scraped oars, and a white English
ensign fluttering in the morning breeze; from which Moodie, who had come
in state with four rowers, had just landed, and by means of which, the
travellers were to complete their journey.
In truth, Gäddebäck was not very accessible in any other way; it had been
originally built as a pic-nic house by the Mayor of Wenersborg, who, when
he had been half-ruined by the great fire that had taken place there the
year before, was glad enough to contract his expenses, and to find a
person to take it off his hands. It suited Moodie well enough, and its
low rent suited him also, but there were not many men whom it would suit
at all. It had been built exclusively for pleasure parties, and these
were expected to arrive there either by boat or by sledge, according as
the surface of the river was, water or ice. No one had ever troubled
themselves with any other entrance, and it was no sort of drawback to the
place in its original state, that communication with the main land was
entirely cut off. The still, deep brook which gave to the place its name
(pike brook), had spread out behind the house into a broad reedy morass,
which in spring, during the floods, was a broad reedy lake, but in summer
a sort of neutral ground, between land and water, through which was led
a precarious track, which might be passed on wheel, or indeed on foot,
provided the traveller did not object to very clear water, not much above
his knees. The actual spot on which the house was situated in the middle
of all this, was a patch of parky ground, abounding in beautiful timber,
which was five or six feet above the general level; that part of it which
lay next the river was firm, and hard, and covered with short green turf,
but this subsided to landward, first into wet sponge, secondly into
bog, and lastly into reedy water, in proportion as it receded from the
river. The brook, divided by this patch of dry land, soaked into the main
stream, on either end of it, completely insulating the domain.
This suited Moodie exactly, for the little park was full of all sorts of
grouse and other birds, which looked as if they were at perfect liberty,
as indeed they were, only that having had their pinions cut, and not
being able to swim, they could not pass the girdle of water—herons, and
cranes, and bitterns, were stalking about, or watching for fish in the
shallows, like their wild brethren, for though excellent waders, and
quite in their element on the soppy shores to landward, they could not
swim any more than the grouse. There were some deer, also, of various
kinds, but as these had no sort of objection to take the water, they were
confined in little paddocks, those being classed together who would keep
the peace.
On the esplanade, between the house and the river, lay a dozen dogs,
mostly English, on excellent terms with the great brown bear, who, though
perfectly tame, was secured from paying any inquisitive visits to the
deer paddocks by a collar and chain, with which he was made fast to a
substantial post at the door.
The whole front of the house had been occupied by a ball-room, with
windows opening into a verandah. This verandah had become a general
marine store—oars, boat-hooks, masts, sails, were arranged along it on
hooks; but so tidily and regularly were they disposed, that they looked
as if they had been placed there for ornament;—fishing rods of all
lengths were there, and a large assortment of eel-lines and night-lines,
and trimmers, and gaffs, and pike-wires, and spears, and other poaching
implements, together with a goodly assortment of drags and flues in the
back ground; while a full-sized casting net, hung up to dry, displayed
its leaded semi-circle to the sun: for be it remembered, Moodie made
a profit of his pleasure, and not only kept his own establishment in
fish, but very seldom allowed the Gotheborg steamer to pass without
dispatching in her a heavy birchen basket, consigned to Jacob Lindegren,
the fishmonger.
Neither was the interior at all out of character: the ball-room had been
divided by wooden partitions into three very tolerable apartments—an
ante-room or broad passage in the middle, and on either side his dining
room and what he called his study, that is to say, the place where he
made his flies. The passage, which was sufficiently littered, contained
little other furniture than a turning-lathe and a carpenter’s bench, with
shelves and pigeon-holes round the sides for the necessary tools; but
both rooms were pictures of tidiness; the furniture was plain enough,
certainly, but the walls were covered with sketches, of Moodie’s own
drawing, and with sporting trophies of every kind: huge bear skins and
wolf skins occupied whole panels, surmounted, perhaps, by the grinning
skull of a lynx, or a huge antlered head with the skin on; between these
were cases containing most of the wild birds found in the country, all
stuffed by his own hands; together with specimens of eggs, hung up in
a pattern, but each labelled with the name of the bird it belonged to.
Between the windows was a formidable armoury, while over one door was
a stuffed otter, and over the other a wild cat, and the rug itself was
formed of badgers’ skins bordered with fox; for Moodie had imported an
English grate and had built a fire-place, besides the invariable stove.
Such was the sportsman’s paradise, into which Moodie welcomed his guests.
There was accommodation, such as it was, for an unlimited number of
them; for there were several empty rooms of one sort or another; and a
rough box, hastily run up with planks from the saw mills, filled with
dry poplar leaves and covered with a bear skin, was a bed much better
than any of them had been accustomed to. As for washing, their toilet
apparatus was laid out every morning on the stage to which the boats
were moored, and a dive into the river was the very best way of washing
the face after shaving,—at least, so Moodie seemed to think, for though
his room was pretty well fitted up, inasmuch as such toilet would be
difficult in the winter, when the river was as hard as a stone, in summer
he always chose the boat stage for his own dressing room, as well as for
that of his guests.
No one was sorry for a rest; journals had to be written up, notes had to
be compared; there was something, too, in lounging lazily in the sun, or
smoking a peaceful cigar under the shade of the awning, or teasing the
bear, or feeding the grouse, and knowing all the while that there was no
duty neglected, and no opportunity lost. Not but that excursions in a
quiet way were made—now upon the water with the trolling tackle, now on
the high grounds of the royal forest, now on neither land nor water, but
on the marshy debateable land, astonishing the ducks that swarmed among
the reed beds which divide the left bank of the river from the sound
land; but nothing very particular was done, beyond existing in a very
high state of quiet enjoyment.