Tuesday, August 20, 1839 Travel Journal (Partial Entry)

1839

August

Tuesday 20

4 1/4

10 35/..

Fine morning, Fahrenheit 58° at 5 a.m.  Good beds and slept well – Everywhere good beds, however small – Mine large last night – Pulled out 1/3 of its length – They generally pull out breadthwise –

Ӧrebrö a nice neat, and, for Sweden, very good town – 2 little gateways (2 square posts) at each end of the town – The church large and good – The pillars inside gilded in imitation of fluting – A large plain, bounded in extremis in the great distance by wooded hill – The plain as seen from top of the church clear (i.e. of large and small boulderstone) except 2 or 3 patches – Corn and grass – oats and rye and barley the greater part cut and in stook or hung round poles to dry as near Drammen –

Off from Ӧrebrö at 5 1/4, putting my watch 1/4 hour forward.  Not much wood till Glanshammar at 6 52/.., single house, neat and good, with several outbuildings – Might have slept here very well –

Nice foresty drive from Glanshammar – Sun now at 8 and very fine morning.  No very large fir timber – Mountain trees to be cut down everywhere where we have yet been before they can attain any great size – I should suppose cut down every 40 or 50 years at most – The timber was nowhere large that we saw growing in Norway, but about Bolkesoe larger than here – Forest almost all the way –

At 8 3/4, nice peeps through the forest on a good looking town?

At 8 50/.., cross wooden bridge over good river –

At 9 3/60, at the Station, good house, Fellingsbro.  One might sleep very well – Merely the house and many farm-buildings – It must have been the town that we passed, peeped at (left) through the vistas in the narrow strip of forest at 8 3/4 –

Off in 10 minutes at 9 13/.. – Breakfast at 9 1/4, Ann on biscuit and gingerbread, I on bread and candied lemon. 

Little bit of Chaos (big pieces huge pieces of rock piled on each other) and afterwards, plots of big boulder (always granite?) encumbered ground – In the Aldsta (oldest time), this country must have been almost one sweep of chaos, with few clear spots till the hand of man had cleared them and many large masses of rock hereabouts still lying amid the corn – This the case more or less (and with greater or less sized stones) almost everywhere here. 

Several people ploughing this stage with 2 oxen and harrowing with 2 oxen to each pair of harrows –

Enter the gateway  (2 square posts – no gate – as usual ) of Arboga at 10 23/.., and at 10 26/.., at the Station.  Nice, neat, clean looking house where one might sleep very well – One long, not over wide, neat, picturesque street.  Just after entering, corn in stook left side the street. both ploughs and harrows very small and oxen too –

Arboga nice little town – Some lateral streets – Neat good Church with tall spire – Stone body of church and tower, except the top part, which is brick just under the setting on of the shingles covered spire – This Church smaller and more village like than at Ӧrebrö. 

The bookseller at Götheborg advised our going by water from here to Stockholm – Steamers every day – Cannot see the river or lake yet – but here just out of Arboga, our valley may be perhaps 2 English miles wide formed by a range of lowish round fir covered hill on each side, but soon widens out largely on the left – Sandy soil – but good road – The road 2 or 3 stages was heavy in consequence of the great deal of rain, but otherwise very fairly good all along – Here, very good – as good as the best in England – but narrow as all the roads are.  Our 4 horses abreast take up nearly the whole breadth – About 12 English feet wide –

A Dutch barn just out of Arboga, and I have seen another or 2 this morning – Manure lying here and in several places this morning on the new ploughed ground, about the quantity we should put on for potatoes – William knows not what they are going to sow or plant – Have seen only one little plot of turnips (yesterday morning) in Sweden – None to be had to eat for us, at the Inns, page 51, one observes the little beds – The convenient many seated –  

 The fences the splittings (slivings as Robert Mann would call them ) laid here and elsewhere horizontally but in many places at an angle of 45°, the corn being on tall stakes to dry – and the peas and beans hung on roof-like racks to dry.  Everywhere the people gathering their line – Have seen very little if any hemp in Sweden – The pigsties opening into a sort of hut as at Kållängen on Sunday morning and elsewhere (vide page 54 at the bottom). Observed the red wood-house and picturesque small cottages many sorts of bread, the little fresh fish that is to be had considerably the quantity of water.

’Tis the country of chaos and big boulders, fir, birch and juniper, and cranberry, bilberry, cloudberry i.e. blau-berry – and the berry we got at Bolkesoe, vide __.  I have only seen apple trees (with apples on them) only 2 or 3 times – More cherry trees – Plenty of gooseberry trees, and gooseberries in the market at Götheborg (had them one day, but not very good –

Forest again at 11 35/.. (clear from Arboga, that is, for an hour).  Now a very little of forest –

At 11 40/.. 2 horses at a large wooden roller and 4 oxen at a cogging machine yoked to the broad side of this sort of narrow, heavy sledge to break the clods of sand – Chaos-y ground again and little hamlets –

Köping at 12 10/.. largeish town we had to go in and out to the Station in the square – Large, newly whitewashed good church – Little river – At the end of the town 2 men thrashing long flail with weight at the end – rocks and

WYAS Finding Numbers SH/ML/TR/12/0032 and SH/ML/TR/12/0033