Värmland

“ From 1872 so-called "landsmålsföreningar" (dialect societies) were founded among the students at the universities of Upsala, Lund, and Helsingfors (at Upsala alone 13) , for a systematic and thorough investigation of dialects. We find remarkable progress in scientific method especially with regard to phonetics in the constantly increasing literature; special mention may be made of the detailed descriptions of the dialects of Värmland, Gotland, and Dalarna by Ad. Noreen, and A. F. Freudenthal's monographs on the Finnish and Esthonian Swedish dialects. ”

“ The rivers which flow down to the sea from the western chain of mountains carry millions of logs from the great dark forests. As soon as the ice breaks up in the spring, whole fleets of fishing boats and lumber vessels sail up and down the coast; sawmills whirr and buzz all day long; the hum of labor is heard all over the land.
In this Northland the winter days are short and cold; but there are the long sunny summer days, when even in the south of Sweden midnight is nothing but a soft twilight, and in the north the sun shines for a whole month without once dipping below the horizon. ”

“ Thus, in Sweden, the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. ”

“ The snow, so beautiful while the sunrise setting illumination lasts, wears a ghastly monotony at all other times, and the air, so exhilarating, even at the lowest temperature, becomes an enemy to be kept out, when you know its terrible power to benumb and destroy. To the native of a warmer zone, this presence of an unseen destructive force in nature weighs like a nightmare upon the mind. The inhabitants of the North also seem to undergo a species of hibernation, as well as the animals. ”

“ Unlike the cold mountainous regions of Norway and Sweden, it lies low, and by being to such an extent surrounded by water and interspersed with small lakes, preserves an equilibrium of temperature beyond what its latitude might otherwise indicate. Though it is sometimes visited with heavy falls of snow, and the severity of winter has congealed the salt water of the Belts and the sound, so that teams have crossed the ice between Denmark and Sweden. The islands, particularly Zealand and Fuen, the two largest, are rich and in a high state of cultivation. ”

“ I can also the better realise the terrible sufferings of himself and his men, exposed to a storm in a temperature of -47°, when the same degree of cold, with a very light wind, turned my own blood to ice.
Most of our physical sensations are relative, and the mere enumeration of so many degrees of heat or cold gives no idea of their effect upon the system. I should have frozen at home in a temperature which I found very comfortable in Lapland, with my solid diet of meat and butter, and my garments of reindeer. ”

“ At a varying distance from the base of the mountain the Helm wind is rarified by the warmth of the low ground, and meets with the wind from the west, which resists its further course. The higher temperature it has acquired in the valley, and the meeting of the contrary current, occasion it to rebound and ascend into the upper region of the atmosphere. When the air or wind has reached the height of the Helm, it is again cooled to the low temperature of this cold region, and is consequently unable to support the same quantity of vapour it had in the valley ”

“ Climate.—The climate of the Scandinavian peninsula as a whole is so far tempered by the warm Atlantic drift from the south-west as to be unique in comparison with other countries of so high a latitude. The mountains of the Keel are not so high as wholly to destroy this effect over Sweden, and the maritime influence of the Baltic system has also to be considered. Sweden thus occupies a climatic position between the purely coastal conditions of Norway and the purely continental conditions of Russia; and in some years the climate inclines to the one character, in others to the other. ”

“ The houses of the well-to-do people are often made with double windows; they are rarely more than one story high, the ceilings are low, and thus they are more readily kept warm in winter. Indeed, I am assured that the inhabitants in these northern countries, including Russia, often suffer more from heat than cold in their houses during the severe weather of their cold season. Education is generally diffused in Sweden, nearly all being able to read and write; and, taken as a whole, the people being moral, industrious, frugal, and contented, what could they have more? ”

“ On the other hand, it is quite probable that the cold zones lie on the outer edges of the world to the north and south: and in case I have thought this out correctly, it is not unlikely that Greenland lies under the frigid belt; for most of those who have visited Greenland testify that there the cold has received its greatest strength. Moreover, both sea and land bear testimony in their very selves that there the frost and the overpowering cold have become dominant, for both are frozen and covered with ice in summer as well as in winter. ”

“ In Sweden and in Norway, in Russia, even in Siberia, the traveller meets with towns and villages in a flourishing condition up to the 60th parallel of north latitude and beyond, under a climate whose mean annual temperature is inferior to the mean winter temperature of France, and where the thermometer frequently descends in winter below—40° R. Thus, then, we see that the warm bland tropical air enervates the mind as well as the body, while the cold of the north seems to increase their energy. ”

“ The vast shadows of the dark mountain masses fall upon valleys where nothing but moss grows; upon lakes whose still waters are full of never-melted ice—thus the Cold Valley, the Cold Lake (Koledal and Koldesjö) , with their dead, grey-yellow shores. The stillness of death reigns in this wilderness, interrupted only by the thunderings of the avalanche and by the noise which occasions the motion of the glaciers. No bird moves its wings or raises its twittering in this sorrowful region; only the melodious sighs of the cuckoo are borne thither by the winds at Midsummer. ”

“ The Danish settlers at Upernavik, in North Greenland, are at times startled by a similar sudden rise of temperature. During the depth of winter, when all nature has been long frozen, and the sound of falling water almost forgotten, rain will fall in torrents; and as rain in such a climate is attended with every discomfort, this is looked upon as a most unwelcome phenomenon. It is called the Warm South-east Wind. Now, if the Greenlanders at Upernavik are astonished at a warm South-east Wind, how much rather must the seamen, frozen up in the pack, be astonished at a warm North-west Wind. ”

