SIXTH LETTER
In this chapter Phillips describes a day without a sunrise; his anxiety lest the sun should appear; the wonderful beauties of sunrise and sunset where the sun never appears; the fitful glories of the aurora borealis; the daily bombardment of Kiruna; the great iron mountain from which the bombardment comes; Luleå, the metropolis of the north, and a Lapp encampment in winter.
Kiruna, January 14.
My dear Judicia,
I wonder if, when you were a girl, you were as much fascinated by Bayard Taylor’s travel books as I was. Did you read Views Afoot, and especially did you gloat over his Northern Travels? If you did, you remember how when he got up toward the borders of the arctic circle, though he did not get nearly as far north as Kiruna, he went out of his hotel door one morning and found that the thermometer had sunk to forty degrees below zero. Do you remember with what a sort of rapture he recorded this fact, as though he had now actually reached the land of the aurora borealis, and how he seemed to revel in every degree that the mercury sank? I will not be sure of the exact degree of cold that so rejoiced his soul, for I have not read my Bayard Taylor for many a year, but I was conscious of an experience something like his when I went out on the crisp, frosty streets of Kiruna this morning and watched for the sun which I devoutly hoped would not rise.
By nine o’clock the sky had begun to glow faintly. I wandered about the streets, keeping my eye on the eastern horizon as earnestly as a good Mohammedan faces toward Mecca. Moment by moment the glow, which was at first barely discernible, deepened, and the fleecy clouds grew rosy. Evidently something was doing just below the horizon; but very, very gradually the dawn came on. By ten o’clock the sky was blushing like a modest damsel in the presence of her lover, but still the Lord of Day did not appear. Ten minutes after ten, twenty minutes after, half-past ten! It seemed as though the sun must break above the horizon line at any moment, but still he delayed his coming, while all along the east, and far up toward the zenith, the sky was flushed with such a light, it seemed to me, as never was on sea or shore.
Twenty minutes of eleven, and still he did not appear; ten minutes of eleven, and I could see that the sunrise glories were a trifle dimmed, and a little to the north the beginning of the glorious pageant that attends the setting sun. Eleven o’clock came, and I was sure of it. The sun was setting and not rising. Though the skies were all aflame, and sunset mingled with the dawn, it was very evident that old Sol would not show his face in Kiruna to-day. Hurrah! I have got beyond the sunrise. I am in the land of the Midday Moon!
And why is it not as notable a thing to see a day without a sunrise as to see a day without a sunset? Why do not people travel to northern Sweden or Norway to see the Midday Moon, as well as the Midnight Sun? I venture to say that the phenomena of midwinter are even more glorious than those of midsummer. I cannot imagine that one would see any such wonderful sky tints in summer as in winter. For hours the sun’s beams played upon the feathery clouds of pale blue sky and constantly changed them from glory to glory.
At one time the brilliant tints predominated and the splashes of golden color lighting up the white snow put even Turner’s pictures to the blush. After many minutes these fiery colors changed to exquisite green and blue, and broken, opalescent hues adorned the clouds. Then a red gleam showed under one dark blue cloud. The sun seemed to summon all its strength for one last burst of glory, and the western sky, which I thought had passed its acme, glowed once more with a deep red, as though some vast furnace were throwing its hidden light upon the clouds. For more than four hours this wonderful display lasted, as sunrise faded into sunset, and it was not until nearly three o’clock this afternoon that the last beam of day had entirely faded.
But the beauty of the scene did not consist altogether in the glorious colors of the sunset. All the accessories have made it forever memorable. As I walked to the top of a little eminence near Kiruna, the stillness could almost be felt. A dog barking half a mile away was distinctly audible. The axes of the workmen whom I left building a log-house as I tramped on through the snow and climbed the hillside made a melodious tapping, which could be heard as far as the dog’s bark.
