Riddarholm’s Church, Stockholm

COUSIN-HUNTING
IN SCANDINAVIA

BY
MARY WILHELMINE WILLIAMS

ILLUSTRATED

BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER
TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED

Copyright, 1916, by Mary W. Williams

All Rights Reserved

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

Made in the United States of America

TO MY FRIEND

ELLA MAY ADAMS

PREFACE

As every one knows, the mother land of the American nation is England. But what is the grandmother land? A short glance at England’s past will show that it is Scandinavia. Though the English people are exceedingly composite, there exists in them a very important Scandinavian strain. The Northern blood was contributed primarily by two great immigrations directly from Scandinavia, and one from Normandy, by people only a century and a half removed from Scandinavia; but it should be borne in mind also that the somewhat mysterious Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, whose continental home was in the peninsula of Jutland and about its base, must have borne a very close relationship to their contemporaries and neighbors to the north.

With the introduction of Scandinavian blood came Scandinavian manners and customs which made an impress upon the English population only recently recognized.

Of the various parts of Europe which contributed elements to the English people during their formative period, Scandinavia is the only one whose population has remained relatively pure and in the original home, unjostled and unmixed by foreign invasions. Thus it happens that the English people are more closely related to those of Scandinavia, in blood and in manners and customs, than they are to the inhabitants of any other European country. Hence, Scandinavia is the grandmother land of the American people.

We know the English fairly well, but with the Scandinavians, who have more in common with us than any other Europeans except the English, our acquaintance is of the slightest. Books in plenty, descriptive of present-day Scandinavia, are in existence, but they somehow fail to present the Scandinavians as definite personalities. My aim in writing this narrative has been to introduce to my fellow Americans in as intimate manner as possible their Scandinavian kindred, who are still living in the ancient ancestral homestead—the Grandmother Land. In my efforts to establish a real acquaintance between the branch of the family which has wandered and that which has remained at home, I have purposely omitted the more conventional and more obvious part of my experiences in Scandinavia in order to give place and emphasis to the homely details which help to bring out the characteristics of the Scandinavians and their home land, and to show them as they really are.

In the preparation of this book I have received aid of various sorts from many people—so many that to list the names of all to whom I feel indebted would be a most perplexing undertaking. Consequently, I make only this general acknowledgment of obligation.

Mary Wilhelmine Williams.

2207 N. Charles Street,
Baltimore, Maryland,
May 28, 1916.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

COUSIN HUNTING IN
SCANDINAVIA

CHAPTER I

THE ENTRANCE INTO SCANDINAVIA; COPENHAGEN

Copenhagen, Denmark,
July 20, 191—

Dear Cynthia:

Here I am at last, all safe and sound, in the land of the Viking—the land of my ancestors. In fact, several days have passed since my wandering feet first touched Danish soil; but I have been so absorbed with my initial explorations of this snug little country, which is still “home” to my mother, that I have been neglecting my own home and friends in the dear Far Western World.

Last Friday morning I left Kiel for Korsör, which is upon Seeland, the largest island of Denmark. A glorious, cloudless sky was overhead; and the Baltic about us was a vast, shimmering, rippling liquid plain of changing blues and greens over which our boat, the Prince Sigismund, smoothly and rapidly passed. About two hours after leaving Germany I secured my first glimpse of Danish territory; Langeland (Long Land), with low, white cliffs—modest imitations of Shakespeare’s “pale and white-faced shore”—loomed up on the left. Our boat kept close enough to the island to give us a good view of the rolling coast, marked off in patches of light fields and dark forests, with here and there glimpses of quaint farm houses and windmills of the “Dutch” variety. To the right, faint and far away, was a misty suggestion of the cliffs of Laaland (Low Land), a larger island of the Danish archipelago; but so like Langeland did its vague outline appear as to seem the very ghost or double of it.

While we were still passing between these two southern outposts of Denmark, luncheon was announced. Some of the passengers promptly went below to the dining salon, but many had their refreshments served on little tables on the open deck. I was among the latter. Most of the people about me were evidently Germans going to Denmark or Danes or other Scandinavians returning home after visits of business or pleasure in Germany. To them it was a voyage frequently made, and they preferred the deck to the dining salon merely because it was pleasanter. But to me, an American of Scandinavian parentage, it was such a very important occasion that I was determined to see as much as possible, during this first view, of the land in which, for centuries—for thousands of years—my forefathers and foremothers had lived and died.

The part of the Baltic which separates the island of Fünen from the island of Seeland, upon which Copenhagen is situated, is called by the Danes “Store Baelt”—the Great Belt. As I have told you, for my crossing, the waters of the Great Belt rippled charmingly under the gentle stroke of the summer breeze; and the islands beckoned invitingly to the front and the left and the right. This seascape and landscape was as different as possible from the mental picture which the name Great Belt had long summoned to my mind. Since studying Scandinavian history I had most frequently thought of the strait as heavily bridged with ice, and of the Danish islands as paralyzed under the dominion of the Frost King. For this was the state of affairs one February day two hundred and fifty odd years ago. And the bridge of ice was so strong and so thick as to tempt Charles title="the tenth" of Sweden—who had been recently moved to make a belligerent call upon his nearest neighbor to the south—to march several thousand horse and foot soldiers over the bridge, via the smaller islands to the right hand, and to threaten the Danish capital. In consequence of the Swedish king’s pressing attentions, Frederick III of Denmark, who had been to a considerable extent to blame for the quarrel, decided to buy peace by means of the treaty of Roskilde. This gave to the Swedes a half dozen Danish provinces, including some in the southern part of the present Sweden, which had long been Danish soil.

It soon became evident, however, that Charles intended to make use of the army which he maintained in Denmark for the purpose of wringing still further concessions from his humiliated neighbor. Naturally, Denmark did not agree to the new demands with the desired alacrity, and King Frederick declared that he would die like a bird in its nest rather than surrender to Charles. Whereupon the Swedish king vowed that he would wipe the Danish nest off the map, and soon had laid siege to Copenhagen. But the Danish people worked as one man and helped save their capital by hurling upon the enemy an avalanche of artillery fire, stones, and hot water. Much aid was also given to the Danes by the Dutch fleet, which slipped past the Swedish guns guarding the Sound to the north and arrived in time. Soon the tables were turned. The Swedes were defeated and driven out of the land, and in the end Denmark recovered some of the territory which she had lost. And little Denmark still stands, somewhat pared away, to be sure, in the course of the centuries by one enemy or another, but with the great heart of her—the most Danish part—still intact and still beating, an independent nation of busy, healthy, happy people.

While I was still meditating upon Charles X’s crossing of the Great Belt and the exciting events which followed, the Prince Sigismund slipped swiftly into the harbor of Korsör, a place rimmed with low-built, cosy-looking houses. As soon as we landed, a giant in buttons and bars “shooed” us into the customs house. He was a giant of the harmless, friendly sort, and as soon as the inspection of my baggage was over he hunted up a porter for me. The porter was a blond, guileless-appearing individual, possessed of astonishingly modest ideas of his own worth. He weighed my trunk and put it on the Copenhagen train, carried my two suit cases to an “ikke-röge” (smoking not allowed) compartment of the same train, and then announced the charge for his services to be ten öre—less than three cents!

The train which I boarded, like most passenger trains in Europe, was divided into compartments for accommodating about six people, each compartment opening into a narrow corridor running the whole length of the car. The compartment in which I rode was third class, but it was very clean and was quite satisfactory for a short journey. The seats were not upholstered, but they were more comfortable than the average church pew. On the walls were several attractive photographic views of Danish landscapes, and a map of Denmark. There was also the customary notice prohibiting spitting upon the floor. My only companions in the compartment were a rosy-cheeked Danish mother and two chubby, blue-eyed little boys. Each of the little chaps had a tiny shovel and a tin bucket, still bearing traces of sand. They had evidently spent the day at the beach.

As the train rolled placidly along, I had pleasant glimpses of Seeland through the car window. The otherwise monotonous level of the land was broken by the variety of color and form: there was a constant alternation of dark forests and light fields, of thatched-roof farm houses and huge windmills; and occasionally there appeared men and women cultivating the crops. Now and then we passed through a town, and in one of them, Roskilde, I obtained a view of the spires of the fine old cathedral towering above the tops of the trees clustering around it, and far above the broad red-tiled roofs of the houses in the foreground. I shall visit Roskilde upon my return.

Soon we were at our destination. It took just two hours to pass from Korsör to Copenhagen—to cross Denmark’s largest island; and the fare which I paid was the equivalent of eighty-five cents in American money—about one-third of what it would have been if I had come first class. To an American used to the long transcontinental journey in her own land, Denmark seems so very, very tiny.

As you doubtless know, I have cousins in Copenhagen, but I did not write to them of my intended visit because I wished to make my first acquaintance with Denmark’s capital by independent exploration; therefore, at the Central Station I took a drosky for a hotel. And at the hotel I secured a comfortable room, supplied with a generous portion of windows and furnished in blues and greens and browns blended according to Danish ideas of the artistic. My exploration of Copenhagen began with my bed-room. I wish that you could see my bed and my stove, Cynthia; they are marvels to American eyes. The bed is a veritable mountain of feathers; whole flocks of geese must have contributed their substance toward its construction. Not only are there several strata of feather pillows upon which to lie, but the coverlet is also of down, puffy and fluffy, and of smothering thickness. At night I cast most of the components of the bed in a heap upon the floor, cap off the pile with the coverlet, and sleep in peace under the top sheet and the steamer rug which I purchased in New York. It is not a bad plan to carry along one’s blankets when one is traveling.

When, as a child, you read the story of the “Princess and the Pea,” didn’t you feel that Andersen stretched the truth a little in his solemn assertion that the old queen put twenty mattresses on top of the pea, and twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses? I certainly did; but I doubt no longer. Since, in these modern times, a hotel bed for plain folks contains the number and variety of mattresses and feather beds which mine does, I am willing to believe that in times past on an extraordinary occasion Denmark’s queen used an unlimited quantity of downy layers in making up the royal “spare bed.” Whether or not the true princess felt the pea through the forty-strata mountain is another question.

The Danes call heating apparatuses like the one in my room a “kakkelovn,” and they show discrimination and taste in doing so; no such simple word as “stove” could adequately indicate the dignity and majesty of the structure which fills the corner of my room from floor almost to lofty ceiling. The edifice bears a striking resemblance to the picture of the Tower of Babel which appeared in the “Child’s Bible” of my juvenile days. Though its proportions are slimmer, its general style is the same; a series of stories—each one slightly smaller than the one next below—mount ambitiously skyward. Far above my head is the summit, crowned with a shining nickel ornament, and near the base is a door opening into the fire-box. There is enough cast iron in the tower to make several fair-sized American heaters.

The days since my arrival have been so balmy that the giant stove has not been called upon for service; but I gladly warrant its efficiency, for it bears a strong family resemblance to a more modest-appearing structure called a “kachelofen,” which kept my room in Germany comfortable last winter in the worst below-zero weather. These “kakkel” stoves are lined with brick and retain the heat remarkably well. They are a vast improvement upon the English open-grate fire which permits one to freeze on one side while he roasts on the other.

On the very afternoon of my arrival, without even stopping to unpack my suit-case, I took a walk about Copenhagen. I just could not wait; all of the sights and sounds which came to me through my wide-open windows seemed to blend into one distinct personality and to call to me to come forth and become acquainted. Copenhagen has decidedly the most distinct personality that I have ever sensed in any city. This interesting capital seems very old and very wise, but not too old and not too wise to sympathize with youth and unwisdom. It is like an ancient lady with silvery hair and strongly-lined face, who yet has warm red blood pulsing through her heart and a merry twinkle in her blue eyes; a very charming dame, Cynthia, and altogether lovable. Once out upon the streets, moving along with the pedestrians, I felt quite at home. I was no longer a stranger in a strange land.

Perhaps the fact that familiar words met my ears was the chief element in my sense of homelikeness. My ability to understand Danish and to speak it—after a fashion—contributed much toward placing me upon a friendly basis toward Copenhagen. But the Copenhageners’ knowledge of English was also a tremendous help. An astonishing proportion of the population speak English. Most of the younger half have studied it in the schools; and some have become acquainted with the language through residence in England or the United States. I promptly met one of the latter group. A short distance down the street I noticed some large red gooseberries of a variety which is edible raw. I have never seen them in the United States, but became fond of them in Germany; so I wanted some. As I could not remember the Danish name for the fruit, I simply pointed to it and asked for ten öres’ worth. While measuring out the berries, the salesman surprised me by asking, in good English, “What is the English name for these?” I told him, and he evidently promptly catalogued me as an American experimenting with the King’s Danish; for he proceeded to remark that he had seen berries of somewhat similar appearance in “the States,” where he had spent a few years. I replied that it was pleasant to find people in the shops who could speak English. “Sure!” said he, whereupon I was quite convinced that he had been in “the States.”

Until the middle of the twelfth century the place which later became Denmark’s capital was but a small fishing port. Facing, as it did, the Baltic, which was at the time infested by the piratical Wends, whose homes were on the southern shore, this portion of Seeland was very open to attack; and probably was also frequently a resort for sea-robbers. But a change came soon after the great warrior-priest, Axel—or Absalon, as he was later called—was made archbishop of Lund. This was in the stirring days of King Waldemar the Great, and the frontier bishop’s office was far from a sinecure; repeatedly, Absalon interrupted services at the altar in order to seize the sword and to pursue the enemies of his land and his religion. And eventually the struggle ended by the conquest of the Wendish heathen and their conversion to Christianity. But before this, Copenhagen was founded. During his campaigns against the Wends, Absalon strongly fortified the obscure little fishing port. At first the stronghold bore the name Axelshuus, or Absalon’s House, but as time passed the important commercial town which grew up around it came to be called “Kiöbmaenshavn,” which in Danish means “Merchants’ Haven.” Copenhagen is merely the English corruption of the modern Danish name, Kiöbenhavn.

