hing dangerous. When
the land does this, the sea comes up to it with fiery wrath, and beats
and roars and lashes against the rocks, and looks as if it would tear
the land-hill to pieces.

But in Blekinge it is altogether different when sea and land meet. There
the land breaks itself up into points and islands and islets; and the
sea divides itself into fiords and bays and sounds; and it is, perhaps,
this which makes it look as if they must meet in happiness and harmony.

Think now first and foremost of the sea! Far out it lies desolate and
empty and big, and has nothing else to do but to roll its gray billows.
When it comes toward the land, it happens across the first obstacle.
This it immediately overpowers; tears away everything green, and makes
it as gray as itself. Then it meets still another obstacle. With this it
does the same thing. And still another. Yes, the same thing happens to
this also. It is stripped and plundered, as if it had fallen into
robbers' hands. Then the obstacles come nearer and nearer together, and
then the sea must understand that the land sends toward it her littlest
children, in order to move it to pity. It also becomes more friendly the
farther in it comes; rolls its waves less high; moderates its storms;
lets the green things stay in cracks and crevices; separates itself into
small sounds and inlets, and becomes at last so harmless in the land,
that little boats dare venture out on it. It certainly cannot recognise
itself--so mild and friendly has it grown.

And then think of the hillside! It lies uniform, and looks the same
almost everywhere. It consists of flat grain-fields, with one and
another birch-grove between them; or else of long stretches of forest
ranges. It appears as if it had thought about nothing but grain and
turnips and potatoes and spruce and pine. Then comes a sea-fiord that
cuts far into it. It doesn't mind that, but borders it with birch and
alder, just as if it was an ordinary fresh-water lake. Then still
another wave comes driving in. Nor does the hillside bother itself about
cringing to this, but it, too, gets the same covering as the first one.
Then the fiords begin to broaden and separate, they break up fields and
woods and then the hillside cannot help but notice them. "I believe it
is the sea itself that is coming," says the hillside, and then it begins
to adorn itself. It wreathes itself with blossoms, travels up and down
in hills and throws islands into the