ARV Nordic Yearbook of Folklore Vol. 76

Editor

ARNE BUGGE AMIUNDSEN OSLO, NORWAY

Editorial Board

Lene Halskov Hansen, København; Fredrik Skott, Göteborg; Suzanne Österlund-Poetzsch, Helsingfors (Helsinki); Terry Gunnell, Reykjavik

Published by THE ROYAL GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS ACADEMY UPPSALA, SWEDEN

Distributed by eddy.se ab VISBY, SWEDEN © 2020 by The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, Uppsala ISSN 0066-8176 All rights reserved

Articles appearing in this yearbook are abstracted and indexed in European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences ERIH PLUS 2011–

Editorial address: Prof. Arne Bugge Amundsen Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University of Oslo Box 1010 Blindern NO–0315 Oslo, Norway phone + 4792244774 e-mail: [email protected] http://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/forskning/publikasjoner/tidsskrifter/arv/index.html Cover: Kirsten Berrum For index of earlier volumes, see http://www.gustavadolfsakademien.se/tidskrifter/tidskrift/arv

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Printed in Sweden Exakta Print, Malmö 2020 Contents

Articles on Digital Humanities and Folklore Peter M. Broadwell & Timothy R. Tangherlini: Geist, Geest, Geast, Spøgelse: Challenges for Multilingual Search in Belief Legend Archives ...... 7 Venla Sykäri: Digital Humanities and How to Read the Kalevala as a Thematic Anthology of Oral Poetry ...... 29 Trausti Dagsson & Olga Holownia: Legends, Letters and Linking: Lessons Learned from Amassing and Mapping Folklore and Viewing as Part of 19th-Century Culture Creation ...... 55 Katherine S. Beard: The Eitri Database: A Digital Humanities Case Study ...... 75 Pia Lindholm: Finland-Swedish Folklore as a Versatile Online Tradition Source ...... 93 Mari Sarv & Janika Oras: From Tradition to Data: The Case of Estonian Runosong ...... 105

Other articles Anders Gustavsson: Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden from a Popular Perspective ...... 119

Book Reviews Aarbakke, Thea: Forfattermuseumsfunksjonene (Lars Kaijser) ...... 151 Cocq, Coppélie & DuBois, Thomas A.: Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North (Alf Arvidsson) ...... 156 Danielson, Eva: Skillingtryckarna (Gunnar Ternhag ) ...... 159 Frykman, Jonas & Löfgren, Orvar: Den kultiverade människan (Mats Lindqvist) ...... 161 Gerndt, Helge: Sagen ‒ Fakt, Fiktion oder Fake? (Anders Gustavsson) ...... 165 Gustafsson, Sofa: Järtecken (Anders Gustavsson)...... 166 Jarlert, Anders (ed.): Reformationen i Lund ‒ Malmö ‒ Köpenhamn (Anders Gustavsson) ...... 168 Klintberg av, Bengt: Vänster hand och motsol (Ane Ohrvik)...... 169 Lindqvist, Katja (ed.): Kompetens i museisektorn (Teemu Ryymin) ... 170 Løvlie, Birger et al. (eds.): Tru på Vestlandet. Tradisjon i endring (Anders Gustavsson) ...... 172 Lundqvist, Pia: Ett motsägelsefullt möte (Anders Gustavsson) ...... 173 Ramsten, Märta: De osynliga melodierna (Karin Hallgren) ...... 175 Rasmussen, Tarald (ed.): Å minnes de døde (Ulrika Wolf-Knuts) ...... 177 Resløkken, Åmund Norum: ’Ein lut av det nære levande livet’ (Torunn Selberg) ...... 179 Roos, Anna Marie: Goldfsh (Ingvar Svanberg) ...... 180 Schön, Ebbe: Ängel med bockfot (Anders Gustavsson)...... 182 Strand, Karin: En botfärdig synderskas svanesång (Inger Lövkrona) ...... 183 Ternhag, Gunnar: Jojksamlaren Karl Tirén (Krister Stoor) ...... 186 Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden from a Popular Perspective

Anders Gustavsson

Abstract My focus is on the many cholera epidemics which hit Sweden from 1834 until 1873. I have studied how cholera epidemics affected the countryside from an ethnological, folkloristic and cultural historian’s point of view. Popular practices and ideas in diffcult crisis situations are the subject, rather than top-down regulations. How did the population perceive the cholera and how was the disease treated on the local level when it broke out? The different epidemics share a common feature: the disease has been spread by shipping across the oceans and then along inland waterways and the shores of larger lakes. A chol- era epidemic outbreak immediately raised questions regarding barriers against the immediate neighbourhood. Smoking with juniper or tar was used as a protection against cholera infection. This points to the opinion that the cholera contagion was airborne, namely a miasmatic view. In towns, the disease hit the socially weak areas where poverty, bad hygiene, and overcrowd- ing reigned. This tendency was apparent in the countryside as well. Since the cholera hit local communities suddenly and many died within a short time, it is to be expected that strong fears appeared. There are informants who had survived cholera and left tales of shattering memories. In many cases, the themes in legends about cholera had roots going back to the Black Death in the fourteenth century. Keywords: cholera, contagion, epidemic, legend, miasma

In Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2017 I studied a coastal area in Western Sweden concerning the establishment of public health services in the nine- teenth century in the form of district physicians, pharmacists, and midwives, services which earlier had been available solely in cities and towns. Rural culture was confronted with a new offcialdom present in cities and towns. The earlier folk healers had not previously met competition from medically trained doctors (Gustavsson 2017:51–90). I will maintain the focus on the nineteenth century as I study the various cholera epidemics which affected Sweden from 1834, lasting for a number of decades. Cholera is a bacterial intestinal disease with diarrhoea, fever and vomiting, and with a rate of mortality of some 50 per cent. The onset is sud- den and is accompanied by severe pain. The important losses of fuid lead to 120 Anders Gustavsson dehydration and the body contracts to become unrecognizable. Death might occur within hours (Tallerud 1999:113; Schiøtz 2017:237ff). The extensive Swedish cholera epidemic of 1834 led to the establishment of district physi- cians in the countryside. In 1834, medical doctors might be sent out from towns to the countryside on temporary duty (Öberg 1988; Jacobsson 1989).

The Problem Being an ethnologist, folklorist and culture historian, I wish to study the impact of the cholera epidemic on the countryside. My focus is on popular practices and perceptions in severe crisis situations rather than upon regula- tions imposed from “above”. How was the cholera seen by the inhabitants and how was the disease handled on the local level? What was seen as the cause of the disease? What preventive measures might be available? Was isolation tried locally and/or between regions? How did the local population care for the sick and the dead? What happened on the psychological level regarding horror and worry? The epidemic was most widespread in the towns and came there frst, as described in a number of town studies. This is what happened in Uppsala (Tallerud 2006), Stockholm (Zacke 1971) and Gothenburg (Öberg 1988). The countryside, however, has not been studied in the same detailed way, at least not from a popular point of view. The medical historian Sven-Ove Arvidsson has placed the Swedish cholera epidemics in a global context in his doctoral thesis in Stockholm “The Swedish Cholera Epidemics” by showing the major propagation paths lead- ing to the various outbreaks in Sweden (Arvidsson 1972). The author and medical historian Berndt Tallerud’s surveys have also been important in my study (Tallerud 1999, 2006).

Sources The Swedish Folklore Archives in Gothenburg, Lund, and Uppsala have rich recorded material which was collected in the early 1900s from all parts of Sweden. It contains stories about local developments during various cholera epidemics. The informants were, most often, born in the late 1800s and most lived in the countryside as did most Swedes at the time (cf. Skott 2008; Gustavsson 2014). In 1853, that share was almost 90 per cent (Arvidsson 1972:53). There are some cases where stories are told by informants who had personal memories of a cholera epidemic, or had heard stories told by close relatives, about how the local environment had experienced terror, isolation, etc. I have also read local historical literature which tells stories of local events. I use stories from various regions in Sweden together with in-depth reviews on the Swedish west coast. Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 121 Added to stories of what has actually happened in local communities as told in folklore records, there are also legends associated with the cholera epidemics. The basic ideas behind these legends can be traced back to the Black Death in the fourteenth century in both Sweden and Norway. Issues regarding old popular traditions being revised to ft new situations will be discussed along with questions regarding a possible basis in truth in old legends. This issue was raised recently by the distinguished German ethnol- ogist Helge Gerndt, Munich (Gerndt 2020).