The trees everywhere were loaded with their beautiful burden of snow. The pines and birches seemed in the dim light of the setting sun to have blossomed out like cherry trees in May. The mercury registered only a little below zero, or perhaps some forty degrees of frost, according to Celsius, by whose thermometers the Swedes swear, for I have found no such cold weather as that in which Bayard Taylor revelled. But the zero air was so dry and still that the ordinary clothes which I found necessary and none too much for Boston east winds were entirely sufficient.
As I came down the hill, the workmen were still busy on their log house in the deepening twilight. A Yankee in a white slouch hat must be a rarity in these altitudes in winter, but they did not pause in their work or exhibit any curiosity at the sight of an outlander. Perhaps their natures partake of the largeness and solitude of their great forests and snow fields, and they are not moved by the curiosity which affects other mortals. After watching them for a few moments, I left them fitting their logs together without nails or spikes, sawing and cutting with bare hands in this zero weather as though it were balmy June.
But even when the last ray of the setting sun (which had never risen) had faded away, the glories of the Arctic night did not disappear. Indeed they had but just begun, for the aurora borealis began to shoot out its wavy lines of fire in the northern sky. Higher and higher the waves mounted toward the zenith, until they arched overhead. Palpitating like a living thing, the white would change to green, and the green to a reddish glow, and all the time the streamers that seemed to be shooting up as from a mighty volcano on either side of the North Pole waved and wavered like banners in the wind; now being folded in upon themselves, then flaunted out to their full width, as though Erebus himself were blowing upon them.
But the interests of Kiruna are not altogether centered in the far horizon. At half-past eight in the morning, and again at half-past four in the afternoon, I was startled by a series of tremendous explosions. They could not be thunderclaps, for there were few clouds in the sky and not the slightest indication of a storm.
Over and over again the thundering volleys rolled, and as I looked toward the west I could see a vivid flash in the darkness preceding the thunderclap by some seconds. And yet the flash and the thunder did not seem to come from the sky, but from a massive hill, which bulked dimly against the horizon, across an intervening valley. You have already guessed what the bombardment was. It came from the mighty iron mountain of Kiruna and was the explosion of the dynamite charges which every morning and every afternoon are set off to loosen the ore. More like a rapid-fire Gatling gun perhaps than like thunderclaps the explosions became, after the first few shots, and from various parts of the mountain, high up and low down, and to the right and the left, one could see the dull flashes and hear the reverberating roar, scores of shots every minute, until perhaps two hundred had been fired.
This iron mountain accounts for a lot of things in this part of the world. This was the magnet which drew the railway, the most northerly railway on the face of the earth, up so far through the dreary Lapland wilds. Do not suppose for a moment that the Swedes were so philanthropic as to build the road for the sake of a few Americans who wanted to see the Midday Moon or the Midnight Sun (for you must know that you can see his Majesty from the top of Kiruna’s iron mountain all day long if you happen to be there any day during the latter part of June). No, it was this great loadstone mountain that compelled the thrifty Swedes to build a railway through the snow a thousand miles north of Stockholm. Their enterprise was well repaid, for this mountain is from fifty to sixty per cent solid iron, and the best iron in the world.
From Kiruna it is transported nearly one hundred miles farther north to Narvik, across the Norwegian border, where there is an ice-free port all the year round, and where great ships are constantly waiting within its quiet fjord to transport sections of Kiruna’s iron mountain to New York and Philadelphia and London and Hamburg and Boston. There is another iron hill some five or six miles from Kiruna, from which the ore is shipped by overhead electric skids to Kiruna and thence transported by rail to Narvik. Indeed it is said by geologists that all the hills about this little Arctic metropolis are full of iron, and they are not likely to be exhausted for a thousand years to come.
Kiruna reminds me of a hustling American town more than any other that I have seen in this part of the world. It is only fourteen years old, and yet it has ten thousand inhabitants; hundreds of well-built houses; a good electric tramway, which carries the miners back and forth from the works on the mountain to their homes in the little city; four fine schoolhouses, and a big church with a huge bell tower, situated at some little distance from the sanctuary.