The name of Bishop Absalon, as you see, is one which is written large in Danish history; and, in the long centuries which have passed since his day, Copenhagen has not forgotten his services. Close to the Island of the Castle, or Slotsholmen, on which once stood the fortress erected by him, is a conspicuous equestrian statue of Absalon; and on guard over the entrance to the new town hall, or Raadhuset, is another sculptured figure of the great Dane who went forth with the cross in one hand and the sword in the other.

But to my thinking, at least, Denmark’s prehistoric past is of more interest than her early Christian history. Consequently, I went, the day after my arrival, to the National Museum. This is in the heart of the old Copenhagen, just opposite Slotsholmen. The building which houses the national collection was first erected in the seventeenth century; and it was rebuilt in 1744, as a residence for a Danish prince, for which reason it is still called “Prinsens Palais.” About sixty years ago it was converted into a museum; and, though it is a homely old structure, the Prince’s Palace is spacious and well lighted, and hence is well suited to its present use.

On the walls of the courtyard are memorial tablets to Rasmus Nyerup and to Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, the founder of Danish archæology. To see these tablets was like coming across mementoes of old friends; for Nyerup and Worsaae have done much toward making rough ways smooth and crooked paths straight for all who care to learn what the ancient Scandinavians were like. And within the vestibule of the building stands a marble bust of Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, the man to whom Denmark is most indebted for bringing together the collections exhibited in the museum.

But it is neither Nyerup, Worsaae, nor Thomsen to whom belongs the final credit for Denmark’s pre-eminence in things archæological. That must go to the Danish people, whose unusual interest has been indispensable in making the national archæological exhibit the most complete possessed by any nation, except Norway and Sweden. But there is no mystery connected with the Scandinavian zeal for things prehistoric; it has a sound historical basis, which is akin to family pride. No other peoples of Europe have so long held the soil now occupied by them as have the Scandinavians. In fact, the ancestors of the modern Scandinavians reached the northwest of Europe even before they were Scandinavians; it was only during the long centuries following their arrival that they acquired the physical and mental characteristics which distinguish them from other peoples of Teutonic stock. When my pre-Scandinavian forefathers and foremothers came into the present Scandinavian lands, a thousand years or so before the birth of Christ, they were in the New Stone Age of culture. And while nations rose and fell in other parts of Europe—while Celt fell before Roman, and Roman before Teuton, and Teuton before Saracen and Slav—the people who were becoming Scandinavians remained isolated in their northern land, frequently quarreling among themselves, it is true, but unjostled and uninvaded by alien blood. Consequently, to the modern Scandinavians practically all archæological remains found in the land seem almost ancestral relics, and, naturally, they take a tremendous interest in them.

The exhibits are arranged in the museum in chronological order, beginning with the Old Stone Age, and visitors are expected to follow Denmark’s cultural development progressively. I know, because I unwittingly entered first one of the rooms containing exhibits from the late Middle Ages, and the vigilant guard courteously but firmly showed me to the door on the opposite side of the vestibule. I was not to be permitted to get an inverted idea of Denmark’s past, even if I wished to do so.

The earliest part of the Old Stone Age in Denmark is represented in the museum by a section of a kitchen midden, or shell mound. The primeval settlers of Scandinavia did not live in the days of patent garbage cans and incinerators; hence, after a feast of raw or baked clams or oysters on the half shell, they dumped the shells upon the community refuse heap—and thus were saved dish-washing. When they feasted on mammals and birds, the bones were thrown upon the same garbage pile; but the middens are mostly made up of shells, for shell fish—especially oysters—were wonderfully abundant in the Baltic in the Old Stone days, and could be had for the digging.

I was particularly interested in this bona fide, primitive Danish garbage heap because a few years ago I saw a midden of the same general character, left by the ancestors of the American Indians, when they were at the same stage of culture as the makers of the Danish shell mounds. Perhaps I have told you before of the midden which I saw in California. It was near Point Richmond, on the shores of San Francisco Bay; but as the land on which it stood has long been sinking, it had been partially carried away by the waves. On the other hand, since the coast of Denmark is rising, many of the Danish middens are now far inland. But the two kinds of prehistoric garbage heaps bore a striking resemblance to each other; both were made up largely of shells, interspersed here and there with bones.

Until the middle of the last century, the world believed that the many heaps of shells, mixed with bones, found here and there on the coasts of Denmark, were merely due to the in-wash of the sea waves. Professor Worsaae it was who discovered their true origin. In 1850 he proved them to be of human formation. Though this seems a very simple discovery, it was a very important one in archæology, for it explained similar mounds in other parts of the world, and it led to a most careful investigation of the Danish middens, resulting in the disclosure of fragments of weapons and utensils which threw light upon a people whose one-time existence the Danish archæologists had hitherto not even suspected.

But though we are introduced familiarly to their garbage heaps and to a few of their personal belongings, much uncertainty exists regarding the midden-builders of Denmark’s Old Stone Age. We know, to be sure, that they probably lived in huts of boughs and skins, or in caves; that their food was fish and game, with perhaps roots and berries; that they could manufacture a very rough sort of pottery; that their weapons and implements were of the most crudely-worked stone. But of how these ancients themselves appeared, whence they came, and whither they went, we know nothing. It seems pretty certain that they were a different people from the ancestors of the modern Scandinavians. Indeed, some scientists have suggested that the midden people were members of the yellow race, probably related to the Eskimo, or to the Lapp. And in the absence of proof this theory will do as well as any other.

The people from whom the Scandinavians evolved came later, as I said before—in Denmark’s New Stone Age. It would be more accurate, I presume, to say that they brought the New Stone Age with them; for when they reached the Scandinavian cradle-land they already knew how to chip stone into accurately shaped implements and weapons, and how to put on a finishing polish when the proper shape had been obtained. However, these early immigrants learned much in their new home about working in stone, and in Scandinavia the New Stone period attained unusual perfection. This was because the isolation of the region delayed the introduction of a knowledge of work in metals. With all due respect to the Neolithic Danes, I feel bound to remark that, given a sufficiently long period of apprenticeship and a reduction of the number of distracting and discouraging elements, most people would be able to reach a high standard.

Nevertheless, when one wanders through the archæological collection one becomes quickly convinced that these primitive Scandinavians were master workmen. On the shelves behind the glass doors are extensive exhibits of stone hammers and axes and other objects, in a great variety of graceful and beautiful patterns—wonderfully symmetrical where symmetry was aimed for, and with a smoothness of finish that has resisted the vicissitudes of thousands of years. In those early handicraft days such work was an art as well as a science; and surely the craftsmen loved their labor, else they could not have exercised the patience necessary to the attainment of such excellence. When I remember how simple must have been the tools with which they wrought, I swell with pride over the skill of my Stone Age ancestors.

As the use of bronze in Denmark supplanted the use of stone, as a material for the manufacture of implements and weapons, so the exhibit from the Bronze Age, in the National Museum, comes next after that from the New Stone Age. In one of the rooms in which the early Bronze Age finds are displayed are the life-sized dummy figures of a man and woman, dressed in the costumes of the time—in garments of sheep’s wool, mixed with deer’s hair. I was tremendously impressed to find that my great-grandparents of three thousand years ago actually wore woven garments—of simple pattern, it is true, but woven garments, nevertheless. Before visiting the Early Bronze room, I must have had a vague impression that at this period my forbears clad themselves in the skins of wild beasts—like Adam and Eve and Robinson Crusoe.

Lest you skeptically conclude, Cynthia, that the accouterments of the lady and gentlemen in the Early Bronze room were merely highly glorified reproductions of imaginary primitive costumes, I beg to assure you that the garments are faithful copies, both as regards style and material, of clothing found in graves belonging to this ancient time. Isn’t it astonishing that such things should have been preserved through the stretch of centuries? But it was due to no miracle. The coffins were made of roughly hewn and hollowed-out trunks of oak trees, and the tannic acid in the bark preserved not only the coffins but the clothing and other articles buried with the dead.

Thanks also to the fact that the ancient Scandinavians were careful to supply their dead with the necessaries and luxuries of the time, in order that the departed ones might live in comfort beyond the Great Divide, I was able to learn something about their knowledge of the decencies of life. For instance, I found that “in the flesh” they used horn combs, and that they expected to use them beyond the Divide. It is such a comfort not to have to picture them with matted, tangled locks!

But by the Later Bronze Age the Scandinavians had become sufficiently advanced to burn their dead; consequently, the graves of this period throw less light upon their costumes and habits. The bronze articles, however, which the fire could not harm, show the same perfection of workmanship and the artistic beauty which one would expect to find in the descendants of the people of the Scandinavian New Stone Age. And like this age also, the Bronze Age was prolonged in Scandinavia; iron did not come into general use until four or five centuries before Christ; hence, the Scandinavians again had time for the practice which makes perfect.

In the exciting days of the later time when the piratical raids of the Vikings caused the nations to the south to pray “Protect us, O Lord, from the fury of the Northmen!” simple burial was again introduced, but cremation was not completely abandoned. The return to the more primitive method of disposing of the dead was, I suppose, due to imitation of Christian practice; for Christian observances had a strong modifying influence in Scandinavia long before Christianity itself was adopted there. It was undoubtedly imitation of their Christian neighbors which led the Scandinavians of the late Viking period to engrave runic inscriptions upon the previously bare stones erected over the graves of the dead. But in the epitaphs the spirit of the departed was commended to the protection of the warlike Thor, who was at that time the favorite god of the North, and not to the gentle Christ. Such heathen grave stones are found in abundance in the museum. Another Christian practice which got the attention of the Scandinavians was the wearing of the cross and the crucifix as emblems or charms; in the pagan North this custom seems to have produced an enthusiasm for Thor’s hammers, which were worked into ornamental patterns in jewelry and were also worn about the neck in the form of little silver pendants.

Upon my first visit to the National Museum, I decided that I should like to take photographs of a few of the objects there. An American gentleman residing in Copenhagen whom I consulted about the matter intimated that it was very doubtful whether I would be permitted to use a camera in the building; and he advised me to repeat my request through the American minister to Copenhagen, if the powers at the museum remained obdurate after I had personally approached them upon the subject. In consequence of this hint of coming difficulty, I armed myself with all of the documents in my possession calculated to prove me a responsible and respectable person, and set forth. At the museum I asked to see the director, and was promptly piloted by a guard through what seemed an endless series of corridors and passageways to the office of the Formidable One. I expected to see a Dane of grim appearance, curt manners, and an iron jaw. But the Herr Direcktor was far from that; he was a mild, absent-minded, somewhat frowsy-looking gentleman who would scarcely frighten a mouse. In spite of my surprise and relief, I preserved sufficient presence of mind to blurt out my request, at the same time placing my letters of introduction, passport and diplomas in a jumbled heap upon the table before him.

The Power behind the National Museum gazed blankly and absent-mindedly at the pile of documents for a few seconds, and then asked, “What are those papers?”

“They are my credentials,” said I.

“Credentials? I do not care to see your credentials,” said he. “Take all the pictures you want.”

And I did. Wasn’t the Herr Direcktor a nice man?

I have since learned that the Scandinavian people are surprisingly generous and helpful toward all serious students who come to their land for the purpose of working in their libraries and museums. They are honest themselves and expect honest treatment from others, and generally receive it, too, I think, else they would hardly continue their liberal policy.

But I fear that I may have bored you with my ramblings in archæological fields, haunted by the ghosts of ancient heathen Scandinavians. By way of variety, you might like to hear about my visit to “Runde Taarn” (the Round Tower), which is above ground, and modern and of Christian construction. No pun was intended, but it happens that the tower was really built by Christian IV of Denmark, who lived in the early part of the seventeenth century. It was originally erected for an astronomical observatory and—together with an important library—was connected with a church, built at the same time, which was given the doubly significant name, Church of the Trinity.

For a short time Tycho Brahe, who, because of his birth in southern Sweden in the days when it was controlled by Denmark, is claimed by both Swedes and Danes, worked in the observatory. Tycho had received much kindness at the hands of Frederick II, Christian’s predecessor, but it soon was evident that the new ruler, great though he was in many ways, did not appreciate the genius of the astronomer, and not only cut off the pension which had been granted to Tycho by the late king, but also forbade him to continue his investigations. Before this, Tycho Brahe had gained the hatred and contempt of the nobility, to which rank he belonged, by daring to do anything so useful as to study astronomy; he had been ostracised by his family as a result of his marriage with a peasant girl; and had roused the jealous indignation of physicians by free medical attendance upon the poor. Now, when his king turned against him, the astronomer shook the dust of unappreciative Denmark from his feet for good and all, and went to Germany, where he taught the German astronomer Kepler, who became greater than he. Kepler’s teacher, however, will be long remembered not only because of the fundamental discoveries which he made, but also because his name is fixed in the sky. Perhaps you will recall that in the old normal school days when I gave “astronomy parties,” one particularly large lunar crater stared down at us through the telescope like the eye of a Cyclops. That one is named Tycho, for the Scandinavian astronomer, Tycho Brahe.

Though Tycho Brahe went, the Round Tower stayed on; and it was used for astronomical purposes until about fifty years ago. It might have been so used still, except for its popularity as a general landscape-gazing observation tower, in spite of the opposition of the professors, who finally abandoned it for purposes of investigation.

The top of the tower is reached not by a spiral staircase, but by a wide spiral roadway of brick, deeply grooved by the carriage wheels of celebrities who drove to the top in days gone by. Peter the Great, for one, seems to have found the ascent of Runde Taarn a favorite amusement when he visited Denmark. It is stated that when he made his last ascent it was in a coach drawn by six horses, and that Queen Catherine sat at his side and held the lines. Until recent years also, in accordance with time-honored custom, newly confirmed children climbed to the top of the tower for a view of the surrounding land; thus they celebrated their formal entrance into manhood and womanhood, and thus they were introduced to the world in which they were thenceforth to play a larger part.