Public Regulations I use public regulations as background information to developments in local communities. There are government regulations from as early as 1831 and somewhat later, 1833, when the threat of cholera was approaching Sweden across the Baltic Sea from Russia. Regulations were issued regarding quar- antine sites for ships arriving in Swedish harbours (Arvidsson 1972:106f). The frst such quarantine site was situated on the island of Känsö in the Gothenburg archipelago. The required quarantine was ten days for ships from a town with an epidemic and fve days for ships from a suspected town. Corresponding regulations were introduced in Norway in 1831, then in a union with Sweden. The cholera arrived there earlier than in Sweden, i.e. in 1832 and in 1833 and 1834 (Bente Alver et al. 2013:52ff). A Swedish quarantine site was established for travellers from Norway on Öddö (close to Strömstad) as early as in 1832. The Swedish quarantine regulations were modifed through a new regulation in 1859. The older quarantine regula- tions regarding arriving vessels had not given the desired effects (Arvidsson 1972:139). In 1860 Norway established a Health Law which required that Health Boards be established in all local municipalities. Earlier, such com- missions had been temporary when an epidemic broke out. From 1860 on, these boards were charged with fghting epidemic diseases and with taking preventive measures (Alver et al. 2013:57, 248; Schiøtz 2017:239ff). In 1831, Health Boards were required in Sweden as well, in towns as in local municipalities. They were to be activated when epidemics broke out. Designated “cottage hospitals” were to be established in which dis- eased individuals could be isolated. In the countryside, it was quite com- mon that this “cottage hospital” was where the frst cases appeared. The Health Boards were to issue regulations regarding the care of the diseased so as to hinder the spread of the infection. Cleanliness was emphasized. “All roads, squares and streets between houses are to be brushed clean and kept free of all uncleanliness, infringements to be punished by fnes” (Royal announcement November 12, 1831). This indicates an awareness of the role of contagion in the transmission of disease (more to follow below). Similar opinions are present in minutes from local Health Boards, such as 122 Anders Gustavsson the Torsåker municipality in the province of Gästrikland, where the Board minutes say: “remind forcefully that cleanliness regarding body, houses, yards and clothes, together with an orderly and sober way of life should be maintained at all times” (ULMA 21096). Other scientists have carried out studies specifcally into the minutes of local Health Boards in some cities (Stockholm and Uppsala, as well as Falun, Kalmar and Karlskrona), but much less so in the countryside. I had to build upon local literature. The minutes which have been saved or copied show how conscientious the local Health Boards could be. They closed roads, bridges, and harbours to isolate the local community from their immediate surroundings. Guards were posted with considerable authority to stop peo- ple from entering or passing through the municipality. On September 11, 1853, the Möja chapel Assembly’s Health Board in the province of Uppland decided that “each individual is to watch over his bridge. In case somebody tries to use violence, this is to be met with violence. It is the disobedient per- son’s own fault if he loses his life and no penalties should ensue” (ULMA 28970). This statement refers back (almost word for word) to paragraph 94 in the Royal Regulation of July 9, 1831. Specifc carriers of the sick and dead could be designated by the Health Boards. Coffns were to be built and preparations made for the establishment of cholera cemeteries.

District Physicians’ Efforts The District Physicians’ annual reports which are available on the net (http:// www.ep.liu.se/databas/medhist.sv.asp) illustrate what was happening in the countryside as seen by the physicians from 1850s onwards. There were physicians in the towns from 1834 with responsibility for the surrounding countryside. As early as in 1831 physicians might visit municipalities in the countryside to prepare for a threatening cholera epidemic. This was done by the Uddevalla physician Fredric Marin (1772–1834) who met with the newly established Health Boards on the islands of Orust and Tjörn in order to describe the disease and how to treat the diseased. He mentioned smoke ster- ilization of the localities and hot baths in designated bath tubs. He carefully described the medications which were thought to be effective against the cholera. They were to be purchased ahead of time in an Uddevalla pharmacy and distributed for free to the poor. At that time, there were no pharmacies in the countryside. A cottage hospital was to be established in each parish. When Marin visited the island of Klädesholmen on Tjörn on August 13, 1834, the cholera was raging and the medications had been used up. Marin ordered new medications to be sent immediately from Uddevalla (Pettersson 1989:103f). During the cholera outbreak on the islands of Orust and Tjörn the regional authorities sent three physicians in training to assist the town physician Marin in Uddevalla (Jacobsson 1989, Gullman 2003). Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 123 There was a great shortage of physicians and they were liable to succumb to cholera and die themselves. In the Strömstad district physicians’ area, which included the whole of North Bohuslän, the mayor Johannes Hegardt sent several requests during 1834 to the governor in Gothenburg to get more physicians, but with no effect. The situation became extremely diffcult when the district physician Simon Landeberg died during a visit to a farm in the Brastad parish close to the village of Lysekil (Andersson 1998:17). There are other cases in Sweden of district physicians dying when fghting cholera. During the next cholera outbreak in 1850–1851, two young physicians were stationed on Tjörn which had no permanent district physician until 1892. The frst district physician was stationed on Orust in 1836 with a responsibility for Tjörn as well. Sven Kellberg was district physician 1850–1853. In his annual report for 1851 he noted that the cholera hit Tjörn, but not Orust. Roughly one third of the 200 diseased died. The Health Boards in the different parishes had closed the ferry line at Skåpesund, that being the border between Orust and Tjörn. Doctor Kellberg was not at all convinced that this would have stopped the spread of the infection to Orust. He writes that the Health Boards “activities often focussed on the useless and often ridiculous barriers, and here, like in many places elsewhere, they would not listen to the physician’s advice”. Living on Orust and being a physician, he could use the ferry to visit “the cholera patients on Tjörn and be in their close proximity and touching them . . . without any negative effects or spread of the disease”. Touching was not a problem if the physician believed in the miasma theory, that the disease was spread through the air. Kellberg’s report also shows that large quantities of cholera medications were purchased by the Health Board on the advice of the pharmacist who lived on Orust at the time. Doctor Kellberg’s arguments raises the question of how physicians of the time regarded the spread of diseases. Annelie Drakman’s doctoral thesis in history of ideas, Uppsala 2018, has made a careful analysis of Swedish physicians’ view of the human body and diseases (Drakman 2018). The cholera bacterium had not yet been identifed, that happened as late as in 1883 through the physician Robert Koch (1843–1910). Instead, many physi- cians regarded cholera as being spread through the air through damaging vapours emanating from dead bodies and “unhealthy places”. The disease was not spread person-to-person. Smoke from burning tar and juniper were thought to be helpful against airborne contagion. This is the miasmatic opinion. It recurs quite often in folklife records. The putrefactive matter was called “miasma” and could be identifed through its horrible stench. Local sources of contagion could be stacks of refuse or manure, as well as swamps. Physicians advocated ditching of such areas. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the miasma theory was being replaced by the view of contagious spread of diseases. It emphasized 124 Anders Gustavsson con tacts between people rather than airborne contagion. This is visible in local physicians’ statements. In 1849, the British physician John Snow showed that cholera was spread through water. From there on, cholera was seen as being spread through dismal hygienic conditions, primarily con- taminated water, but also overcrowding. Body secretions were regarded as disease carriers. The district physician Niklas Olof Gammelin who served on the islands of Orust and Tjörn in Bohuslän 1853–1863 illustrated how rapidly the disease could be spread through physical contacts.

A skipper’s wife in Rågårdsvik with cholera... had a newborn baby. She did not dare to give her breast to the child for fear of contagion and asked an old woman to suckle her. This happened in the evening, and the old woman turned ill during the night and died in the morning, 12 hours after suckling.

Dirty streams close to sewers and manure stacks were regarded as key sources of contagion, particularly in densely populated areas. Because of this, cleanliness and disinfection came to be highly valued, at least by phy- sicians and Health Boards. Washing and bathing became important means to remove dangerous secretions. The annual reports from district physicians show how people in the countryside offered a fair amount of resistance. They wanted to stay with well-established traditions regarding how to live and act together. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, physicians complained that over- crowding was self-inficted during the winter by many people. Everybody lived in the kitchen and in the common room to save on heat. The district physician Uno Helleday described conditions on Orust and Tjörn:

Unhealthy habits and conditions. In family homes, even wealthy homes, only one room was heated during the winter, and this offers insuffcient space for the large family and their servants. It is not possible to separate the diseased however necessary that might be. An epidemic during the cold part of the year makes this situation even worse, since it is virtually impossible to get fresh air, the windows being nailed shut.

