Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden from a Popular Perspective

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ARV

Nordic Yearbook of Folklore

Vol. 76

Editor

ARNE BUGGE AMIUNDSEN OSLO, NORWAY

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Articles appearing in this yearbook are abstracted and indexed in European Reference Index

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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 difficult 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 cholera 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 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 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 nineteenth 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 officialdom 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 fluid lead to

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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 physicians 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 regulations 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 first, 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 leading 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.

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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 fit 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 ethnologist 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 quarantine sites for ships arriving in Swedish harbours (Arvidsson 1972:106f).

The first 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 five 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 modified through a new regulation in 1859. The older quarantine regulations 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 fighting 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 diseased individuals could be isolated. In the countryside, it was quite common that this “cottage hospital” was where the first 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 fines”

(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

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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 specifically 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 people 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 person’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. Specific carriers of the sick and dead could be designated by the Health Boards. Coffins 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).

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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 difficult 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 fighting 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 first 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 identified, that happened as late as in 1883 through the physician Robert Koch (1843–1910). Instead, many physicians 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 identified 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

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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 contaminated 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 physicians 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 overcrowding was self-inflicted 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 insufficient 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 field there was no controversy between physicians 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 officialdom 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

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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 first to be hit through arriving vessels. In Norway, Drammen was hit in 1832 and then the areas surrounding the Oslo fjord in 1833 and 1834 (Alver et al. 2013:53).

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

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had set the table with food when her husband was carried home. She was terrified 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 fishing villages were hit hardest. 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 fishing village of Råå was hit particularly hard. The first 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 largest cholera epidemic in 1853 (Bente Alver et al. 2013:53).

Towards the end of July 1853, cholera epidemics hit several coastal

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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 fishing 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 according 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, particularly the fishing village of Edshultshall (more about this later) and further 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 flag, 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 flag. 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 first 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 first 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 officially declared to be infected by cholera. From there, the disease was

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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 fishing village of Grundsund in the province of Bohuslän, 24 persons died during October and November.

In 1859, cholera came to five Swedish import harbours, i.e. Malmö, Gothenburg, Kalmar, Stockholm, and Uddevalla. In Gothenburg, the mortality 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 harbours in Stockholm and Gothenburg were the ports of entry, the first 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 confirmed in church. When he came back home after his first job as a sailor, he was met by a horrifying experience:

Twenty-five 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 terrified 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

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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 persons 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 regulation in new towns along the coast took time, however. Fishing was carried out coastally until open sea fishing was developed in the 1860s.

Until then, contacts with an outside world regarding fishing were limited.

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 outside the towns. The situation had changed, however, in the epidemics during 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.

Fig. 2. Diagram showing the number of deaths in Gothenburg in 1834. A sud-den peak with at least 80 deaths per day lasted for 11 days in August. The entire cholera outbreak, from the first to the last death, lasted from July 30 until Sep-tember 5. After Öberg 1988.

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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 officers.

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 officers and soldiers and a big boom was lowered and an officer 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 fire on which another soldier poured tar. The letter was duly smoked and then given to a high officer 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 informant 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

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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 protect 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 surroundings 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 fir 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 carried 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 approaching. 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 flew 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

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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 particularly true for the corpse carriers who brought the dead to the newly established cholera cemeteries (more to follow below).

There are many confirmations of the fact that coastal villages which were focused on sea transportation and fishing 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 five days in quarantine for the diseased. Guards were placed around houses where there were diseased persons. Special black cholera flags had to be put in place in order to keep people away.

Anybody who cheated in order to avoid the quarantine would pay fines.

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 border 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 contacts between fishermen’s wives in Grundsund and farmers’ wives from the countryside during the 1834 cholera epidemic.

Bernhardson 1978:70.

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paintings and recorded old stories for the Folklore Archives. One painting (1834) shows a fence in the outskirts of Grundsund where the fishermen’s wives placed their empty milk containers. Later, the farmers’ wives filled these containers with milk which could be picked up by the fishermen’s wives. This prevented personal meetings between the two groups, which was otherwise an established pattern well into the twentieth century. Each fisherman’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 confirmed by older people living in Grundsund.

The fishing village of Edshultshall on western Orust belonging to Morlanda parish was hit severely by the 1853 epidemic. Twenty-three persons 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 fisherman 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 fisherman 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 countryside. Barracks for contract workers, mill workers, and sawmill workers 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).

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Regional Differences in the Countryside

It has been shown that the cholera contagion reached the large towns first, 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 visible on the island of Orust includ- ing the island of Skaftö in 1834.

The coastal villages were situated in the western part of Orust in the Morlanda parish. The death toll was 103 died in the village of Grundsund, 90 on Gullholmen island, 78 in Fiskebäckskil, and 77 in Mollösund. A mere six persons

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 carry them all to their grave.

