CHAPTER III. STRUND TO PETERSBURGH. Upsala-Dr. Afzelius-Dannemora mines-Stockholm-Charles XII.-Gulf of Bothnia-Abo-Finnish peasantry-Agriculture-Superstitions-Unpopularity of the king of SwedenPetersburgh-General appearance of the Russians-Character -Food-Manners-Houses-Winter amusements-Sledges and carriages-Theatres-Greek Clergy-The Taurida-The great palace-Popularity of the Emperor-His character and appearance. 1805. To Richard Heber, Esq. Stockholm, September 14. "WE arrived here this morning, and after so long an ignorance of all relating to our friends or our country, I need not mention the pleasure with which we caught hold of our packets of letters.... Excepting Upsala and Dannemora, our journey has taken in nothing very remarkable, and concerning Norway, the memorabilia are too numerous for a letter, and must be reserved for our future conversations. In general, it may be said to have an uninteresting shell, with one of the richest and most beautiful kernels in the world. The neighbourhood of Friderickshall is certainly striking, but far inferior in beauty to the romantic descriptions and drawings which I have seen of it; and the people, who affect to despise the Swedes, fall far short of them, both in civilization and honesty. The western coast, Bergen, Christiansund, &c., we did not see; by all accounts, the manners are almost as wild, and the country quite as savage, as in the neighbouring regions of Labrador and Greenland. Yet hence the wealth of Norway is chiefly derived; and the innumerable fiords, and sunds, which intersect the country, while they separate the people from all commerce with the interior, supply almost the entire Mediterrancan with fish and are the means of accumulating very considerable wealth to individuals and the government. I saw some of these vessels loaded, and it was a very singular sight; they were filled up not only to the hatchways, but even half up the mast; and the captain had literally formed a burrow for his bed, with fish packed all round him. This was at Trondheim; at Christiansund every thing stinks of cod and herring, the refuse of which is the usual and almost the only fodder for their cattle. A cow will make a luxurious meal of stinking salmon; and you may conceive how delightful, in this country, is the balmy breath of a heifer. The cattle are soon fattened on this food, but acquire an unmanageable ferocity, and their nature is totally changed. "The formidable mountains towards Sweden present a terrible scene of cold and barrenness. At Röraas, where are their principal copper mines, no corn or garden-stuff will grow, and in winter quicksilver is frozen. We staid here a day or two, and went a day's journey into the mountains in quest of a small tribe of Laplanders, or Finns, as the Danes call them, who have been, time immemorial, wanderers in this neighbourhood. In the valleys we had been tormented by heat, but in this inhospitable tract it snowed fast, and probably does so occasionally through the whole summer. The fir-trees were no longer visible, and all the wood that remained was some stunted birch in the sheltered situations; at last these, too, disappeared, and nothing was seen but rotten bog, and rocks covered with lichen, a white mealy moss, which has more the appearance of a leprosy than a pasture. In short, I could easily conceive how a Swedish army, in the time of Charles XIIth. had been entirely destroyed by the cold in an attempt to cross these terrible fielles, (fells,) and was not a little glad to warm myself in the miserable wigwam of the people of whom we were in quest. Their huts are exactly resembling those of the Tchutski, given in Cook's last voyage, but are neither so large or so high; and they still preserve their race, language, and dress unmingled with those of their neighbours, from whom they also differ very remarkably in person, being much shorter, with round faces, and wide mouths. Their dress is generally made of sheepskin, with the wool turned inward. We drank rein-deers' milk, and stored ourselves with sufficient venison for our journey into Sweden. For a bottle of brandy and a rix dollar they were so grateful that they would willingly have loaded us with a whole buck. Before this expedition we had intended to sell the carriage, and to go on horseback over the mountains to Faklun; but we were now satisfied that we should gain no time by such as species of nearest way. "Yet in spite of this inhospitable frontier, the interior of Norway is a most delightful and interesting country. Hedermarken, Gulbrandsdale, Trondheim and Oesterdal, would hardly give up the palm of beauty and fertility to the finest valleys of Wales and Cumberland; and the appearance of comfort, and even wealth, in the cottages of the peasants, is, as a general characteristic, far beyond any thing of the kind