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well together, that at my first visit to the Stockholm skerries, I was unable to breathe until I had reached Sandhamn.^[1]

Strindberg defended himself by describing his Kymmendö—yet without mentioning it by name, for he always tried to make a secret out of that spot which he loved most dearly of all that I heard him speak of—and he described its loveliness in such colors that I could feel that he had enjoyed daily being in the midst of this ideal landscape.

My beloved Bohuslän, on the other hand, I could not induce him to love. I described a sail along its coast. I recalled to him how we wake up in the morning in a setting that has not changed since the time of the Vikings. It forms the background of primaeval man. And the red tinge of the cliffs against the light green, isn't that the most beautiful combination of colors that can be seen in nature?

But Strindberg was not to be moved. This Prometheus, who indeed, if anyone, was in every respect created for a background like that of a Bohuslän landscape, this Viking of violent passion, had fallen desperately in love with the idyllic surroundings of his native city!

And this really seemed to me altogether unreasonable, that he who himself had proclaimed that “he found the joy of existence in the hard, cruel struggle of life,” should be capable of loving natural sceneries which are the very opposite of all that.