MARRYAT'S YEAR IN SWEDEN.*
A farms less than a century ago a certain M. Fortia visited Sweden and published a book of travels. Under the head of " morals" he describes the natives of the country as having "good qualities, for they are polite, affectionate, and engaging." It is, somehow, the lot of that happy country that not more than one traveller in twenty can be brought to take a serious view of it. Other lands attract, for the most part, an intelligent interest; they have grand histories, wonderful antiquities, memorials of great men; they are described with some degree of respect, and mentioned as though they were really worth mention. Sweden is invariably dismissed to its content- ment and prosperity. We speak of it much as we speak of a dairy, or a country rector, or a permanent under-secretary. It is as though quiet good fortune had something positively humiliating about it. Perhaps it would be rash to impugn too hastily the instinct which suggests that vicissitudes and struggles are an essential element, of a great career; but the sentiment, even if true, is strangely misplaced in the case of Sweden. It may at present be culpably happy and despicably well governed; but it has had, nevertheless, its full share of fighting and change. Notoriety often involves, it is true, the canker of care; bene qui Intuit, these visit; but in reality the stigma of quiet goodness applies as little to the history of Sweden as to that of England. It has had as violent revolutions, has joined as heartily in European wars, and has been distracted by as fierce internal fac- tions. The disputes of Whigs and Tories are harmony itself as com- pared with the battles of Hats and Caps. Charles the Twelfth and • &se Year in Bowdon bonding a vita to the Isle of G&W's& By Horses Mssryat,
Gustavus Adolphus would be a little surprised if they could be told now that their country was regarded by the mass of foreigners as the embodiment of unobtrusive merit.
Mr. Laing has already told us about Sweden what it is chiefly important to know; Mr. Marryat adds now all that it is extremely pleasant to hear. He does not set to work in a serious spirit to find out problems of social science; and useful information,-he particu- larly hints, is not in his line. But he has the -very distinct advantage of being amusing. He looks on the country not as that around which clung once the hopes of the Protestant cause, the power which coped in its time with the greatest empire of Europe; but as a land ex- tremely rich in picturesque personal narrative, and blessed by Provi- dence with a truly marvellous collection of mythic legends. He spent a year in wandering from place to place, collecting stories, examining antiquities, and sketching gateways. He does not seem to have travelled quite half way up the country itself ; at the same time we readily admit that the most interesting part of Sweden is the south, and the narrative of the visit to the Isle of Gotland is probably more worth publishing than any materials which an expedition along the Gulf of Bothnia would have supplied. Mr. Marryat is evidently well acquainted with the history of Sweden, and in some of his re- searches he displays a really critical spirit ; but we frankly confess that, in a great number of cases, we have been unable to follow him, from an unfortunate habit which lie has of never giving references. This is so much the case, that most readers will have to surrender themselves blindly to his guidance, and accept in faith, if they can do so, all that. the author tells them as historically true. They will find bim, at all events, an interesting leader to follow, and, as far as we have been able to form an opinion, a generally accurate one.
From what • sources Mr. Marryat can have drawn his numberless legends and anecdotes we are fairly at a loss to conceive. Such things must present themselves in far greater number in Sweden than in England, if the harvest of a single year yields such a return as this. There are stories of ghosts, of nuns, of saints ; personal anec- dotes of kings, miracles wrought by witches ; gods, elves, vikings, pilgrims, and devils, all pressing on one another's heels in strange confusion. Mr. Marryat is wise enough to leave his private adven- tures somewhat in the shade ; and when he does refer to the food he eats or the lodgings at which he puts up, he does so in a brief, work- manlike style, which implies that he knows the estimate which the public will probably form of their permanent interest. But of nar- ratives, myths, and neat little woodcuts, there is no stint. It is hard to know where to turn first for an example. Near Kullen, there was, "once on a time," a celebrated witch, named Putta :
"In her lifetime she stole the holy wafer, wherewith to feed her swine, who did thereby greatly increase and multiply; but after her death she walked all night, trying to get it back again. So the peasants dragged up the body, and sunk her, with a stake pierced through her bead, in the morass, where now the white flowers blow; and if the passers-by happened to shake the stake, they heard a voice from below, crying, Pull it out, pull it out, and Putts will come up again.' An unwary stranger did at last withdraw the stake, and Putts renewed her devilries. They now tied her to a cart, and cast her into a hole by the sea-shore, said to have no bottom. . . . Once a sailor would go down. He collected all the rope in Miille, and was lowered by his comrades. When all was uncoiled they drew it up again, and found nought but a bloody elk's horn fastened to the rope's end—he had fallen into the clutches of Putts !"
