Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Land and People from the Heathen Period
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
were trading stations in inner West-Gothland,
which must have received their wares from Wiken.
But what was the appearance of this commercial
route at the end of the tenth century? It passed
through a great forest, two days’ journey long [1],
partly over rocky mountains. The wares were
packed cross-ways upon horses. The journey was
dangerous, the way easily missed, and the forest
was the haunt of footpads (stigmän) and robbers.
Even peasants were sometimes known hardened
enough to take part in this bloody work, and if the
stroke of the axe announced to the tired wanderer
some lonely clearing or the vicinity of an inhabited
place, the night’s lodging granted to his prayer was
sometimes paid for with his life. In the midst of
the wood was a safety-house (sälohus) as it was
called [2], one of those otherwise untenanted lodges
for travellers and their goods, which were
maintained where roads, especially those frequented by
traders, penetrated rough and uninhabited wastes.
Such was then the condition of the frontier tracts
interspersed between the cultivated districts. In
the list of these West-Gothland is to be reckoned,
as undoubtedly one of the earliest settled provinces
of Sweden. At the end of the heathen age we find
the West Goths disputing supremacy with the upper
Swedes (Upp-Svear), but soon becoming the more
powerful from their adoption of Christianity. The
ascertained populousness of their territory in the
succeeding period, makes it probable that its
occupation could not be recent, although in old times
broad woodlands, hard to pass through, are said to
have existed, and the forest region of West Gothland,
still considerable, was much more extensive
in the thirteenth century, embracing districts where
we now see the high level, the heath, or the
ploughed field.
East-Gothland, during the heathen times, lies
more dark, and in Scandinavia generally, during
this period, the shadows deepen towards the east.
The neighbourhood of the Western Sea supplied
the means of intercourse with the rest of the world,
at least that part of it upon which, in the north,
historical light most falls. On the inner side, by
the Baltic, reigned obscurity; beyond it thick gloom.
Thus we know less of East than of West Gothland in
old times, and even if the saga lays here the scene
of any important event, it is silent on the condition
of the country. The oldest East-Gothic settlements
were perhaps in the midmost tract, one of the most
fruitful in Sweden. East-Gothland’s southern forest
district stretched formerly much higher up from
the hilly territory of Smaland. It was a solitude
difficult of access; for no stranger ventured beyond
the forest of Holawed [3]. Its northern woody and
hilly district above the Motala stream was long a
wilderness, as both the nature of the country, and
the scantiness of ancient remains plainly indicate.
Here lay the great Kolmörker forest [4], now the
Kolmard, which, continued by that of Tiwed, and
stretching westwards to the shores of Lake Vener,
increased in breadth and difficulty in the interior of
the country. So late as the year 1177, king Suerre,
journeying from East-Gothland to Vermeland, wandered
in its wide and unknown wilds for six or seven
days, without finding a refuge against hunger and
cold. Still later, the Tiwed is said to be ‘twelve
rasts broad [5].’ On the East-Gothland side, nearer
the Vetter lake, the wood was for a long time so
difficult to pass, and like all the frontier forests so
notorious for robbers, that in the Christian age
travellers who wished to pass into Nerike, used to
commend their souls to God, in the chapel which
formerly stood at Husby Fell [6]. Hence in former
times the great forest was ordinarily traversed by
its eastern border on the coast, where the road from
Norrkœping to Stockholm now runs. Here where
from a rising of the Kolmard the noblest prospect
over the fertile and well-watered plains and woods
of East-Gothland opens to the view of the traveller
from the north, Sigurd Ring, in the eighth century,
descended with his army to contest with Harald
Hildetand the field of Bravalla, formerly the most
renowned of northern battles. Here, in the eleventh
century, was the usual passage, by a long circuit,
from West-Gothland to Upper Sweden. Travellers
went from Scania upwards, not through East-Gothland,
where the hilly region of Smaland presented
the greatest difficulties, but through West-Gothland
to Skara, a distance which was traversed in a week.
For the journey thence to Sigtuna by Telje, three
weeks more were required, so that the whole occupied
a month [7]. As, according to the accounts, such
a journey was performed partly in boats, and great
wastes which intervened had to be crossed [8], the
route probably lay on the side of West-Gothland
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
