Ch. 9 - The Skjärgaards

The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
between the remains of low, thick walls--it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
is that we call "The Skjärgaards:" their waters flow into each other
with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
from the cliffs, your limbs feel--even through the ship on which you
stand--the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
hands.

We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
horse that bore us; from Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard. The signal-gun is
fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.

We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
with the blast; the Skjärgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
smiling pasture, which appears to have