Ångermanland

Five miles from the inn there lies a small bridge over a little river between 2 small lakes and this marks the boundary between Medelpad and Ångermanland.

No sooner had I crossed into Ångermanland than the highway began to present gradients of such length and steepness that their descent on horseback could only be ventured with much care.

I found numerous ‘Chrysomelae’ [leaf beetles] of a blueish green and gold colour on the bishop’s lands close to Harnösand.

Here, only 4 or 5 miles from the boundary, lies the town of HARNÖSAND, situated on an island which is circumnavigable except at the the drawbridge; it is only with difficulty that vessels can proceed past this.

In Ångermanland, deciduous woods of ‘Betula’ [birch] and ‘Alnus alba’ [Grey Alder] began to compete with the coniferous ‘Pinus’ [pine] and ‘Abietes’ [spruce], just as the little ‘Vaccinium nigrum’ [Blaeberry] competed in places with ‘Erica’ [Heather], so that a mass of ‘Erica’ flourished wherever there were bare areas on the hillside whereas in the woods there was ‘Vaccinium’.

The wooded slopes here were more suitable for clear-burning than they had been earlier since, once the fire had passed, a covering of soil was left behind rather than the heaps of stones that get left in Hälsingland and Medelpad.

Just as in the last two provinces, only the valleys between the hills were occupied by fields and meadows, though here the people did, however, have slightly larger farms.

The frames I mentioned earlier were to be seen standing outside all the farms and they dry all their rye on them. Rye, however, is a minor crop compared with barley and even peas.

I noticed numerous witch’s broomsticks on the birches in the forest – I do not know why.

From the hill by a lake called MÖRTSJÖN that lies between NORRSTIG and VEDA, I could see that the whole distant landscape resembled clouds stacked one upon the other and heavy with rain. Thus the mountains appeared on all 3 sides, all blue with the smoke that rose from the earth and each peak raising its head above another.

Close by Veda we came to the great Ångerman River, over three quarters of a mile wide and full of salt water, for this is an inlet of the sea and not the river proper. We took the ferry across. As we approached the other side, I saw a continuous line of white foam 2 feet wide runiung along the river and, when I asked for the cause of it, they answered that the only cause they knew of was that the main current of the river ran just there.

At a number of places on my route I saw nets for catching fish and it was interesting to note that they had been dyed red rather than black here. They do this by boiling the inner bark of birch in lye for quite a long time and putting the nets in it when it begins to cool down.

20th. I saw cows without horns in various places along my way; they are merely a variation on the ordinary ones and not a distinct species. They were not created like this in the beginning even though the horns, their most obvious generic characteristic, are now missing, for the rudiments of them still exist under the skin. In Skåne and elsewhere there are rams with 4, 6 or 8 horns, which, like fully-opened flowers, so to speak, revel in excess.

There were whole forests made up of ‘Alnus folio oblongo’ [Grey Alder] in this district, and the birches here, too, bore numerous witch’s broomsticks. Whichever way I turned, I saw nothing but high hills.

While approaching ӒSKJA I caught sight of the small ‘Rubus fragariae folio’ [Arctic Bramble] in full bloom, though its purple coloration had become paler because of the cold.