Pictures of Sweden: Ch. 24 - Danemora

Ch. 24 - Danemora

Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the
land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
it sways under him--the walls vanish from him.

Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.

We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.

The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall--a
fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.

The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden,
eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun,
which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.

"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street
(strait). "But, however, one can say one has been down there," said
he, and he pointed to the gulf; "right down, and up again; but it is
no pleasure at all."

"But why descend at all?" said I. "Why will men do these things?"

"One must, you know, when one comes here," said he. "The plague of
travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
not to have seen everything, that others ask him about."

"If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you."
And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.

"Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all," said he: "I am clearly sensible
of it."

I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
workmen, &c.

"Yes; one should be able to tell all about it," said he. "That _you_
can, for you have seen it."

"No more than you," said I. "I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
time I should get into the tun--no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
and that we have now."

"But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!" said the man; and he
drew forth his "Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden," from which he
read: "Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
fathoms deep."

Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
higher and higher--upwards, upwards--and at every step they became
larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!

"It is appalling!" said the man from Scania. "One ought, however, to
have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one _had_ been.
You, however, have certainly been down there," said he again to me.

"Believe what you will," I replied; and I say the same to the reader.

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