The province of Upland is full of stories of St. Brita, a saint of wonderful holiness. The following miracle is told of her when a child :
"Brits was most precocious ; while but a child she rose at midnight to watch and pray, much to the anger of her aunt, the lady Ingrid, to whose care at her mother's death she was confided. The aunt considered there was a time for all things, and forbad it. The small girl heeded but little the orders of her relative, who, furious at her obstinacy, plucked in the woods a large birch rod, and, when the child was next caught, was about to administer a sound whipping; but lo! scarcely was her arm uplifted, when the rod divided, and the twigs, separating, flew in all directions, not one bud touching the body of the youthful saint."
Mr. Marryat seems to have studied deeply the subject of supernatural powers, and lie is most careful to discriminate accurately between elves and trolles. Trolles are, in a general way, malicious; elves are chiefly conspicuous for carrying off unbaptized infants, and leaving their own in exchange—on which account no mother, if she is wise, will leave a child alone without a fire before the christening. Witches play a large part in the legendary stories, and it would seem that they were even in demand beyond the shores of Sweden itself. Eight hundred years ago there lived in Gotland a wicked man, Taxten by name ; he oppressed the people, and bullied the priest. At last, lie killed the latter for beginning the service too soon ; and, very natu- rally, his own ghost walked after death, and all the authorities of the district could not lay it. At last, the peasants sent for a great and famous wizard from Sweden:
" The wizard came to Gotland, sailing over the sea in a glass goblet, —an unpleasant passage, for a large fish swallowed him up, where he remained for three days, but got out again, and arrived safely. The stream bore him to the myr where Taxten lay concealed ; here he caught a white horse, and rode upon it with his face to the tail. Taxten laughed loudly, exclaiming, 'Odd things have I seen, but never an odder man, than you.' The wizard cast his rune staff before Taxten, and said, Kick it away !" He did so ; his foot stuck fast to the stick. Tread on it with the other foot!' cried the wizard. He did so ; that foot stuck also. Pull with the right hand!' The hand stuck too. Try the left, and you'll be free!' Taxten did as he was ordered, and was bound by, both hands and feet. 'Bite with your teeth!' The teeth gnashed round the staff, and there was Taxten bundled up like a hedgehog. The wizard now rolled him over like a ball through the northern door of Laderbro church into a tomb, and walled up the entrance ; then he cast lead on him, crying, Rest here till the lead rusts!" That I may well outlive,' answered Taxten. Then the wizard took the hide of a bear, and cast it over him, saying, ' For every- hair in this hide rest here a year !' Taxten answered, I think to live till the time is finished.' The wizard, in a rage, now cast lime charcoal upon him, roaring out, ' Rest there till this becomes mouldy !' Taxten sighed, That will never happen, so I'm in for it!' was then quiet, and never breathed more."