Let us not plume ourselves on the thought that we have all the enterprise in the world, or lay the flattering unction to our souls that no one else can build a city in a decade, for here is one with all the conveniences and comforts and many of the luxuries of life; and if we go another hundred miles farther north we shall find a still larger town, less than twelve years old, with good blocks of stores, large residences, and splendid wharves, to which the commerce of the world pays tribute; for Narvik, where the sun does not rise for a month or six weeks in wintertime, is even younger than Kiruna. To-morrow I intend to go to Luleå (pronounce it Luleo, for the little circle over the a gives it the o sound), and I will finish this arctic letter there.
Luleå on the Baltic.
A funny, if chilly, experience awaited me when I arrived here last night. It was well on toward midnight, and, though a crowd of fellow passengers disembarked from the third-class cars, there was no hotel porter or trager or dienstman to tell me where I should go. My somewhat aged Baedeker had not informed me of the name of a single hotel.
The only individual who took any interest in me was a small boy, and from his voluble Swedish and more comprehensible gestures I felt that he wished to lead me to a hotel. Having nothing better to do, I followed my diminutive guide. It was very cold, at least twenty degrees below zero, the severest weather I have seen at all in this northland. The streets were dark, for most of the electric lights had been put out, but I followed the small boy trustingly. When I seemed to waver in my allegiance, he would run back and urge me on. At last we came to a house which had few signs of being a hostelry. I suspect it was his mother’s humble residence. I followed him in at the door, and he discoursed fluently to the lady of the house, apparently telling her of my needs. She looked quite as blank as I did, but at last she opened a door into a somewhat shabby parlor and gave me to understand that I could sleep on the lounge if I wished to.
I declined the invitation, for I remembered having passed in the dark a house that looked more like a hotel. Going back through the frosty air, I soon found it, and over the door made out the legend Privat Hotellet. Here, much to my joy, I found a large room, nicely heated, with two beds, a huge, white monument of a stove, and a whole picture gallery, though not all by the old masters, on the wall, and all this for seventy-five cents a day. To be sure I could get neither bite nor sup in this Privat Hotellet, but what did that matter when almost at the next door I found, in the morning, a restaurant on whose generous tables were piled mounds of butter, stacks of oat cakes at least two feet high, a peck of small potatoes, unlimited milk and coffee, pickled fish, fried fish, cold meat, everything on the most lavish scale, and all for sixty öre, or fifteen cents?
But you should have seen my fellow boarders eat! They were all hardy tars, who had sailed the Baltic for many a year, when the ice does not interfere with their trade, and the way they made those viands disappear was a caution to a dyspeptic. Even Aylmer, who has just joined me here on his way south from northern Norway (did I forget to give you this interesting piece of information, Judicia?), could not keep up with them. He said that they could give the boys in the college commons a good handicap and then beat them in the race through the breakfast, hands down—but then they had the advantage of being able to use both knife and fork with equal dexterity.
Luleå, as you have already gathered, is on the banks of the Baltic; in fact, it is on its extreme northern shore, and the sea here is so charged with fresh water from the more than two hundred rivers that flow into it from the Swedish and the Finnish shores that it is like a great fresh-water lake, and freezes in its northern end as solidly as Moosehead or Winnepesaukee. As we wandered down to the shore the next morning after our hotel adventure, we could see nothing but a vast expanse of snow-covered ice. Only a few large schooners and small steamers, frozen solidly into the ice, convinced us that this was indeed the Baltic Sea.
Luleå is a very presentable town, quite the metropolis of this part of the world. Many of the blocks are of brick and stone. A splendid church of cathedral dimensions stands in the center of the town, broad streets lined with well-built houses radiate from it on every side, and an enormous hotel overlooking the Baltic makes an attractive bid for summer visitors, though at this time of year it is closed as tight as a bank vault.
