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Read Ebook: Pictures of Sweden by Andersen H C Hans Christian
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Ebook has 501 lines and 44815 words, and 11 pages
INTRODUCTION
TROLLH?TTA
KINNAKULLA
GRANDMOTHER
THE PRISON-CELLS
BEGGAR-BOYS
VADSTENE
THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN
THE "SKJ?RGAARDS"
STOCKHOLM
DIURGAERDEN
A STORY
UPSALA
SALA
THE MUTE BOOK
THE Z?THER DALE
THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND
FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
IN THE FOREST
FAHLUN
WHAT THE STRAWS SAID
THE POET'S SYMBOL
THE DAL-ELV
DANEMORA
THE SWINE
POETRY'S CALIFORNIA
INTRODUCTION.
We Travel.
It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.
"Get on my back," says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, "and I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that you are still in Denmark."
"Fly with me," says the swallow; "I fly over Holland's mountain ridge, where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves."
"Come with me! come with me!" screams the restless sea-gull, and flies in an expecting circle. "Come with me to the Skj?rgaards, where rocky isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!"
"Rest thee between our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs , that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North Sea, on yonder side of Norway.
That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany them?--at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and with horses--yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the note-book--for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times, the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of "Linnaeus;" which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's summer wind shall whistle therein!
TROLLH?TTA.
Who did we meet at Trollh?tta? It is a strange story, and we will relate it.
We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming, delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and rattles. The din of Trollh?tta Falls mingles with the noise from the saw-mills and smithies.
"In three hours we shall be through the sluices," said the Captain: "in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn up here."
We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand, or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst the learned.
We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us, but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv--the outlet of the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring, above--below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing champagne--of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the deep--what a sight! Words cannot express it!
Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed , made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about former days, as if they had been of yesterday.
"Here, on the rocky holms," said he, "it was that the warriors in the heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior St?rkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was challenged by St?rkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus St?rkodder did not gain her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers, whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall before Top Island, on the Norwegian side--there was their cave: now it has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!"
"Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!" shouted all the boys. "It fell in the year 1755!"
"Fell!" said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but himself could know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed. That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be heard better under the bergman's loft.
And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island, continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the most imposing of all Trollh?tta's Falls; the hurrying water falling here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge, which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been the same.
"No one can ever get to the island there," said one of our party, pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.
"I however know one!" said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar smile.
"Yes, my grandfather could!" said one of the boys, "scarcely any one besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise, just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!"
One of the travellers cited Tegner:
"Vildt G?ta stortade fr?n Fjallen, Hemsk Trollet fr?n sat Toppfall r?t! Men Snillet kom och spr?ngt stod Hallen, Med Skeppen i sitt sk?t!"
"Poor mountain sprite," he continued, "thy power and glory recede! Man flies over thee--thou mayst go and learn of him."
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