NINTH LETTER
Which tells of Swedish lakeland; the commodious craft on which one sails through it; with some side remarks on the coinage of the country and the honesty of the people. Returns to the four great lakes, and tells of hill-climbing by steamer and going down hill by the same route across Vettern and Venern until the falls of Trollhätten and Gotenburg are reached.
Lake Venern, June 20.
My dear Judicia,
While I am sailing across this magnificent lake I must indite another epistle to you, telling you of the fascinations of Swedish lakeland. There will be plenty of time, too, to write you all about it, for Lake Venern is eighty miles long, the largest lake, if I am not mistaken, in all Europe, and our steamer traverses almost its whole length. Let me advise you, if you ever have another long holiday, to spend it among Sweden’s lakes. You have seen the Swiss lakes more than once, and the Italian lakes and the Cumberland Lake region of England, but in many respects Sweden’s lakes surpass them all in size, in picturesqueness, and in the convenient and delightful way one may get from one to the other. It is true that there is no Mount Pilatus in Sweden, or Monte Rosa, but there are other charms which fully make up for the lack of the mountain scenery one finds in France and Italy. And as for the little “waters” which one finds in Cumberland, they pale into insignificance beside these great reservoirs of the purest, most translucent water on the earth’s surface.
But the great advantage that they have over every other lake region in the world is that you can see all the great lakes in a three-days’ journey without leaving the very comfortable steamer on which you embark at Stockholm.
At Lucerne you can have a fine excursion on the Vierwaldstättersee, but, unless you come back by land, you must return by the same route to Lucerne. Your steamer cannot climb the hills and get over into Lake Geneva, or strike across country and find its way into Lake Thun and Lake Brienz; but that is just what you can do in Sweden. You can journey clear across the lower end of Scandinavia, from the Baltic to the Kattegat, passing through a continuous succession of the most delightful scenes, through rivers and canals, across lake after lake, past ancient castles that will tell you the whole story of Sweden, until at last you come out on the western sea and land at Sweden’s second greatest city, Gotenburg. In this journey you even climb some considerable hills without leaving your stateroom, unless you choose, or your comfortable seat on the steamer’s deck, and at some places in your journey you are more than three hundred feet above your starting point on the Baltic, or your arrival point on the Kattegat.
But let us begin at the beginning, for this journey is worth describing in detail. To begin with, the craft on which we set sail is no little motor boat or steam launch, as you might imagine when I tell you of its ability to climb hills, but a very substantial and commodious little steamer, with quite elegant staterooms, upholstered abundantly in red satin, and with two wide berths and ample toilet accommodations.
What a travesty it is, Judicia, to speak of many of the steamer cabins even on Atlantic steamers as “staterooms.” Rooms of state! Call them vaults, closets, or any other appropriate name. But, really, it is not very much of an exaggeration to call the cabins on the great Göta Canal line of Sweden staterooms. They are quite good enough for statesmen of average quality, and even royalty need not object to them for a three days’ occupancy.
The berths are not one above the other, to which the unfortunate man in the upper berth must climb by a precarious ladder, but are on either side of the room, and make very comfortable lounges by day. The table, too, on these steamers, is everything that could be desired; but that is to be taken for granted in Sweden. The Smörgåsbord is abundant and varied, and the hot dishes are always admirably cooked. When your meal is finished you simply write down on a long account book which hangs on the wall what you have had, whether merely coffee (which includes all the cakes and sweet bread that you wish), or Smörgåsbord, or perhaps a full dinner.
At the end of the voyage the amount is reckoned up, and the cashier takes your word for what you have eaten. You are very likely to be surprised at the smallness of your bill, whether she is or not.
This trustfulness in your probity tempts me to dilate upon the refreshing honesty of these Scandinavian nations. Especially if you come direct from Italy, the contrast is most refreshing. You never have to scan your bills and add up the items to see that the cashier has not slipped in a few extra francs for his or her perquisite. You need not even count your change, unless you want to make sure that the change-maker has not cheated himself. You need never bite your money or ring it on the pavement to be certain that it is not bad; or examine the date on the coins to find out whether the smiling clerk who gives you the change is not working off some obsolete coins on you which you cannot honestly dispose of without a loss of fifty per cent.