Bohuslän Museum, Udde - valla UM 000332. https://

d i g i t a l t m u s e u m . s e / 011044500895/aflidna- uddevallabor-silhuett.

Fig. 5. Map, showing Morlanda parish until 1923. The various cholera cemeteries are in- dicated by a + sign, from the south Mollösund, Bråtö, Vedholmen, Kårehogs Hage and Åse- backe. After Jacobsson 1989:142.

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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 primarily farming parish of Tanum in the northern part of the Bohuslän province, 25 of whom lived in the fishing 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 difficult 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 fishing village of Gullholmen was hit, with 36 dead within five 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 Israeli exodus from Egypt (www.

ne.se Mordängel).

According to Jonsson, there was a religious path out of the difficulties.

“A serious penance and petition for

Fig. 6. A wooden cross from the island of Gullholmen in memory of the widow Inger Johansson, born 1816, and her son Carl Johan Andersson, born 1849. They died of cholera on the same day, September 4, 1866. A winged angel holds a cloth with the names and life data of the deceased. Photo Berth Kull-holm.

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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 fishing villages 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 adjacent 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 fishing 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 fishing 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

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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 complained 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 finally 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 people in towns and in the countryside lock themselves in their homes or outbuild- ings. The fear of touching others (reflecting 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 painting by Carl Gustaf Bernhardson.

Bohuslän Museum, Uddevalla CGB 087.

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Several recordings tell how the people who were the most fearful and closeted themselves could still be infected. At times, they were among the first 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 first 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 fish (Hasslöf 1949:396). Women living on Gullholmen were known to travel to Gothenburg by boat in the summer in order to sell the fish their husbands had brought in.

Children obviously suffered, physically as well as mentally, when relatives 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 first 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 without 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 reflections 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:

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A man, who suffered from another disease, said: “I visit the diseased in God’s name, where I find 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 municipality 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 coffins 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 coffins, 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).

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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 coffins. Before filling the grave, they put a rod on each coffin, 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, filling the hole with chlorinated lime (IFGH 3401:9).

Very often it is said that the dead were sprinkled with lime as a sort of protection. 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 coffins 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 cemetery 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.

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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 people have been buried there”. A similar story is told about the cholera cemetery in the town of Ystad in Skåne. In 1942, an informant born in 1873 related: “It brings sad

Fig. 10. In 1957, the contract rector Knut Jons- son inaugurated a memorial stone for the farmer’s widow Kristina Svensdotter, who was born in 1800. She was the only person to die of cholera during 1855 in the inland parish of Röra on the island of Orust. Photo privately held.

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memories back to me”. They took gravel from that place for various buildings here in town. When the railway was extended, they destroyed the entire cemetery” (LUF M 9126:9).

Legends

Until now, I have dealt with what happened 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 a story and supposed knowledge … a story’s mirror image of reality” (Rooth 1978:16f). This is in line with what the German ethnologist Helge Gerndt dis- cusses in his newly published extensive study of the character of legends in the borderland between fact and fiction (Gerndt 2020:206ff). The Norwegian folklorist Brynjulf Alver is of the opinion

Fig. 11. The cholera cemetery in the village of Kårehogen in Morlanda parish on the island of Orust was used in 1834, but was not inaugurated until 1934. The Morlanda local association erected a memorial stone with an iron cross. The association still takes care of this cholera cemetery. Photo Kristina Gustavsson.

Fig. 13. It is rare to find an individual memorial stone to a person who had died from cholera during the nineteenth century in an ordinary cemetery. Outside the church in the village of Grundsund, there is however, a large memorial stone to remember the inn-keeper Abraham Larsson, born in 1778. He belonged to the local elite and died together with 95 other inhabitants in Grundsund in the month of August 1834. Photo Kristina 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 severe cholera outbreak in 1853 (cf. above). The cemetery was inaugurated in 1854 and the local association of Morlanda erected the stone in 1956. Photo taken in 1978. After Jacobsson 1989:158.

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that in historical legends “it is the historical person or event which takes the centre stage”. You cannot expect to find “truth” in historical legends but you can expect to find 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 sacrificed 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 carriers who, it is said, were heavily under the influence 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 memories 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 coffin when carried away. In 1936, one informant who was born in 1850 in the village 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 coffin when he came to. Many were put in a coffin 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 coffin in the grave, but then the woman came to because she was, like, sham dead,

Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden from a Popular Perspective

ARV

Nordic Yearbook of Folklore

Vol. 76

Contents

Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in Sweden from a Popular Perspective

The Problem

Sources

Public Regulations

District Physicians’ Efforts

The Spread of Cholera to Sweden and the First Cases

Barriers between Towns and the Countryside

Barriers in the Countryside

The Social Situation of the Diseased and Dead

Regional Differences in the Countryside

Local Experiences

Handling the Dead

Cholera Cemeteries

Legends