in our own country. I was surprised, at first, at the great apparent liberty of all classes; but soon found reason to attribute the mildness of their government to the weakness of the ruling nation, and the circumstance that every peasant in Norway is armed and disciplined. "There are, however, many injurious laws, of which the principal is the distinction apparent between the peasants and burghers. They are completely distinct castes; the peasant may grow rich, but his son, by the obligation of military service, is precluded from all elevation of rank, and remains as plain and ignorant as his fathar. There are, however, no doubt, many advantages which result from this state of society; and if it were not for the frosts of winter, the torrents of spring, and the lemmings of autumn, few people would be so happy as a Norwegian peasant. These two last plagues are peculiar to the country; we passed by whole farms which the mountain torrents, from the melted snow, had desolated; they were covered with large stones, as thick as the shingly part of the sea-coast, and not a blade of grass could be seen. Of the lemming, you will find an accurate, though rather exaggerated account in 'Be wick's Quadrupeds;' they descend at uncertain periods from the mountains, where we saw great numbers, as large as little rats, of a dun colour, with three black stripes on their back. They are a plague little inferior to a swarm of locusts. With these drawbacks, you will not wonder that, notwithstanding their rich soil and delightful summers, the corn of Norway is, in a great measure, imported from England. Their cultivation is, however, rapidly improving, and the late introduction of potatoes by General Von Kraagh, has already caused a prodigious alteration in their comforts. The principal apprehension at present arises from the too rapid destruction of their forests, to the existence of which they attribute, with apparent reason, the superior mildness of their climate to countries under the same latitude. Their timber-trees are entirely fir, and, I think, inferior in size to those of Sweden. The larch has been introduced, and thrives well. Bears and wolves are still common; the first only are objects of apprehension to a man; they are brown, and as big as a moderate calf. In Oesterdal few barns are without some of their skulls nailed up as trophies. "Tell I have not been able to get her any yellow hair; in truth, there is very little to be had: the hair is almost universally flaxen or light brown, and the complexions, figure, and very accent of the people are almost entirely English. Their songs, of which I contrived to collect a few, are in the same measure, and frequently almost in the same language as the old English; and many apparent differences only arise from the vile system of spelling, which the Danish government has introduced to make it different from Swedish. The genius of the language, however, certainly differs from ours, and we must, I think, have got our grammar from some quarter distinct from Scandinavia. An Englishman, nevertheless, particularly if he knows any thing of Yorkshire, will hardly mistake their meaning when he hears of a 'bra bairn,' an 'ox stek,' a 'kalf stek,' when he is told, 'sitta dere,' or 'ga til kirchen ;' a 'skort simmer,' a 'cald winter,' 'snee,' 'swerd,' and ten thousand other words are equally similar. "I enclose the literal translation of a fragment of a popular Danish song which I happened to see: DANISH SONG. King Christian stood beside the mast His falchion fell like hammer fast, Fly, fly! they shrieked-what mortal man Niels Juel raised a warrior cry, He hoisted up the red flag high, With blow on blow, and cry on cry, And still they shrieked-" fly, Sweden, fly! 81 Though the Norwegians rather pride themselves on their affinity to England, I do not think our nation is popular. Mr. Pitt is most cordially hated both in Norway and Sweden. We ourselves, however, experienced the greatest hospitality from every quarter; to Mr. Rosencrantz of Hafstun, near Friderickshall, General Von Kraagh, and the society of Trondheim in general, we have very particular obligations. * "The road through Sweden, from Koningsberg to Upsala, lay through a flat, well cultivated country, which had nothing to distinguish it from Leicestershire, or any other country of the same sort, except the rockiness of the soil. Our route from Gottenburgh to Norway had given us a very false idea of the general appearance of the country. Sweden may be compared, in general, to a marble table covered with baize; it is level indeed and green, but the veil is thin, and every here and there the stone peeps through the cracks of its covering. Farming is well understood, and the soil, though very light, in not unproductive. In this, as in every thing else, we have detected the VOL. I.-11 |