Sweden. ^ 



rough and uncouth as the Swedish peasants may be, they are as 

 "hard as nails j" and the thought struck me, as I saw about 100 of 

 these hardy foresters marshalled together at an elk " skall," that it 

 must be a bold enemy who would attack such men in their native 

 woods. 



The Swedish peasant is an original. It has been observed that "a 

 Yorkshireman was the hardest study of man, not even barring a 

 Scotchman ; but a Yorkshire farmer out-Heroded even Herod." 

 For the Yorkshire farmer substitute a " Swedish peasant.'' You 

 need never try to drive him out of his way. If you want anything 

 done for you, you must let him do it after his own fashion j but on 

 one thing you may depend, it will le done. There is something, 

 to my fancy, very sterling and good in the character of the true 

 "bondes" of the north j always civil and friendly, hard-working, 

 cheerful, and honest, he generally farms his own little estate, and 

 nearly always contrives to lay by a little money. He is proverbially 

 inquisitive, and covetous after money ; and it is wonderful, for a 

 trifle, how far he will go to serve you. But the real key to his 

 heart is a glass of corn-brandy. 



And I may here remark that the principal drink of the country 

 is a fiery kind of spirit distilled from potatoes or rye, about half the 

 strength of our gin. This is called finkel or branvin, and can be 

 bought for about 15. 6d. the Swedish kanna or gallon, which 

 contains four English bottles. This is the nectar of the Swedish 

 peasant j and it has one great advantage in his eye, that he can 

 manage to get comfortably drunk on it for 30?. The Swedish 

 peasant is often a heavy drinker and a heavy swearer. 



It is singular that, although a drunken peasant is no uncommon 

 sight, it is a very unusual circumstance to see any one of the better 

 class in Sweden intoxicated : they like their social glass, but they 

 do not drink in the business-like manner of the English j and, 

 moreover, somehow or other, they all seem to have found out the 

 secret which an old friend of mine used to say he had been sixty 

 years trying to discover, which was, "when he had had just 

 enough." 



c 2 



