The post-office, which was made a government department by Axel Oxenstierna, in 1636, annually transmits 130 million letters and parcels. The telegraph lines have not reached a very high state of development; still there are 14,600 miles of telegraph. The telephone has made much more progress, far surpassing that of any other country in Europe. The total length of the connections exceeds 40,000 miles, and the number of apparatus is more than 25,000. Stockholm makes the widest use of the telephone of any city in the world, with her 300,000 inhabitants having a telephone for every thirty. Sweden has developed into a commercial country of no inconsiderable rank, notwithstanding her isolated position. Exports and imports each exceed yearly in value $100,000,000, the imports being 344,290,000 kronor and the exports 311,434,000 kronor in value, in 1895, a Swedish krona being about twenty-eight cents. The commercial value of the foreign trade amounts to thirty-nine dollars in yearly average for each inhabitant of Sweden, which is about as much as in France. The imports chiefly consist of coal, coffee, salt, cotton and wool, while the exports are timber products, about forty per cent of the whole, iron and steel, the best in the world, machinery, butter, cattle, matches, etc. The inland navigation and commerce are very lively. The state finances are in a prosperous condition. The budget of 1898 showed total receipts of 120,086,000 kronor, of which 14,229,000 was surplus from proceeding budgets.
Thanks to the well equipped and regulated system of instruction, the general education has been so highly advanced that Sweden, in this respect, holds the very front rank among the nations. Besides the national universities of Upsala and Lund and the state medical college of Stockholm, city universities at Stockholm and Gothenburg have been recently founded which are quickly developing. All study at the universities consists of post-graduate work, there being about thirty colleges in various parts of the country which lead their pupils as far as the demands requisite for entering the universities. The Swedish university courses are of unexcelled thoroughness and completeness. The so-called Peasant High Schools are peculiar to Scandinavia, having originated in Denmark. There are twenty-five such high schools in Sweden, which give to young men and women of the peasant class a higher education than is available in the common schools, of which latter there are 10,702, with 692,360 pupils and 13,797 teachers.
Scientific research progresses with energy and success, and Sweden possesses to-day a great number of eminent scholars, even if the epoch of men of universal genius appears to be a thing of the past there as elsewhere. Swedish scientists have opened closer relations with their co-workers in all parts of the world. The energy of King Oscar has brought about several congresses of science at Stockholm. In the natural sciences, Sweden still holds an honored place, in physics offering two great names, Eric Edlund and A. J. Angstrœm, the latter celebrated for his work on the solar spectrum, which forms the basis for the spectral analysis. Death has claimed these men and also J. A. H. Gyldén, an eminent astronomer; J. G. Agardh, C. W. Blomstrand, H. O. Nathorst, J. E. Rydquist, able botanist, chemist, agriculturist, and philologist, respectively; Pontus Wikner, the most remarkable of the disciples of the philosopher Bostrœm, and Victor Rydberg, the philosophical poet, novelist and polyhistor.
Among the most noteworthy of living Swedish scholars are Adolph Norén, Axel Koch and Esaias Tegnér, Junior, philologists; Hans Hildebrand and Oscar Montelius, archæologists; P. Fahlbeck, Nils and Magnus Hœjer, Martin Weibull, Ernest Carlson, historians; A. M. Mittag-Leffler, mathematician; Hugo Hildebrandsson, meteorologist; E. A. H. Key, E. O. T. Westerlund, Anton Wetterstrand, F. J. Biornstrœm, T. F. Hartelius, Curt Wallis, prominent in various branches of medical science.