The district physicians faced a need to spend a lot of time to build trust among the local population. They were steeped in a tradition of using uned- ucated local healers (Gustavsson 2017). These healers were not expected to treat cholera, however. In this feld there was no controversy between physi- cians and local healers. Many people who lived in the countryside were also reluctant to seek a doctor for economic reasons as well as a high respect for educated persons and the offcialdom of the town.

The Spread of Cholera to Sweden and the First Cases The medical historian Sven-Ove Arvidsson, who has been mentioned before, studied the global spread and distribution during the various epidemics Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 125 during the nineteenth century. He has used government regulations, Health Board minutes, the annual reports from district physicians, and the cholera physicians’ journals. Cholera originated in India and after 1817 it spread across the borders. It came by sea from the east through Russia in 1830, arriving in the Nordic countries in 1831. Finland had an outbreak in 1831, and Norway in 1832, 1833 and 1834. Coastal towns were the frst to be hit through arriving ves- sels. In Norway, Drammen was hit in 1832 and then the areas surrounding the Oslo fjord in 1833 and 1834 (Alver et al. 2013:53).

Fig. 1. The cholera epidemic 1826–1837 (after Arvidsson 1972:16).

Sweden escaped any outbreaks until 1834, but the worry made itself known amongst the leadership as early as in 1831. This is clear from the already mentioned royal regulations regarding cholera epidemics. The very frst case hit Gothenburg through the sailor Anders Rydberg (52 years old) and his wife Anna Persdotter (55). He worked in a shipyard in Gothenburg which repaired open-sea vessels. The course of development was very rapid and painful through diarrhoea and cramps. The post-mortem report regard- ing this couple says:

Last Saturday, on June 26, at 5 o’clock in the morning, the man left his home in good health after having had a breakfast consisting of coffee and two shots of liquor. At work, he was hit by vomiting and diarrhoea, as well as leg cramps, between 7 and 8 o’clock. He became very weak and was carried to his home at 9 o’clock. The stom- ach pains ceased but he became muddle-headed and died at 3.30 in the afternoon. The wife had been in town in the morning without having anything to eat. She 126 Anders Gustavsson had set the table with food when her husband was carried home. She was terrifed at the sight and fainted. She vomited immediately when trying to drink. She did not have any diarrhoea. The vomiting ceased in the afternoon. She was fully conscious until her death Sunday morning at 5 o’clock. Dr Lübeck cared for the diseased and prescribed medications. The couple were both known as sober and well-behaved individuals in spite of their poor conditions (Öberg 1988:66).

Many folklife records mention the rapid course and great pains through vomiting, cramps, and diarrhoea. In some cases the informants had witnessed the disease close-up. A man born in 1845 in the parish of Upphärad in the province of Västergötland told (in 1929) how his sister died of cholera in the 1860s.

She turned like a worm because of the cramps. They gave her massage for the cramps. “I’ll soon be well,” she said. But then the cramps hit her intestines – and then she died within thirty minutes (IFGH 1627:20).

The cholera spread from Gothenburg along the Göta Älv river. Two seamen died as early as July 31, 1834, in the village of Västerlanda close to the river roughly 50 kilometres north of Gothenburg. Soon thereafter, the cholera spread epidemically in the countryside parishes Västerlanda and Hjärtum. It spread further along the lake Vänern coasts. The epidemic spread along the waterways by way of the Göta Canal to the lakes Vättern, Hjälmaren, and Mälaren. The town of Vadstena was hit heavily, also by sea transport activities. In the Bohuslän coastal region, the fshing villages were hit hard- est. Ninety out of 223 inhabitants died on the island of Gullholmen, 103 out of 535 inhabitants in the village of Grundsund, and one third of the around 400 inhabitants in the village of Klädesholmen on Tjörn. A total of 24,978 persons were taken ill in Sweden in 1834, roughly half of whom, 12,637, died. One third, 4,659, came from the Gothenburg and Bohuslän region. The city of Stockholm had 3,665 deaths (Arvidsson 1972:166). The next wave of cholera came from the east to Finland in 1848. The epidemic of 1849 hit the towns of Borgå and Helsingfors particularly hard. In 1850, Sweden was hit by another epidemic in early August in the town of Malmö. Fishermen spread the contagion, and the fshing village of Råå was hit particularly hard. The frst cholera cases appeared in Gothenburg in late September. A sailor was taken ill on a vessel. The contagion was spread along the waterways to both the archipelago and along the Göta Älv river to villages along the lake Vänern coast. The following wave came to Finland from the Russian city of Petersburg in 1853. Denmark was hit from June 11 in Copenhagen. A total of 10,598 persons were taken ill, of whom 6,588 died. Norway also suffered the larg- est cholera epidemic in 1853 (Bente Alver et al. 2013:53). Towards the end of July 1853, cholera epidemics hit several coastal Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 127 towns in the southern Skåne region of Sweden as well as in the archipelago of the Blekinge region. A quarter of all inhabitants in the fshing village of Borstahusen close to the town of Landskrona in Skåne were taken ill, and one in thirteen died. Many middle-aged married women were infected when they cared for the sick who were placed in the school building accord- ing to an informant who was born in 1835 (LUF M 4824:4). In August, both Stockholm and Gothenburg were hit. The disease was spread from Stockholm along the waterways of lake Mälaren. A number of towns and villages in the Bohuslän archipelago were infected from Gothenburg, par- ticularly the fshing village of Edshultshall (more about this later) and fur- ther along both sides of Göta Älv river. The contagion then spread further along the lake Vänern coasts like during earlier epidemics. A total of 17,327 persons were taken ill in Sweden in 1853, and 8,775 died. Stockholm had the largest share with 2,875 deaths. In 1854, a new wave of cholera hit Stockholm as well as the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, this time coming from the Finnish archipelago of Åland. The disease spread from Stockholm along the northern coast. This epidemic was, however, clearly smaller than that of 1853. Of 3,038 people who fell ill, 1,212 died. Almost half of that number, 560 persons, came from Stockholm. In 1855, the cholera started towards the end of July, and spread widely across the town of Halmstad. Stockholm was declared infected on August 11. In 1856 a minor epidemic broke out in Sweden, with 278 deaths, 98 of which were in Stockholm, and 58 in Gothenburg. The cholera was spread by arriving vessels in Gothenburg and then by way of waterways along the Göta Älv river towards the province of Värmland. In 1934, a man born in Borgvik in 1839 still remembered how a ship came from Gothenburg to the harbour of Borgvik on the coast of lake Vänern.

It came loaded with rye and was to take on iron going back. It showed a black fag, and we understood that it carried a contagious disease. The manager at the mill, however, needed both the rye and transportation for the iron, so he was rowed out to the ship to get an explanation for the black fag. It was the cholera, he was told, but he didn’t care, and ordered the ship to unload. The ship hadn’t even been unloaded before the frst deaths were reported, and the disease spread rapidly. Three physicians came to Borgvik, I remember that one of them came from Gothenburg. My uncle was one of the frst to be infected, and his wife soon followed. I had to care for both of them as well as the animals in the barn. I didn’t need to bother about food because the diseased were not allowed to eat anything. … Every ten minutes, I was to give them a spoonful of water. … I was sixteen when this happened (IFGH 3401:7ff).