In Scandinavia a kroner is a kroner and an öre is an öre, and I should be as much surprised to find a bad coin in any of these kingdoms as to find one of the unmentionable little creatures, so common in some other countries, in a Scandinavian bed.
The coinage of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway is interchangeable. At any bank in any of the three kingdoms, or at any store where you may trade, you will receive money that is good in every other place, from Korsör to Hammerfest.
Each of these three kingdoms had its own money, with the head of its king stamped on its own coins, and its bank notes issued by its own banks. But Denmark’s money is exactly the same value as Sweden’s, and Sweden’s of precisely the same worth as Norway’s, and the money of each passes current at its face value in all.
If, my dear Judicia, you will bring this idea of an assimilated currency to the attention of all the great nations, and persuade them to accept it, you will confer an enormous boon upon every traveler.
During this monetary discussion we have not made much headway along the Göta Canal. Now I will make up for lost time. A few minutes after our steamer left the quay at Stockholm we found ourselves among the islands of beautiful Lake Mälar, famous in Sweden’s story, but before long we came to the deep cut by which the waters of the lake join a bay of the Baltic. Lake Mälar covers nearly five hundred square miles, and though less than a fifth part as large as Lake Venern, it is yet one of the greatest lakes in Europe. Let me at least make you acquainted with the names of Sweden’s four inland seas, which ought to be as familiar to a traveler like yourself, as Lake Como or Maggiore. They are the Venern, the Vettern, the Hjelmar, and Mälar.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Locks, Borenshult, Göta Canal.
Mr. Von Heidenstam, in Swedish Life in Town and Country, says: “It is a common saying that you cannot stand on any given spot in these districts without having a lake in view somewhere, for by the side of the giant lakes smaller ones abound, spread over the face of the whole country. Of the hundred and ten millions of acres forming the surface of the country, over eight and a half millions are covered by lakes. Large and small, they dot the green earth with blue wherever the eye turns. The peasants call them the ‘eyes of the earth,’ and limpid and blue they are, like the eyes of the northern maidens.”
If you will consult the map you will easily understand our tortuous but delightful course across southern Sweden from Stockholm to Gotenburg.
The deep cut which I have told you about that leads from Lake Mälar to the Baltic Sea was soon passed (for in order to reach the great canal we must first get into the Baltic), and we found ourselves sailing among the beautiful islands and past the charming villas which dot the coast in this region. A few hours more and we entered another long, narrow gulf or fjord, until at Norrköping we struck the canal again. Before long we came to the fifteen steps by which our steamer climbs from little Lake Roxen to the level of the Vettern.
This is indeed the most delightful hill-climbing that I have ever enjoyed. From one lock to another the steamer rises, while the passengers can either stay on deck or they can get off and stroll up on foot.
We had plenty of time to visit Vreta Klosterkyrka, which is celebrated as the place where Ebba Leijonhufvud spent her widowhood and died in 1549. I do not know that Ebba was particularly celebrated for her exploits or for beauty of face or form, but she was the mother-in-law of Gustavus Vasa, and even that oft-derided relationship adds an interest to the place.
The beautiful church, which is built upon the ruins of the old cloister, contains the ashes of several kings, but these old forgotten worthies are not of so much interest as the coffins that we saw in another chapel of the church. There are five of them, piled one above the other, and each one contains a Douglas. The most famous Douglas of them all, a younger son of the head of the great Scottish clan, fought under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’ War. For his bravery he was made a Swedish count, and many a Swedish noble with Douglas blood in his veins lives in Sweden to-day.
By the time we had sauntered slowly up the hill and had visited the site of Gustavus Vasa’s mother-in-law’s cloister, and ruminated sufficiently on the past, we were ready to take the steamer again for another lovely sail down an arm of Lake Vettern to Vadstena, and here we had time enough to go ashore and see another castle of Gustavus Vasa’s, who seems to have sprinkled his residences all over this part of Sweden. Here, we are told, “he celebrated his marriage with his third wife, Catarina, a blushing bride of sixteen, though the bridegroom was almost four times as old, and this, too, notwithstanding that the girl was already betrothed to a noble youth, and ran away and hid herself in her father’s garden when the old king came to court her.”[4]
In Vadstena are two churches, each some five hundred years old, one of which is famous as the last resting place of St. Bridget, to whom I have already introduced you, for here she had founded the celebrated nunnery, whose inmates had to take such strict, ascetic vows.
