The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

152 SCANDINAVIA.which that of Ammeberg, at the northern extremity of Lake "Wetter, yields threefourthsof the whole amount. It belongs to the Belgian Vieille-Montagne Company,which exports the metal for its works in Belgium. Coal is won in Scania,Manufactures.House industries are still far more developed in Sweden than in all the morethickly peopled European countries. In a region where the markets occur atsuch long intervals each family naturally endeavours, as far as possible, to supplyits own wants. Certain processes and styles of ornamentation are found only inthe remote Scandinavian hamlets, and date probably from prehistoric times.Ilazelius, founder of the Scandinavian Museum in Stockholm, and other learnedarchaeologists are carefully studying these primitive industries before they havebeen swept away by the manufactured goods already threatening to invade theremotest upland hamlets.The chief Scandinavian factories utilise the natural products of the land andsurrounding waters, iron, timber, and fish. All the seaports are occupied withthe building and repairing of fishing- smacks, the weaving of nets and othertackle, the curing and forwarding of fish. The metallurgic works use up theores in sufficient quantities to export a large amount of the produce, while thetimber is shipped, either as planks or as furniture, to the remotest Europeansettlements. Most of the mechanical saw-mills are situated along the seaboardabout the mouths of the rivers, which float down the timber in bulk to Gefle,Soderhamn, Hudiksvall, Sundsvall, Hernosand. It is only quite recently thatthe Swedes have taken to export their timber worked up into inlaid flooringsand cabinet pieces. This industry has been developed especially in Goteborg,and has thence spread to all the Swedish towns engaged in the timber trade.The wood is also exported in the form of matches, a branch of industry inwhich Sweden already takes the foremost rank. The aspen, which supplies thobest material, has rapidly risen in value, every factory now consuming thesetrees by the thousand. In Sweden, and Norway also, the greatest quantity ofwood is used up in the manufacture of paper. This branch was first establishedat Trollhattan in 1857, and it is now carried on in about forty different factories,jointly yielding a yearly average of about 30,000 tons. The vast heaps of sawdustformerly encumbering the ground about the saw-mills will henceforth boconverted into material for packing, wrappers, books, and especially newspapers.Amongst the industries imported from abroad the most important are cottonspinning and weaving. The first essays were made after the Napoleonic wars,and Scandinavia already imports about 13,000 tons of the raw material yearly,employing thousands of hands in converting it into yarns and tissues. Of olderdate is the woollen industry, which began early in the seventeenth century atJonkoping and Upsala, but which, notwithstanding its subsequent development,still falls short of half the local requirements. There are also some flax, hemp,jute, and silk works, and, exclusive of hardware, the Swedish manufacturing