On the Seaboard. August Strindberg
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the spectator when he saw this circle round him, where he himself ever remained the center. The big water surface was as a corporeity radiating from the beholder existing only in and with the beholder. As long as he stood on shore, he felt himself intimate with the now harmless power and superior to its enormous might, for he was beyond its reach. When he reminded himself of the dangers he had undergone the evening before, the agony and wrath he had endured in his combat against this brutal enemy, which he had succeeded in eluding, he smiled in magnanimity toward the vanquished and beaten foe, which was after all only a blind tool at the wind's service, and was now stretching itself out to resume its rest in the sunlight.
This was East Skerries, the classical, for they have their old history, have lived long, flourished, and declined, the old East Skerries that in the Middle Ages were a great fishing port where that important article stromling was caught, and for which a special law of guild was given and is still maintained up to to-day. The stromling serve the same purpose in middle Sweden and Norrland as the herring does on the west coast and in Norway, being only a kind of herring, a product of the Baltic Sea, and suited to its small resources. It was sought during the time when herring were scarce and dear, and less sought after when they were plentiful. It has been for ages the winter food for middle Sweden, and was eaten so continually that a song is still preserved from the days of Queen Christina's enticing Frenchmen into the country, who complained of the eternal hard bread and infinite stromling. A man's age ago the great land-owners paid their laborers' wages in natural products which consisted mostly of herring; after herring-fishing declined they substituted salt stromling. The price rose and the fishing which previously had been managed moderately and for domestic use, now became an eager speculation. The shoals of the East Skerries which are the richest on the coast of Sodermanland, began to be used on a large scale, the fish were disturbed during spawning time, the meshes of the nets were made closer and closer, and as a natural consequence the fish diminished, not so much from extermination perhaps as from the fact that they left their former spawning places and sought the depths where as yet no fisherman has had the resolution to search for the flown prey.
The learned puzzled long with investigations over the cause of the diminution of the stromling supply, but the Academy of Agriculture took the initiative, by appointing skillful fish commissioners, both to learn the cause and find a remedy.
This was now Commissioner Borg's mission at the East Skerries for the summer. The place was not lively as the Skerries are not situated on one of the main courses to Stockholm. The big vessels from the south usually pass by Landsort, Dalaro and Vaxholm, those from the east, and during certain winds, even those from the south, seek passage by Sandham and Vaxholm, while the merchants' vessels from Norrland and Finland pass between Furusund and Vaxholm.
The eastern route is mostly used in case of necessity by the Esthonians, who as a rule come from south-east, and by others in case of wind, current and storm, who lie over at Landsort and Sandham. Therefore the place has only a third-class custom house station under one surveyor, and a little department of pilots who are under control of Dalaro.
It is the end of the world—quiet, still, abandoned, except during fishing time, fall and spring, and if there comes only a single pleasure yacht during mid-summer it is greeted as an apparition from a lighter, gayer world; but fish commissioner Borg, who had come on another errand—to "spy," as the people called it—was greeted with a noticeable coolness which had found its first utterance in the indifference of the past evening and now took its expression in a miserable and cold coffee which was brought to his chamber.
Although gifted with a keen sense of taste, he had acquired through strong exercise an ability to restrain unpleasant perceptions, therefore he swallowed the drink at a draught and arising went down to see his environment and greet the people.
When he passed the custom-house man's cottage everything was hushed and it seemed as though the occupants would make themselves invisible —they shut the doors, and stopped talking in order not to be betrayed.
With this unpleasant impression of being unwelcome, he continued his promenade out on the rock and came down to the harbor. There was a group of small huts all of the simplest construction just as though piled from pickings of stone shingles with a little smattering of mortar here and there; the chimney alone was of brick, rising above the fireplace. At one corner was a patched-up wooden addition for storage, at another only a shed of driftwood and twigs, a harbor for swine, which were shipped here during the fishing season for fattening. The windows seemed to have been taken from shipwrecks, and the roof was covered with everything that had length and width, and would absorb or shed rain—kelp, sand-oats, moss, peat, earth. These were the shelters now standing deserted, each of which housed about twenty sleepers during the big fishing season, when every hut was a kitchen bar.
Outside the most prominent shanty stood the head man of the island, fisherman Oman, scratching out a flounder net with a whip. He did not in the least consider himself beneath a fish commissioner, nevertheless he felt a pressure from this presence and bristling up, prepared to answer sharply.
"Is the fishing good?" greeted the instructor.
"Not yet, but it may be now that the government has come to do it," answered Oman impolitely.
"Where do the stromling shoals lie?" asked the commissioner, relinquishing the government to its fate.
"Oh! we thought the instructor knew better than we did, as he is paid to teach us," said Oman.
"See here, you only know where the shoals lie, but I know where the stromling are, which is a straw nearer."
"So," rallied Oman. "If we dip into the sea we shall get fish!—well one is never too old to learn."
The wife came out of the cottage and began a lively talk with her husband, so that the commissioner found it unprofitable to confer longer with the hostile fisherman, and started toward the harbor.
Some pilots were sitting on the pier who zealously increased their conversation and seemed inclined not to notice him.
He would not turn back but continued toward the strand, leaving the habitations behind. The naked rock lay waste, without a tree, without a bush, for everything that fire could burn was destroyed. He walked along the water's edge, sometimes in fine soft sand, sometimes on stones. When he had continued an hour, always turning to the right, he found himself in the same place from which he had started, with a feeling of being in captivity. The hillock of the little island crushed him, and the sea's horizontal circle oppressed him, the old feeling of not having room enough came over him, and he climbed to the highest plateau of the hillock, which was about fifty feet above the sea level. There he lay down on his back and looked up into space. Now when his eyes could behold nothing, neither land nor sea, and he saw only the blue cupola over him, he felt free, isolated, as a cosmic particle floating in the ether only obeying the law of gravitation. He fancied he was perfectly alone upon the globe, the earth was only a vehicle in which he rode on its orbit, and he heard in the wind's faint rustle only the air draft that the planet in its speed would awake in the ether, and in the din of the waves he perceived the splashing which the liquid must make as the big reservoir rolled round its axle. All reminiscences of fellow creatures, community, law, customs, had blown away, now that he did not see a single fragment of the earth to which he was bound. He let his thoughts run like calves let loose, dashing over all obstacles, all considerations, and therewith intoxicated himself to stupefaction, as the India navel reverencers, who forgot both heaven and earth in contemplating an inferior external part of themselves.
Commissioner Borg was not a nature worshiper any more than were those navel worshipers of India. On the contrary he was a self-conscious being, standing highest in the terrestrial chain of creation and entertained certain contempt for the lower forms of existence, understanding very well that what the self-conscious spirit produces is partly more subtle than that of the unconscious nature, and above all else has more advantages to man, who creates his creations with regard to the usefulness and beauty they may afford to their creator. Out of nature he brought forth raw material for his work, and although both light and air could be produced by machine, he preferred the sun's unexcellable ether vibrations, and the atmosphere's inexhaustible well of oxygen. He loved nature as an assistant, as an inferior who