Sweden has all the elements of a great and good people. She is making progress, too, in moral and intellectual culture, and her people are rising in the scale of social enjoyment. I notice these things in the rural districts even more than in the cities, which are so much the same all the world over.
CHAPTER XXXV.
SWEDEN (Continued).
WE are going across the kingdom, from Stockholm to Gottenburg. We might be carried through by rail in a day; but what should we see of life in Sweden if we went flying over it in that style? We will take the slower and better way, by the raging canal. This canal is the Erie of Sweden. It extends from lake to lake, and so connects sea with sea, the Baltic with the Atlantic; it leaves Malar lake, and takes lakes Wetter and Wener in its way, and all the chief towns of the interior; and as the travelling is rationally moderate, the pauses frequent and long, we have a fine opportunity to study the country and the people whom we have come to see.
It is a steam canal; that is, a canal for steam navigation, as the Erie and other canals of our country ought to be, and might be, but for the penny-wise and pound-foolish policy of politicians. The steamers are small. We embarked for this inland voyage on the Oscar, a royal name. The cabin had ten state-rooms, with two berths in each; a wash-stand in the middle had a movable cover, making a table, on which I am writing. The boat is furnished with great simplicity, but is comfortable. It is crowded with passengers; several families, with children and luggage immense, probably emigrants on their way to the land of promise. Their friends in troops thronged the wharf to see them go, and when the hand-shakings and hugging and kissing were finished, the boat was off, and the tears and waving of rags continued as we steamed away.
The clouds wept too, for a few moments, and then, like the passengers, dried up; smiles and the sun came out again, and beautiful Stockholm seemed more beautiful as we left it than it did while we were in it. The green slopes around the city were joyous in the sinking sun. The iron steeple of the Ridderkolm, and the white palace, and many spires, glistened in the light. Gems of islands, with pretty bridges uniting their shores, neat villas, with lawns carpeted with rich verdure, abodes, we may hope, of sweet content and comfort, are on either hand, and now and then, from a window or balcony, a white handkerchief greets a friend on board, who responds, and we have a telegraphic communication at once with the people we are leaving. I do love to find in strange lands, and among those whose language is all unknown to me, the same ties, the same loves and hopes, that fill our own hearts at home. It makes me know that all these people are my kin, children of my Father.
We have been passing across Lake Malar. But now, at seven in the evening, we enter a lock, and the Gota Canal begins. The village of Sodertelje receives us here. So sweet does it seem to be, in its quiet repose, that every house appears to invite you to stop and make a visit. It was at this point that St. Olaf, when a viking, was shut in by the fleets of the Swedes and Danes, and he cut his way out, not through the enemies’ fleets, but by digging a canal to the Baltic! This was in the eleventh century, and no such feats of rapid canalling were known from that time down to the Dutch Gap ditch, during the late war in America. The story of the saint is history, and the other one will not be forgotten.
The passage of the lock from the lake to the canal is tedious, but in the mean time the villagers come on board and greet friends, the children, as in all other countries, ply their sales of cake and fruit, till we are out and enter the Gota Canal. The banks for some time are fifty feet high, but they slope away gradually, and are beautiful in their green sod. Neat cottages and wooded walks and gardens, signs of taste and culture, and plenty, are on our right hand and left; and these dwellings are so near that the canal seems a street like those of Venice, where you step from the gondola to the marble threshold of your house. Passengers on board recognize their acquaintance, and exchange salutations. Now and then an old mansion, with many out-buildings, shows that an extensive farm is behind; and occasionally we pass a village which appears to be of modern creation, as if progress was making even in Sweden. We are following the course of the very same canal that St. Olaf, the viking, cut in such a hurry eight hundred years ago, and we soon come to the end of it, and run again into the sea, or a bay of the Baltic, and keep along the coast, among a wilderness of islands, touching now and then at one of them to drop or take a passenger. Heaps of rock on the points are painted white to guide us in the mazes of these intricate passes, and sometimes trees have been moored in the water to mark the pathway of the ship. Ruins of castles, each one of which has its legends as romantic as those of the Rhine, still haunt these rocks. Stegeborg Castle is the most picturesque in its solitary grandeur and desolation, and the traditions of the country associate it with many a hard-fought fight in times so far gone by that history is rather too romantic to be credited.
The night is now about us, but in these latitudes it makes little difference for seeing the country whether it is night or day. There was no sleeping to be done, for some of the rising generation rose all night, and made the little cabin vocal with their cries, so that only those who enjoy the music of sleepless babes could be said to have a pleasant night in that vicinity. Out of my little window I see the islands, with their stunted firs, shores rarely rising so as to be entitled to the dignity of hills, sometimes a forest, and here and there a house, red and neat, with no signs of slovenliness or poverty.
It was very early in the morning when we left the canal-boat, and in the midst of a drizzling rain followed a porter who had been directed by the captain to take our luggage to a hotel, the best hotel in the village of Soderkoping.
This was the village we had selected as a quiet, retired, obscure, but pleasant place to pass a sabbath in, to see the Swedes in their rural churches and in their humble homes.