Alingsos saw its population suddenly increase from 300 to 1,800 and entered upon an era of prosperity. Ahlstrœmer’s factories formed almost a little town of their own beside the older one. There were twelve looms for the manufacturing of broadcloth, forty-five looms for wool, and, besides, cotton mills, dye works for wool and silk, hose factories, an English tannery and various other industrial works. Also a foundry, with eight communicating shops, where all kinds of household articles of simple and composite metals were manufactured. Alingsos was made a kind of normal school of industry for the whole country. The foreign master workmen, who at the beginning had charge of the factories, instructed in time a great number of native apprentices, who later found employment elsewhere, thus distributing to various parts the experience obtained at Alingsos. Wool was the principal material in the factories, and in order to obtain a refined quality, Ahlstrœmer imported stocks of foreign breeds. He commenced with English sheep, the Riksdag of 1727 granting him the use of the royal estate Hœjentorp for the purpose. Angora goats were later imported and seemed to thrive.
Ahlstrœmer did his country a great service by introducing the cultivation of potatoes. The first shipment of this useful plant arrived in 1723, with workingmen imported from France. As soon as the plant was seen to stand the climate, larger quantities were sent for. Potatoes were cultivated in the vast fields around Alingsos at a period when they were exhibited in the botanic gardens of the Continent as rare plants from Peru. Prejudice at first interfered, but when the soldiers returned home from Pomerania with the habit of eating potatoes, and planted such around their cottages, the popularity of the Peruvian plant was assured. Ahlstrœmer also introduced the cultivation of tobacco and several dye plants. The coal mines, near Helsingborg, in Scania, commenced to be operated at his instigation. When the Academy of Science was instituted, in 1739, Ahlstrœmer was made one of its members. The Academy of Science served originally and in that era of utilitarianism a more practical purpose than later. The Cap administration of Arvid Horn gave comparatively little attention to the enterprises of Ahlstrœmer, having more in view to develop agriculture than industry. When the Hats got into power the conditions were reversed. Count Charles Gyllenborg, the successor of Arvid Horn as president of the chancery, in order to set a good example, always dressed in broadcloth of Swedish manufacture. Ahlstrœmer was made a councillor of commerce, and ennobled, while his bust was placed in the Exchange of Stockholm and medals issued in his honor by the Academy of Science.
Ahlstrœmer was a middle-sized man of a strong constitution. He was amiable, courteous and hospitable, ever ready to conduct visitors through his factories and warehouses. His energy was as great as his kindness, and he refused to recognize an enemy in anybody. The large profits of his plants he mostly spent on other patriotic enterprises, leaving hardly any other inheritance to his sons than an excellent education. During the last few years of his life he suffered the consequences of a stroke of paralysis. He died in 1761, and thus was saved from witnessing the destruction which was caused to the new factory industry and his own works at Alingsos by the reckless policy of the new Caps.
Olof Dalin is the principal poet and writer of the Period of Liberty, strongly influencing not only the creative minds of his own day, but also those who with more or less right have been counted as belonging to the Gustavian Period. Dalin was the son of a minister in the province of Halland and a relative of Professor Andrew Rydelius of Lund, a historian of the older generation, who conducted the course of his studies. He came to Stockholm in 1726, where several positions in various state departments afforded opportunity for study in libraries and archives. Dalin, from the year 1732 to 1734, published a magazine called “The Swedish Argus,” which, with the English “Spectator” as a pattern, contained articles on public and individual morals, with allusions to the facts of contemporary life. This publication caused a great stir and became very popular on account of the acute logic and excellent language of its editor. Dalin was appointed royal librarian by the Riksdag, and, on the recommendation of Count Tessin, teacher to the young crown prince Gustavus.
Dalin was an enthusiastic admirer of the glorious epoch of Swedish history and of the character of Charles XII., which caused him to join the party of the Hats. When the latter utterly failed in their attempts to restore the political grandeur of the past, and Dalin witnessed the excesses of the rivalling parties, he joined the secret agitators for an increased royal power. In the literary and artistic circle of the brilliant Queen Louise Ulrica, Dalin was the leading spirit. He was not unaware of the conspiracies and intrigues of the queen, and is supposed to have been the author of several of the sharp notes which the king added to the records of the state council. The Hats, who took offence at his sharp satires, made him resign from his position as the teacher of the crown prince. After the conspiracy of the court party was detected, Dalin was called before a committee of the Estates and by order dismissed from the court. Dalin used the time of his compulsory isolation for the writing of a history of Sweden. This work, which never was carried further than to the end of the Period of Reformation, is characterized by an attractive style, but is not reliable as to facts.
Dalin was allowed to return to the court in 1761. He stood in great favor and was covered with testimonials of appreciation. He died in 1763, at the moment when King Adolphus Frederic was resolved to make him a state councillor. Dalin was the first writer who made Swedish history popular, and exerted, by his poems and his magazine, and by his education of Gustavus III., a considerable influence upon the history of his own time.
In point of scientific research the historical works of Sven Lagerbring have a much higher value than Dalin’s history, although they lacked the literary excellence of the latter. Lagerbring, who, born in Scania, was professor of history at the University of Lund, carried his work to the times of Charles VIII. A shorter history of his was translated into French and long formed the chief source of continental knowledge of Swedish history.
As a poet Dalin had a rival in the somewhat younger Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, one of the most interesting characters in Swedish history of literature. Her works, chiefly consisting of lyrics and idyls, show a long chain of development from the taste of the Carolinian period to that of the Gustavian epoch. In her deep emotional nature and enthusiasm for all cultural movements she stands without a rival. Receiving an annuity from the government, she was after many adversities able to maintain a literary salon. The men who met there, like Gustavus Philip Creutz and Gustavus Frederic Gyllenborg, were the founders of an academic style in poetry, as was Charles Gustavus Tessin in eloquence.
John Ihre is perhaps the most highly gifted of Swedish philologists and the first whose research had a lasting scientific value. He stood at the summit of contemporary European study of language, and rose a head or more higher than the philologists of his own country in that day. The period was characterized by a movement for the purification and analyzation of the language, Dalin expressing his wish to speak the truth to the Swedes in pure Swedish, and the Academy of Science taking pride in publishing their important papers in the mother tongue. Eric Benzelius, an able critic of the Gothic, and interested in Swedish dialect research, was one of the precursors of Ihre; and so was Olof Celsius, Senior, professor of Greek, later of Oriental languages, who was the first to fix the age of the majority of Runic inscriptions as dating from the Christian era.
John Ihre was born, in 1707, in Lund, where his father was a professor of theology, a talented, witty and learned man. The young Ihre lost his father in 1720, after which time his uncle, Archbishop Steuchius of Upsala, had charge of his education. He later studied modern languages at the University of Jena, made the acquaintance of the contemporary philologists of Holland, and also studied at the universities of London, Oxford and Paris. After an absence of three years he returned, soon to be connected with the University of Upsala, where he remained for forty-two years as professor of rhetoric and politics. Ihre was a liberal, outspoken man, who was severely censured for his opinions upon political and religious subjects, once by the Riksdag being sentenced to pay fines and receiving a warning from the chancellor of the university. When the clergy upon another occasion warned the philosophers not to mix in theological subjects, Ihre defended himself in the following terms in a letter to the chancellor, Count Charles Gustavus Tessin. “Gracious lord! I teach eloquentiam, politicam and the states, with all things pertaining to them. To become a heretic I possess neither genius nor stupidity enough, less an evil purpose. Therefore I am willing to forego all theology, if only an allowance of it be made large enough for my private practice and edification in Christianity. I never intended to go any further.”