In 1857 a new epidemic started in Stockholm. On September 11, Stockholm was offcially declared to be infected by cholera. From there, the disease was 128 Anders Gustavsson spread by steam ships and sailing ships to the coasts along lake Mälaren, the Vättern and Vänern regions, and to Gothenburg by way of Göta Älv, as well as to the province of Blekinge. The epidemic of 1858 was, by and large, limited to Stockholm, where 619 persons died, as well as 88 persons outside of Stockholm. In the fshing village of Grundsund in the province of Bohuslän, 24 persons died during October and November. In 1859, cholera came to fve Swedish import harbours, i.e. Malmö, Gothenburg, Kalmar, Stockholm, and Uddevalla. In Gothenburg, the mor- tality was high in the labour quarters of Haga. Sixty-one people fell ill in the town Uddevalla, and 39 died. It was not until 1866 that cholera appeared next time in Sweden. The other Nordic countries escaped entirely. As in earlier epidemics, the har- bours in Stockholm and Gothenburg were the ports of entry, the frst cases appearing late June. There were a large number of cases in Gothenburg, with 638 deaths. In the archipelago of Bohuslän, the islands of Orust (the Gullholmen village), Tjörn (the Klädesholmen and Rönnäng villages), and Styrsö were hit particularly hard. The cholera also spread along the Göta Älv river, reaching the town of Karlstad on July 18. The contagion spread from Stockholm along the coast to the north as well as inland along waterways such as the Göta channel. A total of 4,706 persons died in 1866. The province of Gothenburg and Bohuslän was hit hardest, with 1,330 deaths. The last epidemic in Sweden in 1873 was limited to the province of Skåne, starting in the town of Helsingborg on July 19. Soon thereafter, the cholera spread to the town of Höganäs, some 20 kilometres away, where 356 persons fell ill and 177 died. An informant, born in Höganäs in 1859, remembers this period when he was fourteen years old and just confrmed in church. When he came back home after his frst job as a sailor, he was met by a horrifying experience:

Twenty-fve to thirty persons a day had died at the peak period. The wells were dry, and people had to get their water from the dirty mill channel. … The disease terrifed the inhabitants. Homes were abandoned, people preferring to live in hovels. They were not allowed to bury their dead, because people were not allowed to gather in crowds. When the cholera raged, no birds were visible, and if you did see any, they did not sing (LUF M 7461:16).

After 1873, there were no cases until 1893 and 1894, and then only single, imported cases from overseas in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Related to the total Swedish population, the cholera mortality was clearly highest during the 1834 and 1853 epidemics with 425 and 239 deaths respectively per 100,000 inhabitants. In 1866 the corresponding numbers were 113 and 74 deaths respectively per 100,000 inhabitants. All ages were Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 129 hit, from babies to old people, as can be seen in the death and burial books. As a rule, the contagion lasted just over a month and never more than two months. The severe outbreak on Gullholmen in 1866, when 36 per- sons died, lasted from August 7 until September 13. Summing this up, the various epidemics share the pattern that the infection has been spread across the oceans by sea vessels and then along the waterways and along the coasts of larger lakes. Big coastal towns were the hardest hit, while the interior fared better. Small coastal municipalities were hit harder than the interior. This is obvious along the Bohuslän coast (more below). In 1832, shipping outside the coastal towns was restricted through the regulation on farm transport activities. Establishing this regula- tion in new towns along the coast took time, however. Fishing was Fig. 2. Diagram showing the number of deaths carried out coastally until open sea in Gothenburg in 1834. A sud-den peak with fshing was developed in the 1860s. at least 80 deaths per day lasted for 11 days in August. The entire cholera outbreak, from the Until then, contacts with an outside frst to the last death, lasted from July 30 until world regarding fshing were limited. Sep-tember 5. After Öberg 1988.

Barriers between Towns and the Countryside When a cholera epidemic struck, issues concerning nearby villages were raised immediately. This is consonant with the royal regulations of 1831. During the 1834 epidemic, the countryside’s trading contacts with nearby towns was essential since general stores had not yet been established out- side the towns. The situation had changed, however, in the epidemics dur- ing the 1850 and 1860 decades. Free trade regulations had been established in 1846, permitting the establishment of stores in the countryside (Ejdestam 1943), and many country stores opened rapidly. Annually recurrent markets were still restricted to the towns and would be visited by large numbers of countryside people, not least the market in Gothenburg on August 10 (Skarin-Frykman 1993). This could become a dangerous source of contam- ination as was stated in recorded material (such as IFGH 3860:33) There are several stories showing the care with which town and country inhabitants were kept apart during 1834 by guards in the town outskirts. 130 Anders Gustavsson The town of Uddevalla had endured a severe cholera epidemic in the same year, but during the cholera outbreak in Gothenburg and southern Bohuslän in 1850, a tight barrier system was established, using soldiers and offcers. That helped Uddevalla avoid any disease cases, a very different situation compared to 572 diseased and 270 deaths in Bohuslän up to November 8 (http://uddevallare.blogspot.com/search?q=kolera). In 1925, a man born in 1846 in the village of Ljungskile some 20 kilometres south of Uddevalla recounted his childhood memories from the 1850s:

My parents were going to Uddevalla and had received a passport from our helpful local chief of police, and I was taken along in the vehicle. When we arrived at the hill Kapellbacken close to the town we met a large troop of offcers and soldiers and a big boom was lowered and an offcer ordered us to stop. Show your passport. A big corporal stuck a long-shafted pair of pliers into the wagon to take the passport which he carried to a burning fre on which another soldier poured tar. The letter was duly smoked and then given to a high offcer to be carefully read, after which he shouted to the soldiers to raise the boom and told my father Pass! (VFF 1109:6).

Farmers could leave their produce at custom ports in the town outskirts. Merchants needed to go there to pick it up in exchange for wares needed by the farmers. The farmers were not allowed to cross this border, although stories were traded about those who were able to when, for example, the guards fell asleep (ULMA 2293:18). That may have been caused by the large amounts of Scandinavian vodka (brännvin) which was supposed to protect the guards against the cholera. Brännvin, particularly spiced with wormwood, was given as a protective before anyone was allowed to pass the guard entering or leaving the town. “At the customs port in Kristinehamn, a guard was placed with brännvin. Everybody who entered or left were obliged to swallow some brännvin”, according to a story told by an infor- mant born in 1866 in the village of Varnum in the province of Värmland (IFGH 4325:19). The ambition to keep town and countryside people apart is illustrated in a letter sent from Gothenburg to the farmer Lars Andersson on the farm Naveröd in the Röra parish on the island of Orust on September 8, 1866. His brother Nathanael informed him that:

Here in Gothenburg, the cholera is raging hard – it was said today that in the township of Haga 22 persons died in one day, the day before yesterday, I believe. Yesterday I heard that the schools are closed until further notice, or until the epidemic has eased.

For the last two weeks, the writer had planned to come home to Naveröd to eat some of the apples then available in the orchard, “but as you may fear me because I may carry the disease, I will probably stay in Gothenburg”. He also heard “that the unpleasant cholera plague has also harried the islands of Orust as well as Tjörn and Klädesholmen since some time. I therefore wish Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 131 to inform you about how to behave during the cholera”. He had therefore sent a copy of instructions published by the Swedish Medical Association and printed by the Gothenburg Health Board. These instructions were kept among the papers left by Lars Andersson, and were titled “Instructions to the public regarding the symptoms of the cholera disease, and how to pro- tect the healthy, and what medications should be used for the disease until a physician has arrived or when a physician is unavailable”. The instruction gave much detailed advice. Cleanliness is of the essence, “no less of body and clothing than of living quarters, vestibules, yards, and the close sur- roundings and places”. It “is one of the best means in preventing and curing the disease”. Floors of rooms where there are diseased should be covered with freshly chopped fr branches sprinkled with vinegar” (privately owned letter).

Barriers in the Countryside The countryside guards were careful in checking everybody arriving from neighbouring parishes. A man born in 1866 in the village Levene in the province of Västergötland related what he had heard had happened to his grandmother when a boom had been erected across the road. Somebody asked: “Have there been any travellers today?” The answer was: “Yes, if the Good Lord Himself were to come by, do not let Him pass. He must be smoked!” (ULMA Bd 01352). Smoking with tar or juniper was common in towns as well as in the countryside. Smoking was done because the cholera contagion was assumed to be car- ried by air, in other words a miasmatic view, as related in folklife records. It was said that you could hear the air move when the cholera was approach- ing. This was claimed in a recording made in 1930 from the island of Tjurkö in the archipelago of the province of Blekinge as the cholera arrived from the nearby town of Karlskrona (ULMA 2743:13). A woman born in 1858 in the village of Veinge in the province of Halland recounted in 1925 that the cholera “once few 140 kilometres in one day” (VFF 1244:13). A woman born in 1852 in the parish of Ransäter in the province of Värmland stated in 1937 that “the air was grey from all the cholera” (IFGH 4050:38). There are several stories telling that pieces of pork were strung up to ascertain whether the cholera had arrived or was still present in the village. Many believed that the pork turned black if the cholera was in the air. Meeting a black man or woman was sometimes seen as an auspice of a coming cholera outbreak (Tallerud 1999:144f). It was also said that the birds ceased singing (as cited earlier from Höganäs 1873), which was interpreted as a sign that the air was contaminated. Along with the perceived importance of smoking, there was a broad popular perception that brännvin gave protection against cholera. “So they 132 Anders Gustavsson drank copious amounts of brännvin. They drank until they were totally drunk because they believed that the contagion then would not affect them”, a woman from the village of Råggärd in the province of Dalsland stated (ULMA 18874). According to several recordings, this had caused an over- consumption of alcohol during the cholera epidemics. It was said to be par- ticularly true for the corpse carriers who brought the dead to the newly established cholera cemeteries (more to follow below). There are many confrmations of the fact that coastal villages which were focused on sea transportation and fshing were harder hit by cholera than the inland areas. This was particularly obvious for the village of Klädes holmen which lacked a land connection, compared to the parish of Stenkyrka further inland. In 1834, Klädesholmen was hit particularly hard because of people who were coming home from Gothenburg. The Health Board prescribed fve days in quarantine for the diseased. Guards were placed around houses where there were diseased persons. Special black cholera fags had to be put in place in order to keep people away. Anybody who cheated in order to avoid the quarantine would pay fnes. The people living on Klädesholmen were not permitted to visit the mainland or other islands. Food purchases were to take place along a jetty in Stenvik some distance from Klädesholmen, where suppliers and buyers had to deal outdoors. Guards were put in place to stop people from Klädesholmen from reaching the mainland. All men between 18 and 50 years of age were obliged to participate as guards (Pettersson 1979:102ff). The folklife artist Carl Gustaf Bernhardson (1915–1998) lived in the bor- der zone between the coastal village of Grundsund on the island of Skaftö and the countryside further inland (Gustavsson 2011). He has created