King Oscar with fervent interest and unfailing liberality has encouraged various scientific explorations, and has had the satisfaction to see the greatest geographical discoveries of the century successfully made by Swedes, the circumnavigation of Asia and Europe, and the discovery of the Northeast Passage by Baron N. A. E. Nordenskiold, and the exploration of Central Asia by Sven Hedin, which has forever settled the learned disputes of ages. A third expedition, the most daring of scientific exploits ever attempted, still keeps the world in suspense as to its final outcome. July 11, 1897, S. A. Andrée, a scientifically experienced aëronaut, with two companions, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel, started in a balloon constructed for the purpose, and with provisions for three years, from an island of Spitzbergen, with the purpose of reaching the North Pole. The daring aëronauts have not been heard from since their departure, but authorities like Baron Nordenskiold have expressed the best of hopes that they may have reached Franz Joseph’s Land in safety, whence they might regain settled regions.[6] S. A. Andrée belongs to a class of men, the Swedish engineers, who have won distinction for their ability, and on whom the examples set by Christopher Polhem and John Ericsson have had a stimulating influence. There are among them two inventors of the very first rank, who belong to the reign of Oscar II., Alfred Nobel (d. 1896), the inventor of dynamite, and Gustavus de Laval, the Swedish Edison. The latter is world-famous for his separator and other inventions, which have revolutionized the dairy industry. Alfred Nobel, the disciple of John Ericsson, has not only the glory of having invented one of the most useful helpers of mechanic and industrial progress, but also that of having set aside his vast fortune, amounting to something like $12,500,000, for public purposes. The money is so invested as to constitute a fund the interest of which shall be applied to five equal annual prizes, to be awarded for the most important discovery or improvement in chemistry, physics or medicine, for the work in literature highest in the ideal sense, and to the one who shall have acted most and best for the fraternity of nations, the suppression or reduction of standing armies, and the constitution and propagation of peace congresses. The first prize, physics and chemistry, shall be awarded by the Academy of Science of Sweden; that for physiology and medicine by the Carolin Institute of Stockholm; the literary prize by the Swedish Academy; and that for the propagation of peace by a commission of five members elected by the Norwegian Storthing. He especially directed that in distributing these prizes no consideration of nationality shall prevail, so that he who is most worthy of it shall receive the reward, whether he be Scandinavian or not. It seems that the sum of each of the five annual prizes thus instituted will amount to $75,000. The inventor of dynamite was deeply interested in all that was done to promote peace by congresses and societies. He always considered that by improving war material, and thus increasing the dangers of war, he was contributing his share toward the pacification of the world. Alfred Nobel has, by the manner in which the Norwegian Storthing is made an active party in the disposition of his will, indicated his view upon the Union of Sweden and Norway and his hopes for a peaceful solution of their conflicts.
Swedish literature, after the period of dilettantism and epigones, has, during the reign of Oscar II., twice been rejuvenated and continues its development on broadened paths and with a wider scope. The eighties were characterized by a strong realistic movement, which went far in daring truth of description and brought problems of a social, religious and political nature under discussion in works of a novelistic or dramatic form. In naturalism, it never went to the extremes of the other Scandinavian literature. The movement was to a great extent brought on by Norwegian and Danish influence, and soon subsided for want of solid and fascinating art to maintain it. The Swedish champion of this movement, although without the restrictions of any school, was August Strindberg, a genius of extraordinary endowment. Through the versatility and power of his talent, he created new forms for the Swedish drama, novel, short story and essay. In his battle against reactionary conservatism he went too far; an excitable nature, led into extremes, but he has had the manly courage to confess and regret his mistakes. Strindberg, who is an able historian, ethnographer, naturalist and sinologue, is the most versatile and prolific of contemporary writers. In the wide scope of his genius and originality of his methods, Strindberg is one of the most remarkable dramatists that ever lived. His autobiographical works are of supreme importance, both to the students of literature and psychology. Among his masterpieces are “Master Olof,” the great historic drama of his youth, “Swedish Fates and Adventures,” and “Utopia Realized,” two series of short stories, and “The Father,” a modern drama of unsurpassed tragic grandeur.
Several women took an active part in the literary discussion of social problems, with more or less justice considered as the champions of women’s rights. Among these Anne Charlotte Leffler, duchessa di Cajanello, in spite of her premature death, developed into a novelist of merit who will be placed side by side with Bremer, Knorring and Carlén.
