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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
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