THE BRIDAL CROWN
THE SPOOK SONATA
THE FIRST WARNING
GUSTAVUS VASA
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE BRIDAL CROWN
THE SPOOK SONATA
THE FIRST WARNING
GUSTAVUS VASA
MUSICAL APPENDIX TO "THE BRIDAL CROWN"
The province of Dalecarlia has often been called the heart of Sweden.It is a centrally located inland province, said to contain a sampleof everything the country can offer in the way of natural beauty. Forcenturies it played a remarkable part in Swedish history, taking theleadership time and again in the long struggle to rid the nation of aperverted and abused union with Denmark and Norway. It has preservedthe original stock, the original language, and the original customsof the race as no other province. The dialects used in Dalecarlia areamong the most difficult to understand for outsiders and have an air ofantiquity that irresistibly leads the thought back to old Norse. Thepicturesque costumes characteristic of the different parishes are stillin use, and one of these—that of Rättvik—has almost become thenational costume of Sweden.
The people are simple and shrewd, stem and kindly, energetic andobstinate, loyal and independent. They have much in common with theold New England stock, but possess, in spite of their unmistakablyPuritanical outlook, a great store of spontaneous and pleasant joyin life. They are thinkers in their own humble way, but not morbid.In their attitude toward each other and toward the family they aredistinctly and quaintly patriarchal, and in this respect, too, theypreserve a quality that used to be characteristic of the wholeScandinavian north. It is impossible to read "The Bridal Crown," withits typical Dalecarlian atmosphere and setting, without being struckat once by the extent to which the individual plays the part of alink in the unbroken chain of generations rather than of an isolated,all-important point of personality. And the same impression is obtainedfrom Selma Lagerlöf's contemporaneous novel, "Jerusalem."
Always a very religious race, though not always good church-goers, theDalecarlians have long had and still have the Puritanical closeness tothe Bible as the book, and they talk naturally in quotations fromthat source. At the same time the old Norse stores of legend and homelywisdom survive among them to an extent that is perhaps paralleled onlyin Iceland. And when Strindberg in this play makes his characters quotethe old poetic Edda he violates no law of probability, although it isdoubtful whether the expression in question would actually come injust such a form from living lips. I mean that the sentiment of sucha phrase as "Vagrant women make bread of mould for their men as onlyfood" survives among the people, while it is likely to have graduallychanged into a form more wholly their own.
No matter from where the inspiration of their utterances may come,the Dalecarlians are apt to express themselves picturesquely,and this inclination to lapse into rhyme and alliteration isnoticeable—sometimes in quoting old saws dating back to h