With the coming of the flying machine, however, and other devices for producing more exquisite thrills, Runde Taarn was left pretty much to the ordinary tourist, who pays his ten-öre entrance fee and, like myself, climbs laboriously along the worn roadway to the top. But once up there under the fluttering folds of Dannebrog, the beautiful red and white flag of the Danes, your tourist—meaning myself—gazes out over the city feeling fully rewarded for her exertions. For the view is a splendid one and reveals practically all of the famous buildings of the city, with their peculiar towers and domes, spires and steeples, as well as the parks and boulevards interspersed between, and the harbor with its many ships, and the Sound beyond.

Around the edge of the platform at the top of the tower are double railings. The inner one, I learned, was put up in the 1890’s, during a suicide epidemic. Before it was erected several melancholy Danes had taken arms against a sea of troubles and had ended them by a flying leap over the solitary railing. Now, such a spectacular termination of one’s earthly career is no longer possible.

Another monument to Christian IV’s interest in building is the Castle of Rosenborg. Formerly this royal residence was well outside of Copenhagen, but during the centuries the city has grown to such a degree that now the beautiful royal park and castle are in its very heart. Perhaps it was the magic of the day of my visit to it which lent Rosenborg part of its fascination; for the sky was of the clearest blue and the sunshine was wonderfully golden. Yet the castle itself, irrespective of the day, looked just like the castles in all proper fairy tales. With its red brick walls outlined in Renaissance softness, it stood in its setting of grass and trees, looking indescribably “homey” and inviting. About it clustered the great rose gardens blooming so triumphantly and invitingly that as I approached across the park I felt a stranger to my recent self. It seemed as if fairy tales might be true, or as if I myself might be a child in a fairy book.

But to cross the threshold was to be disillusioned; for Danish kings and queens and gallant knights and ladies fair no longer dwell within. The castle is a museum; since 1863 it has been the repository of the “Danish Kings’ Chronological Collection.” And royal “old clothes,” though sometimes interesting, are incapable of working enchantment. The collection of relics at Rosenborg, however, is one of the richest in Europe, and is exceedingly varied. In it one may find royal souvenirs ranging from the lock of hair of Christian I, who lived four hundred and fifty years ago, to the couch upon which the late Christian IX was in the habit of taking his noonday nap.

Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

City Hall (Right) and Palace Hotel (Left), Copenhagen

Before telling you about the collection more fully, however, I wish to explain to you the time-honored custom of naming the Danish kings, lest you become utterly bewildered among the Christians and Fredericks. The system is really a very simple one; for, since the accession of the Oldenburg house to the throne four hundred and fifty years ago, all of the kings—with one single exception—have been Christians or Fredericks, appearing alternately. The exception was the son of Christian I who ruled as King Hans. Ideally, he should have been named Frederick, for his successor was Christian; but, as it was, the Christians got the start of the Fredericks by one reign; so the late Christian IX was succeeded by the late Frederick VIII. And I suppose that henceforth even to the end of Danish kings the alternation of Fredericks and Christians will continue.

Every Christian and every Frederick is, I presume, represented at Rosenborg by at least one relic, but I have no intention of boring you with an exhaustive catalogue of them. However, a few of the objects which for one reason or another caught my attention may not be without interest to you. Christian IV, the builder of the castle, who is generally considered Denmark’s best-beloved king, is naturally well represented in the museum. It was this Christian, you will remember, who led the unsuccessful Protestant forces during the Danish period of the Thirty Years’ War. While the struggle was on, Christian had a vision—or thought he had—with reference to the war. In one of the show-cases at Rosenborg is a miniature painting of the vision, accompanied by a description by the king. A further proof that Christian IV had a part in the superstition of his time is a piece of jade which he wore as a charm against gout.

After taking his turn in the Thirty Years’ War, Christian valiantly fought the Swedes in the great battle of the Baltic; but in the engagement one of his eyes was put out by a splinter. The cap which he wore, with a green patch attached to protect the wounded organ, is another souvenir of Christian IV’s reign to be found at Rosenborg. You remember well, I am sure, Longfellow’s translation of Evald’s song, “King Christian,” which is one of the favorite national songs of the Danes. It begins:

“King Christian stood by the lofty mast

In mist and smoke;

His sword was hammering so fast,

Through Gothic helm and brain it passed;

Then sank each hostile hulk and mast,

In mist and smoke.”

That King Christian was Christian IV, and the battle was the battle of the Baltic.

In the exhibit belonging to the period of Frederick III, the successor to this famous Christian, are pieces of alchemical gold. I was surprised at this, for I had not supposed that the attempts to change the baser metals into gold lingered so late as the seventeenth century. But perhaps the Danish “artificial gold” was not the result of any serious attempt to find a short-cut to wealth.

It was during the reign of the next Frederick that Czar Peter of Russia visited Denmark. Frederick IV and Peter were pretty good friends, partly because of their common enmity for Charles XII of Sweden, “the madman of the North.” In the Corridor of Frederick IV is the bust of Peter, and also a goblet and a compass of ivory, both of which were made by Peter, who knew how to use his hands as well as his head. In the apartments of Frederick are also a bottle containing a little of the oil with which the Danish king was anointed at coronation, and a table and a chair of chased silver used by him and his successors at the formal opening of the Danish parliament.

Frederick VI lived in the troubled period of the Napoleonic wars; and as a result of his desire to remain neutral, he saw his capital bombarded by the British fleet. This provoked the Danes to ally themselves with France, against England, and they paid for doing so, in 1814, by the loss of Norway to Sweden. A curious souvenir of this Napoleonic war time is a ship of the line made by Danish sailors from bones found in the soup served to them while they were prisoners of war of the English.

I particularly wish, Cynthia, that you could have seen the grand old banqueting hall on the top floor of Rosenborg. It restored to me the atmosphere of fairy lore and romance which the museum of relics of defunct royalty had dispelled. The great room is finely proportioned, and is well lighted by large windows which give a fine view of the park. On the pane of one of these windows was the name “Alexandra”—scratched with a diamond—to which a guard near at hand proudly called my attention. The dowager Queen Alexandra of England is the daughter of the late Christian IX, you remember. The present appearance of the room dates from the time of Christian V, two hundred years ago. The ceiling is of dark oak set with panels painted by famous artists. On the walls are twelve Gobelin tapestries, woven at the order of Christian V in honor of some rather doubtful victories won by him in southern Sweden. Tall silver candle-sticks have been placed at intervals around the sides of the room; and, here and there, against the walls are great arm chairs, and stiff, grand-looking, high-backed ones, upholstered in rich embroidery. Before the fireplace are two silver firedogs and a silver firescreen bearing Christian V’s monogram. The royal thrones stand at one end of the room; that of the king was constructed from the ivory of whales’ teeth in the 1660’s, while the queen’s, which is of silver, was made in 1725. But to me, far more impressive than these antique seats of the mighty were three couchant silver lions, large as Newfoundland dogs, which stand in front of thrones.

The lions represent the three divisions of Scandinavia, which, through the Union of Calmar, were, in 1397, united by the great Queen Margaret under Danish rule. In 1523 Sweden revolted against the tyranny of Christian II, “the Nero of the North,” and established her independence under Gustav Vasa; and Norway was finally lost to Denmark a century ago. Nevertheless, these three particular lions are still used at royal funerals, at special solemn audiences granted by the king, and at the opening of the Danish parliament when the king is present. And three lion emblems still appear upon the Danish coat-of-arms. Sweden, however, has long since ceased objecting to the implied insult, for she well knows that Denmark has no unholy designs upon Swedish territory. Indeed, it is a case of tit for tat; for during the long period of enmity and warfare between Denmark and Sweden, following the separation, Sweden retaliated by placing three Scandinavian crowns upon her shield; and there they are to-day, even though the two countries are now the best of friends. Norway, on the other hand, is more modest; probably made so by her four centuries of domination by Denmark and her later unequal union with Sweden. Upon Norway’s coat-of-arms are seen one solitary rampant lion and one solitary Scandinavian crown. Rejoicing in her tardy freedom, Norway is satisfied merely to be free; “Alt for Norge” (All for Norway), the motto which appears upon her coins beneath the head of King Haakon, reflects only this intense patriotic joy; the “Alt” carries no thought of unfriendly designs upon the property of Norway’s neighbors.

CHAPTER II

MORE ABOUT COPENHAGEN; THE COPENHAGENERS’
COUNTRY GARDENS

Copenhagen, Denmark,

July 26, 191—.

My dear Cynthia:

You have probably noticed that I have not as yet mentioned the art museums of Copenhagen. That fact is due to the modesty of the amateur in the presence of the professional. However, as I know that you will want my “reaction,” I confess to having visited two museums of art. Thorwaldsen’s I visited yesterday. It is a huge, ugly, tomb-shaped building, constructed at the expense of the city of Copenhagen as a permanent home for the works of the greatest of Danish sculptors. And it is really a tomb as well as a museum, for Bertel Thorwaldsen, in whose honor it was erected, lies buried in the court under a great mass of dark ivy. As in ancient classical tombs, a frescoed border around the outside wall depicts scenes from the life of the entombed one. Among other events connected with Thorwaldsen’s successes is represented his triumphal return to Copenhagen in 1838, after the long, hard years of apprenticeship to his art in Rome. Above the main entrance is the gift of the late King Christian—a Victory reigning in her quadriga. This beautiful piece of bronze was designed by Thorwaldsen himself, but was executed by another Danish sculptor, Herman Bissen.

What impressed me most of all about the museum was the tremendous amount of work which Thorwaldsen turned off. There are scores and hundreds of sculptures, drawings and paintings by him. As you know, most of his subjects are classical—as would be expected of the founder of the neo-classical school. But there are really very few of his works for which I care. Thorwaldsen’s people do not look as if they had ever accomplished anything; they bear too few marks of life’s battles; they are too passive, too gentle, too restful. The “Christ,” I admit, possesses a benignance and serenity which is overmastering; and the bas-reliefs of “Night” and “Morning” are exquisite. But the draperies of some of his Greeks do look painfully like wash-boards. Judging from the “Lion of Lucerne,” Thorwaldsen was more successful with animals. The “Lion” is my favorite. He has kept his trust, has fought a good fight, and is dying grandly—but in anguish of mind because even the sacrifice of life itself was insufficient to save the lilies of France. However, I do not consider the “Lion” characteristic of Thorwaldsen’s work. Do you?

Unlike Thorwaldsen’s Museum, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, which I also visited, had its origin in individual generosity. Its founder was Captain Carl Jacobsen, “Ph. D., Brewer,” who is the Carnegie and Rockefeller of Denmark. He is a great lover of art, and his country has profited accordingly. Jacobsen money has paid for the New and Old Glyptoteks, two of the finest art museums in Scandinavia. Probably you are shocked at the idea of the love of art being fostered by “beery” money. I was at first, I acknowledge, and I still wish that the “wherewithal” had been secured in some other way; but I have been assured that the Carlsberg brew is of a particularly pure quality—as beers go—and that the Jacobsens are really patriotic, public-spirited Danes.

The New Glyptotek is a handsome building occupying a whole city block. The interior is beautifully decorated with rare woods, colored marbles, and frescoes. And it contains collections of paintings and sculptures representing most of the countries of Europe. As you well know, I was never orthodox in my preferences among works of art—especially paintings. It was probably in consequence of this peculiarity that I was drawn to a canvas which most people would, I suppose, pass by. The picture is “Denmark,” by Elizabeth Jerichau-Baumann, and was painted more than sixty years ago. Denmark is represented by a young woman, strong, determined, and fearless, standing amidst sheaves of rye; in her left hand she bears Dannebrog, the red-and-white crusaders’ flag of the Danes, which she is prepared to defend with the two-edged sword grasped in her right.

“Denmark” by Elizabeth Jerichau-Baumann

Grave Monument by Rudolph Tegnér

The sculptures in the New Carlsberg are, I think, finer than the paintings. The French collection is the most complete to be found outside of France itself. It is not necessary to tell you that in plastic art France is far ahead of Denmark. Yet there were several Danish pieces for which I cared very much—some by Herman Bissen, and particularly some by Jens Adolf Jerichau. I was much attracted by the latter’s “Little Girl with a Dead Bird.” It is in white marble. The little girl, barefooted and simply dressed, is sitting upon a rock with the bird tenderly held between her hands; and upon her face is an expression of gentle pity which gives a peculiar charm to the whole figure. But, to me, the most pleasing of all the Danish sculptures was a grave monument by an obscure young artist, Rudolf Tegnér. It represents the mourning figure of a young woman, whose face is left buried in the original mass of white marble. There is an exquisite delicacy about the slender, drooping form to which no picture that I might send you could do justice. A similar figure, in bronze, marks the grave of the artist’s mother at Elsinore.

Perhaps you would be interested in learning how I spent yesterday, which was Sunday. Like all of my Danish days, this was crammed with new impressions. In the morning I attended services at Vor Frue Kirke—the Church of Our Lady. In this church are the greyish blue marble originals of Thorwaldsen’s “Christ and Apostles.” The statues are of heroic size and are exceedingly impressive. Besides myself, there were six other tourists viewing the church—five alert-looking boys and a middle aged man, evidently their tutor. One glance was sufficient to tell me that they were Americans. I, too, must have had a “Made-in-America” appearance, for before I had uttered a sound one of the boys who happened to stand near me while I was studying the “Christ,” began to address me in “American,” commenting intelligently upon the beautiful figure. The unassuming friendliness of the boy quite warmed my heart. When services began the party seated themselves in the rear of the room and took notes and read their guide-books for a time; and then tiptoed quietly out. I felt lonesome when they had gone, and decided to go cousin-hunting the very next day.

