Pictures of Sweden: Ch. 19 - In the Forest
Ch. 19 - In the Forest
We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.
The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
yet it is most flush in the forest--it extends for miles around. Our
road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
changing, but yet always forest scenery--the close, thick forest. We
pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.
We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted--not a bird
flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
fellow-men.
The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: "Nothing
is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing."
They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
horses always fly onward with us!
How solitary it is here!--so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as he is--as the magnet which
apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel--for capricious
fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?
In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
are _sagas_ of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.
The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
transformed cultivated fields and towns--nay, whole parishes, into
barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"
Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
rots.
But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the
thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it
were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
opened paths.
The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
delightful in the forest.
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