Sweden
Date: 2026-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Painting; Swedish -- 19th century; Swedish -- 20th century; Sweden -- In art

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sweden

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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 | PRINTED ON PAPER
HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED BY | FROM
A. BÖRTZELL’S PRINTING CO., LTD. | J. H. MUNKTELL’S PAPER MILL
STOCKHOLM | 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

SUMMER EVENING

Painted by RICHARD BERGH

Scene from Lidingön

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?

MY FAMILY

Painting by CARL LARSSON

Mrs. Karin Larsson and her children at Sundborn

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

CHURCH-GOERS IN BOATS

Oil painting by CARL WILHELMSON

Picture from Bohuslän

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.

BIRCHES, “HAGE”,

Painting by REINHOLD NORSTEDT

IN SÖRMLAND

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.

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.

MARCH EVE

Painting by EDVARD ROSENBERG

IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

INTERIOR OF A COTTAGE AT RÄTTVIK

Water-colour by CARL LARSSON

IN THE POSSESSION OF VULT VON STEIJERN ESQ. KAGGEHOLM

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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

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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Table of Contents

- SWEDEN
- PICTURES.
- Transcriber’s Notes
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE