How we wish to be cited:
Lundkvist S. Poaching in the North of Sweden - tradition and culture [culture]. Rondel 2005; 22. URL: http://www.rondellen.net

Poaching in the North of Sweden
Tradition and culture

Editorial introduction In some countries, men were hung, beheaded, or deported to Australia for poaching. The Swedish policy was more gentle. For periods, poaching was regarded as an honorable but criminal spare-time job. Poachers were portrayed by pens such as Fritiof Nilsson Piraten (1895-1972) and Johan Rudolf Sundström (1874-1954), the latter also a member of the Swedish Parliament from 1911. However, most poachers were careful about anonymity and personal integrity – "shoot and shut up!" One such hero of the folklore was Gustav Lundkvist (1860-1940) at Svanaberg in the vicinity of Raggsjö and the present Library of Torgny Lindgren (1). His grandson Sture in Gothenburg tells a bit of the tale. Picture (left) of a tar pile described by the front page of the essay of Sture Lundkvist, "Production of tar" (Swe).

I was born 1928 at the farm that maintained my father and my grandfather. The houses were isolated from other farms and small villages by kilometers of tarns, bogs, and forests. My home had a strategic position in the wilderness at the moot of three shire borders, Lycksele, Norsjö, and Malå. Our livelihood was farming, forestry, and tar boiling. Hunting and fishing provided a necessity – "need knows no law". The farm was solitude with tracks, planked over mires in the summer, and sledge tracks over frozen marshes in the winter. A graveled road was broken through the backwoods in 1935.

During elementary school 1935-41, I was lodged in neighbor villages, first Rökå, then Malå. Like most boys of my time and origin, I was trained in farming, lumbering and tar boiling by my father 1941-1944. We had no ordinary dog most part of this period. I started the hares, my father shot them (cf 2). One deviant ran off in a perpendicular direction and was lost to us; most of them followed the hare habits of looping. Fishing provided another fine spare-time job.

In the autumn of 1944, I joined a cost-free vocational school in Vännäs – beware, pronounced much like "Venice" in Stockholm dialects, at the cost of the tourists who order their tickets by phone. The program was two years of training for a career as qualified craftsman. Leadership training followed in military service. After a few years, I joined a Volvo factory in Gotheburg. Now, more than 40 years later, I am a retired logistician with apartment in the center of Gothenburg, cottage at an island in the archipelago of our coast, daughter and grandchildren in Switzerland. We, my wife and me, enjoy the fruits of our labor. However, sometimes my thoughts linger on the time of my grandfather.

From boyhood, my grandfather was a devoted hunter; such a career started at about the age of 10 in his time (2,3). Beside the legal hunting, he hunted on illegal time and illegal land. The reindeer herdsmen of the time had a monopoly of hunting in the crown forest west of our farm; grandfather did not acknowledge their privilege (cf 4). At the age of ten, my father assisted grandfather in carrying home a moose shot in crown forest in late summer.

Unexpected visits of the county sheriff had always to be expected in the time of my grandfather. The storage of meat was a summer-time problem. Grandfather stored the moose meat, heavily salted, in two barrels. The barrels were hidden in the frost-burst cleft of a huge erratic block. The cellar was masked as mound by brushwood and turf. The cellar was located about 130 meters from present entrance to the farm. Still, I found the remnants only by special advice from my father 20 years ago.

It should be emphasized that moose was rare up to about 1955; cattle and reindeer cleared the pastures (cf 4). On an average, grandfather shot a moose each second year. In the winter, the game was butchered at the place of killing. The meat was speared on stakes and hidden in snow. Then the snow was tramped to ice in order to protect the meat from fox and raven. The blocks of meat were collected knapsack by knapsack during the winter.

In fact, the wilderness is more public than the metropolis. Every wanderer leaves tracks, especially in winter. One winter day, a forest keeper of the crown followed the ski tracks of my grandfather, which followed the footmarks of a moose. The keeper turned, where the ski tracks of grandfather turned. However, the moose lay dead behind the ridge, where it was shot. It was cut up and collected later.

My grandfather was never caught for poaching. However, once fresh meat from moose was found in his house at non-hunting season by a visiting county sheriff. Every explanation would make things worse; so grandfather shut up. He was sentenced by the court of Norsjö to prison for 20 days. "The lack of snuff was worst."

The facts known are that grandfather shot from a barn with a rifle, Remington of the 1867 model, caliber 12.17 mm. The wilderness was patched with arables and small hay-fields along creeks and swamps. Each such arable had a barn for hay to be transported to the farm during winter. Some hay was usually left for hunters of courting grouse. The shooter slept in the barn and was woken by courting grouse. The cocks courted and fought untill fainting (5). Thus, it was possible to shoot one cock after the other in the midst of the flock. When the concert had ended, the quarry could be collected.

When grandfather shot, his rifle exploded. He walked home and crept to bed without a word. He covered under the skin rug for a couple of days. My father thought that grandfather had re-loaded the original cartridges, designed for black powder, with stronger powder. In any case, the lock of the rifle had burst into two halves. I saw them last in a box at the loft of my old home, about 20 years ago.

Good old times were more harsh than good. We are the descendents of past survivors. It is desirable to understand the context of our ancestors in research, song, and saga.

1. Norberg B. The Torgny Lindgren Library [culture]! Rondel 2002; 12. URL: http://www.rondellen.net/culture 12_eng.htm
2. Hägglöf M. Fare of hare. [health]. Rondel 2004; 21. URL: http://www.rondellen.net/health21_eng.htm
3. Norberg B. Bernhard Nordh and body language [health]. Rondel 2002; 13. URL: http://www.rondellen.net/health13_eng.htm
4. Norberg B. Artificial aborigines – a threat to democracy and human rights [health]. Rondel 2004; 19. URL: http://www.rondellen.net/health19_eng.htm
5. Hägglöf M. Capercaillie courting – an animal model of love [culture]. Rondel 2001; 8;. URL: http://www.rondellen.net/culture08_eng.htm

Published April 22, 2005