Fig. 3. Carl Gustaf Bern- hardson’s painting shows how a fence prevented con- tacts between fshermen’s wives in Grundsund and farmers’ wives from the countryside during the 1834 cholera epidemic. Bernhardson 1978:70. Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 133 paintings and recorded old stories for the Folklore Archives. One painting (1834) shows a fence in the outskirts of Grundsund where the fshermen’s wives placed their empty milk containers. Later, the farmers’ wives flled these containers with milk which could be picked up by the fshermen’s wives. This prevented personal meetings between the two groups, which was otherwise an established pattern well into the twentieth century. Each fsherman’s wife had her own allotted farm, which she would visit two or three times a week to pick up milk. Bernhardson named his painting Bôttre (a dialectical word for tub), and that became the name of this fence. It lived on well into the twentieth century, which has been confrmed by older peo- ple living in Grundsund. The fshing village of Edshultshall on western Orust belonging to Morlanda parish was hit severely by the 1853 epidemic. Twenty-three per- sons died in September, or about one third of the total population of 70. They were buried in two groups on the Sundays September 18 and 25 on the uninhabited island of Bråtö nearby (more about this later). They were transported to the island by a fsherman and his thirteen-year-old son. In three houses, everybody died. The Health Board in the Morlanda parish was activated and met weekly to report on the state of health. Edshultshall was cordoned off for six weeks after the acute cholera outbreak. In his annual report, district physician Olof Niklas Gammelin (1815–1867) stated that he visited the village four times during the month of September, and once in early October. He made sure that the village would be supplied with fresh food from the surroundings. The Edshultshall fsherman Alfred Andersson (1862–1949) described how farmers left provisions on the peninsula Anstensholmen close to the adjacent village of Hälleviksstrand. People in Edshultshall were allowed to go there by boat, the farmers having already left (Jacobsson 1989:155ff).

The Social Situation of the Diseased and Dead Investigations of cholera epidemics often point out that the disease hit particularly hard in socially deprived areas which suffered from poverty, bad hygiene, and crowdedness. Such was the case in the Gothenburg workers’ district Haga. The same pattern could be seen in the country- side. Barracks for contract workers, mill workers, and sawmill work- ers were a dangerous environment. During the epidemic in the province of Sörmland, contract workers with the Sörby manor in the parish of Torsåker were the only ones to be infected (Arvidsson 1972:14). Amongst the cholera-stricken in the inland farming parish of Stenkyrka on Tjörn, almost all dead belonged to the poor population, paupers and crofters (the only difference between the groups being that the former did not lease farming land) (Bosson 2012). 134 Anders Gustavsson

Fig. 4. Deceased persons living in Uddevalla during 1834. All social categories are present, from paupers to the manager of the sea- side resort Gustafsberg. The grave-digger comes last, the one who will car- ry them all to their grave. Bohuslän Museum, Udde - valla UM 000332. https:// digitaltmuseum.se/ 011044500895/aflidna- uddevallabor-silhuett.

Regional Differences in the Countryside It has been shown that the cholera contagion reached the large towns frst, and that waterways were an important factor in the spread of the disease. This was true also in the further spread to smaller towns and villages along inland waterways and large lakes. Regional differences are also visible in the countryside between coastal villages and the adjacent inland. This is of interest particularly regarding the archipelago in the province of Bohuslän. The differences are easily seen on the two islands of Orust and Tjörn. The separation in 1834 of the small island of Klädesholmen from the Tjörn hinterland has already been described. Roughly one third of the island’s 400 inhabitants died, or 135 individuals. A total of 165 persons died on Tjörn. This demon- strates the high excess mortality on Klädesholmen. The same differences between coastal and inland areas were vis- ible on the island of Orust includ- ing the island of Skaftö in 1834. The coastal villages were situ- ated in the western part of Orust in the Morlanda parish. The death Fig. 5. Map, showing Morlanda parish until toll was 103 died in the village of 1923. The various cholera cemeteries are in- Grundsund, 90 on Gullholmen dicated by a + sign, from the south Mollösund, Bråtö, Vedholmen, Kårehogs Hage and Åse- island, 78 in Fiskebäckskil, and 77 backe. After Jacobsson 1989:142. in Mollösund. A mere six persons Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 135 died in the interior of the same perish. In the parish of Myckleby in the eastern part of Orust, where there are no coastal villages, only two persons died, one crofter and his nine-year-old daughter who had travelled by boat to Gothenburg. A report from the Board of Health stated that “it is likely that a wise barrier having been made easy by the patients’ isolated home on the eastern shore of the island, had contributed to the lack of a further spread of the disease” (Jacobsson 1989:153). Twenty-eight people died in the primar- ily farming parish of Tanum in the northern part of the Bohuslän province, 25 of whom lived in the fshing village of Grebbestad (Andersson 1998:14). The same differences between coastal and inland areas on Orust and in Tanum parish were pointed out in 1843 by the district physician Niklas Olof Gammelin in his 1858 annual report. At the same time, he pointed out that it “would be diffcult to explain the underlying cause”. The 1834 and 1859 patterns on Orust and Tjörn were repeated during the last outbreak in 1866. On the island of Orust, only the fshing village of Gullholmen was hit, with 36 dead within fve weeks. In the inland parish Röra where the farmer and diary keeper Jakob Jonsson (1795–1879) lived, only one person died, a 72-year-old crofter’s wife. Jonsson noted that the infection was carried to Röra by a person who came from Gullholmen. In early September, Jonsson expressed “a double sadness, the raging epidemic so widely spread that all com- merce between towns, particularly Gothenburg, and the archipelago had to be almost totally closed – and totally so in some areas”. Jonsson regarded the situation with worry and a deep concern about the con- sequences for the coastal popula- tions outside of Röra. He wrote: “It would appear that all these poor or pitiable coastal people will accom- pany each other into eternity at the same time – we can only wait and see for how long angel of death is allowed to rage and how widely he has been told to kill”. The angel of death is a concept with roots in the Old Testament’s stories about the Fig. 6. A wooden cross from the island of Israeli exodus from Egypt (www. Gullholmen in memory of the widow Inger ne.se Mordängel). Johansson, born 1816, and her son Carl Johan According to Jonsson, there was a Andersson, born 1849. They died of cholera on the same day, September 4, 1866. A winged religious path out of the diffculties. angel holds a cloth with the names and life data “A serious penance and petition for of the deceased. Photo Berth Kull-holm. 136 Anders Gustavsson mercy might serve as a reason not to punish humanity more.” On October 26 he could observe with relief that: “God be praised, the cholera disease has largely decreased in general, and particularly in towns and fshing vil- lages where it has hit most heavily” (Jakob Jonssons dagbok 1 1991:27–30). The archipelago of the island of Tjörn was hit by its heaviest epidemic in 1866. The death toll was 116 on the island of Klädesholmen and the adja- cent coastal village of Rönnäng. Eighty-six minor children lost one or both parents. In the hinterland village of Klövedal, only seven persons died. The larger inland parish of Stenkyrka was harder hit, with 23 deceased. Most of the deceased were poor (Bosson 2012). It should be noted that differences in degrees of outbreaks existed not only between coastal and inland areas, but also between different coastal villages. This is clearly seen in the reports from district physicians in the archipelago of the province of Bohuslän. The fshing village of Klädesholmen on the island of Tjörn was severely hit in 1834, Edshultshall on Orust and Kalvö on Tjörn in 1853, Hälleviksstrand on Orust and Åstol on Tjörn in 1855, Grundsund on Skaftö in 1858 and Gullholmen on Orust and Klädesholmen and Rönnäng in 1866. During the same periods, adjacent coastal villages escaped without any cases of cholera. One such village was Grundsund in 1866.

