The Red Room - August Strindberg (best summer reads TXT) 📗

half an hour, we will hear what he has got to say. What do you say, gentlemen?”

“Hear! Hear!”

“If you please, Mr. Montanus.”

Olle shook himself like a dog about to jump, and threaded his way through the assembly, who examined him with curious eyes.

The chairman began a brief conversation with the front bench, and the secretary yawned before taking up a newspaper, to show the meeting that he, for one, was not going to listen.

Olle stepped on the platform, lowered his heavy eyelids and moved his jaws, pretending to be speaking; when the room had grown really silent, so silent that everybody could hear what the chairman said to the captain, he began:

“On Sweden. Some points of view.”

And after a pause:

“Gentlemen! It might be more than an unfounded supposition to say that the most productive idea and the most vigorous striving of our times is the suppression of shortsighted patriotism, which divides nations and pits them against one another as foes; we have seen the means used to gain this object, namely, international exhibitions and their results: honorary diplomas.”

The audience looked puzzled. “What’s he driving at?” said Eriksson. “It’s rather unexpected, but it sounds all right.”

“Now, as in the past, Sweden marches at the head of civilization; she has more than any other nation spread the cosmopolitan ideal, and if one may rely on statistics, she has attained a great deal. Exceptionally favourable circumstances have contributed to this result. I will examine them shortly, and then pass on to lighter subjects such as the form of government, the ground-tax, and so on.”

“It’s going to be rather long,” said Eriksson, nudging Arvid, “but he’s an amusing chap.”

“Sweden, as everybody knows, was originally a German colony, and the Swedish language, which has been preserved fairly pure to our days, is neither more nor less than Low-German and its twelve dialects. This circumstance⁠—I mean the difficulty of communicating with one another, experienced by the provinces⁠—has been a powerful factor in counteracting the development of that unhealthy national feeling. Other fortunate facts have opposed a one-sided German influence which had reached its pinnacle when Sweden became a German province under Albrecht of Mecklenburg. The foremost of these facts is the conquest of the Danish provinces: Scania, Halland, Bleking, Bohuslän, and Dalsland; Sweden’s richest provinces are inhabited by Danes who still speak the language of their country and refuse to acknowledge the Swedish rule.”

“What in the name of fortune is he getting at? Is he mad?”

“The inhabitants of Scania, for instance, to this day look upon Copenhagen as their capital, and constitute the opposition in Parliament. The same thing applies to the Danish Göteborg, which does not acknowledge Stockholm as the capital of the realm. An English settlement has sprung up there and English influence is predominant. These people, the English people, fish in the waters near the coast, and during the winter very nearly all the wholesale trade is in their hands; they return to their own country in the summer and enjoy their winter profits in their villas in the Scotch Highlands. Very excellent people, though! They have even their own newspaper, in which they commend their own actions, without, it must be admitted, blaming those of others.

“Immigration is another factor of the utmost importance. We have the Finns in the Finnish forests, but we also have them in the capital, where they took refuge when the political situation drove them out of their own country. In all our more important ironworks you will find a fair number of Walloons; they came over in the seventeenth century and to this day speak their broken French. You all know that we owe the new Swedish constitution to a Walloon. Capable people, these Walloons, and very honest!”

“What in the name of heaven does it all mean?”

“In the reign of King Gustavus Adolphus a whole cargo of Scotch scum landed on our coast and took service in the army; they eventually forced their way into the House of Knights. At the East coast there are many families who cherish traditions of their immigration from Livland and other Slavonic provinces, and so it is not surprising that we frequently meet here pure Tartar types.

“I maintain that the Swedish nation is fast becoming denationalized. Open a book on heraldry and count the Swedish names! If they exceed twenty-five percent you may cut off my nose, gentlemen! Open the directory at random! I counted the letter G, and of four hundred names two hundred were foreign.

“What is the cause of this? There are many causes, but the principal ones are the foreign dynasties and the wars of conquest. If one thinks of all the scum that has sat on the Swedish throne at one time or another, one cannot help marvelling that the nation is so loyal to the king. The constitutional law that the kings of Sweden shall be foreigners is bound to be of the greatest assistance in the work of denationalization; this has been proved to be a fact.

“I am convinced that the country will gain by its alliance with foreign nations; it cannot lose anything⁠—because it has nothing to lose. The country has no nationality; Tegnér discovered that in 1811, and shortsightedly bemoaned the fact. But his discovery came too late, for the race had already been ruined by the constant recruiting for the foolish wars of conquest. Of the one million men which inhabited the country in the days of Gustavus Adolphus, seventy thousand enlisted and were killed in the wars. I do not know for how many Charles X, Charles XI, and Charles XII were responsible; but it is easy to picture the offspring of those who remained behind, the men whom the crown had rejected as unfit for service.

“I repeat my statement that Sweden has no nationality. Can anybody tell me of anything Swedish in Sweden except her firs, pine trees, and iron-mines? And the latter will soon disappear from the market. What is our folklore but bad translations of