Like the vast majority of Scandinavian churches, Our Lady is State Lutheran. But the Scandinavians, though instinctively religious, are by no means regular church-goers; and summer Sundays in Copenhagen are more likely to be devoted to recreation than to formal worship. Consequently, the congregation was a mere scattered handful; most of the worshipers were old people who came early, wearing solemn expressions, and carrying prayer-books. The preacher was a little old man in black gown and white linen ruff, suggestive of pictures of Sir Walter Raleigh. From a lofty and magnificent pulpit, reached by a staircase, he preached his sermon. The solemn faces of the congregation had led me to expect a self-righteous, theological presentation containing conspicuous thanks to God that Danish State Lutherans are not as other men; but I was much relieved to hear a live human message, not read, but clearly and feelingly spoken, in which the pastor urged his hearers to lives of loving service to their fellow humans. I liked the little old pastor, and forgot that I was homesick for “my own United States.”

I think that you would have enjoyed the music, Cynthia, for it possessed a dignity and reserve conducive to reverence. You may be interested to learn that the choir was composed entirely of women, and that a woman played the pipe organ.

After the services were ended, I had luncheon in a restaurant close at hand; and then I went for a long, rambling walk, visiting some places which I had seen before and others that were new. I passed Runde Taarn again, bound for Kongens Nytorv, one of the finest squares of the capital, pleasant with shade trees, well-kept lawns, and an abundance of flowers, among which the cosmopolitan scarlet geranium seemed as much at home as in California. On the Nytorv is the Royal Theatre, an imposing Renaissance structure.

Twelve different streets lead out of the square. I made my exit by the most famous one, Bredgade (Broad Street), which for part of its length is lined with handsome shops. Copenhagen shopkeepers have a shrewd but gratifying way of keeping up the shades of their windows on Sundays, thus enabling the worldly-minded to enjoy gratuitously the beauty of the wares and to select the very articles which they would purchase were they rich. As I long since learned to ‘name the birds without a gun, to love the wood-rose and leave it on its stalk,’ I am particularly fond of this mental shopping; it is a pleasant pastime, devoid of the worry and wear of the physical kind. The display of antiques, pictures, and porcelains on Bredgade is unusually interesting. Antiques, in general, but rarely attract me—except as do curios in a museum—for many of them have little else than their age to recommend them; and age, in itself, is no virtue. Some of the old furniture, and the bronzes which I saw in the windows on Bredgade, were, however, very handsome.

But the paintings and the porcelains especially caught my eye. To my mind (and I believe you would agree with me), many of the works by young Scandinavian artists would hold their own against modern paintings in any European country. They are genuinely Scandinavian. It is such a satisfaction to know that the Scandinavian lands have really begun to make a distinct contribution to the art treasures of the world. And as for porcelain, I am simply mad over the Royal Copenhagen variety; it is almost as difficult for me to pass a display of this ware without stopping, and gazing, and lingering, as it is for a toper to resist a grog shop. The makers of the Copenhagen pieces are high-grade artists, and their work beggars my attempts at description. Much of the attractiveness seems to lie in the glaze; it is exquisite, and it gives to the delicate colors an appearance of remoteness and a subtlety of charm and refinement which seems almost to belong to the realm of the spiritual. Compared with the Royal Copenhagen, most other “China” impresses me as loud and bizarre. But the prices of the pieces which I should have wanted to buy, had I been anything more than a mental shopper, would pay for my whole Scandinavian tour; hence, I am not likely to carry home with me very extensive samples of the ware.

In the course of my rambles I reached the Marble Church. This building was begun more than a century and a half ago, but lack of funds delayed its completion until within the last thirty years, when it was finished at the expense of Herr Tietgen, a philanthropic Danish banker. In architectural style and richness of material, this building contrasts strongly with Our Lady, which is really conspicuous by its plainness—except for Thorwaldsen’s sculptures. The Marble Church, as its name implies, is constructed primarily of marble; and it is crowned with a great dome—suggestive of Saint Paul’s in London—covered with copper partially gilded. A large number of busts and statues of ecclesiastics and saints also decorate the exterior. Outside, above the entrance, are the words, “Herrens Ord bliver evendelig” (The Word of God is everlasting). The main room beneath the dome is perfectly circular and is rich with wood-carvings, colored marbles, mosaics, paintings, and statues. There is a fortune of gold-leaf in the crucifixes and candle-sticks.

The guard at the door to whom I paid my entrance fee recommended the view from the dome and supplied me with a pair of opera glasses; so after viewing the interior I mounted to the top. This I accomplished by groping my way up a dark, narrow, winding stair-case, some parts of which were as dark as a pocket—and in the darkest part bumping squarely into a couple of women who were on their way down. As the Marble Church is quite a distance from Runde Taarn, I gained a new and different view of Copenhagen from its dome; and I also gained considerable information about the most important buildings from a friendly Danish lady whom I found at the top.

Amalienborgtorv, or square, which is near the Marble Church, was my next objective point. It is a stone-paved place, ungladdened by trees or grass or flowers, with a large bronze equestrian statue of Christian V in the center. On each of the four sides is a royal palace in rococo style, in which the king and queen and other members of the royal family reside during most of the year. When I crossed the Torv, soldiers in high, bearskin caps stood on guard at the street entrances—a sign that the king was in residence.

After Rosenborg, Amalienborg seemed so dreary and uninteresting—especially since common visitors get no glimpse of the interior—that I did not linger, but walked on to Grönningens Esplanade, where St. Alban’s, the first English church to be built in Denmark, peeps out with a charm peculiarly English from a clump of trees bordering an arm of the Baltic.

North of St. Alban’s is Langelinie, the most beautiful promenade in Copenhagen. To the left of the promenade is a park, and to the right lies the harbor, filled with all sorts of water craft bearing the flags of many nations, including our own “Old Glory,” which looked wondrous good to me. Great crowds of people—young and old, parents and children—dressed in their Sunday clothes, were passing to and fro upon Langelinie, all looking healthy and happy.

I returned through the beautiful, shady park. Upon the benches under the trees I noticed many women serenely chatting, their fingers busy with sewing, embroidery, or knitting. Would you call such a Sabbath occupation scandalous and unseemly? I must confess that I was more impressed with the women’s industry than I was shocked by their desecration of the day.

Farther on, I took a peep into the Citadel. It dates from the seventeenth century, and is of red brick, with tree-covered ramparts. Soldiers were standing on guard at the entrance, and were passing back and forth between the buildings. Unlike England and the United States, Denmark, I regret to say, requires military service of all of her ablebodied men. She maintains what is, in proportion to her population, a large standing army.

This morning, true to the resolution made at Frue Kirke, I called upon Cousin Lars. Cousin Lars is really my mother’s cousin, but as he has always been her favorite cousin he has seemed a sort of an uncle to me. Many years ago, when I was a tiny child, Cousin Lars spent several years in California, which he expected to make his permanent home; but his young wife suddenly died, and it was her dying request that he take their children back to the home land and rear them. This caused him to return to Denmark.

Cousin Lars still loves the United States, however, and, though “blood is thicker than water,” I really believe that he welcomed me more heartily as a Californian, recently “come over,” than as a cousin. For he quickly convinced me that I was thrice welcome—and caused me to regret keenly that I had delayed so long making known to him my presence in Copenhagen. He wished to send immediately to the hotel for my baggage; and without consulting me he asked his housekeeper to have a room prepared for my reception. But when I informed him that I was booked to sail from Copenhagen to-night he abandoned his plan, stipulating, however, that I was to be his guest upon my return.

I made my call early this morning in order to be sure to find Cousin Lars at home, for the Danes are fresh-air people and all who can afford to do so spend their afternoons in the city parks or in the country. And in consequence of my early call I enjoyed the pleasure of a real Danish home luncheon with my cousin. Yet it was not so genuinely Danish, after all, except the food, which, like all food I have tasted in Denmark, was good. The luncheon was really Danish-American, for Cousin Lars, in my honor, had the table set with the silverware bought years ago in the Far West, and at one end of the table he placed a little silk Dannebrog with the white cross on the red field, and on the other my own Stars and Stripes. As a sign that this was a very festive occasion, both flags were at the very tip-top of their masts. Our conversation was also Danish-American. At times we spoke Danish, my contribution being of a very bad quality; at others, we spoke “American,” Cousin Lars’ efforts showing rust for want of use; and, occasionally, when the borrowed languages seemed inadequate, we would resort to our own respective mother tongues and exchange remarks in Danish and American.

After luncheon I learned that Cousin Lars had planned to spend the afternoon in the country in his “garden,” and I urged that he execute the plan and take me along. He did, and I had such a pleasant, untouristlike time! We started on the street cars, but a strike of carmen interrupted our progress; then we walked the remainder of the way—as I preferred doing so to taking a carriage—and Cousin Lars called attention to the places of interest which we passed.

Near the outskirts of the city, a “folke skole,” or elementary public school, which was being repainted, caught my eye, and we went in to explore. This was one of the free schools to which the poor people send their children. The class rooms were well lighted and well ventilated and generally comfortable. In fact, the building pretty closely resembled those of our own elementary schools. A few good pictures, including portraits of Hans Christian Andersen and Bertel Thorwaldsen, were on the walls. Upon the second floor were completely equipped departments for the teaching of cooking and sewing; and in another part of the building was a manual-training laboratory.

Farther out along the street I noticed a bread-line of children. A woman was handing out generous-looking sandwiches to twenty or thirty little people as they filed past her in an irregular line. These were children, Cousin Lars said, whose parents were not able to supply them with proper food. While school was in session they were supplied with luncheons at public expense; and now, during vacation, one of their teachers, a noble-hearted young woman, had assumed the task of keeping the active young bodies somewhat adequately nourished. She herself is poor, but she solicits money from private individuals with which to purchase food; and this food she personally distributes daily. I am glad to be able to say, however, that such cases of want are comparatively rare. The splendid spirit of cooperation shown by the Danish people in their industrial life has produced a degree of prosperity which is truly remarkable, in view of the resources of the country.

And now for the garden—for we soon reached it. It is a tiny plat of ground of about four thousand square feet, which Cousin Lars has planted to the choicest kind of flowers, selected with the view to securing an unbroken succession of bloom, beginning with the earliest varieties and ending with the latest. There are also a few shade trees, and along the fence are berry bushes. In the rear of the lot is an arbor covered with a picturesque tangle of woodbine and climbing rose; and close beside it is a one-roomed bungalow, so overgrown with clematis, now in bloom, that the little building looks like a giant purple bouquet. The bungalow room is furnished with a table, a couch, two or three comfortable chairs, a case containing books and magazines. Attached like a barnacle to the outside of the building is a tiny kitchenette, containing an oil stove and a stock of provisions.

We were hungry, of course, after our walk, so as soon as we arrived we proceeded to prepare a luncheon. I made coffee on the oil stove while Cousin Lars fished all sorts of delectable canned and preserved foods from the shelves in the barnacle and arranged them in artistic confusion upon the table in the arbor—which is the dining room of the establishment. And while we consumed the coffee and the delectables Cousin Lars told me about the “garden.” It is his play place; he goes out to work among his flowers almost every afternoon; and he and his sons quite frequently spend their Sundays there, having a picnic luncheon in the arbor. Until a few years ago, he had a house in town set in the midst of a large garden; but when the din of the growing city became too offensive, he sold the place, rented his present top flat on a blind and, consequently, quiet street, and secured this garden—an arrangement which he likes much better. Copenhagen is very decidedly a city of flat-dwellers.

But the interesting and really splendid fact connected with the garden is that Cousin Lars’s is only one of fifteen hundred little gardens, all of which have sprung up around Copenhagen within the past ten years. The land is leased by those who work it from the commune of Copenhagen or from private individuals. Plats of as few as sixteen hundred square feet may be rented from the commune for one-half to three-fourths of an öre per square foot annually. Land owned by private individuals rents a little higher. Water is piped to the lots by the owners, who also furnish free wheelbarrows for use in gardening. Several tiny lots form a block, as in a regular city, and between the blocks run diminutive streets about ten feet wide. Some of the narrow passageways have such picturesque names as “Rosen Allé,” “Odins Allé,” and the like. The Christian Danes have not completely forgotten the gods of their fathers, you see. The blocks, in tracts of ten acres or so, are surrounded by the owners with strong open-work fences; and each family holding land within the tract is supplied with a key to the big gate. Over the gate appears the name of the tract, which is sometimes “fancy,” like “Flora” and “Iris.”

The renters fence their own little plats to suit their inclinations and pocket-books; and they build their houses after the same fashion. Since the “gardens” are merely daytime and fresh-air institutions, generally the buildings are one-roomed and tiny. In fact, they look as if they might be the playhouses of an army of parent-tired little children who had run away and set up for themselves. Many of the structures are very cheaply built. One “playhouse,” which caught my attention, was an abandoned street car masquerading under a luxuriant mantle of vines; but it was every bit as much of a success as an orthodox bungalow, for in the tiny yard several flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked children were shouting and playing. Instead of house numbers, the owner’s names, as a rule, appear over the doors—generally the names of women; but here and there I again noticed “fancy” names, such as “Johannes Haab” (Johanne’s Hope) and “Christines Lyst” (Christine’s Joy), which suggest how much the simple little recreation places mean to their owners.

Aside from the narrow walks, every square foot of soil in each plat is just crammed with green things growing. In many cases where the houses indicated poverty, the ground was largely planted to vegetables—one garden was a single large potato field. Since the rent amounts to only a few dollars per year, those who wish to do so can more than pay their expenses by their vegetables; and in addition they have all of the fun of the wholesome, out-of-door life. But most of the plats have been converted into charming flower gardens; and of all of these Cousin Lars’s is the most worthy of the prize.

