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9- LIFE AND CHARACTER OF fHE PEOPLE. 33
and promptings in the blood. Their dreams, whether
waking or sleeping, are not interrupted by cross-currents.
And the isolation of Sweden, its sparse settlement, its
climatic conditions, all contribute to make these dreams a
real part of the life. The long winters and the bright
summers bring out the contrast of darkness and light in
a way with which dwellers in lower latitudes cannot be
familiar. The beautiful silent starry nights of winter, the
fantastic forms of ice and snow, the long-drawn summer
days melting gently into a night which is scarcely night,
all do their part in nourishing a poetic temper. Fairyland
is revealed, in a way unknown to us, by the electric glow
and coloured waves of shimmering, pulsing light, when
the aurora borealis spreads over the heavens, or when the
summer meadows, after sunset, are clothed with the white
transparent veil of the "elf-dance."
23
Again, both lake
and forest contribute their part to the production of the
dreamy temperament. The lake is alternately, and almost
at will, a mirror of the familiar shapes of cloud and land
scape, subject to the beautiful changes wrought by sun and
wind, and a transparent medium, through which the world
beneath the earth is revealed to the gazer s fancy. The
forest, with its deep glades and glancing half-seen forms of
wild life, excites the imagination in another manner. A
sense of these mysteries of lake and forest is emphasized by
the isolation in which so many lives are passed. The whole
experience seems to produce at once an intense love of the
Fatherland, and, strangely enough, an intense desire to
escape from its monotony into other lands. This double
attraction to and from home is shared by the Swedes with
the Irish. There is, indeed, much that is akin to the Celtic
temperament in the Swedish, but the poetic turn takes a
different line. Both love to dwell on the past, and to
dream of the future. But, with the Swedes, the dreaming
is of a much more practical character. While the Irish
and the Highlanders, in their myths and in their aspira-
23
See for good descriptions of both Du Chaillu s Land of the
Midnight Sun, Vol. ii., pp. 46 and 420.
3
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