LAING (Samuel).
A Tour in Sweden in 1838;
Leaving his home on Orkney in 1834, Laing spent a couple of years living in Norway before travelling in Sweden in 1838. His account of this Swedish trip is highly critical, arising in part from his sympathy for the people of Norway, who were forced to join Sweden after nearly four centuries of Danish rule. Laing, using figures on crime, poverty and illegitimacy, argued that the Swedes lived “in a more demoralised state than any nation in Europe”; however, unsurprisingly, the Swedish Ambassador to the Court of St. James denounced these clais with a pamphlet, which Laing rebutted in the Monthly Chronicle.
