Blue stone, of which I saw plenty both before and after this in Hälsingland, is used here to line chimneys because they say that it lasts better than millstone.
The limestone used for separation was taken from the seashore and was full of petrified coral.
It is my belief that every type of granite that exists in the world is to be found in the forest here.
Wherever there was a river, there was a wheel driving a hammer for pounding flax; they are designed in such a way that a trapdoor in the floor can be raised in order to stop them.
Butterflies were flying in the forest, both the ordinary all black ones and the larger blacks with a white fringe.
At NJUTÅNGER and all the way on to Bringsta I saw violet-coloured clay in places on the road; it was used for road-surfacing.
On the road to IGGESUND I found an insect with half-sheathed wings that has not been described before.
Between the inn at Iggesund and Hudiksvall I saw the same violet clay in abundance. I noticed how it formed a layer in the sandy ditches and also observed it on a hillock above a lake that lay immediately alongside. The hillock was 18 feet high, of which humus made up 2 to 3 fingers’ depth, followed by sand of one or two hands’ depth, violet clay of two hands’ depth and, finally, barren sand. Small bivalve shells, white and quite unbroken, lay in this clay; the violet colour, however, when I examined the particles, seemed to me to come from the brown shells that are found in such numbers on the seashore.6
I am firmly convinced, therefore, that all these valleys and marshes used to be part of the sea and that the highest part of the hill was formerly cliffs.
It was here that I saw ‘Hepatica’ with purple flowers, very rare elsewhere, and I would like the chance to test the gardeners’ theory that states that the colour of the soil affects the colour of the flower.
I noted that the hills, where they had been cleared and burned, had become barren, with nothing but heaps of stones remaining.
Since the yield of the arable land is poor, they bake bread from barley which they mix with peas and chaff. They make the loaves 2 feet in diameter but only a fraction of an inch thick so that the taste of the peas seems less disgusting.
HUDIKSVALL is a small town bordered by the sea on one side and by a small lake on the other.
From Hudiksvall onwards ‘Rubus fragariae folio’ [Arctic Bramble] grew and ‘Lychnis sexualis rubra’ [Red Campion] was in flower, as was ‘Turritis’ minima [Thale Cress].
Every 3rd year the main field is sown with flax. The turf is turned over by the plough along the length of the field, after which flax is sown and the ground is harrowed. Linen manufacture provides the principal industry of the province.
I reached BRINGSTA towards evening. The weather was pleasant and it had only rained once during the day.