Stockholm's Archipelago and Strindberg's

73

Scandinavica Vol 52 No 2 2013

last act together. Yet they are not far from town, especially as the 

wilderness of the inner archipelago is gradually becoming part of the 

larger urban area of Stockholm.

76

 

The interpretations of the myth of Eden during the Middle Ages often 

wondered how long the blissful life of man and woman as a couple 

really lasted. The assumptions varied, but it was common to think that 

it lasted a short time. The shorter it lasted, the sharper the Fall, its 

consequences and the yearning for the original state made themselves 

felt.

77

 In his seminal book about Strindberg and the poetry of myth, 

Harry G Carlson has given evidence of the author’s mythological 

thinking, and of the mythopoetic layers we can find in his plays, both 

historical and contemporary. Among these representations, the Fall 

and the loss of Eden play an important role.

78

 On his own conditions, 

Strindberg can adapt mythical patterns. The gloomier and more 

melancholic archipelago, experienced during the divorce from Siri, can 

be read as an actualization of the mythical lovers’ loss of Eden and 

their Fall. This set of representations acquires an even more intense 

character in connection with the writer’s third marriage to Harriet Bosse, 

with its peculiar swings between bliss and desperation, paradise and 

hell. Images of isolation, absurd waiting, imprisonment and shipwreck 

become recurrent in Strindberg’s later production, and they also affect 

the images of the archipelago, although the natural beauty of it never 

stops nourishing the hope of happiness and redemption.

During his second marriage, to Frida Uhl, the Inferno Crisis and a 

new long period abroad during the Nineties, Strindberg temporarily 

lost touch with the archipelago; he came back, however, in 1899. 

By the age of fifty he was, to be sure, still a controversial writer in 

Sweden; but his canonization as a great national author, especially 

as a playwright, had begun. He was celebrated and, for the first 

time in his life, wealthy. The fashionable resort on Furusund, in the 

northern archipelago, where Strindberg spent some summers from 

1899, brought about a rich literary production.

79 

On 3 August 1899 

Ockulta Dagboken (The Occult Diary) contains a simile between the 

environment around the writer and Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in 

Palestine, situated one opposite the other and connected to curse and 

to blessing in the Bible.

80

 From Furusund, with its luxuriant nature, 

---

74

Scandinavica Vol 52 No 2 2013

Strindberg emphasizes the contrast with the barren and poorer Yxlan, 

the island he could see on the opposite side of the bay, and with the 

villages on it called Köpmanholm and Skarmsund. On the fictional 

level, Furusund becomes Fagervik (Fairhaven), while Köpmanholm 

and Skarmsund become Skamsund (Foulstrand). The Fagervik-and-

Skamsund motif is found in the play Ett drömspel (A Dream Play) 

from 1902, in the collection of short stories Fagervik och Skamsund 

(Fairhaven and Foulstrand), also from 1902, and in the collection of 

poems Ordalek och småkonst (Word Play and Minor Art), published in 

two versions in 1902 and 1905. The writer’s experience on Furusund 

is an inspiration also for the play Dödsdansen I-II (The Dance of Death 

I-II) from 1901, the novel Götiska Rummen (Gothic Rooms) from 1904, 

and the short novel Taklagsöl (The Roofing Feast) from 1907. 

The Fagervik-and-Skamsund complex is full of elements taken from 

the observed reality, which are of great interest from the historical 

and sociological point of view. Thanks to biographical research – but, 

before that, thanks to the autobiographical space Strindberg himself 

has created through his letters and diaries and through his whole way 

of staging his literary work as experienced life

81

 – we gain a better 

understanding of the process by which reality is remoulded into the 

peculiar post-Inferno literary universe, often taking on a visionary and 

dream-like quality. Fagervik and Skamsund become, in such a way, the 

terms of a symbolic opposition, through which the author can give 

his motif of summer paradise in the archipelago a gloomier and more 

problematic turn: human misery and unhappiness are also found on 

the sunny side, and behind the smart façade of upper class vacation 

rites.

What is specific about Dödsdansen

82

, with reference to the setting, 

is that this family drama takes place on an island, apparently on what 

we have called the sunny side, but actually in a bourgeois interior that 

conveys the idea of cage and claustrophobia (Wirmark 1989: 58-61, 

65). The outdoor environment is hinted at in the stage directions and 

by the characters’ words, and perceived at a distance through the 

windows and the veranda. It is as if the paradisiac promises that the 

place would allow in theory, are contradicted and denied, sometimes 

with a form of black humour. Captain Edgar refers to the myths of 

---

75

Scandinavica Vol 52 No 2 2013

classical antiquity and the Bible in the second part of the play, when 

he mentions the Fortunate Isles and Paradise, comparing them to his 

‘little hell’, i.e. his life on the island and his indissoluble love-hate 

relationship with his wife Alice (SV XLIV: 158-159).

83

 This form of 

misanthropic cynicism characterizes Edgar, who can define his island 

‘a community of idiots’.

84

 In Dödsdansen the island is an anti-utopia: a 

place of banishment and a retirement post for people who are suffering 

failures and shipwrecks, especially marital ones. Even the surrounding 

sea and the shores are described as unpleasant by the characters (SV 

XLIV: 151, 209). Kurt – Alice’s cousin, the couple’s old friend, and the 

third pole in the triangle – is the new quarantine master on the island, 

a job that is connected with banishment and suffering, and a symbolic 

role that will be developed in Ett drömspel and Fagervik och Skamsund.

The spatial relations are an interesting aspect in Dödsdansen. 

Edgar’s intrigues imply his restless moving between the island and the 

city; and when Kurt dreams of a love affair with Alice, he invites her to 

go to town that same day – in just one hour, he says, and maybe go to 

the theatre, she adds.

85

 It is true, as Wirmark observes, that neither the 

name of the island or that of the city are mentioned, but it is not true 

that we do not know how long it takes to reach the town by steamboat.

86

 

Wirkmark gives priority to an allegorical, mythical and metaphysical 

reading of Dödsdansen, whereby the geographical, historical and 

social elements of it are played down, if not denied (Wirkmark 1989: 

80-85, 92-95). Yet, I argue, the contexts depicted in the text indicate 

Stockholm and its archipelago. Using the steamboat, the telephone 

and the telegraph becomes a leitmotif in this play, where observed 

reality and nightmarish atmospheres mingle. It also illustrates the 

circumstance that living permanently in the archipelago was possible 

for the well-off bourgeoisie of Stockholm at the turn of the century, 

and that the technical improvements in the communication system 

allowed an even high standard of comfort. 

In the second part of the play there is a possible opening in the 

claustrophobic space, expressed in the love story between the young 

couple Judith and Allan. It is summertime now, and markers of the 

vacation atmosphere enjoyed by the upper class, such as tennis 

rackets, white dresses and parasols, can occasionally enter the cage-

---