Fig. 7. Number of deaths per week in the fshing village of Klädesholmen together with the inland parish of Stenkyrka on Tjörn from the end of July to the middle of October 1866. Bosson 2012:8.

Local Experiences The cholera hit local communities very suddenly and many died within a very short time. It is not surprising that this raised feelings of terror. What might one do to protect oneself and survive, and how would one dare to Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 137 care for the diseased? There are some stories told by people who lived with and survived cholera (compare the quotation from the village of Borgvik in the province of Värmland). The girl Anna Holmberg was fourteen years old during the great cholera outbreak on the island of Klädesholmen on Tjörn in 1834 when 68 persons died during the month of August (cf. above). She has left a devastating tale of her memories:

I remember that time with fright. People slunk about with the fear of death on their faces, scared of each other, and even more scared by death. I remember oldsters, whom you met one day, and the next day were lying on a stretcher. First, they com- plained about stomach pains, after a few minutes they had to lie down and screamed from their stomach cramps which then made them black in the face, and fnally took their lives away from them. As soon as parents were taken ill, they would send the children out of the house. You could see these children watch fearfully through the windows. It was heart-breaking to see them stand there crying, and to know that they might lose their father or mother within the hour. And in the general chaos, nobody would care for these children. As soon as somebody showed signs of dying, they would be carried off to a barn that served as a mortuary. The old men who did the carrying of the dead faltered around dead drunk. They did not care very much about checking whether they were carrying a dead body or somebody in suspended animation. Every forenoon at eleven o’clock the church bells would toll for a long time with short breaks. They tolled the knell (Pettersson 1978:15f).

The recorded material contains stories of how the fear of contagion made peo- ple in towns and in the countryside lock themselves in their homes or outbuild- ings. The fear of touching others (refecting a contagious view of the disease) was fundamental. Food was taken in with the help of somebody who would pass the food through a small hole. It is said that the same procedure was applied in the cholera houses which were established in towns and villages when they were infected by cholera. The folklife artist Carl Gustaf Bernhardson has visu- alized this situation in a painting which was based on stories told in his own family (Brockman 2010: 175).

Fig. 8. The cholera year 1834. An infected person, who was isolated in a designated house, received food offered on a long rod through a small opening so as to avoid any physical contact with the outside. Folklife pain- ting by Carl Gustaf Bernhardson. Bohuslän Museum, Uddevalla CGB 087. 138 Anders Gustavsson Several recordings tell how the people who were the most fearful and closeted themselves could still be infected. At times, they were among the frst to die in the community. One informant, born in 1863 in the town of Filipstad, said:

There was one person who built a long tunnel leading to his home through which he drew the food. But this man was the frst to die of cholera here in town (IFGH 4334:16).

In his book “My Childhood on Gullholmen” the author Olof Hansson, born in 1914, relates stories told by his grandparents. They were around thirteen at the severe outbreak of cholera in 1866. The contagion was said to have been carried by people from Gullholmen who had visited the market in Gothenburg on St. Lawrence’s day on August 10 (see Skarin Frykman 1993). This market offered an important opportunity to sell fsh (Hasslöf 1949:396). Women living on Gullholmen were known to travel to Gothenburg by boat in the summer in order to sell the fsh their husbands had brought in. Children obviously suffered, physically as well as mentally, when rela- tives were taken ill, often dying. Olof Hansson related how his grandparents: talked about how horrible life was, and about the fear felt by everybody. In the morning, no one knew what had happened during the night. There were diseased in almost every house, and 36 persons had lost their lives. Many panicked and in one house a woman locked herself in, for fear of being infected. The children who had been locked out, among them my grandmother, had heard her scream in anguish. And yet, she was one of the frst to die (Hansson 1983:45).

A kind of belief in destiny is recorded at times. Those who were to die from cholera would die regardless. That made it senseless to lock oneself in. An informant in the village of Källby in the province of Västergötland told about a man in the town of Lidköping who nailed the doors to his house shut – and still died. The informant’s comment was: “Those who were to die from the disease could not escape” (IFGH 4143:37). Old folk belief could show how people were to protect themselves with- out having to lock themselves in. The man from the village of Borgvik in the province of Värmland referred to earlier, helped his uncle when he was suffering from cholera without being infected himself. His refections were:

I believe that the reason I was not infected myself was that as soon as the cholera broke out, I went to the church and knocked on the door. I had been told that this would give me protection, and it does seem to have helped me (IFGH 3401:12).

Faith in God might have contributed when somebody dared to care for the diseased instead of locking oneself in. In her book “My Childhood on Tjörn”, the author Hulda Tjörne tells about the cholera in her parish Valla in 1834: Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 139 A man, who suffered from another disease, said: “I visit the diseased in God’s name, where I fnd them”, and so he did. He did not catch cholera but was cured from the other disease (Tjörne 1970:119).

There are very few Christian references in the folklife records. There is only one informant, born in 1862 in the coastal village of Fjällbacka in the province of Bohuslän who has mentioned a belief in God’s punishment related to the cholera outbreak in 1859 in the village. He also spoke of “much singing of psalms, because people believed that they would escape the cholera if they turned into believers” (IFGH 4861:38f).

Handling the Dead It has already been shown that the cholera had a short and painful course with a high mortality. Many died within a very short time when a municipal- ity was infected by this disease. Because there was a great deal of fear that the diseased person would still be contagious, the dead had to be removed to a specially designated cemetery, rather than the usual cemetery. At the peak of the disease many would die each day. Simple coffns had to be prepared very rapidly. In 1926, an informant born in 1851 in the village of Hammarö in the province of Värmland said that “there were no real coffns, they sim- ply made unpainted boxes in which to put the dead” (IFGH 776:7). Transporting the dead was not a popular task. The Health Boards had the authority to pick people for the job. It was important to make it attractive, the risk of contagion being very high. One informant, born in 1862 in the village of Fjällbacka in the province of Bohuslän, which was severely hit by cholera in 1859, said that “everybody feared having to participate in the removal of the dead”. There was one, however, Jan, who accompanied all the transports to the lonely island of Stora Eneskär. “He would sing psalms all the way to Eneskär and by the grave”. “The bodies were covered with soil as much as possible”. The informant also said that “there are not many in Fjällbacka but they have relatives lying there” (IFGH 4861:38f). Brännvin (vodka) helped enrol carriers of the bodies. As has already been said, it was regarded as a protection against contagion. Many folklife records state that the corpse carriers were always drunk and often singing loudly when they set out with several bodies on the same wagon. It usu- ally took place during the night. The body carrier might be the last to die during the cholera outbreak. One informant, born in 1850 in the village of Skepplanda in the province of Västergötland, related the following story which he had heard from his father:

The man who took the bodies to the cemetery on a simple cart drank and was con- stantly drunk. He survived until the autumn, and died just as the epidemic ended (IFGH 3387:20). 140 Anders Gustavsson When the epidemic had ceased in the village, the cholera wagon was left standing in the cemetery to rot (IFGH 4064:34, IFGH 4390:16). On the islands the dead were taken away by boat to uninhabited islands. In 1834, the island of Malmön was hit very hard by the cholera.

An old man brought the dead out on the water in a boat to prevent the contagion from spreading. When asked how he had been able to stay well, he responded: “I was drunk the whole time” (IFGH 4282:40).

The burial ceremonies became very strange when many bodies had to be buried at the same time. The informant quoted above, born in 1839 in the village of Borgvik in the province of Värmland, related about such a burial which he took place at the age of sixteen.

