On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

A beacon, which had shown ships the way for years, lay thrown up, and with its thick end looked like the thigh bone and condyle of a giraffe; in another place a juniper shrub, like the carcass of a drowned cat, with its white small roots stretching out for the tail.

Outside the strand lay reefs and rocks which one moment glanced wet in the sunshine, the next were submerged by the swell which passed over them with a splash, or if it had not sufficient power, rose, burst, and threw a water-fall of foam into the air.

Outside the island lay the shining sea, that great flat, as the fishermen called it, and now in the morning hour it stretched like a blue canvas without a wrinkle but undulating like a flag. The big round surface would have been tiresome had not a red buoy been anchored outside the reef, and brightened up the monotony of the surface with its minium spot like the seal on a letter.

This was the sea, certainly nothing new to Commissioner Borg who had seen several corners of the world. Still it was the desolate sea seen as it were in a tête-à-tête. It did not terrify like the forest with its gloomy hiding places, it was quieting like an open, big, faithful blue eye. Everything could be seen at once, no ambush, no lurking place. It flattered the spectator when he saw this circle round him, where he himself ever remained the center. The big water surface was as a corporeity radiating from the beholder existing only in and with the beholder. As long as he stood on shore, he felt himself intimate with the now harmless power and superior to its enormous might, for he was beyond its reach. When he reminded himself of the dangers he had undergone the evening before, the agony and wrath he had endured in his combat against this brutal enemy, which he had succeeded in eluding, he smiled in magnanimity toward the vanquished and beaten foe, which was after all only a blind tool at the wind's service, and was now stretching itself out to resume its rest in the sunlight.

This was East Skerries, the classical, for they have their old history, have lived long, flourished, and declined, the old East Skerries that in the Middle Ages were a great fishing port where that important article stromling was caught, and for which a special law of guild was given and is still maintained up to to-day. The stromling serve the same purpose in middle Sweden and Norrland as the herring does on the west coast and in Norway, being only a kind of herring, a product of the Baltic Sea, and suited to its small resources. It was sought during the time when herring were scarce and dear, and less sought after when they were plentiful. It has been for ages the winter food for middle Sweden, and was eaten so continually that a song is still preserved from the days of Queen Christina's enticing Frenchmen into the country, who complained of the eternal hard bread and infinite stromling. A man's age ago the great land-owners paid their laborers' wages in natural products which consisted mostly of herring; after herring-fishing declined they substituted salt stromling. The price rose and the fishing which previously had been managed moderately and for domestic use, now became an eager speculation. The shoals of the East Skerries which are the richest on the coast of Sodermanland, began to be used on a large scale, the fish were disturbed during spawning time, the meshes of the nets were made closer and closer, and as a natural consequence the fish diminished, not so much from extermination perhaps as from the fact that they left their former spawning places and sought the depths where as yet no fisherman has had the resolution to search for the flown prey.

The learned puzzled long with investigations over the cause of the diminution of the stromling supply, but the Academy of Agriculture took the initiative, by appointing skillful fish commissioners, both to learn the cause and find a remedy.

This was now Commissioner Borg's mission at the East Skerries for the summer. The place was not lively as the Skerries are not situated on one of the main courses to Stockholm. The big vessels from the south usually pass by Landsort, Dalaro and Vaxholm, those from the east, and during certain winds, even those from the south, seek passage by Sandham and Vaxholm, while the merchants' vessels from Norrland and Finland pass between Furusund and Vaxholm.

The eastern route is mostly used in case of necessity by the Esthonians, who as a rule come from south-east, and by others in case of wind, current and storm, who lie over at Landsort and Sandham. Therefore the place has only a third-class custom house station under one surveyor, and a little department of pilots who are under control of Dalaro.

It is the end of the world—quiet, still, abandoned, except during fishing time, fall and spring, and if there comes only a single pleasure yacht during mid-summer it is greeted as an apparition from a lighter, gayer world; but fish commissioner Borg, who had come on another errand—to "spy," as the people called it—was greeted with a noticeable coolness which had found its first utterance in the indifference of the past evening and now took its expression in a miserable and cold coffee which was brought to his chamber.

Although gifted with a keen sense of taste, he had acquired through strong exercise an ability to restrain unpleasant perceptions, therefore he swallowed the drink at a draught and arising went down to see his environment and greet the people.