Intemperance had grown to be an evil from which the Swedish people greatly suffered since the reign of Gustavus III., when alcohol began to be produced in great quantities by the common people. The king encouraged the temperance movement, which was very fruitful in results. In 1853 the Riksdag abolished the free and unrestrained production of alcohol, which was changed into a regular industry and placed under heavy taxation. From 1855 onward, the principles of free trade were adopted for commerce and trade through the influence of J. A. Gripenstedt, the minister of finance, and seemed to have beneficial results in every branch of industrial and commercial activity. The state revenues were greatly increased and the surplus spent in improvements of the widest scope. The means of interior communications were vastly improved. In 1853 the network of the state electric telegraph began to spread and now embraces every part of the country. The agitation for the construction of railways had long been an active one. The first one constructed was a private railway between Œrebro and Arboga. In 1854 the Riksdag decided on the construction of trunk lines in Southern Sweden, to be built and controlled by the state. The Riksdag of 1856 appropriated a sum of $5,000,000 for that purpose. The railways were rapidly and solidly built under the supervision of Baron Nils Ericsson, the highly talented brother of John Ericsson, the world-famous inventor of the propeller, the caloric engine, the steam hose and the “Monitor.”
The relations with Russia were not the best during the latter part of King Oscar’s reign. The Russian claims on the harbors at the bay of Varanger were repeated in 1847, and when deliberations for a settlement were opened, in 1851, Russia showed a tendency to take possession of the desired places. In the conflict between Russia, on one hand, and Turkey, supported by England and France, on the other, Sweden sided with the latter, especially after Russia had failed to recognize an alliance of neutrality under arms formed by Sweden-Norway and Denmark. In 1855 Sweden entered an agreement with France, promising not to cede any territory to Russia in case of a conflict. In 1856 peace was made at Paris; the only favor won by Sweden was a pledge made by Russia not to fortify the archipelago of Aland.
King Oscar was a very hard worker and also fond of the pleasures of life. His health was injured through illness, in 1857, and he never recovered. The premature death of his second son, Prince Gustavus, a talented composer and highly popular, had a disastrous influence on him. King Oscar I. died July 8, 1859, after a long illness, beloved by the two nations who, during his reign, had enjoyed the happiest epoch of their history.
Romanticism in literature had an important second blossom during the reign of King Oscar I. and his successor. With the exception of Runeberg and Almquist, it offers no name of the very first rank. But Runeberg, the Homer of the North, does not belong to Sweden alone, and Almquist, the only great Romanticist, had made his appearance during the preceding epoch. Charles John Ludvig Almquist was a genius of great versatility and exceptional endowment. He wrote with equal force in all branches of literature; besides the poet, dramatist and prosaist, being a good philologist and well versed in a number of practical pursuits. He anticipated the ideas of which George Sand became a champion, and wrote charming peasant idyls long before Auerbach and Bjœrnson. His most important work is an ambiguous creation, conceived somewhat in the form of Boccaccio’s “Decamerone,” but much larger, and containing productions in every imaginable artistic form. It is called Tœrnrosens bok (The Book of the Wild Rose). Almquist has not, like Bellman and Tegnér, crystallized the Swedish national character in a lyrical form, but he remains, in spite of glaring defects, the most versatile and supremely gifted genius of Swedish literature.
Nybom, Bœttiger, Malmstrœm, Sætherberg and Strandberg were talented lyric poets of this epoch, Von Braun, Sturzen-Becker and Sehlstedt good humorists, while Bœrjesson, Blanche, Jolin, Dahlgren and Frans Hedberg wrote successfully for the stage. Swedish women were destined to win fame for themselves by bringing the novelistic form to a richer development; principal among whom were Frederica Bremer, Sophie von Knorring, Emilie Carlén and Sophie Schwartz, while the men Crusenstolpe, Sparre, Mellin, Ridderstad and Starbæck cultivated the field of historical fiction, for which Swedish history offers such a wealth of appropriate subjects.
Swedish composers of note were becoming numerous, although the field in which they chiefly excel is the rather limited one of lyric song, the most spontaneous medium of expression for the lyrico-rhetoric Swedish temperament. As the composer of “lieder” or visor, Adolphus Lindblad, an intimate friend of Mendelssohn, occupies a revered place in the history of music. Close to him stand Crusell, Nordblom and Josephsson, while Hæffner, Otto Lindblad, one of the noblest composers in this line, Prince Gustavus and Vennerberg are famous principally for their part songs.
The cultivators of dramatic and orchestral composition have as yet been comparatively few. Chief among them is Bervald; further, Norman and Hallstrœm. In a later contemporary epoch, Hallén, Aulin, Sjœgren, Stenhammar have considerably brightened this aspect of cultural development. Gunnar Vennerberg occupies an honored place as a poet, humorist and composer in one. There seems to be a deeply rooted tendency in the Swedish national temperament to unite the various branches of artistic creation, which would stamp it as romantic in its very essence if there did not run a vein of stunningly realistic portrayals through the works of such composite nature. In the art of Bellman this tendency has found its highest exponent. Bellman selected for his subjects the life of the lower middle classes in the Swedish capital of his day. His Fredman sings of the experiences of himself and his friends. Vennerberg has chosen the student’s life at the University of Upsala as the subject of his duets between two students, “Gluntarne,” in which are mirrored as faithfully, and sometimes as artistically, as by Bellman the humorous and pathetic scenes which have fascinated the poet and composer.
Swedish song for the first time acquired universal fame through Jenny Lind, who has had many successors, but no peer as a dramatic singer. Contemporaneous with Jenny Lind were a number of highly talented histrionic artists, principal among whom were Lars Hjortsberg, Nils William Almlœf, Olof Ulric Torsslov, Emilie Hœgquist and Carl Georg Dahlquist. The Swedish stage has set a good example for the preservation of the highest standards of the language, and in this line exerted a great cultural influence.