3-011-465 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Sweden: elk-shooting in the Forest of Högtorp - from a sketch by our special artist, 1864. The future King Edward VII in Scandinavia. 'The place was semicircular in form, and strangely suggestive of an amphitheatre. Lumps of stone dotted the indosure, between and around which was a tangled growth of fern forest grass; groves of birch and larch were the nearest trees, beyond these was a rising background of rocks crowned with the dark and pointed fir-trees. In the centre lay the prize, large as an ox, and with outstretched limbs already stiff, that Kings and Princes had come there to slay - a noble beast, with a pedigree more famous than any of theirs, extending back to prehistoric times, and written even in the stone tables of the antediluvian era. To look upon an elk newly killed is a privilege that in these days is given to very few...Much time was spent in discussing the size and weight of the prize, which was eventually taken on board the steamer and carried to Stockholm, the Prince expressing his intention of having the head cut off and preserved as a memorial of the day's sport'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.