Though many sorts and conditions of people are represented by the fifteen hundred plats, most of the renters are poor “working people.” As a rule, the families pass their Sundays in the gardens, and in many cases the mother and children are there also during most of the long summer days. After work hours the father joins them for supper in the “playhouse,” and later the whole happy family returns to the city to sleep.

I had heard of such “gardens” before; they have them in Germany, and call them “Lauben,” or “Gärtchen”; and I was delighted at the chance to see them in detail for myself. Now, I only wish that we might have them around the great, congested cities in the United States. The population would be so much healthier, both mentally and physically, if gardening could be substituted for idle gossip, cheap society twaddle—or worse. As Cousin Lars remarked on the way home, such wholesome, out-of-door recreation would go far towards settling many problems arising from city life.

After we had explored the place to my heart’s content, we walked to the end of a car line and rode back to the city. Now I am again in my room in the hotel, finishing up this letter to you, preparatory to my departure to-night. Cousin Lars and his sons are to be at the pier to wave good-by, so I shall not feel that I am in a “far country.” Whither do you suppose that I am bound, Cynthia?

CHAPTER III

BORNHOLM AND THE BORNHOLMERS

Rönne, Bornholm,

August 6, 191—

My dear Cynthia:

“Bornholm!” I hear you exclaim. “Wherever in all Europe is Bornholm?” Bornholm, I reply, is the “backwoods” of Denmark, the “pearl of the Baltic,” and altogether the loveliest place in the world—next to the choicest bits of my own fair land. Look on your map of Denmark, and you will see in the extreme east, as if it had strayed away from the other Danish islands and become lost, a trapezoid-shaped scrap of territory; that is Bornholm—the birthplace of my mother. When a child, I was very fond of reading “Robinson Crusoe” and “Swiss Family Robinson,” in consequence of which my ideal terrestrial paradise was a desert island near the Equator. And many were the dreams which I wove about the tropical spot, well populated with talking parrots and chattering monkeys. But if I could now, rich with my present experience, dream them over again, I should substitute Bornholm, in the Baltic—at least for summer residence.

I flew over here one evening more than a week ago, in the cabin of Örnen (The Eagle), the triggest little steamship you ever could imagine. We left at about nine o’clock, and Cousin Lars and his sons were at the pier to wave good-by, as planned. Contrary to even her summer habits, the Baltic was again beautifully calm for my sailing, so the crossing was made on schedule time, and we reached here at about six o’clock the next morning.

As you may well imagine, I rose early, and was on deck to see the arrival. When I came out of the cabin I saw a high, dark bank to the east. That was Bornholm. It is higher than the other Danish islands, and more rocky. In fact, geologically, it belongs to Sweden, for it is a continuation of the rock-ribbed Scandinavian peninsula. Soon I could distinguish trees and houses and windmills, and presently we glided past the light-houses at the ends of the breakwater and were in Rönne harbor, where a new cousin was on hand to bid me good-morning.

Rönne, which has a population of about nine thousand, is the capital of Bornholm. So far as I have been able to learn, the little town is noted only for its quaintness; and it is certainly quaint. Practically all of the houses except the public buildings are long and low and box-shaped, with red-tiled or slate roofs and brick or stone walls. Bay windows and other architectural protuberances are conspicuous by their absence; windows of the small “German” variety which swing open like doors are in time-honored vogue instead; and their broad sills are simply crowded with potted plants. But there are no flower-filled “yards” or lawns in front to delight the passer-by. Gardens, the Danes seem to believe, are primarily for the pleasure of the owner, and are to be enjoyed in seclusion and privacy. Consequently, they are behind the houses and are generally surrounded by a high, close fence. My great aunt Karen, to whose home I went upon reaching here, has such a garden in her “back yard,”—with patches of velvety grass, draperies of vines clinging to the fence, hedges of roses, and brilliant beds of blooming annuals. And in the midst of this “garden of delight” is the vine-covered arbor in which we had our meals.

The shops, as well as the dwelling houses, are low and box-shaped; and their show windows are small and crowded. There are no bold sign-boards on the gable ends of the buildings, as in the United States; instead, modest little “shingles” are generally stuck out by the tradesmen.

Dwelling houses, as well as shops, extend to the sidewalks, and many encroach shamelessly upon them, even monopolizing the whole width, and pushing the pedestrian out into the street. In fact, it is very evident that the houses in centuries past were just placed “any which way,” and that later the sidewalks were filled in, along as straight a line as possible. Like the streets, they are of cobble stone, and are marked off from the former only by being a few inches higher. After what I have said, you would hardly expect these streets to be of the avenue or boulevard variety, would you?

On my second day in Rönne I gained much quiet pleasure from wandering about the little town, noting the places of importance, and gazing in the shop windows at the rows of wooden shoes and other practical wares intended primarily for the native; and at the models of Danish castles and churches, and the exquisite displays of pottery and statuary, more calculated to catch the eye of the opulent tourist. Such shops are clustered around Storetorv, the Large Square, to which the country people come in regularly to sell their produce. In the midst of the “torv” is a queer old stone fountain decorated with gigantic bronze snails.

Forming part of Store Gade, Rönne’s main street, are two small stones, one of them bearing the date “1658.” All true Bornholmers are as proud of these stones as New Englanders are of Plymouth Rock, with its “1620;” for on this spot fell the Swedish commander, Printzenskjold—shot, time-honored tradition says, by a silver button, torn from the vest of the shooter and used as a bullet—when the Bornholmers rose in revolt against Swedish domination. By the treaty of Roskilde which followed Charles X’s unwelcome visit over the frozen Great Belt, the Swedish king, you may remember, secured several Danish provinces. Bornholm was one of these. But the Bornholmers had not been consulted regarding the cession; and as they preferred to be Danes, they did not “stay put.” That is how it happens that I am half Danish in descent, rather than wholly Swedish—a distinction largely without a difference. And the distinction hangs upon a silver button.

Bornholm still celebrates the anniversary of her victory over the Swedes; and within the last few years, at Hasle, where the revolt had its origin, a large monumental stone was erected, bearing the Danish coat-of-arms and the names of the men who headed the revolt. Of these, Jens Pedersen Kofoed, a Bornholmer who was a member of the Danish army, and Paul Anker, the pastor of the church of Hasle, are the most important.

At some distance from the “liberty stones” is Bornholm’s Museum,—the special pride of all Bornholmers; and well it might be, for the collection there, in view of the smallness of the island, is an unusually large and fine one. The curator, a woman and a true Bornholmer, proudly informed me that Copenhagen would be most happy to possess the African collection. To me the objects of most interest, however, were those throwing light upon Bornholm’s own history. These range from rude stone utensils out of the shadowy past of the island to an exhibit of graceful royal Copenhagen porcelain;—for Bornholm it is that supplies the clay from which the beautiful ware is made. The cost of manufacture seems to be too great to admit of the use of the porcelain for distinctly practical purposes; consequently, its functions are largely ornamental, and it appears chiefly in the form of vases, plaques, and statuettes. The last-named class I gazed at most lingeringly, for the subjects were varied and especially alluring. There were wonderfully-glazed robin-red-breasts sunning themselves; perky foxes with noses pointing skyward; sleepy, yawning tigers; cats crouching to spring upon unconscious nibbling mice; kerchiefed Bornholm old ladies carrying market baskets, and busily knitting as they walked; and a fond pair of children, one of whom was hugging the very life out of a tousled fat puppy. So skilful had been the artist that I caught myself actually pitying the porcelain pup.

Bornholm’s Museum and St. Morten’s Street, Rönne

Bridge Crossing the Old Moat at Hammershuus Castle

In one room was an unusually large collection of “grandfather” clocks, with elaborately and quaintly decorated faces, and with crude, clumsy weights. Bornholm at one time was famous for the manufacture of this style of time-piece. And in another room were glass-cases filled with dummy Bornholm men and women and helpless-looking dummy babies, clad in the fashions of various past ages. The garb of these dummies convinced me that fashions are not actually growing worse; for surely clothes cannot be uglier or more uncomfortable in appearance than the ancient elegance behind the glass doors within the museum.

One souvenir of unusual historical importance, the key to old Hammershuus Castle, is also on display among the exhibits. The castle, Bornholm’s chief stronghold for centuries, was occupied by the Swedish garrison for some months previous to the revolt in 1658. But Hammershuus has now long been in ruins, and its key is resting from its labors among the other antique relics in Bornholm’s Museum.

In the art collection are several paintings by famous Danes; and a whole room is set aside for the works of Lars Hansen Tobiasen, the portrait artist who was Bornholm’s own son. As yet, only a few of his pictures have been placed in the room—including portraits of himself and his parents, and of Oelenschläger, Denmark’s greatest poet. One painting by Tobiasen seemed to me quite unique; it is the arm of a young woman. That sounds cadaverous, doesn’t it?—like an anatomical chart, or an illustration in a medical journal. But the portrait suggested anything but that;—for a portrait it was—of the arm of a Danish damsel instead of her face—expressive of individual character as well as of beauty of color and line. Tobiasen spent twenty years of his life in Sweden, where he painted the royal family, and some of his pictures are there. Others are in Rönne, still in the possession of relatives; but with the passing of this generation, the curator told me, these last are by the artist’s will to go to the museum.

In a shed near the main building are the skeletons of moose and reindeer which roamed through the forests of prehistoric Bornholm. And outside in the yard are many runestones, graven by the hands of pagan Bornholmers. The island seems to have specialized upon these stones in times past, as well as upon grandfather clocks; for even to-day they stand here and there by the wayside and are, in many cases, still clearly marked with ancient runic characters.

After a short visit with my great aunt in Rönne, I spent a few happy days with my Uncle Johannes and Aunt Ingeborg in the interior of the island. My uncle and aunt drove to town to fetch me, and while Uncle let the fat horses jog along on their homeward way at a pace to suit themselves, I had a good opportunity to see the objects of interest which Tante (the Danish for aunt), pointed out on the beautiful landscape. That place with the black smoke stacks was the great pottery factory; there, where the white walls shone between the trees, one of my cousins used to live; the large, four-armed windmill on the right did not pump water, as I had ignorantly supposed, but ground grist; the handsome, cream-colored villa on the left was the summer home of a wealthy Copenhagen merchant; and so on, until the journey ended.

As we drove into the court at Uncle’s, my cousins, a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed flock, came running out to greet us. These children were so well-trained, and so natural and wholesome that they were a real pleasure to me. But do not conclude from this statement that I am implying a comparison invidious to the American child, or that I hold up Danish children as models of deportment; for I have met some enfants terrible during the last week or two, even among my own kith and kin. I attribute the superiority of these particular cousins to their quiet country rearing.

And that reminds me to speak of the great interest and curiosity with which they regarded me upon my first arrival. While I talked with Uncle, my cousins sat silently by, completely absorbed in watching me; and when he noticed them their father laughed and said, “Yes, my children; this is a genuine, native-born American.” Then he explained that I was the first native American that the children had ever seen. Few aliens except bona fide tourists reach the center of the island—and they merely pass through. It would take an Eskimo or a Patagonian to rouse a similar degree of interest in a country child of the cosmopolitan Far West.

The manner in which I mutilated the king’s Danish was also a source of much interest to them; for I suppose that they had never before heard broken Danish. They were too polite to show amusement; even at my most grotesque blunders not a smile crossed their faces; they were simply alert and fascinated—and silent. But when it occurred to them to try upon me the English which they had learned in the grades, we were promptly upon a very sociable footing; they took turns practicing their English vocabularies on me, and were delighted to find that the formulae had worked—that their school-learned language was comprehensible to me.

To the children of the neighbors I was also a whole menagerie of interest. They referred to me as “de fremmede dame” (the foreign lady), and whenever I opened my mouth to speak they waited around with bated breath to see what liberties I should take with their native tongue.

Old-fashioned Danish farms are quite different from anything which we have in America; therefore, you might like to know about Barquist, my uncle’s place. On the afternoon of my arrival I went all over it with Uncle as a cicerone, and with Astrid, the smaller of the twins, clinging to my hand and practising her English whenever the opportunity offered. Such a farm as Barquist is called a “gaard” (or court), because of the fact that all of the buildings are arranged in rectangular fashion about the stone-paved interior. The long dwelling house forms one side of the quadrangle; the sides are made up of machine shops and wagon sheds and store houses for hay and grain; and at the other end are the stables in which the live stock are kept. Roofed-over driveways separate the house from the other buildings. When the gates to the court are shut, the quadrangle forms a complete inclosure, and, consequently, furnishes much protection from stormy weather. The back doors of the dwelling house open into the court, in the middle of which stands the pump; and the front ones open into a large flower garden, which, you see, is outside of the quadrangle.

Brick and plaster form the building material for the walls, and all of the roofs are covered with thatch of rye straw, which must, of course, be quite frequently renewed. As you may imagine, the thatched roofs lend a very picturesque air to the quadrangle, especially when there is a stork’s nest in one corner. But straw roofs are going out of use because of the danger of fire from lightning; tiles are being substituted, and slate, and plain, prosaic shingles.

Surrounding the buildings on every side were fields of barley and rye, golden unto the harvest. Dotted with silky red poppies and deep blue cornflowers as they were, these grainfields presented a charming picture. Uncle admitted the beauty of nature’s color scheme, but added, “To us farmers, the poppies and cornflowers are weeds; they choke out the grain.”

The interior of the house was a comfort, for it did not have the “cluttered up,” junk-shop appearance produced in some American homes by over-furnishing. There was plenty of room to walk around without stumbling over, or knocking off, anything. The guest room, in which I slept, was so large that I felt out of doors in it. And the furniture was of corresponding proportions; the clothes-press could tuck away the whole wardrobe of an ordinary family; and the bed was even nearer kin to that in which Hans Christian Andersen’s true princess slept than the one in my hotel room in Copenhagen. Cross my heart, Cynthia, there were nearly a dozen feather ticks of various sizes on that bed. Taught by my Copenhagen experience, I promptly dumped most of them on the floor, where they remained until morning, when I replaced them and gave them a poke or two, to produce a slept-on appearance, lest my aunt by any chance be led to suspect that I was not partial to Danish beds.