Across Lake Vettern we sailed through another canal, that led us between charming pastures, musical with the tinkle of cowbells; past fine farms, the red farmhouse making a spot of color on the rich green turf; past gently wooded hills, until we came to magnificent Lake Venern. But we had to get downhill before we reached the Kattegat, for we were one hundred and forty-four feet above the sea, and eleven great locks, each of them one hundred and twelve feet long, is the stairway by which we descended.
Since it took some time for our steamer to go down the hill, we walked instead, for we get many a glimpse from the shore of some of the most beautiful rapids I have ever seen. These are the falls of Trollhätten. Is not that a name that lingers upon your lips and suggests all sorts of trolls and sprites and water nymphs? A tremendous volume of water comes rushing down over the falls, for Europe’s largest lake, as I have before told you, here empties itself, or rather throws itself into the sea. Except for its one majestic fall, Niagara cannot show us anything more exciting in the way of cataracts than Trollhätten. There are five of them, the smallest twenty-five feet high, and the biggest forty-two feet of steep incline, while the river is lined on either side by jagged rocks and high cliffs, past which it comes surging and swirling with deafening roar, hurling its spray high in the air.
I wish the poet-laureate Southey had seen the falls at Trollhätten and had expended some of his adjectives upon them instead of wasting them all upon that little streamlet at the end of Derwent Water when he wrote “How the Waters come down at Lodore.”
At the foot of the falls we took the steamer again for a few hours’ sail down the Göta River, until we came to Sweden’s greatest commercial city, Gotenburg, where steamers are waiting to carry Sweden’s products and Sweden’s emigrants to the ends of the earth.
I fear I may have given you the impression, as I have described the getting up and downhill across Sweden’s broad southern end, of merely a holiday waterway, but the Göta Canal is the great artery of Sweden. Through it, up and down these gigantic steps, pass twelve thousand vessels every year, some of them steamers capable of making an Atlantic voyage, some of them full-rigged schooners or brigs.
The charm of the trip, too, is not by any means confined to the scenery or the ancient castles, for our fellow passengers, by their gentle politeness, do much to make the journey memorable. If you had been with us, they would have taken pains to find out any titles which the American colleges may have incautiously conferred upon your husband, and would always address you as the “Lady Doctor.” They would not think of using the word ni (you) in addressing you. We are told about one of the young lady clerks in a great store in Stockholm who sent word to a gentleman that his son had insulted her. On asking the girl what the insult was, she replied: “He addressed me as ni.” I am speaking now of the way in which chance acquaintances or strangers address one another.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Gorge of the Göta at Trölhatten.
But now and then, as we hear our fellow passengers talking together, we notice a peculiarly affectionate stress of accent upon the little word du, and we know that the two men who are talking together are fast friends, or they would never address each other as “thou.” “The event marks an important stage in their friendship, it is said, and is accompanied by a little ceremony. The higher in rank, or the elder of the two, says, ‘Let us lay aside our titles.’ Pouring out bumpers (let us hope it is always in Sweden’s temperance beverage), they stand erect, and clinking glasses drink the brothers’ Skol. Then, grasping each other warmly by the hand, they say: ‘Thanks, brother.’ Thereafter they are ‘du brothers’; they always address each other as du, or ‘brother.’”
This custom of fosterbrödralag, or foster brotherhood, is as old as Sweden itself, but in olden times the foster brothers instead of clinking glasses cut gashes in their arms and let their blood mingle together as it fell to the earth, a too strenuous ceremony for these milder-mannered days.
Have I not told you enough, Judicia, to prove the proposition with which I set out: that there is no more charming journey in the world, when we consider the scenery, the historic associations, our means of conveyance, and our fellow passengers, than this trip through Sweden’s magnificent Göta Canal?
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.