Stockholm's Archipelago and Strindberg's

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continued in the autobiography Tjänstekvinnans son, is detectable 

in the narrator’s distant, neutral, and at times even sceptical attitude 

towards the popular subject matter in his stories. The social and 

cultural differences, caught with subtlety, are seen with no hope or 

desire for reform. Even in Skärkarlsliv different worlds meet and, to a 

certain extent, mingle. In ‘Den romantiske klockaren på Rånö’ (SV XXVI: 

17-70) the protagonist’s life connects the mainland (the small town of 

Trosa), the capital town of Stockholm, a bigger island (Rånö) and the 

outer skerries, where the hidden and traumatic past of the protagonist 

is also concealed (Johannesson 1968: 109-120). Wilderness is no 

more a positive marker as such; the archipelago can appear on the 

contrary – in ‘Den romantiske klockaren på Rånö’ (SV XXVI: 59-68) as 

well as in ‘En brottsling’ (A Criminal) (SV XXVI: 89-103) – as a miserable 

social milieu where poverty fosters crime. Another interesting meeting 

point between the urban and the rural sphere is described in ‘Min 

sommarpräst’ (My Summer Priest) (SV XXVI: 71-78), where the narrator 

and protagonist is a cultivated atheist from the city, who enjoys the 

company of his friend the rural (and also cultivated) priest, with whom 

he can quarrel and escape the crowd of other summer holiday makers.

The archipelago becomes again a peaceful oasis in  Blomstermålningar 

och djurstycken

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 (Flower Paintings and Animal Pieces) from 1888, a 

fascinating and nostalgic autobiographical book, where Strindberg 

represents himself as a lover of nature, a hiker, a gardener, a fisher and 

a hunter. The bliss of a quiet, white summer night in the archipelago 

is evoked, with its almost sacred feeling of proximity to the elements 

of the universe: the sky, the moon, the sun and the sea (SV XXIX: 194-

195). The archetype of Eden is even actualized in the description of 

Strindberg’s garden on Kymmendö (SV XXIX: 219-225), where the writer 

is finally conscious that he will never see that island again, since both 

Hemsöborna and Skärkarlsliv have made him unwelcome (SV XXIX: 

224). Even here, the preparations for the gardening and the purchase 

of seeds take place in Stockholm, the urban point of departure (SV 

XXIX: 219-220).

In 1890 Strindberg’s second archipelago novel I havsbandet

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 is 

characterized by the sharpest dissociation from his earlier democratic 

radicalism. It is however also based on the description of Baltic herring 

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fishing in the Middle Ages, given some years before in the cultural 

history  Svenska Folket, as we have seen. The author’s standpoint 

has now changed from popular and democratic to Nietzschean and 

aristocratic. Such a change is also detectable in the spatial relations: in 

and out, i.e. mainland and open sea, civilized town life and wilderness 

on the islands, acquire opposite connotations, and account for the 

author’s new world model. The opposition is no longer constriction 

versus freedom, rotten society versus authenticity, but rather reason 

and rules versus dumbness and lawlessness. The fishery inspector 

Borg tries to teach updated fishing methods, but in vain, because the 

fishers prove to be pariahs, who live a basic and almost animal life. 

Skärkarlsliv introduced the motif of the skerries by the open sea as 

a secluded place, where concealed crimes are committed, away from 

legal social life; this motif is developed in I havsbandet. The tragic 

thing about Borg is, however, that he neither belongs to the urban 

and lawful society on the mainland or to the more disordered and 

less constricted social life by the open sea. Rather, the small island 

where he is living becomes a place of banishment and a prison for 

him, and he literally does not know which direction to take, either in or 

out.

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 Contact with mankind becomes detestable, only nature is sacred 

and desirable.

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 The image of Borg’s pathological isolation reaches its 

peak in chapter nine, when he enjoys sitting alone on an outer rock 

surrounded by a thick fog (SV XXXI: 120-136).

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 After that, only the 

voluntary journey towards darkness remains. The remarkable beauty 

of Strindberg’s Nietzschean, decadent and tragic novel consists also in 

the fact that the natural elements are described with such delicacy. As 

the narrator says at the beginning of the novel, this landscape leads 

Borg back to the origins (SV XXXI: 34).

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 This declaration of love is 

expressed through Borg’s new aesthetics. His culture is urban; he is a 

refined aesthete and a scientist at the same time.

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 The combination 

allows him to perceive the variety and beauty in the only apparently 

simple nature of the islands and skerries by the open sea.

In a certain sense, the coastal area near Stockholm and the bigger 

islands were conquered by the urban sphere as early as in the 

seventeenth century, when the powerful Swedish nobility became the 

owner of large estates and built manor houses and castles, especially 

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in the southern archipelago (Hedenstierna 2000b: 9-10, 31). The 

young Strindberg’s second encounter with the archipelago dates back 

to 1867, when he worked as a private tutor for children belonging to 

a noble family, and stayed with them at their estate to the south of 

Dalarö (SV XX: 144-157). A similar setting, the Sandemar Castle near 

Dalarö, is used in ‘En häxa’ (A Witch), a short story that takes place 

in the seventeenth century. The protagonist Tekla, a social climber 

from the lower class in Stockholm, happens to experience some days 

of paradise at Sandemar, when she is invited by Ebba, a noblewoman 

and friend of hers (SV XIV: 133-149). The boat trip from Stockholm 

to Sandemar, described from Tekla’s perspective, accounts for the 

captivating change of place, from the constricted urban room to the 

natural paradise outside of it.

Between 1889 and 1891, when he is back in Sweden after his long 

stay abroad, Strindberg spends some periods in the archipelago, 

among other things to write I havsbandet. He wants to come back to 

his landscape, but also hide himself. He is divorcing from Siri von Essen 

and the children, and in his letters from Sandhamn and Runmarö, in 

the spring of 1889, he evokes the summer paradise in a desperate 

attempt to draw them there, reunite the family, and restore what has 

irreparably fallen to pieces.

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 Strindberg’s archipelago mythology 

is developed even further in these vivid descriptions. In the short 

story ‘Silverträsket’ (SV XXIX: 273-294) (The Silver Pond) published 

first in 1898 but connected to the personal events of 1889-90

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, 

the protagonist’s psyche undergoes a process of dissolution in the 

aftermath of the traumatic separation from his family, especially from 

the children. The setting is an island in the archipelago, with its both 

enchanting and disquieting nature. What could be a summer paradise 

has turned to a sense of irremediable loss, and the protagonist’s 

growing isolation from the human community reminds one of Borg in 

I havsbandet (Lagercrantz 1986: 270-272).

While the process of divorce is going on, during winter 1890-91, both 

Strindberg and his wife live on Värmdö, a bigger, inner island, but they 

do not live together. The writer’s mood is gloomy, and the archipelago 

appears now as the stage of a bourgeois drama; August and Siri, well-

known people in the capital, hide from the public eye to perform their 

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