The Prefecture of Luleå [1]

The Prefecture of Luleå

Down by the shore to the right at GӒDDVIK ferry there rises a lively spring that they call Cold Spring. It flows vigorously and is full of ochre. The latter lies around here in considerable quantities, producing a silvery scum. It tastes rather like a sulphur spring but is quite mild. It bubbles up no more than 12 yards from the river, yet it does not freeze in the winter until it has reached the river. The hill there is not high, being no more than a fair-sized mound about 4 feet in perpendicular height above the level of the river. The opening faces north-east, or a little east of it, and people wash in it.

Wherever bridges have been built along the road, it was possible to see how very thin the topsoil was: gravel and heath sand for a hand’s breadth, common in the damp places and even more so in the dry, followed by clay often for as much as 4 feet. Between the sand and the clay there was a layer of gravel, and another at the bottom where the clay stopped. Water was flowing from the clay in particular and it was producing a deposit of slime. Could this be ochre?

22nd. I found ‘Viola aquatica, rotundifolia, flore prorsus niveo’ [Marsh Violet] close by the new town of Pitea.

Plenty of ‘Chamaecyparissus’ [clubmoss] grows here and they dye wool with it.1 They boil it together with birch leaves collected around midsummer and use it to dye coarse woollen cloth.

‘Ranunculus minimus parisiensis’ [Creeping Spearwort] was growing on the shore at Old Luleå.

New Luleå is a very small town and lies on a peninsula situated within a bay. The soil is rather infertile. The town stands on a small eminence of jumbled rocks filled in with sand and rubble so that it looks as if the sea has eaten away all the topsoil that used to be there – rather as if some predator has left only the bones behind, that is the stones, after throwing sand over them so that no one could see them.

I left New Luleå at 11 o’clock since there was nothing to be gained there and, as there was no horse to be had in the town, went by sea to Old Luleå 4 miles away.

There I found ‘Barba senum’ [Mat-grass], an unusual grass that is called Coffee Beard in Småland. In Piteå they call it ‘Pig’s Bristle’.

From this grass, as well as from the forests, marshes, fields, meadows, plants and lakes, I could see that this province is very like Småland, and I found quite a lot of plants that do not grow in Uppland, Södermanland, Östergötland or Skåne but do grow in Småland etc.

While walking towards a small lake in a meadow I could hear popping and crackling in the bog as if water were boiling, though in many places there was only sludge as the water had dried up. When I looked I saw that the whole ground was almost covered with snails and it was them that were making such a noise. I noticed the same thing in other similar places and, in places where nothing showed, if I dug down into the sludge I could see that it was full of them. They dig themselves down deeper as the water dries up and this is why they are to be found in their thousands in previously dry places as soon as water comes – a claim that I had often had my doubts about in the past.

‘Animalcules’ moved among them like sunspecks and I observed one with a round body the size of a pea and, something that was new to me, it was yellowish. Among the grass I saw numberless thousands of the tiniest mites, the males of which had hairy horns.

There were innumerable small, newly-hatched fish in the water. They were translucent and had very large eyes. I felt compielled to exclaim in wonder: “The whole world is filled with Thine Honour!”

I saw ‘Stellaria minima’ [water starwort] everywhere around here though botanists consider it to be rare.2 It is not a distinct species created by the Creator but one of the species in nature that has been changed by culture. For we know that the ordinary ‘Stellaria’ is always to be found floating in water whereas minima never grows in water but in places where the water has dried up during the dry season of the year. It is thus lack of nourishment that prevents it growing erect and makes it creep and remain small. If anyone doubts this, let him put it in a brook where there is a steady supply of water – or put the greater Stellaria somewhere where the water is beginning to dry up -and he will get confirmation of it.

23rd. I went up to the church in Old Luleå. Right by the door I was shown a hole that the old order of monks had made in the stone wall. Its diameter and its depth were of an equal size; it was quite round and its bottom was smoothed off in an egg shape. It was a test that the cathedral chapter used to use to judge the glans penis of men who had been rejected by their wives. In the church I was shown a valuable altar painting and old statues of martyrs with cavities in their heads through which, I was told, water was poured so that tears came out of the eyes as if they were weeping. Also two posts on which there were images that, by means of a suitable arrangement of cords, were supposed to have been able to raise their hands in worship.

In the morning I went a mile and a half north of the town to inspect a spring that the dean and a number of other people used. The dean was gouty and, thanks to the spring water, he had passed a number of stones. It lay in a marshy and mossy situation but nevertheless pushed up sand. The water, however, was clear, sparkled in the glass and showed a sulphur-spring iris when held up to the sun. It tasted slightly of vitriol but was easily arunk. When swirled around it smelled like gunpowder. It turned a solution of oak-apple reddish but did not stain white paper, nor did it change blue paper. There was not much ochre in it. It produced a silvery scum.