Stockholm's Archipelago and Strindberg's

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(Suddenly a picture opened out which made him shiver with 

delight. Bays and islands, bays and islands stretching far out 

into infinity. Although a Stockholmer, he had never seen the 

archipelago before, and did not know where he was. That picture 

made such an impression, as if he had found again a land seen 

in beautiful dreams, or in an earlier existence, in which he 

believed but about which he did not know anything. […] This 

was his landscape, the true environment of his nature; idyllic 

spots, poor, rough granite islands with spruce forests scattered 

on big, stormy bays and with the endless sea as a background, 

at a safe distance.)

Commenting on this passage, Björn Meidal posits that it was crucial 

for the protagonist that his discovery occurred when he was alone and 

far from his father and the rest of the family.

11

 It became an important 

psychological factor in the young man’s process of emancipation. 

Another interesting aspect is that the realistic recollection of what 

happened twenty years before allows visionary overtones, as Olof 

Lagercrantz has suggested.

12

 The protagonist is perceiving with his 

senses the real southern Stockholm archipelago, caught with a bird’s 

eye view from the mainland at Tyresö; but he is at the same time 

transferred to another dimension. That natural sight suggests both 

a hidden origin, a previous existence, and something that, equally 

invisible, lies far away, beyond the perspective view of the infinite 

sequence of islands, skerries and bays.

13

 The first experience of 

the archipelago is depicted almost as a sacred revelation of a home 

beyond the phenomena, and the word paradis is used to convey this 

metaphysical perception.

14

Strindberg confesses the same special attraction to this 

environment in the introduction to Skärkarlsliv

15

, an unparalleled 

spatial description that can combine a concisely accurate focus on 

the local nature with the adaptation of the myth of earthly paradise 

to a northern climate. To the author’s eyes the environment displays 

an attractive ‘variation of gloomy and smiling, poor and rich, pretty 

and wild, inland and coastland’.

16

 Strindberg’s Linnean approach

17

 is 

evident in his description of the mineral, the vegetable and the animal 

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kingdom on the islands, and of the circumstance, underscored also by 

Hedenstierna (Hedenstierna 2000a: 9; 24-28), that the moraine and 

the clay, left behind in the valleys among the primary rocks after the 

glaciation, have given fertile land that has been cultivated, and where 

deciduous forests have been growing, producing a fascinating mixture 

of garden-like landscape and wilderness.

Given these natural circumstances, the author proceeds to give a 

socio-economical and psychological mapping of the population of 

the archipelago. The rural classes are basically three: the farmers on 

the bigger islands; the farmers on the smaller islands, who practise 

agriculture on a minor scale and combine it with fishing; and the real 

skärkarlar (people from the outer skerries), who live on hunting, 

fishing and a little subsistence agriculture. Another part of the 

population has found jobs in the navy, the merchant navy, the Swedish 

Customs and the pilotage service, whereas a more recent source of 

income originates from the summer guests. Tourism from the big town 

is developing in this traditionally rural area, but in 1888 Strindberg 

must still observe that the archipelago forms a rather secluded little 

world with no regular communications with the mainland.

18

 Lonely 

people live here, including those who, for some reason, have sought 

loneliness, fleeing from the mainland and finding a place of refuge – a 

motif that will be developed in later works. A fundamental opposition 

is thus formulated between two models – the civilized sphere made of 

rules, laws and institutions, and the wild sphere of antisocial characters 

and outlaws who try to escape them; such a solitude often produces 

visionary dreamers. This preface was written with the aim of directing 

the readers’ attention to the main settings, themes and patterns of 

the collection, and especially of the longest and most important story, 

‘Den romantiske klockaren på Rånö’ (The Romantic Organist of Rånö). 

Still, the elements presented in the preface to Skärkarlsliv offer a basic 

frame to many other representations of the archipelago in his oeuvre, 

from the debut to the last years. 

In the early Seventies the young Strindberg worked hard to make his 

name as an author. He wrote the prose version of his first masterpiece, 

the historical drama Mäster Olof (Master Olof), on Kymmendö, an island 

off the expanding resort of Dalarö in the southern archipelago. From 

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1871 to 1873 Strindberg spent three summers on the island, where 

leisure and work, body and spirit reached a perfect balance, a variation 

on the classical mens sana in corpore sano theme.

19

 Strindberg had 

found his first sommarparadis, the natural environment where a 

modern writer like him could be on vacation and, at the same time, 

creatively productive.

20

Between 1872 and 1875 Strindberg wrote also a series of prose 

fragments and articles set in the archipelago. From Kymmendö he set 

off for expeditions and sailing tours that provided him with material. 

The fresh enthusiasm for the discovery is detectable in these texts 

combining narrative prose and journalistic reportage, written from the 

perspective of a Stockholmer who mediates between the civilized and 

the wild world, and observes their meeting during summer, when the 

town-dwellers are on vacation. In the prose fragment ‘En berättelse 

från Stockholms skärgård’

21

 (A Story from the Stockholm Archipelago), 

probably written in 1872 (SV II: 193-196), the protagonist is a student 

from Stockholm who is fascinated by what he hears and sees in Dalarö 

an early summer morning. Already here, through the perspective of 

the curious protagonist, Strindberg’s mimetic genius can grasp the 

mixture of voices and accents. Dalarö appears as a place where people 

from the islands and the mainland mingle; we see and hear the lively 

steamboat traffic, local sailors, customs officers and pilots, as well as 

summer guests from Stockholm spending their holidays in the resort.

22

 

In one of the dialogues overheard by the student, two bourgeois ladies 

are talking. One of them is complaining about the idleness of the 

women’s summer existence, spent waiting for their busy men who 

come and visit the family only during the weekends, when parties and 

activities for the elegant society are organized. She finally declares: ‘I 

hate this town life transferred to the countryside’.

23

 The big town was 

conquering the wild space by the sea, and in the woman’s words we 

find an early expression of the bourgeois summer rites.

The author’s mediating position is a main feature in the articles 

written for the national daily Dagens Nyheter between 1872 and 1875. 

Strindberg as a young journalist is a discoverer from town, who is 

on a mission in the wilderness, both in summer and autumn.

24

 He 

gives his urban readers a great deal of information about the relatively 

---