Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Forestry - 1. Forests. By Th. Örtenblad - Instruction in Forestry. By A. Wahlgren - 2. Forest Industries. By E. Arosenius
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forest industries.
189
and charcoal-burning, established on private initiative, and also at People’s High
Schools, and Farmers’ Schools. A most extensive work of disseminating
instruction and information concerning the rearing and care of timber and forests
is also carried on by the Forest Conservation Boards of the various läns, by
means of the so-called courses in Forest Culture, intended for the peasantry, by
means of lectures, and, finally, by setting apart certain days on which the
children in the elementary schools go out to plant trees.
2. FOREST INDUSTRIES.
Even when the population of Sweden first began to enter into more
lively commercial relations with other nations, it would appear that
forest products formed a considerable part of Swedish exports, although
at first the demand mostly comprised other forest products than those
which are now the most important.
From various documents dating from the Middle Ages we find that furs and hides
of different forest animals (elk or moose, deer, etc.) were in great demand as
articles of commerce and were bought in the Swedish ports by foreign traders.
The Hanseatic cities, which, at the close of the Middle Ages, controlled the
commerce and navigation of Northern Europe, took from Sweden their requisite
supplies of pitch, tar, masts, and spars, as well as, to a certain extent, of
firewood, deals, and boards. The boards exported went by the name of hewn boards,
i. e., not sawn, but hewn by the axe direct from the log.
In early modern times the Dutch inherited the commercial supremacy of
the Hanseatic cities in the North and also became the principal
purchasers of Swedish timber. As they were in need of much timber for their great
commercial and naval fleets as well as for dams, piles for building purposes, etc.,
which could not be obtained in their country, so deficient in forests, the Swedish
export of timber to Holland became very extensive for those times. The timber
shipped consisted principally of masts, spars and balks, hewn by hand, and logs,
which were afterwards sawn in the numerous wind saw-mills in Holland. —
During the eighteenth century, the position as the head of the world’s commerce
and shipping passed from Holland to England, which country, for nearly the
same reasons as Holland, found it necessary to import timber.
In order to give an idea of the extent of the Swedish timber-trade at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, it may be mentioned that, in the year 1809,
Sweden exported about 220 000 dozen boards and deals, about two-thirds of
which went to England. The whole timber export was then estimated at a value
of 5 488 000 kronor, which equalled one-seventh of the total export of the
kingdom at that time.
During the wars against Napoleon, the development of the timber trade was
arrested. For in 1809 England imposed — chiefly as a retaliatory measure
against Napoleon’s system of isolation — a very considerable increase of the
former import-duties on timber from the Continent, which increase was further
raised the following year and rose once more in 1813, so that the import-duty
per load (1’42 cubic meters) thus finally amounted to £. 3. 5 sh. These
customs-duties had all the greater effect on the European exports to England, as, at
the same time, only an inconsiderable duty was paid on the timber imported
from British North America. Consequently, commerce between Sweden and
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