The golden lyres of Romanticism were silenced and the epigones were hushed by the sarcasms of Realism. Count Snoilsky and Victor Rydberg were the only poets of the earlier period who sang with inspiration and were listened to. After the realistic movement of the eighties came a romantic reaction with new lyrics and new novelists, who avoided the ruthlessness of the realists, but had profited by their merits. This new movement cannot be called a school, for it is marked by its great versatility of subjects and great elasticity of treatment. If the definition of realistic art be “a piece of nature seen through a temperament,” that of the new movement may be “an artistic temperament attuned to pieces of nature,” a sensitive and supple talent which has an almost unlimited capacity to tell every story just in the vein its particular subject demands. Pre-eminent in this movement stand Ola Hansson, Selma Lagerlœf, Verner von Heidenstam, Gustaf af Geijerstam, Peter Hallstrœm, Thor Hedberg, Oscar Levertin, all fine novelists, almost all good poets, and Geijerstam, an able dramatist. One of the most interesting and supremely gifted poets Sweden has ever had is Gustaf Frœding, who generally excels, sometimes abuses, his remarkable versatility in finding a true lyric expression for the very widest range of subjects. Sigurd Hedenstierna is the most popular humorist, witty in his sketches, but impossible as a novelist. The greatest humorists are August Strindberg and Gustaf Frœding. Contemporary Sweden has very few and no great literary critics, but some good literary historians in Henric Schueck, Karl Warburg and Oscar Levertin. She has a number of able journalists, most distinguished among whom is their Nestor, S. A. Hedlund, of Gothenburg, a fiery but dignified champion of a liberal government, religious tolerance, social evolution and cultural progress.
Swedish literature has a long pedigree compared to Swedish art, which is hardly more than two centuries old. All the more remarkable, then, is its rapid growth and high degree of excellence. The first school of Swedish painters was founded by the German Ehrenstrahl, giving to Swedish art the cosmopolitan character it has preserved to this day, influenced by continental but chiefly French art. Swedish painters early attracted attention abroad. Gustavus Lundberg, with a picture of Boucher and his wife, won the greatest success of the Salon of Paris, in 1743. Peter Adolphus Hall, “painter to the king and the children of France,” has been called the Van Dyck of the miniature painters. He resided in Paris up to the time of the revolution and took part in the storming of the Bastile. Alexander Roslin was, from the year 1760, installed in the Louvre as painter to the king and councillor of the French Academy. In 1771 he carried home a prize which the immortal Greuze could not capture, much to the dismay of Diderot, and died as the most famous and wealthy artist of the period. In a later period, Italy attracted many Swedish artists, and later still, in the sixties of the present century, the influence of Germany, especially of the Dusseldorf school, was strongly felt. John Frederic Hœckert won the first prize of the Paris Exposition of 1855 with his large picture “Divine Service in the Lapmark.” When the glories of Hœckert were almost forgotten at home, Edward Wahlberg, in the seventies, was ushered into celebrity as one of the greatest landscape painters of modern times, equally appreciated in Germany, as later in France, and new French laurels were won by Hugo Salmson, William von Gegerfelt and August Hagborg. Since then French influences have become solidly established, with a few important artists of the Munich school, like C. G. Hellquist and Julius Kronberg. The climax of artistic honors was reached by Nils Forsberg, whose picture, “The Death of a Hero,” carried home the first prize of the French Salon in 1888 (not an exposition medal), a distinction which no Swede and exceedingly few non-French artists ever won. The repeated successes which Swedish painters have won at expositions of Europe were more than duplicated by the enthusiastic approval granted it at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. The truth is that Sweden possesses a number of eminent painters in every branch of painting, except the marine, which has been but sparingly represented since the days of Marcus Larsson. The most famous among them are, besides those already mentioned, Richard Bergh, Oscar Biorck, Eva Bonnier, Gustavus Cederstrœm, Prince Eugene, Eugene Jansson, Ernst Josephson, Nils Kreuger, Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors, Charles Nordstrœm, Allan Œsterlind, Georg and Hanna Pauli, George von Rosen, Robert Thegerstrom, and A. L. Zorn. It has been said of the Swedish painters, by way of complaint, that they are not, as their brethren in Denmark and Norway, in any marked degree national. Swedish art has, for its characteristic boldness and superiority in modern technique, loftiness of purpose, great individuality of expression and depth of feeling. Be these characteristics national or cosmopolitan, the Swedish painters are certainly a great credit to their country. To King Oscar it must be in a high degree satisfactory to see the artistic tendencies of his family culminate in the works of his youngest son, Prince Eugene, who, being in the front line of the advance corps of art, paints, from dreamy, inner life, pictures which are the delight of artists and true connoisseurs.
The sculptors are less numerous, but the art of Sergel, Fogelberg and Molin have found worthy perpetuators and innovators in Per Hasselberg, John Bœrjesson, Frithiof Kjellberg, Alfred Nystrœm, Christian Ericsson, Th. Lundberg and Ingel Fallstedt. To the art of metal engraving on coins and medals Sweden has offered some works of the very highest value by J. E. Ericson, P. H. Lundgren, Lea Ahlborn and Adolphus Lindberg.