In the brick-paved kitchen is a built-in oven, also of brick, such as was used in New England in colonial days. Most of the baking for the family is done here, but uncle also exchanges grain with the baker for immense loaves of rye bread. And the baker, I suppose, transfers the grain to the miller, in return for flour, in the placid, old-fashioned way.

In the dining room was a very old grandfather’s clock which ticked stolidly away, keeping more or less accurate time—mostly less. As a time-keeper it was not much, but you, as a fancier of the antique, would have loved the venerable case and the crotchety works. I wish, too, that you might have seen the lovely potted plants on the broad sill of the sunny dining-room windows. I never before saw such begonias as Aunt Ingeborg can grow.

One morning shortly after my arrival, Uncle announced that we were to go for an all-day picnic. I was quite willing, I assure you. My aunt, who is of the plump, comfortable, bustling type, soon had two great baskets packed with luncheon. These were stowed away under the broad rear seat of the carriage. By eight o’clock we were off,—but the sun was well on his way by that hour. There were objects of interest all along the road, so Carle, my oldest cousin, and I studied my tourist map, which names every highway, large farm, church, and windmill on the island. Uncle laughed and called us “aegte turists”—genuine tourists—but he was really as much interested in the harmless gossip supplied by the map as any of the rest of us.

Bornholm is a great place for cycling; once or twice we passed veritable flocks of cyclists. But I did not see a trace of an automobile. When I remarked upon their absence Uncle said that it was a mere accident that we had met none, for there were automobiles on Bornholm. But they had not been there long. Originally, a few of the Copenhageners who spent their summers on the island brought their machines with them,—but only for a short period, for the automobiles frightened the unsophisticated Bornholm horses quite out of their wits. After the machines had paid their first mad, chugging, snorting, honking visit to the island, and had left numerous splintered and smashed vehicles and irate farmers in their wake, a local law was passed prohibiting the desecration of placid little Bornholm by the mechanical monsters. Recently, however, the ban had been removed (Even the “pearl of the Baltic” follows in the wake of the procession), and at present, Uncle triumphantly announced—Uncle is a progressive in spite of his thatched roof—not only are tourist autos admitted, but the island even harbors two or three naturalized immigrant machines.

At about ten o’clock we stopped for luncheon in a beautiful grove where there were tables and benches under the trees. While Tante went to a near-by inn for a pot of hot coffee, and the girls unpacked a basket and set a table, Uncle cut huge slices of rye bread and fed them to the horses. But please do not generalize from this last and conclude that Danish horses regularly live on rye bread; it was merely an extra, like an apple or a carrot in America, because we were picnicking.

And wasn’t it pleasant to picnic out under those grand old beeches? And wasn’t I ravenously hungry, notwithstanding a seven-o’clock breakfast? And didn’t Tante Ingeborg have the most delicious things to eat?—pickled herring, for instance, and smoked salmon sandwiches, and “rödgröd”—probably the most typical Danish dish—made by cooking sago in fruit juice, in which have been dropped raisins, currants, spices, and other tasty morsels, until the whole is of the consistency of custard. But then I am always hungry in Denmark, and the food is always delicious. Were I to stay here very long I should degenerate into an absolute epicure.

As we neared Hammershuus Castle—our first goal—the road ran along the northeast coast through Allinge, a pretty little summer resort. Here we noticed a number of sun-browned women, wearing gay-colored bandanas on their heads in Topsy fashion, and carrying alpenstocks in their hands. They had been climbing over the cliffs. After passing Allinge, to our left was The Hammer, an imposing promontory of granite, which is being rapidly quarried away; and just ahead were the castle ruins. At the inn near at hand the horses were unhitched and stabled, the lunch baskets were removed and carried to a group of trees where there was a table just the right size, and here we had another meal; and all were again hungry.

Then we explored the ruins. Hammershuus was first built in the thirteenth century and for much of the time since it has played an important part in Denmark’s history. For a long time it, with the remainder of Bornholm, was an object of dispute between the archbishops of Lund and the Danish kings. During much of the sixteenth century the German city of Lübeck controlled the castle; in the seventeenth, as I have told you, Sweden for a short period held dominion over it and the island. For some time after Denmark resumed control, Hammershuus remained the stronghold of Bornholm; but presently the islet near at hand, Christiansö, was fortified, and the old castle was permitted to fall into ruins. Its destruction was hastened by the fact that stone was taken from it for public buildings in Rönne; and subsequently it became a sort of public quarry. Until within a century ago, the domestic vandalism continued. Nevertheless, the Hammershuus ruins are the finest in Denmark to-day.

The old pile had quite enough of the characteristics of the orthodox mediæval castle to satisfy the most romantic student of feudalism and chivalry. It stood on a high promontory with sheer cliffs on three sides. On the fourth was a moat through which flowed an arm of the sea, spanned by a draw-bridge. It is very easy to trace the whole ground plan of the castle, for many of the great walls of unhewn stone still stand, picturesquely overgrown with shrubs and trees. I was especially interested in the dungeon, as I had never seen one before; but after we had half climbed and half slid down into it, I found that it differed very little from a deep, dark, windowless cellar. In this dungeon, says tradition, the unhappy Eleonore Christine, daughter of Christian IV, and her husband, Corfitz Ulfeldt, were confined while prisoners at Hammershuus. Ulfeldt had committed treason against his country; Eleonore Christine was merely guilty of loyalty to her husband. They were imprisoned at the castle just two years after the Swedish garrison sent over to hold the island was forced to surrender to the doughty Bornholmers. Those were stirring times for little old Denmark.

Having explored the dungeon and identified the various parts of the castle by means of the map in my guide book, we wandered around the outer walls. What was once a moat is now a pretty, deep, little dell, crossed by a gracefully-arched bridge of red brick. Below, and seaward, near the base of the cliffs, are several queer, wave-sculptured rocks. One of them, the Lions’ Heads, is especially well named. Beyond these, far to the north, we detected the outlines of the coast of Sweden. Bornholm, you see, is much nearer to Sweden than it is to any Danish territory.

After leaving Hammershuus, we drove along the southeast coast to Rö, to see Helligdommen Klippen (Holy Cathedral Cliffs). As it was about five o’clock when we arrived at Rö, we first had supper under the trees, with coffee, piping hot, obtained just across the way. Then, by means of a winding stairway, we reached the base of the cliffs. Here was a little gasoline launch which took us up and down the coast to see the fantastic wave-worn rock, now and then puffing into the deep caves dug out by the breakers. In some places the cliffs look as if Mother Nature when in an angry mood had seized a mighty knife and slashed right and left, working havoc with the solid granite; here were long slices of rock; there were slender columns and spires standing alone in the water; and occasionally there appeared a distinct variation of pattern, bearing resemblance to natural objects. Our guide in the launch made the most of these. “Look at the profile of the Bornholm damsel, formed by that mass of rocks,” said he; and “There is St. Peter; can’t you see his cross and keys?”—and so on.

On every ledge of the cliffs where soil could find place were velvety mosses, delicate, plumy ferns, and flowers brightly blooming; gaily colored fish darted about in the water; and—most beautiful of all—a glorious sunset crowned and scene and the day with a blaze of orange and crimson and gold and rose which covered half of the sky and was reflected on the surface of the placid Baltic.

Perhaps, as compared with the wild, majestic sweep of our Western scenery, all of this seems very miniature and very tame. But it is not fair to compare it with anything so different. Helligdommen, when I saw it, had a charm all its own—like an English landscape. I shall never forget its beauty.

It would have been very pleasant to spend the whole summer at Uncle Johannes’, but duty called, and the time for my other visits was short; so I soon returned to Rönne, bound for the northeastern part of the island. The railroad journey from Rönne to Nexö was one of the drollest experiences which I have had in Europe. Generally speaking, there is not anything funny about a ride by train;—but there are railroads and railroads; and of her own particular variety little old Bornholm certainly has a very exclusive monopoly. The cars are very small, as if they were the half-grown children of American ones; and the trains are almost incredibly leisurely. Positively, I believe that my train spent two-thirds of the time backing and switching and waiting at stations. During the remaining third it ambled and sauntered between stopping points; and upon finally reaching one, the locomotive gave a ridiculous, hysterical shriek, as if overcome by the prodigiousness of the feat which it had performed. But this toy train suits Bornholmers very well, for they have plenty of time; and it suited me, for it gave ample opportunity for studying the landscape. An American express would never do at all on that twenty-three-mile long island; it would be a giant in dwarf’s quarters. The Rönne-to-Nexö line, which is the main railroad line in Bornholm, is not sufficiently long to enable a train of the American express variety to assume normal speed with safety.

From Nexö to Svaneke, whither I was bound, I had to go by post wagon. A post chaise is just a sort of rudimentary stage coach, and as I am an old stager—as you know—I immediately bethought me of a seat on top with the driver, and lost no time before asking for it. Some one else had got ahead of me, however, and I had to ride inside with two women and two children; hence, I had only an occasional and fragmentary view out of the dusty window in the rear.

Svaneke, which is picturesquely situated upon the northeast coast of Bornholm, is a fishing town of about thirteen hundred inhabitants. It is, if possible, quainter than Rönne. Its streets are crooked beyond belief; they dip and turn, zig-zag, and run in circles;—at least, that is the impression which I gained from wandering helplessly around in them; for I never went out alone without becoming lost and having to undergo the humiliation of inquiring the way to my destination. Another baffling characteristic of the place is that the houses are more completely duplicates of one another than are those at Rönne.

On a particularly crooked street, near the edge of the town, are three of the typical Bornholm houses; all are low and box-shaped, with red-tiled roofs, and with small German windows, the wide sills of which are crowded with potted plants, beautifully growing and blooming. In these three houses live three aunts of mine, all of them sisters and all of them widows. To these aunts, my visit was an epoch-making event; I came as a delegate from my mother whom they had not seen for forty years. At a family congress held shortly after my arrival the time which I had to spare for Svaneke was carefully divided up, in order that each aunt might have a fair chance at her American niece; and in consequence of this treaty, the niece vibrated somewhat like an erratic pendulum between the three dear, quaint old homes. Breakfast at Tante Hulda’s, luncheon at Tante Anna’s, dinner at Tante Laura’s, with one or more of the appertaining cousins present,—thus ran the schedule, with an occasional reversal or combination. Only the place where I was to have afternoon coffee was left unprovided for; I had that wherever I happened to be at coffee time.

My nights, however, were spent with my oldest aunt, Anna, who lives in the middle of the row. All of her children have homes of their own, except the youngest, who has followed the call of the Viking and is away at sea. Her home is a perfect museum of souvenirs of him and his voyages; there are Japanese curios, tapa cloth from the South Seas, armadillo baskets, nautilus shells, South American parakeets, and I do not know what else. Imagine squawking parakeets in little old Bornholm! In its air of “foreignness,” the interior of Tante Anna’s house contrasted interestingly with the homes of my other two aunts, which are typical of Bornholm. But everything was interesting and charming and everything was wonderfully quiet and restful. I recommend Svaneke for all victims of nervous prostration.

One day, like Charles Lamb, I went cousin-hunting out in the country,—but in the company of a cousin instead of a sister. We cycled, Dagmar and I; and started early and had a long, lovely day. The landscape in this part of the island is the most beautiful that I have seen since my arrival here. The poppy-and-cornflower-strewn grain was ripe, and here and there the harvesting had begun. Occasionally the whirr of a reaping machine was heard, but very frequently I noticed folk reaping and binding by hand in primitive fashion. The men led, cutting the grain with their sickles; behind them came the women who bound it into sheaves, which they piled ready for the hauling. The colored dresses of the women contrasted brightly with the background of fields and gave the touch of perfection to the picture.

But the passing landscape was made up of much more than harvest fields and reapers. There was a rare variety. Patches of rosy clover and of alfalfa, with blossoms shading from pale amethyst to deep, dark purple—patronized by thousands of golden yellow butterflies—alternated with the fields of wheat and barley, oats and rye already mentioned. Some of the fields were unfenced; others were inclosed by thick, green hedges, or by walls of unhewn stone, with at times a waste corner given over to purple heather. Here and there over the patches of pasture please imagine a few sleek dairy cows, and a few more plump sheep. Add trees to the panoramic picture—some casting broad, cool shadows across the finely-paved road, along which you cycle in imagination with me, others grouped here and there between us and the horizon—majestic oaks and beeches, and white-limbed birches, with dainty, fern-like leaves.

And now put in the houses. Just coming into view on one side is a mossy, thatched-roofed gaard, with dazzling white walls partly concealed by clumps of trees; on the other side, a little nearer at hand, note a red brick building peeping forth from the clustering foliage; and yonder is a white one with red tiles substituted for thatch. As you cycle past, there will be a constant shifting and changing of styles and colors, according to whether the farms are new or old, small or large. Tuck into the panorama a few large windmills here and there, with long arms slowly and lazily grinding out Danish grist; and finally finish off your picture by adding an occasional church, at first just peeping its spire or tower over the rolling surface of the ground, but as you approach looming large, in Lutheran dignity conscious of State support.

We rode all day in the midst of this beautiful landscape, now and then making a cousinly call. And always, for the sake of the cousinship, these cousins welcomed their clanswoman from the Land of the Setting Sun; and everywhere they insisted that we partake of coffee, regardless of the amount of which we had already drunk; and always they accompanied us to the main road when we departed, remembered the “Hils hjemme” (Greet those at home for us) when the good-byes were said, and were waving a final farewell when we took a last look at the turn of the road. Verily, cousin-hunting in a foreign land may be a wondrous pleasant pastime—if the foreign land be an ancestral homeland.