It is a remarkable characteristic of these supernatural beliefs that the invisible agencies are almost invariably malicious. Every nation's theories of the world of spirits will, as is well known, be modified largely lir the climate and nature of the country ; but it is very unusual to find a demonology so strongly coloured by ideas of adverse and evil influences. In southern nations the good genii are quite as numerous as the bad; in many northern nations they are more unworldly, less distinctly interested in man's welfare or ruin, and often, as in many of our own legends, are capricious, fanciful, and rather troublesome than positively hurtful. Scandinavia bears in her folk-lore unmistakable marks of a violent and unequal climate ; and when such is the case, all that is beyond man's power and fore- sight bodes evil to him, and not good. Even in the miserable region of ice and snow, where events and seasons can be more safely calcu- lated on, the popular creed as regards goblins is far more charitable. Among the Esquimaux this complaisance extends, travellers tell us,. even to the fate of the departed; who, if good, go at once to the summer palace beneath the sea; while the had—those who have caught their seals clumsily, or not caught them all—have only to put up with a three days' slide down rough and jagged rocks, and then they too are admitted to the halls where the fish and fowls are seen ever boiling alive, and ready for food, in the vast kettle of Torngarsuk. One of the most interesting parts of Mr. Marryat's book is that in which he follows the wanderings of the outcast prince Gustaf Erikson —the Alfred of Sweden. Driven from village to village by the usurping Christian IL, he owes his life to the branches of a tree or the craft of a woman—he escapes in waggons, hides in cellars, harangues half-hearted audiences—all on ground over which Mr. Marryat conducts us—and is on the point of abandoning hope, when a reaction sets in, the national party gathers round him, the Danes are expelled the country, and the wanderer becomes Gustaf Wasa, uncle of Gustavus Adolphus, and founder of a dynasty which Bernadotte was the first permanently to displace. When he comes to narrate real connected history Mr. Marryat is not quite so successful. We have no strong views as to the "dignity of history," but we have strollg views as to the duty of rendering it intelligible ; and not only Mr. Marryat's sketches in the early part of the second volume are wanting in seriousness and polish, but we have no hesitation in saying that no one who was unacquainted with the history of Sweden would have a chance of making out from these pages a connected statement of facts. One character who loses greatly from too rapid treatment is Queen Christina. Our author dwells only on her worst side—her random mind, unqueenly habits, wild demeanour. There is, however, another side. For ourselves, we cannot help feeling some pity and sympathy for the orphan girl, brought up by strangers, reared in an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, and plunged, almost without friends, into the government of a nation so hard to rule as the Sweden of 1640. A true portrait of Christina should show a mingled grace and force of mind united to the strange, slovenly exterior—a noble freedom from pettiness—a character sullen, and careless of giving offence, but blameless in personal honour—a mind wonderfully acute and insatiate of knowledge—a face varying every moment in expression, now boisterous, now reserved and gloomy— a resolution which sustained her through difficulties more trying than fall to many women's lot, till at last, perhaps from political necessi- ties alone, perhaps—who knows P—from the memory of an old tale of love, perhaps from sheer weariness of reigning, she surrendered the crown to the cousin who had played with her as a boy, and fled to the literary ease and sunnier skies of Italy.
We have said that the author of One Year in Sweden is a pleasant and interesting writer. He need not, however, represent himself as more superficial than he is. The fact is, that much valu- able information is to be found in these two volumes; while the author's estimate of himself, on the contrary, in the last page of the book, describes a writer who ignores politics and abjures statistics. He does neither the one nor the other, completely. Still, it is certainly true that the most important questions connected with any country are not those which relate to hobgoblins, to saints, or even to kings. At best, these can only go to support some theory of race, or clear up some minor detail of history. Mr. Laing has done the most, after all. In reading his book, we feel that we are dealing with a man with whom no fact is lost, and few exaggerated ; one who works with a purpose, and trusts the conclusions he draws. Sweden is an excel- lent mine for producing nursery stories ; but it is also a most valu- able field for inquiries about the tenure of land, about population, about crime. We are not a whit nearer a final judgment on the merits of the law of primogeniture, from reading Mr. Marryat's book, nor do we know a whit more how far it is right to marry on 3001. a year; and yet every book of travels in a civilized country ought to help us, however little, in questions like these. The modern is after all more important than the ancient, and the civilized than the primi- tive. The land of trade and of law stands on a higher historic pedestal than the land of patriarchal government and exuberant fancy. Genii of every kind may people the realms of rudeness, of ignorance, of social anarchy. Wisdom dwelt—and she is ever likely to dwell— in the habitable parts of the earth.
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