I remember one day when 32 bodies were buried. They had dug a big, common grave for all the coffns. Before flling the grave, they put a rod on each coffn, long enough to be seen on the surface. They put a tag on each rod that showed the name of the deceased. Our own priest was ill with cholera himself. So a strange priest buried the dead. He went from rod to rod, pulled it out and poured the three shovels of earth through the hole. A man followed him, flling the hole with chlorinated lime (IFGH 3401:9).

Very often it is said that the dead were sprinkled with lime as a sort of pro- tection. This agreed with the royal regulation of July 9, 1831, paragraph 48, concerning cholera burials. “When a number of bodies are to be buried at the same time, a large grave should be prepared and a communal burial service should be held. The deposited coffns are to be covered with layer of unslaked lime or coal dust.” A painting by Carl Gustaf Bernhardson shows how the priest buried several bodies at the same time on an out-of-the-way cholera cemetery on the island of Skaftö. The four corpse bearers would throw themselves into the sea, clothes and all, as a protection against the contagion (Brockman 2010:176).

Fig. 9. The priest buries several bodies at the same time in an out-of-the-way cholera cemete- ry on the island of Skaftö. The four corpse carriers who were to throw themselves into the sea, clothes and all, are shown to the right in the painting. Painting by Carl Gustaf Bernhardson, Gothenburg City Museum GM 24869. Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 141 Physicians as well as Health Boards warned against crowds at the burials. Those warnings were not always heeded. The district physician G. Varenius in the district of Alingsås related how the cholera was spread in the parish of Skallsjö to the east of Gothenburg in 1853. “In Svensered (part of the parish) the disease raged particularly inten- sively after a burial where the prohibition against crowds was neglected.”

Cholera Cemeteries When the cholera broke out in a municipality and many died within a short time period, the bodies had to be brought to a solitary place immediately in order to be buried there. At times, mass graves were used. Nobody wanted to go there, fearing contagion. Later, a stone wall might be erected and these cholera cemeteries were blessed by the local priest. After the cholera epidemics, they would remain deserted. A long time after the cholera outbreak, local community associations have erected a collective memorial stone. This would take place as much as one hundred years after a cholera outbreak. The parish priest would conduct an inauguration ceremony. These memorial stones would keep the memory of the nasty nineteenth-century cholera epidemics alive for later generations in the village. Not all cholera cemeteries have been preserved, however. They did not have the same legal protection as ordinary cemeteries. A record from 1926–1927 in the village of Högestad in the province of Skåne tells how a cholera cemetery was ploughed by a farmer as early as in the late nineteenth century. He put the wooden crosses on top of the fence before ploughing. When the sexton saw this, he reproached the farmer for vandalizing the burial chambers of the deceased, but the farmer just continued ploughing. The informant noted that “nowa- days, practically nobody knows that Fig. 10. In 1957, the contract rector Knut Jons- people have been buried there”. A son inaugurated a memorial stone for the far- similar story is told about the cholera mer’s widow Kristina Svensdotter, who was cemetery in the town of Ystad in born in 1800. She was the only person to die of cholera during 1855 in the inland parish of Skåne. In 1942, an informant born Röra on the island of Orust. Photo privately in 1873 related: “It brings sad held. 142 Anders Gustavsson

Fig. 12. The cholera cemetery on the island of Bråtö close to the village of Edshultshall on the island of Orust, where 32 persons were buried during the se- vere cholera outbreak in 1853 (cf. above). The ceme- tery was inaugurated in 1854 and the local associ- ation of Morlanda erected the stone in 1956. Photo Fig. 11. The cholera cemetery in the vil- taken in 1978. After Jacobsson 1989:158. lage of Kårehogen in Morlanda parish on the island of Orust was used in 1834, but was not inaugurated until 1934. The memories back to me”. They took gravel Morlanda local association erected a memorial stone with an iron cross. The from that place for various buildings here association still takes care of this cholera in town. When the railway was extended, cemetery. Photo Kristina Gustavsson. they destroyed the entire cemetery” (LUF M 9126:9).

Legends Until now, I have dealt with what hap- pened during the various local cholera epidemics. I will now proceed to stories which might be seen as legends regarding historical events, stories which have been traded over long periods of time. The folklorist Anna Birgitta Rooth stresses that “tales are built upon a reality-related content”. It “is on the borderline between Fig. 13. It is rare to fnd an individual a story and supposed knowledge … a memorial stone to a person who had died from cholera during the nineteenth story’s mirror image of reality” (Rooth century in an ordinary cemetery. Outside 1978:16f). This is in line with what the the church in the village of Grundsund, German ethnologist Helge Gerndt dis- there is however, a large memorial stone to remember the inn-keeper Abraham cusses in his newly published extensive Larsson, born in 1778. He belonged to study of the character of legends in the the local elite and died together with 95 borderland between fact and fction other inhabitants in Grundsund in the month of August 1834. Photo Kristina (Gerndt 2020:206ff). The Norwegian Gustavsson. folklorist Brynjulf Alver is of the opinion Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 143 that in historical legends “it is the historical person or event which takes the centre stage”. You cannot expect to fnd “truth” in historical legends but you can expect to fnd the general public’s perception of what happened (Brynjulf Alver 1980). Camilla Asplund and Johanna Wassholm have studied historical legends about the 1808–1809 war between Sweden and Russia. The stories were documented one hundred years after the war. They had been recounted within the families and are locally rooted in the places where the informants lived. The study focusses on the subjectively experienced history and how it has been recounted (Asplund Ingemark & Wassholm 2009). The motifs in legend material about cholera often have links to the Black Death in both Sweden and Norway in the middle of the fourteenth century but also to the plague in 1710–1713. I will discuss issues regarding how older popular traditions can be transmitted through generations while also being adjusted to new situations. It might be ideas regarding how dying persons may have been carried away to the cholera cemeteries before being actually dead, and how living children may have been sacrifced to protect against the epidemic. My focus is on collective popular ideas, not historical truth.

Dying People Carried Away to Be Buried A widely held idea which has been recorded in several stories is that cer- tain corpses were not really dead when they were carried off to the cholera cemetery. The question of sham death is raised. No possible cure for the severely diseased was seen and they might infect others around them. The terror was very real (cf above). In that situation the temptation was strong to carry off the diseased as soon as possible, dead or not. The corpse carri- ers who, it is said, were heavily under the infuence of alcohol, were tasked with carrying corpses off as rapidly as possible. Let me remind you of what the fourteen-year-old girl Anna Holmberg wrote about her personal mem- ories of the cholera outbreak on the island of Klädesholmen in 1834. “Nor did they worry about making sure whether the person they carried away was dead or just sham dead” (see the full quotation above). There are also stories about corpses having kicked in their coffn when carried away. In 1936, one informant who was born in 1850 in the vil- lage of Stora Lundby in the province of Västergötland told the following story: “Mansa-Petter (born in 1825) was severely ill. And they had already put him in a coffn when he came to. Many were put in a coffn too soon, and some would wake up and start kicking, so they were taken out again” (IFGH 3860:32). In 1937, a woman born in 1848 in the village of Önum in the province of Västergötland told how the village corpse carrier: carried off a young woman who had died from cholera. Being alone, he threw the coffn in the grave, but then the woman came to because she was, like, sham dead, 144 Anders Gustavsson and started screaming. The old man hurried back to the village and related how things were, and a couple of men accompanied him to the grave, but when they opened the coffn she really was dead (IFGH 4060:34).

The fshing village of Grundsund with a population of around 600 was hit by a cholera outbreak in October and November 1858. Forty-six persons were taken ill and 24 died. The priest Nils Lindblom and his wife Emma did not hesitate to visit the diseased and their families, something other inhabitants were reluctant to do. Before the burial, the priest was careful to check that there were no sham dead among them (Gullman 2003:65). The district physician Niklas Olof Gammelin tells an interesting story about this outbreak in 1858.

The only remarkable aspect was the Asphyetic (“not contactable” according to a physician’s handbook in the nineteenth century) 12-hour long condition of a cholera patient. He was considered dead by those around him and a coffn was prepared. The diseased man unexpectedly came to and is still alive.

This story from the district physician about an uncontactable “in between” condition gives a new dimension to popular stories about cholera corpses coming to life, kicking in the coffn or in the grave. Might mistakes have been made unintentionally regarding the actual death? This does not seem impossible. This may have caused the sham death stories found in recordings. It cannot have been easy to make all the required checks when the epidemic was at its peak. The district physician Niklas Olof Gammelin visited the severely hit fshing village of Edshultshall during the cholera outbreak of 1853 (cf. above). He has also recorded that he visited the fshing village of Grundsund seven times during the outbreak from October 15 to November 21 in 1858.