Near the end of our ride we came to Östermarie Church, of the parish in which my mother lived as a child. And there in the church-yard were many old grave-stones with family names; names that were familiar, but strange—when found there. The ancient church is in ruins, but twenty years ago a new one was built, after an old pattern, with a square tower topped off with a gable. A memorial tablet to Jens Kofoed, who helped save Bornholm for Denmark, has been carefully transferred from the old building to the new.

Harvest Time in Bornholm

Österlars Church, Bornholm

Östermarie represents one of two characteristic types of Bornholm church architecture. The other type which I have in mind is the rotunda. These rotunda churches are among the rare sights of Denmark, and date from well back into the Middle Ages. Österlars, the finest sample, is Östermarie’s near neighbor at the northwest. The main part of the building is a huge cylinder, capped with a cone-shaped roof. Attached to the outer walls, like barnacles, with little regard to symmetry or uniformity, are a number of buttresses. The whole structure has a grotesque appearance, and is like nothing else I have ever seen,—except, perhaps, as regards form, the grass huts of the South Sea Islanders. But it is much more substantial than these; the walls are thick and heavy; for in the old fighting days the rotundas served as fortresses as well as houses of worship.

The northeastern part of the island possesses various reminders of earlier days than those in which Österlars was built. Among these are the sites of several burial mounds. During my mother’s girlhood some of the mounds were leveled by bold farmers, unfearful of the hauntings of outraged ghosts; and their contents—weapons, utensils, ornaments, etc.—which the heathen Danes had buried with their dead, were brought to light. Some of the objects reached the museum at Copenhagen in safety; others, especially the ornaments of gold and silver, were melted down by the thrifty but short-sighted country people. The most famous mound of all was, however, carefully excavated by Danish archæologists. This was on the large farm called Store Bakkegaard, not far from my mother’s old home.

Most of the country people realized that the mounds were prehistoric graves; and some of the farmers, for superstitious reasons, refrained from leveling them. As you may imagine, many ghost stories grew up around these—stories of mysterious lights which appeared and disappeared in the trees on top of one of them; of a monstrous three-legged cat which yowled from another; of a surpassingly beautiful maiden with incredibly long golden locks who haunted a third. They were “spooky” landmarks, my mother said—places past which the school children hurried with bated breath in the early twilight of the short winter days.

In my mother’s childhood also many believed in witches and wizards, who were able to work destruction to their enemies, and against whom one must be on one’s guard; and of “wise men” and “wise women,” beneficent variations of the witch and wizard class, to whom one went with one’s troubles, of whatever nature. Was a Bornholmer afflicted with boils or ringworm, warts or “fits,” which failed to yield to home remedies, if he was superstitious—as he often was—he would ignore medical advice and consult a “wise” person, frequently with satisfactory results. A lost sheep or a lost child, a guilty conscience or suspected disloyalty on the part of a lass or a lover—all of these were cases which called for the services of the “wise.” With the spread of scientific knowledge, however, knowing ones, good and evil, tended to lose prestige, and now, so far as I have been able to learn, they are no more numerous in Bornholm than elsewhere; the “backwoods” in the Baltic is becoming as hard-headed and skeptical as the remainder of the world.

On my return from Svaneke to Nexö I rode on the high seat with the driver; and as the day was fine and the driver was affable it seemed almost as if my old staging days had returned. One has such a top-of-the-world feeling when on the driver’s seat of a stage coach—even if the coach be only a post wagon. To the right hand was a Bornholm landscape such as I have tried to describe; to the left was the Baltic, edged by rocky cliffs, and dotted here and there with the white or brown sail of a fishing boat.

A few miles beyond Nexö I stopped off to visit my cousin Thorwald, who lives on a large gaard with quadrangular buildings of brick, arranged on the same principle as Barquist, only on a larger and more elaborate scale. While here, for the first time—I hope it was the first time—I disgraced my clan. This is how it happened. When I arrived, Christine, my cousin’s wife, was up to her eyebrows in preparations for a birthday party for their little girl; and promptly after my arrival the cook fell ill. It was evident that a crisis was at hand, which I determined to relieve. The intricacies of Danish cookery are quite beyond me, so I knew enough to leave that to Christine; and I cast about me for other means of helpfulness. As luck would have it, I saw a row of milk pails near the kitchen door. Now, as you know, I was not reared on the Far Western frontier for nothing; the mysteries of bridge whist and the tango to me are mysteries indeed, but I can milk a cow.

As the inspiration seized me, as promptly I seized a pail and went forth to relieve the birthday party crisis. The cows were gentle; I milked two, and returned in triumph with the brimming pail. I acknowledge that I had had some misgivings with reference to just how my particular form of aid would be regarded; but I was not prepared for the sensation which my performance created. As I approached the house, I met one of the maids who was starting out to milk. Upon seeing me, she rushed into the house exclaiming, “De fremmede dame har malkede köerene! De fremmede dame har malkede köerene!” And the awful tidings spread.

Since Thorwald is not only a wealthy farmer but—what is vastly more important—is also an officer in the Danish army, Christine has a tremendous amount of dignity to maintain. When she learned what I had done, she stood for a moment in petrified astonishment, and then burst forth, “You have milked the cows! What will my friends say! What will my friends say!” And then she left the room, utterly humiliated by the conduct of her husband’s low-bred cousin. I am certain that she swore the maids to secrecy, lest my exploit get abroad and she lose caste.

A scrap of consolation was offered to me, however, by Christine’s cousin, who was also a visitor at the house. She, not being related to me, could afford to be amused as well as scandalized. After I had stoutly aired my views, this cousin told of a Danish high-school teacher—a woman of phenomenal strength of mind—who had not only shocked the whole community by milking a cow, but subsequently had shamelessly announced that were she the queen she would milk cows if she felt like doing so! Unfortunately, with all of her charm, little old Bornholm is in some ways very conservative and very aristocratic; there is much talk of “fine folk”; and her aristocracy is still determined to a considerable degree by the mediæval qualifications of position and wealth, rather than by intellect and character. She is not so different from my own land, however; for there are plenty of Americans who would sympathize with Cousin Christine’s indignation over my plebeian performance.

Lest you be left with the impression, however, that the “pearl of the Baltic” is far more back-woodsy and conservative than is a fact, I wish to assure you before leaving it that Bornholm is, in many ways, exceedingly progressive. It must be, since it is a part of Denmark, which is in the front rank of the progressives of Europe. The farmers’ telephone system, for instance, is well established on the island, and is well patronized; rural mail delivery also exists, the postmen generally cycling over the smooth roads. Bornholm’s educational system is excellent; you would be astonished at the subjects, besides English, which are included even in the grammar school course. And I must acknowledge—though as an American school teacher I am somewhat ashamed to—that the teaching is more thorough than in our land; the Danish children seem to retain and make practical use of what they learn, as few American children do. The Bornholmers are intelligent too, though isolated; they read and they think; all seem to make at least one trip to Copenhagen during a lifetime, and many visit the capital quite frequently. Also, Socialism gives evidence of being fairly well rooted in the island, where it bids fair in future to play havoc with time-honored aristocratic ideals.

Bornholm conservatism is in a sense a modified local patriotism; for the Bornholmers are intensely attached to their mid-Baltic home,—a fact, I presume, largely due to their isolation and to the consequent necessity, to a considerable degree, for their fighting their own battles in times past. Their love for the beautiful island naturally makes them loath to change the old for the new, unless they see a good reason for so doing. A cousin who is a fiercely loyal Bornholmer is a good illustration of this. One day I asked her the Danish word for “birch” and she replied, “The Copenhagen Danish is birk; the Bornholm Danish is burck. I pronounce it burck, for I am a Bornholmer.” The Danish spoken in Copenhagen is generally considered the best, and is charming to the ear; in my opinion, it has a dignity which French lacks, and a beauty of sound foreign to German. The Bornholm dialect, on the other hand, is a broad drawl which is unqualifiedly ugly.

It must be recognized, too, that Bornholm possesses virtues which many centrally-located places lack. Among the population of more than forty thousand serious crimes are almost unknown. The people are friendly and honest; they practice the Golden Rule pretty faithfully. I was impressed with this fact while in Svaneke. We were going away to spend the evening, and I, being the last out, proceeded to lock the door. “Never mind to lock the door,” said Tante Anna; “just close it. There are no thieves on Bornholm.” Later, fearful lest she had exaggerated the honesty of the island, she discussed the matter with Tante Hulda; and finally they remembered that some years before a man in Rönne had been convicted of stealing a few kroners’ worth of something—I have forgotten what.

I am writing these final lines aboard Örnen, sitting on a stool in the cabin with my writing pad on my knee; for I am outward bound from Bornholm. All of my Rönne relatives came to the boat and saw me off with “Hils hjemmes” and repeatedly waved good-byes. I was just on deck to take a last look. Ah, when I forget thee, Bornholm!—My nearest cabin mate is a girl from the Faroes, who is taking a great armful of purple heather home with her. The Faroes, you know, are a part of Denmark. An old Norse dialect is the vernacular, but Danish is taught in the schools, and my cabin mate, like most natives, speaks it. Hence, we do not have to resort to a deaf-mute show in order to make ourselves understood. The girl is stirring in her berth. I fear that the light disturbs her, so I must put it out. As the Bornholmers say, “Farvel saa laenge”—Good-bye for the present.

CHAPTER IV

AN INTRODUCTION TO SWEDEN: LUND, HELSINGBORG,
GOTHENBURG

Gothenburg, Sweden,
August 15, 191—

My dear Cynthia:

As you see, I am at last in the land of the Swede,—a land even less known to Americans than is Denmark,—which is saying considerable. The sum total of information which most Americans possess about Sweden seems to be that Swedish girls make good cooks. Consequently, they appear to look upon all Swedish women as potential American “servant girls.” To be sure, in view of the fact that my ancestral roots sink deep in Swedish soil, I deserve no credit for such knowledge of things Swedish as I have; and I claim none. But since my arrival here I have been acquiring more knowledge, and I propose to thrust some of it upon you; for I have no reason to believe that you possess any superfluous information upon the subject; and, besides, it is impossible to write from Sweden without writing about Sweden.

Though Lund was my first definite goal in the Swedish land, I went there via Malmö, a commercial town on the sea coast, which I reached after about an hour’s sailing from Copenhagen. So far as I have been able to learn, Malmö’s chief claim to historic glory is the fact that it was here, in 1533, that Christian Petersen, the “Father of Danish literature,” set up the first printing press in Denmark. For the province in which Malmö and Lund are situated, as well as other provinces in southern Sweden, was at that time a possession of Denmark, which had ruled over it since the days of Canute the Great. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, by the treaty of Roskilde, the whole southern end of the peninsula again came under control of Sweden, which has possessed it ever since. And this is well, for, geographically and geologically, the territory is Swedish. However, its long exile under Danish dominion has prevented it from fully acquiring Swedish characteristics—in so far as Sweden has characteristics different from the other Scandinavian lands. Hence, in spite of the customs inspection, and in spite of the fact that a blue flag with a yellow cross was in evidence instead of Dannebrog, it was difficult for me to realize that I was in a new land.

To me, Lund is an attractive place; the house of Tegnér, Sweden’s greatest poet is there; and there also are one of the two Swedish universities, and a fine old cathedral. Tegnér, you should remember as the author of “The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” so beautifully translated by our own Longfellow. “Fritjof’s Saga,” Tegnér’s greatest work, is not so well known in America, though a large number of English translations exist; but I have been fond of it for years. From it, Longfellow got many a valuable hint for his “Evangeline.” Just read the following description of Fritjof’s banqueting hall from the saga, and then tell me whether it does not forcibly remind you of Longfellow’s poem.

“Covered with straw was the floor, and upon a walled hearth in the center,

Constantly burned, warm and cheerful, a fire, while down the wide chimney

Twinkling stars, heavenly friends, glanced upon guest and hall, quite unforbidden.

Studded with nails were the walls, and upon them were hanging

Helmets and coats-of-mail closely together; also between them

Here and there flashed a sword, like a meteor shooting at evening.

“Brighter than helmet or sword were the sparkling shields ranged round the chamber;

Bright as the face of the sun were they, clear as the moon’s disc of silver.

Oft as the horns needed filling there passed round the table a maiden;

Modestly blushing she cast down her eyes, her beautiful image

Mirrored appeared in the shields, and gladdened the heart of each warrior.”

In one of Lund’s narrow streets, squeezed tightly between other buildings, is the box-shaped house with German windows and tiled roof in which Tegnér lived from 1813 to 1826, while he was professor in the university. Two of the rooms formerly occupied by him and his family are now preserved as a museum in his memory. And these rooms presented a real Tegnér personality to me, for many of the quaint belongings within are things which came under the poet’s actual touch and eye, and which preserve still some fragment of individuality, though crowded together now in museum fashion. In the old family dining room are many busts and portraits of Tegnér; also a screen made by his children; and two show cases, one of which contains many letters and manuscripts left by him, and the other, his spectacles and paper knife, and other objects which he once owned. A large book-case displays the many editions in which his writings have been given to the world. The walls of the other room are pretty well covered with portraits of celebrated contemporaries of the poet: men in plain lay clothes, men in clerical frocks, men with military stars and bars. In the second room are also the desk, study lamp and chairs which Tegnér used; and a queer old “bridal stool” somewhat resembling a sofa—from the receptacle under the seat of which the woman in charge pulled a bridal quilt, covered with embroidered silk.

In Tegnér Place, a square shaded by great, characterful old trees, is also a pleasing memorial of the professor-poet. It is a fine bronze statue which represents him—very appropriately, since in his greatest writings he sings of Scandinavia’s pagan past—as leaning against a large rune stone. The square adjoins the university.

