Medelpad

Towards evening I reached SUNDSVALL, a small place lying between 2 high hills. It has the sea on one side, and the river enters it there.

As the sun was setting I came to Finnsta and travelled on in the evening to FJӒL. Here I had to cross a river that split into two, thus creating an island and making it necessary to cross by means of 2 ferries.

18th. It being Ascension Day I took a rest day, partly because of the holiness of the day and partly so that my tired and shaken body could recover a little.

The country here looks like Hälsingland but is somewhat more agreeable to inhabit.

As I was not travelling anywhere that day, I went out to enjoy the beauties of the flora, though it was not yet very far advanced. I found ‘Viola aquat. flore albo’ [Moss Violet]. I have only seen a dried specimen before. It is very like the large ‘sylvestris’ [Marsh Violet] and I could easily have believed it was a variation of it had it not been standing immediately alongside one. It always grows by water, the odd or upper petal always shades over into blue, the other side petals are always whitish or mainly white. Apart from the above, I also found the ‘Viola acjuat’. with small purplish flowers, which is noteworthy.

Heavy rain came on in the evening. I was up with the sun the following morning.

19th. Departed from Fjäl. When I had travelled 1 3/4 miles and come in sight of the next church – at a place called HӒSSJÖ – I turned off to the left to a hill where there was said to be copper ore. It shone just like copper but the pyrites was markedly whitish-yellow, an unmistakeable sign that it mainly contains iron. Eroded, blackish stone lay all around on the same hill. The mine had not yet been dug any deeper and wider than the height of a man. The hill is called BӒLINGSBERGET.

Immediately after that, as we approached the church, I saw a stone of quite considerable size lying on the ground close by the north-east side of the church. The credulous populace told me the story that, when the church was being built, the trolls wanted to knock it down but could not throw the stone far enough. They showed me the 5 holes from 5 fingers on the upper side of the stone.

A little further on, close to the next big hill, I turned off again to the left, went up the hill – it was called BRUNӒSBERGET – and was led into a crypt which nature had formed like a house within the actual hill. The sides, the back and the roof were of stone, the front was open, though constricted both in height and width. The room was so high that it was not possible to touch the roof, and in front of the hole stood a large spruce and a large birch, so that the entrance could not be seen from a distance. The entrance sloped down like a cellar and some burnt stumps lay on the floor. It is said that a criminal lived here for a couple of years without anyone knowing of his presence, and that does not surprise me since it is situated in such an out-of-the-way place. The access from the road is so fortified by stone piled upon stone that it can only be reached with the greatest difficulty.

On the roof and sides of the entrance I saw small fungi on the rock itself; they were quite distinct from other kinds and reembled sponge. Formless. Substance like a piece of oiled ‘Fungus betulinus’ [Birch-tree Polypore] torn from the medulla.

There was spar lying all along the road, full of Muscovy glass and shimmering in the sun.

We now left Medelpad with its ‘Napellus’ [Northern Wolfsbane] and its sand-covered roads, so similar to those in Hälsingland.