Sacrifcing Live Children Another type of tale touches on the motif of sacrifce which is said to have taken place to free the village from epi demics, one of them the cholera. One or two liv- Fig. 14. Niklas Olof Gammelin was the ing children who were free of cholera district physician on the islands of Orust and Tjörn 1853–1863. Photo Carl Cur- would be sacrifced. They were said to man 1860. After Larsson 2015. have been given a sandwich to entice Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 145 them to climb into a prepared grave. As soon as they were there, they would be covered with soil. They would cry, asking why soil was thrown on their sandwiches. They kept throwing soil on them however, until the grave was flled on top of the choking children. Almost identical stories are found in connection with the Black Death in the mid fourteenth century, and also in connection with the plague in 1710–1713. This indicates that there is a popular tradition which survived for a long time and was adapted to outbreaks of new epidemics. As a scien- tist, I am affected by this horrendous story as well as uncertain whether this might actually have taken place in the nineteenth century. The Norwegian folk lorist Brynjulf Alver claims that the important aspect is that similar sto- ries in Norway point to public belief, but cannot be determined as historical truth. Such determination lies outside the scope of a folklorist who inves- tigates the spiritual, immaterial aspects of culture in the form of sayings, popular belief including popular religion, and how they have been handed down over time. Some informants from villages in the province of Västergötland have attempted to enhance the credibility by offering concrete examples of chil- dren having been sacrifced in connection with cholera outbreaks during the nineteenth century. Some men have even been named as having shovelled soil on such a grave. They are said to have been mentally confused after- wards. In 1932, a male informant born in 1858 in the parish of St. Peder in the province of Västergötland told about the local cholera outbreak in 1856:

They buried a live child in the village of Båstorp hillside in Skepplanda (a neighbour parish). They gave the child a sandwich and enticed it to climb into a grave, and then they started shovelling soil. “Don’t put soil on my sandwich!” the child said. There were two men who did it. Both of them are said to have become insane. One was Johannes Pettersson, he was in Hökällan (a manor on the island of Hisingen, later to become the psychiatric hospital of Lillhagen) for several years. One was Kristiansson from Heden West in the village of St. Peder. This was done to stop the epidemic (IFGH 3068:18).

It may sound credible when the story is so specifc, giving the names of two persons. In 1932, a woman born in 1842 stated “it happened in my village” in 1856. A child was buried alive in “Båstorp hillside in the parish of Skepplanda. It was a poor child who had been given a sandwich. … ‘Don’t throw soil on my sandwich!’ the child said” (IFGH 3068:17). Another informant born in 1854 in the same parish had been told by her father that a human being had been buried alive in 1834 (IFGH 3387:20). A third informant born in 1854 in the parish of St. Peder told about a girl having been buried alive during the Black Death in St. Peder or the neighbouring parish of Tunge. “They gave her a sandwich and made her enter the grave, then they started shovelling” (IFGH 3312:13). These are virtually the same 146 Anders Gustavsson stories told by different informants, which are linked both to the Black Death and the cholera epidemics in the nineteenth century in the very same village. This indicates that we are dealing with a tradition going all the way back to the Black Death and then being applied to new situations in the nineteenth century. This throws doubt on the issue of whether this sacrifce actually took place in the nineteenth century. It is worth noting that the medieval town of Lödöse was situated in St. Peder parish on the shore of Göta Älv river. Until Gothenburg was estab- lished in 1621, this was the only Swedish harbour with an entry to the North Sea. The town was given its name after one of the old churches in Lödöse, St. Peder. King Magnus Eriksson summoned a national session to Lödöse right at the time when the Black Death had reached Sweden from Norway in 1349. He ordered each Friday to be a fasting and prayer day. All citizens had to offer money to the Virgin Mary (Harrison 2000:391). The cholera hit the province of Västergötland very heavily (Harrison 2019:66). None of the informants in my material claims to have been present at any such sacrifcial ceremony. They have only been told about such things having happened. Being a folklorist, I fnd it suffcient to point out that this tradition from the nineteenth century is very similar to stories told about what happened during the Black Death. I do not judge the veracity, leaving that to historians to discuss and assess. The historian Dick Harrison poses the question whether such sacrifces could have taken place during the Black Death. He appears to lean towards the conclusion that they happened. “Is it a question of migratory legends or of real events? Unfortunately, most of the evidence supports the view that they did occur. The method made sense. … Those who buried children alive tried to defend themselves against the plague, to turn it away, to demolish the whole by attacking a part” (Harrison 2019:113).

Summary My focus is on the many cholera epidemics which hit Sweden from 1834 until 1873. I have studied how cholera epidemics affected the countryside from the ethnological, folkloristic and cultural historian’s point of view. Popular practices and ideas in diffcult crisis situations are the subject, rather than top-down regulations. How did the population perceive the cholera and how was the disease treated on the local level when it broke out? The Swedish folklore archives offer a rich recorded material which was collected from all parts of Sweden during the early part of the twentieth cen- tury. It contains stories about local developments during the various cholera epidemics. There is also legend material related to the cholera epidemics. I use public regulations from the nineteenth century as background mate- rial for descriptions of what happened in local parishes. The annual reports Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 147 from district physicians give insight into the perspectives of individual physicians. The different epidemics share a common feature: the disease has been spread by shipping across the oceans and then along inland waterways and the shores of larger lakes. Large coastal towns were the hardest hit, the countryside faring much better. Small coastal villages were harder hit than the inland through their waterborne links to the larger coastal towns. A cholera epidemic outbreak immediately raised questions regarding barriers against the immediate neighbourhood. There are several accounts telling how town and countryside were separated, using guards around the towns. The fear of contacts was felt by town dwellers as well as by the inhabitants in the countryside. The guards in the countryside were careful in their checking arrivals from other parishes. Smoking with juniper or tar was used as a protection against cholera infection. This points to the opinion that the cholera contagion was air- borne, namely a miasmatic view. It was even said that you could hear the cholera arriving in the air. There was a widely spread opinion that brännvin (vodka) offered protection against cholera. In towns, the disease hit the socially weak areas where poverty, bad hygiene, and overcrowding reigned. This tendency was apparent in the countryside as well. Since the cholera hit local communities suddenly and many died within a short time, it is to be expected that strong fears appeared. There are infor- mants who had survived cholera and left tales of shattering memories. The great fear that the dead might be contagious made it important to carry them off to a cholera cemetery as rapidly as possible. It was not popular to be a corpse carrier. Free access to brännvin became popular. The burial ceremonies became extraordinary when many corpses were to be buried at the same time. It was important to avoid crowds, as was otherwise com- mon at funerals. In the twentieth century, local associations have had col- lective memorial stones erected in cholera cemeteries. This helped keeping the memories regarding the horrendous cholera epidemics in the nineteenth century alive for future generations in the area. In many cases, the themes in legends about cholera had roots going back to the Black Death in the fourteenth century. I have stories showing how old popular traditions have been carried through generations and adapted to new situations. Such stories have told about dying people who have been carried off to the cholera cemeteries while still alive, and how live children have been sacrifced as a protection against the epidemic. Being a folklorist, I have investigated a collective popular picture of the world, not the ques- tions regarding historical truth. 148 Anders Gustavsson Anders Gustavsson Professor emeritus Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University of Oslo Box 1010 Blindern N-0315 Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

References Archival material Göteborg Department of Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, Gothenburg DAG Folklivsuppteckningar (VFF, IFGH) The Gothenburg City Museum Pictorial material

Lund Folklore Archives, University of Lund (LUF) Manuscript archive, folklife records

Stockholm The National Archives of Sweden (RA) Sundhetskollegium Archives The district physicians’ annual reports 1868–1877 E5A vol. 38–47

Strömstad Strömstad Museum Copies of Health Board and Municipality minutes

Uddevalla The Bohuslän Museum Pictorial material

Uppsala Department of Dialectology and Folklore Research, Uppsala (DFU) ULMA folklife records and copies of Health Board minutes

Privately held Letters and photographs

Internet www.digitaltmuseum.se (20 May 2020) http://www.ep.liu.se/databas/medhist.sv.asp (20 April 2017) Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden 149 www.ne.se (The National Encyclopaedia) http://uddevallare.blogspot.com/search?q=kolera (20 May 2020)

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