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port of the kingdom of Sweden, a village where were
rich traders, abundance of goods of all sorts, and
many treasures. Near Birca there was then certainly
another town or castle with some fortifications,
although of no great strength; in this there
were temples of idols, or, as the pagans said, ‘many
and powerful deities’; there the inhabitants and
traffickers of Birca sought a refuge from hostile assaults,
and sacrificed to their gods or ‘evil spirits’, for help
against peril. The town here not named is evidently
Sigtuna, which, as has been shown, lay near
Birca; the same Sigtuna where the Ynglingasaga
makes Odin establish sacrifices, and build his court,
and which, according to the Edda, he chose for his
‘castled town’ [1]. This word may be viewed partly as
a translation of the name, since tun means fence,
enclosure; but of what nature the fortification was,
may be judged from what has been mentioned
above of the wooden retrenchment surrounding the
town of Lund. The name Birca, also, which we
first hear of in authors of Saxon birth [2], though
writing in Latin, was probably derived from the
Anglo-Saxon form of a northern word [3] of similar
meaning. Here there was not only vicinity of place,
but community of names; and it is not otherwise
to be explained how the old Icelanders should never
speak of Birca, although it probably was not yet
destroyed, when they began to visit the coast of the
Mälar; and in any case, the memory of a town then
so celebrated could not be lost for them [4].
Remark therewithal that they mention two Sigtunas;
for one of them is called the “former,” and it is in
this quarter we must also seek for Birca.
In almost all the metallic districts of Sweden,
mining operations first paved the way for
agriculture; this applies in great part even to the
Mine-Canton of Upland, and still more extensively
to those of East Vermeland, Nerike, and Westmanland.
For although this whole mountainous tract,
interposed between the greatest water-courses
and lakes of Sweden, was anciently not without
inhabitants, who lived dispersed in the forests;
yet the commencement of its cultivation may be
dated from the opening of the mines during the
Christian middle age; nay, it is mostly far more
recent, dating from the new impulse given to mining
pursuits under Charles IX., and the great Gustavus
Adolphus. All this is a new country, and so too,
comparatively, are the districts of Sala Silfverberg
and Stora Kopparberg. The southern part of the
province of Dalarna (Dalecarlia) is of older
settlement, although it does not appear under the same
name. As the great streams generally drew to
their banks the oldest population, so was it with the
mighty Dal-elf, here united in one channel. Near
its waters cultivation existed since pagan days, as
the historical Sagas inform us, and in part even
earlier, as always where sepulchral mounds are
seen [5]. Here likewise is the Jernbäraland
(iron-bearing land) of the heathens, and the present
Eastern Mine-Canton [6], the oldest of the Swedish
mining districts, in so far as the term is applicable
to days so remote. Jernbäraland extended thence
to Western Dalecarlia, and the name was even given
to the Eastern division. Thorsang (Thors Haugh)
is, doubtless, one of the oldest places in Dalecarlia;
and there are relations yet existing which describe
how the inhabitants spread their farms into the
highlands of Kopparberg, Falun, Sundborn, and
Svärdsiö. Over these tracts lay the course of St.
Olave’s expedition in the spring of the year 1030,
through Helsingland and Jemteland to Norway. He
marched out of Upland through the forests, and came
to Jernbäraland, thence through woods and
wildernesses, often across great floods, between which
the boats were carried: huts were erected for the
night campings, which long afterwards were called
Olave’s booths. A still more adventurous journey
was made 150 years later. On his flight from
Southern Norway, king Sverre [7] marched with a
band of robbers, who chose him for their captain,
through the twelve-mile wood (tolfmila skog) [8] to
Eke’s hundred in Vermeland [9]; then, through a still
larger wood in Western Dalecarlia, to Malung, a
place which had even then a name, and inhabitants
who lived by the chase [10]. Thence the road lay
over a country of incredible difficulty, at the
breaking up of the ice, through fifteen rasts of wood and
wilderness, where the travellers lived on the flesh
of the reindeer and birds, till they arrived in
Jernbäraland, which is here Eastern Dalecarlia, perhaps
Elfdal or Mora. What aspect did this remote
territory, afterwards so celebrated from the actions
of Gustavus Vasa, present during the twelfth
century? The people were still heathens; they had
never seen a king in their country, and scarcely
knew, it is said, whether such a one was a man or
a beast, never having quitted their forests to
mingle with other men. Yet they gave Sverre a good
reception, and aided him on his journey, which lay
through wildernesses, forests, and morasses, over
streams and lakes, from Jernbäraland eighteen rasts
to Herjedalen, and farther over Jemteland to
Drontheim (Trondhem); during which the adventurers
had often nothing for food but the rind and
juice of trees, with berries, which had been covered
by the snow throughout the winter. This was in
1177; and in the following year, Sverre again
proceeded with a band of retainers through
Jernbäraland. The peasants now made retrenchments
to oppose his passage, saying they were not used to
such kingly progresses, and wished to know nothing
of them. Yet he got through, and arrived this
time at Alfta in Helsingland.
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