“ Sparks of fire flew up in great numbers into the clouds, and these, glowing like balls of fire, were thrown far and wide on the land. Some of the burning sparks floated northward toward the land of snows, and as they fell into the ice-filled gulf, they changed to clouds of steam which were soon congealed into hoar-frost. Then one day this great mass of frost, on which fresh sparks of fire still fell, was suddenly warmed into life, and out of ice and snow and fire and heat the great giant Ymir was made. ”

“ There I was accustomed to see the broads and rivers frozen over, and the means of communication by boat between the various rivers completely stopped. There we dreaded the marrow-piercing north-east wind which, coming straight across the cold North Sea from icebound Norway and the frozen Baltic, caused everything, animal and vegetable, to be cut and chilled, so that frequently both man and plant succumbed to its penetrating rigour; but here the north or east wind is not nearly such a dreaded visitor, and it is only on exceptional days that its biting power is felt. ”

“ Norway and Sweden appear to have passed through all the successive phases of glaciation which Greenland has experienced, and others which that country will one day undergo, if the climate which it formerly enjoyed should ever be restored to it. There must have been first a period of separate glaciers in Scandinavia, then a Greenlandic state of continental ice, and thirdly, when that diminished, a second period of enormous separate glaciers filling many a valley now wooded with fir and birch. ”

“ The bloody traces of man meet one every where—stain even the eternal snow!
The sun continued to shine brightly daring the whole time of our stay at the glacier, and its beams seemed to recall the masses of cloud which gathered together on the ridge of the Grimsel mountain, and which continued restlessly to vault themselves there, as if they were ready to hurl themselves down over the valley. ”

“ Sometimes the heat is so great as to melt the pitch on the decks and cordage of the vessels, and in a few minutes after, succeed high winds, snow, and frost. The sky, even in calm and serene weather, is covered with dense white clouds, the repositories of the snow so often falling.
The degree of heat experienced in these northern latitudes being so much greater than is experienced in the same latitudes in the southern hemisphere, is supposed to proceed from the greater quantity of land in the north reflecting the rays of the sun, which in the south are absorbed by the ocean. ”

“ But don’t understand this as a reflection upon the Swedish race. They are industrious and energetic when occasion requires, but, like all people who live at the extreme North, acquire tropical habits of indolence from the climate. During the tedious winters, when the days are but six hours long, all who can afford it become torpid, like frogs, and lie up in their houses till the summer sun thaws them out. ”

“ But this is an unusual occurrence, for a summer in Finland has been my most agreeable climatic experience in any part of the world.
The winter is unquestionably hard, and lasts about six months, from November till the middle of April. At Christmas time the sun is only visible for six hours a day. The entire surface of the country, land, lake, and river, then forms one vast and frozen surface of snow, which may be traversed by means of sledge, snowshoes, or ski. A good man on the last-named will easily cover his seven miles an hour. ”

“ But far from on that account bringing cold with it, the temperature suddenly rises above the freezing-point, the snow disappears as if by magic through melting and evaporation, and men and animals feel themselves suffering from the sudden change in the weather. Such winds besides occur everywhere in the Polar regions in the neighbourhood of high mountains, and it is probably on their account that a stay in the hill-enclosed kettle-valleys is in Greenland considered to be very unhealthy and to lead to attacks of scurvy among the inhabitants. ”

“ Norway being also a very rocky country, absorbs the heat with wonderful facility, and as every one may know, is disinclined to part with it. Returning home at half-past twelve, or one, just before sunrise as I sometimes did, by some shadowed path along the mountains, I have placed my hand on the rocks, and found them still warm. The day, on the contrary, though exposed to the direct power of the sun, has the atmosphere always cooled by the wind, which is kept in motion more actively the hotter become the sun's rays, the heat being a circulating medium of itself. ”

“ The Northern nations, like the Greeks, imagined that the world rose out of chaos; and while the latter described it as a vapory, formless mass, the former, influenced by their immediate surroundings, depicted it as a chaos of fire and ice—a combination which is only too comprehensible to any one who has visited Iceland and seen the wild, peculiar contrast between its volcanic soil, spouting geysers, and the great icebergs which hedge it all around during the long, dark winter season. ”

“ The fault does not lie in our climate. I have yet seen none to equal it North or South—not even in Italy. I do not think the climate of Sweden is conducive to longevity, or extraordinary mental or bodily vigor. Indeed, the same may be said of any climate abounding in such rigorous extremes. The Swedes, it is true, lead a placid and easy life, content with ordinary comforts, and worried by no exciting or disquieting ambitions; hence they enjoy good health, and generally get through the usual span allotted to man. ”

“ It is not an easy task to wait for the spring in Vermland. One can have sun and warmth in the evening, and the next morning find the ground white with snow. Gooseberry-bushes and lawns may be green, but the trees of the birch-forest are bare, and seem as if they will never spring out.
At Whitsuntide there was spring in the air, but Ingrid's prayers had been of no avail. Not a single Säter girl had taken up her abode in the forest, not a fen was dry; it was impossible to go through the forest. ”

“ In crossing Greenland in 1888 we found that a pole of cold [anticyclone] lies over the inland ice, which gives off cold air. Scientific greatness does not always depend on erudition or acute learned combinations; it is just as often the result of a sound common-sense.
The allusion in the “King’s Mirror” to the Norse inhabitants of Greenland and their life has already been quoted in part (vol. i. p. 277) ; curiously enough the Skrælings are not mentioned. ”