I must not forget to tell you about the glorious snow and frost of Luleå. We have seen it everywhere throughout northern Sweden, as I have before told you, but never in such absolute perfection as in this favored town. This is, indeed, the Spell of Sweden. The slight fogs which often envelop this region for a little time and then disappear leave their beautiful frescoing upon every tree and bush and telegraph wire and fence post. Rather, perhaps, I should say they do the work of a sculptor and transform everything into pure white marble. Every smallest twig is covered thick with rime, never less than two inches deep. Strike the tree a sharp blow with your cane and a perfect shower of snow will descend, powdering you from head to foot, unless you quickly stand from under. But the next morning the tree will be covered once more by this invisible sculptor with powdery marble, and again it stands statuesque and lovely in its immaculate white against the sky.
When the rime is not so thick, magical nature transforms the trees and shrubs into white coral, and the little arctic bushes, which can never grow to any great height, stand up above the snow in such a way that you can scarcely believe that some ancient sea has not receded and left a forest of coral exposed to view.
The only spot of color in this white wilderness is made by the mountain-ash tree which the Luleåns have induced to grow in one of their parks. These trees are covered thickly with bright red berries, which the English sparrows—unfortunately even the Arctic cold and snows cannot drive them away—rejoice in. They pick out the kernels of the berries and cover the snow beneath with the blood-red husks.
One most delightful excursion we must take you upon. It can be made from almost any point in Lapland, but Luleå is as good a starting point as any. It is a visit to the nomadic Lapps who abound in this region. We often see these little fellows, with their yellow faces, about the color of snuff, of which I understand they are inordinately fond, and their slanting Mongolian eyes, as they come into the towns with their reindeer hitched to long sledges. These patient animals furnish them with almost all that they need—meat and tents and clothing and milk; thread made from their sinews and needles from their bones. When the Lapps want a little money for tobacco or coffee they drive a deer into the neighboring town and sell him for whatever his carcass will bring.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.
But you must see them in their native habitat to really know the Lapps. So we hired a sledge whose low runners raise one but a few inches from the crisp snow, stuck our feet into the abundant straw, tucked around us the warm reindeer robes, pulled our caps over our ears, and told our driver to do his best to find a Lapp camp. This is not always easy, for the Lapps are genuine gypsies in their liking for a nomadic life, and they are here to-day, there to-morrow, and somewhere else the next day.
However our driver had an idea in what direction they might be found, and, after half a dozen English miles, or about one Swedish mile, we heard a tremendous barking of dogs and knew that we were approaching our goal, for the one indispensable quadruped, aside from the reindeer, in a Lapp encampment, is a barking dog, and often a good many of him. It was not a large camp, only a single family of Lapps with perhaps twenty or thirty reindeer and half a dozen dogs. Their only shelter, even when the mercury reaches fifty below zero, is this reindeer-skin tent, with a hole in the top and quite loose around the sides.
A miserable fire burned in the center of the tent, and some of the smoke found its way through the hole in the top. But hospitality is not unknown even in these snowy wilds, and our hosts at once set to work to make us a cup of coffee, their one luxury, which they knew their visitors would appreciate. To be sure the cup and coffeepot looked almost as dirty as the faces of our hosts, but who minds a few microbes more or less among the millions you are constantly swallowing. To be sure, also, our hosts expected a gift of several times the value of the cup of coffee, but that was purely a gift and not by any means payment for value received.
I cannot say that I fell in love with the Lapps or their surroundings, but I must confess that I conceived a new admiration for the missionary spirit of Prince Bernadotte, the brother of the King of Sweden, who I understand has sometimes come to this far north region to preach to the Laplanders.
He once informed me that the only time he was ever in Russia was when he stepped across the boundary of Swedish Lapland into Finnish Lapland, and then only a few feet on the other side. I suppose that a Swedish prince would very likely be persona non grata in the dominions of the reactionary Czar.
A half-hour in the Lapp settlement was enough for a complete disillusionment concerning the joys of nomadic life in Lapland, and we were glad to turn our faces once more toward the thriving little metropolis of the north Baltic.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.