Pictures of Sweden (I Sverrig) was published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen in 1851, based on Andersen’s Swedish journey of 1849. It is the most concentrated of his travel books — focused on a single country rather than ranging across Europe — and it captures Sweden at a particular historical moment: still largely rural and traditional, but beginning the modernization that would transform it over the following decades.
Andersen traveled through southern and central Sweden, visiting Stockholm, Uppsala, Dalarna, and the great lakes. His accounts of Swedish landscapes — the forests, the lakes, the long summer evenings — are among his most beautiful prose passages. He has a painter’s eye for light and atmosphere, and the Swedish summer landscape, with its distinctive quality of luminous twilight, draws from him some of his most lyrical writing.
The book is also a portrait of Swedish people: farmers, innkeepers, students, clergy, and the aristocrats who entertained him. Andersen was a celebrity by 1849, and he was received everywhere with honor — which did not prevent him from observing his hosts with the shrewd, slightly detached eye that characterizes all his writing about people. His portraits are affectionate but precise: he notes social customs, speech patterns, and the small details of daily life that distinguish one culture from another.
Collecting Pictures of Sweden
First edition (C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 1851): Danish text.
Market values:
- First Danish edition: $100–$250
- First English translation (1851): $50–$120
- Later editions: $8–$20