Uppland

O Being of Beings, Have Mercy on Me!

Having been appointed on the 2nd May by the Royal Society of Science to travel to Lappmark in order to describe the 3 Kingdoms of Nature there, I arranged my things accordingly and dressed in the following fashion.

My clothes were a small coat of linsey-woolsey cloth, unhemmed, with small cuffs and a collar of woollen plush. Neat trousers of leather, a wig with a pigtail. A green fustian cap with ear-flaps. Short boots on my feet. A little leather bag about 1 foot long, somewhat less in width, of white-tanned leather, with eyelets on one side to fasten it up and to hang it by. In this I put 1 shirt, 2 pairs of halfsleeves, 2 nightshirts, an inkhorn, pen-box, microsope, spyglass, a gauze hood to protect me from midges. This notebook. A bundle of paper stitched together in which to place plants – both folio-sized. A comb. My ‘Ornithology’, ‘Flora Uplandica’ and ‘Characteres generici’. A long hunting-knife at my side and a small gun between my thigh and the saddle. An eight-sided stick on which measurements were marked, a wallet in my pocket with a pass from the chancellery in Uppsala and a letter of recommendation from the Society.

12th. Thus I departed from the town of Uppsala on the 12th May 1732, which was a Friday, at 11 o’clock a.m., when I was 25 years old all but half a day. Now all the earth was beginning to rejoice and smile, now beautiful flora was coming to sleep with Phoebus:

The whole earth seethes and glows with the sweetness of Venus.

Everything is full of force, everything in spring flower.

Now the winter rye stood half a foot high and the barley had newly shown a blade. The birch was beginning to burst forth and all the deciduous trees to show their leaves, apart from the alder and the aspen.

I travelled alone from Uppsala, that old provincial seat with its castle, destroyed by fire in 1702, from which the view is such that you will seek far to find its equal. The plain lies all around for about a mile and a half, green with Ceres, and beyond that there are hills and finally forests.

As soon as I came outside the northern toll-gate, clay soil appeared except among the hillocks, where there is sand and stones. The land is flat and treeless for a good mile and a half.

In the sandy ditches along the road I saw a yellow ‘Byssus’, particularly in sheltered places. It very much resembles the cream on milk and the farmers call it ‘water bloom’.

All along the road I saw mares grazing with their little foals and I marvelled at their long legs which, it is said, are as long when they are born as they will ever be. For, if a measurement is taken from the foot of a young foal to its knee and that measurement is then extended from the knee up into the air, it will give the height that the said animal will achieve. The small bones provide the measure in youth.

I made a description of a sort of lichen, ‘Lichenoides terrestre daedaleis sinubus’, that may also be seen on the castle hill.

There were geese walking around with their small goslings. It is interesting to note that all goslings are yellow when they are hatched whatever colour they may take on later; they usually lose the yellow, however.

We left GAMLA UPPSALA with its 3 great ancestral mounds behind us on our right.

There were very few flowers except ‘Taraxacum’ [Dandelion], which Tournefort confuses with ‘Pilosella’ [Mouse-ear Hawkweed] even though the reflexed sepals differ. Also, ‘Draba caule nudo, longitudine Palmi’ [Common Whitlow-grass], which is called the rye flower in Småland since farmers should sow their spring rye as soon as it comes into flower. ‘Myosotidem’ [Water Forgetmenot], ‘Viola arv. et mart.’ [Field Pansy and Heath Dog Violet], ‘Thlaspi’ [Field Pennycress], ‘Lithospermum seget’. [Corn Gromwell], ‘Cyperoides’ [Spring Sedge], ‘Juncoides’ [Field Woodrush], ‘Salix’ [willow] and ‘Primula’ [Cowslip] – though neither here nor elsewhere is it the first flower of spring. Caltha svet. [Marsh Marigold] or Swedish Capers, so called because many people are said to eat it instead of capers. It is not true, however, that it gives colour to butter.

The lark sang for us the whole way, quivering in the air: ‘Hear how it sings its tirilay, tirilay, tirilay.’

The sky was clear and warm, the west wind breathed a pleasant cooling breeze and a darker colour began to cover the sky from the west.