CHAPTER VII
DALECARLIA AND THE DALECARLIANS
Falun, Sweden,
August 28, 191—
Dear Cynthia:
If you will look upon the map of Sweden about halfway up the western boundary line, you will see Dalecarlia, or Dalarne. There is where I am. It is the land of my father’s father, and is the most interesting part of the country, for here was born the national liberty which all Swedes hold dear.
Dalecarlia, which gets its name from the Dal River, is a charming territory, mountainous and forest-covered; and in the very heart of it is beautiful Lake Siljan, “the eye of Dalecarlia.” The land itself is very attractive through its beauty; but the people are more interesting still; they are positively unique, and seem always to have been so. If you have ever read the history of Sweden—I fear you have not—you will remember that certain of the Swedes were always revolting against the established order of things. These were the Dalecarlians. Sometimes they were in the right, and other times they were not; but they never lacked the courage of their convictions. With sufficiently strong convictions always came revolt.
Even as late as the fourteenth century the Dal-people were semi-independent of the central government; for the Swedish kings, in order to guard against insurrection, permitted them to retain certain ancient rights and privileges unknown to the other parts of Sweden. With the establishment of foreign rule subsequent to the Union of Calmar—an arrangement quite unsatisfactory to the Dalecarlians, who, however, had not been consulted—came still greater sensitiveness to unjust imposition and greater provocation to rebellion. It was not until 1435, however, that, goaded by the oppression of the Danish viceroy, they first made their début as insurrectionists on a large scale. Their leader was one of themselves and bore the interesting name of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson. This man was undersized and insignificant in appearance, but he was a little giant, and is one of the greatest—as he was the first—of Sweden’s patriot heroes.
Under the stimulation of the Dalecarlians the revolt quickly spread to other parts of Sweden; the peasant army closed around Stockholm; a parliament, which was the first really representative parliament of Swedish history, was called; and Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson was elected regent of the land of Sweden. King Eric was forced to promise to govern Sweden according to its laws; but as he regarded promises merely as convenient makeshifts and subterfuges, to be broken when the crisis was past, the struggle did not end there. By the time it was over Eric had lost his throne, and in his stead was placed the good-natured King Christopher, who permitted the native nobles to govern Sweden about as they chose. Nevertheless, these were hard times for Sweden; crop failures were frequent and the taxes bore heavily; and Christopher came to be called the “Bark King” because poverty forced the Swedes to mix pulverized bark with their flour to save themselves from starvation.
But this device was not restricted to the reign of Christopher. In times past famine appears to have frequently threatened Sweden, and then the Swedes would become bark-eaters. The old ballads which my father’s mother used to sing tell of those dreary days of bark bread.