Lund University was founded about two hundred and fifty years ago; but the present building, in handsome classical-Renaissance style, is quite new. Inside, also, everything is spick and span, cosy, and generally harmonious. The ceiling of the entrance hall is supported by fine marble pillars, the walls are pleasingly tinted, and here and there in the class rooms are paintings by Scandinavian artists. The student body consists of about a thousand men and women. As in the other Scandinavian universities, the women as well as the men wear a black and white cap, with a button of the national colors in front. The common emblem worn by the students may be taken as symbolizing the equality of opportunity enjoyed at the universities by the women and men alike. The women of Lund University, unlike the women in many co-educational institutions in other parts of Europe, are not merely tolerated; they belong; they have equal rights there with their brothers; they attend classes, receive degrees, and come and go with a quiet air of independence and dignity which carries with it no apology for existence.

The cathedral of Lund is a grand old romanesque pile—the finest of the sort in Scandinavia—dating from the twelfth century. The old gray stone walls and the great square twin towers give it an appearance both venerable and majestic, which attracted me very much. A crowd of tourists had gathered to view the building; and presently a wide-awake looking woman, shirt-waisted and straw-sailor-hatted, came and showed us through it. On the restored brick and plaster walls are many tablets—some more than three centuries old—erected to the memory of past and gone Scandinavians. The pulpit dates from 1592, and is of black marble and alabaster, beautifully worked—but suggestive of death and mourning. Surrounding the pulpit are arranged the coats-of-arms of the nobles who gave it to the cathedral. The choir stalls, or monk stools, as our guide called them, are more ancient than the pulpit. They are very quaint, with grotesque, grinning faces carved on the arms. Above the backs of the stools are scenes from the Bible: in one Jehovah is represented as a very round-faced young man in the act of creating the earth; in another, he is bringing the sun into being; in a third, he is creating the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. Surely the mediæval wood-workers did not pursue their labors with very deep seriousness or reverence; they must have given their sense of humor play while they wrought the funny clumsy figures.

But the cathedral is especially famous for its crypt. This is more than one hundred and twenty feet long and is about one-fourth as wide. Twenty three heavy pillars support the round arches, which in turn bear up the ceiling. This great space is dimly lighted by ten small windows. In the right arm of the crypt is an old well with a circular stone curbing, upon which, long centuries ago, some humorist cut quaint, satirical figures and inscriptions. Down in the crypt, long before the Reformation, Roman Catholic monks said their prayers and kept their fasts. Their cells are still in the walls. Down there, too, under the floor, are buried many ecclesiastical worthies, including the bishops of Lund who once held under their dominion all of the churches of Sweden. Also, and finally, the giant Finn and his family are prisoners in the ancient room beneath the cathedral—in bas-relief on the everlasting stone. And I must confess that I was more interested in the frivolous story of the ill-fated Finn than in all of the holy monks and domineering bishops.

Our cicerone told us the story, about in this wise: In the year 1080 the good Saint Lawrence set the giant Finn to work to construct the cathedral. Since it was to be a mighty building, a giant’s labor was needed to construct it. St. Lawrence, however, lacked foresight, and failed to have a contract signed before the work began. Consequently, the giant had him at his mercy when the task was completed. Finn demanded an exorbitant price for his services—the sun and the moon, or the eyes of the impractical saint. The only chance of escape which St. Lawrence had was to guess the name of the builder; failing to do that, out would go his eyes, for, obviously, the sun and the moon were beyond his reach. But giants, as you know, are stupid, and the Finn family was no exception. When the price was almost within their grasp, Mrs. Finn, while crooning her baby to sleep, from force of habit mentioned her husband’s name in the song.—Presumably the lullaby was the ancestor of the “Father-will-come-to-thee-soon” one.—That minute the game was up; all was lost. For St. Lawrence, who was snooping around, overheard the builder’s name.

In the despair and rage consequent upon their failure, the Finns tried to pull down the church, evidently—like Samson at Gaza—welcoming suicide in the general destruction. However, St. Lawrence, who now had the upper hand, prevented, and disposed of them for good by turning them into stone. There they are even unto this day, a part of the pillars supporting the great vault of the crypt. But, in my opinion, a dastardly crime is also recorded against St. Lawrence by the carvings on the two pillars; for the innocent was made to suffer with the guilty; the little Finn baby was petrified with its parents. There is the poor, helpless infant on the column with his mother, flattened out in pitiless bas-relief, to the eternal disgrace of the Church. Here endeth the story of the bas-reliefs on the pillars of the crypt. He that hath credulity to believe let him believe.

Helsingborg was my second stop in the land of the Swede. You will find Helsingborg on the map where southwestern Sweden almost touches Denmark. Indeed, here the Sound is only a little more than two miles wide, so it is not at all difficult to understand why in centuries past Swede and Dane fought so many and such bloody battles over the control of the commerce which passed through this important gateway. The town has only about thirty thousand inhabitants, but it offered me a number of objects of interest. On the quay was a tablet commemorating the landing of the Frenchman, Marshal Bernadotte, on October 22, 1810, when he came to Sweden as heir of the childless Charles XIII, and founder of the present royal Swedish house. Farther on was a statue of Count Stenbock, the warrior who saved southern Sweden from recapture by the Danes during the Swedish reverses suffered under Charles XII.

But of all the attractions offered by Helsingborg the palm should go either to Swedish hard bread or to Kärnan—preferably, I suppose, to the latter; for Sweden has only one Kärnan while hard bread may be obtained anywhere within her borders. It happened, however, that I had somehow missed my chance at hard bread in Lund, so I shall always associate the gustatory pleasure obtained from it with this particular Swedish town. As its name implies, the bread is hard; it is also dry and brittle and brown, for it is made of rye meal and is baked in thin, round cakes about as large as a dinner plate. On the tables in the open-air café where I had luncheon were great piles of this delectable morsel. This bread, spread with slightly-salted Swedish butter and partaken of with coffee such as the Scandinavians know how to make, supplies a luncheon fit for the gods of Scandinavia. Nectar and ambrosia, I am persuaded, would take only second prize in any international exposition. Frankly, however, Cynthia, I fear that you would vote for the fare of the Greek gods, in preference.

Since the café in which I first partook of Swedish hard bread was very near to Kärnan, where I went immediately afterward, I also associate the bread with Kärnan. This latter is not edible, though from association and sound it may seem so. Yet Kärnan is a “kernel”—the kernel or core of a Swedish fortress built something like six hundred years ago. Its actual date of foundation is lost in the past. Around it were once heavy battlemented walls and towers, all of which played a part in the bloody struggles of the centuries. But to modern times there descended only the great square central building, dismantled and falling into ruins—until recently restored. The restoration has transformed the fragment of the ancient fortress into a handsome red brick observation tower, the newest of the new, from the top of which floats the flag of Sweden. The approach up the hill to Kärnan is a right royal one, and is very fitly named for the good King Oscar. After ascending a series of broad, shallow staircases and passing under three arches, each more majestic than the preceding, I reached the door of the tower. Then there were nearly one hundred and fifty steps of a spiral staircase to climb before reaching the platform under the sky blue flag with its golden cross. But the view from there was well worth a much harder climb. Do not miss it if ever the Wanderlust should carry you to the land of the Swede.

Helsingborg, itself, as I learned as a result of my climb, is a very pretty town with bright, clean buildings, magnificently situated upon the shores of the Sound through which many ships were passing. Below me, up and down the clean, well-paved streets moved the busy Swedes, intent upon their daily tasks. But as it was a clear day I also secured a fine sweep of the surrounding Swedish landscape, and—most interesting of all—had a clear view of the nearest corner of Denmark, Helsingör, as the Danes call it, but the Elsinore of Hamlet to all English-speaking peoples. Helsingör looked less than a good stone’s throw away. Its largest buildings were plainly visible; and Kronborg Castle, which guards the Sound in behalf of the Danes, loomed up in the foreground, grand and majestic. I shall be certain to see it nearer on my return to Denmark.

After a day and a night in Helsingborg I left by rail for Gothenburg—or Göteborg, as known to the Swedes. The landscape through which I journeyed is more rolling than that around Lund; and it is exceedingly stony. In one little valley which we crossed the stones were piled up into walls, evidently not so much for the purpose of forming fences as to clear the soil. Indeed, as it was, these fences covered a large portion of the ground. It was harvest time in Sweden; and kerchiefed women were working with the men in the fields, binding and piling the sheaves. The farm houses here were quite different from those in Denmark, both as regards material and style of architecture. The gaard arrangement was exceptional; instead, the buildings, which are generally of wood, painted dark red, with white trimmings, were unconnected, and frequently arranged parallel to each other.

As we neared Gothenburg the scenery improved; the rolling territory with its stones and stone walls gave place to a more hilly landscape with great rugged rocks and beautiful trees. On entering the town we passed Göta Lejon Fort, which stands on the summit of a hill. It is a large, round tower—very old but recently restored—built with exceedingly thick stone walls. It is surmounted by a rampant bronze lion wearing a golden crown and bearing a sword; hence the name. The mate of this fortress, Kronan, which is now a military museum, is topped off with a golden crown. Kronan is on a hill nearer the heart of the city, and is reached by a stairway of about two hundred steps.

Ezias Tegnér

Statue of Gustav Adolf, Gothenburg

A large bronze statue of Gustav Adolf—no true Swede would use the Latin form in these days—has the place of honor in the main public square. This Protestant warrior king was the founder of the town;—or, more strictly speaking, the inviter of the founders. Under his direction and at his invitation it was settled by Dutch people who were commercially inclined and saw great possibilities in a city built at the mouth of the Gotha River. Gothenburg has prospered since its foundation and now ranks second in size to Stockholm; but it still bears traces of its origin, in the form of the broad streets and the canals suggestive of Holland. Another peculiarity of the town is the numerous staircases for ascending and descending the granite hills. These staired streets are a great boon to pedestrians, who have the complete monopoly of them.

Slottsskogen, Gothenburg’s natural park, is on high ground outside of the city. It is a large woodsy stretch, with here and there great patches of purple heather, through which granite boulders peep. In the pretty, tree-rimmed lakes black and white swans were sailing, and in an inclosure were soft-eyed deer. From a cream-colored stone observation tower on the highest point in the park I secured a fine view. To the west was the broad mouth of the Gotha into which were steaming European merchant ships; for this burg on the Gotha is far-famed for its manufactures and its commerce. On to the northeast, like a silver-blue ribbon, the river curved, bearing other vessels bound for Stockholm, via the Gotha Canal.

I cannot leave Gothenburg without telling you about the “automat” and its possibilities. In Copenhagen I had noticed tempting-looking buildings conspicuously labeled “Automat,” but, fearing that they might be a new variety of “gilded halls of sin,” carefully avoided them. In Gothenburg yesterday, however, I saw a tremendously respectable-appearing woman, accompanied by a little girl, come out of an automat, and, thoroughly convinced that there was nothing immoral about the place, I went in to explore. An automat, Cynthia, is an automatic restaurant, non-alcoholic and immaculately respectable; it is the cafeteria idea carried to its logical conclusion. I have never seen automats in our own land; but they are wonderfully convenient, and do away with that survival of mediæval highway robbery called “tipping.” They are operated on the money-in-the-slot and the touch-the-button principle. Taking a meal in one of them is an interesting performance, partaking somewhat of the qualities of an adventure.

In one wall of the dining room are various slots and electric buttons, slides and faucet-like spouts, all properly labeled. Perhaps you would like a cup of cocoa. If so, place a cup and saucer, from the table near at hand, under the proper spout, drop a five-öre piece into the neighboring slot, and immediately cocoa will gush forth into your cup, stopping at just the right degree of fullness. The cocoa will be as good as the best and will cost less than two cents in American money. You will want a sandwich to eat with your cocoa, I am sure. There are almost as many kinds of sandwiches in Scandinavia as there are foods; and all are good. A veritable rainbow array of them is on exhibition in a round glass case divided into compartments. Rotate the case until the dish containing the variety which you would like most to sample is before the little metal door, drop your five-öre piece into the slot, and the door will open and out will slide the desired dish. You can supply yourself with the most delicious little cakes and tarts in the same way. Should you want something hot, roast beef and browned potatoes, for instance, or lamb stew, you will have to return to the wall. Put your money in the slot, press the button, and as soon as ever it can be dished up your order will come out through the side, piping hot and mighty good. Carry your spoils to one of the little tables, which are set as in a cafeteria, but supplied with hard bread in addition; help yourself to knife, fork and spoon and paper napkin from the side table; and—fall to.

You are convinced by this time, I presume, that I have become a perfect gourmand. Perhaps I have; but you would be too, under the same circumstances. I marvel no longer that the Scandinavians eat five times a day. And I hope that Stockholm for which I depart this morning is well supplied with automats. I shall write you from there. Meanwhile, as the Swedes say, “Adjö! Adjö!”

CHAPTER V

JOURNEYING ACROSS SWEDEN; STOCKHOLM

Stockholm, Sweden,

August 20, 191—

My dear Cynthia:

I do not mind admitting now that I was distinctly disappointed with my first glimpses of the Swedish landscape. You probably noticed that in my last letter I ‘demned it by faint praise.’ But since writing that letter I have crossed the peninsula from Gothenburg to Stockholm, and I have found that—at least so far as the eye will reach on either side of the railroad track—Sweden is far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed. It was such a satisfaction to the Swedish half of me to learn that.

The country was woodsy and rolling and rocky all the way; and it was more than that. As we journeyed, conifers, particularly fir and pine, were added to the dainty white-limbed birches and the oaks. Between Lakes Vennern and Vettern for many miles we passed through dense forests, largely evergreens. The trees pressed closely in on both sides of the track, so that I could almost touch their plumy green arms with my hand. There were plenty of rocks, too, but in the form of sightly crags or rugged bluffs which were really a contribution to the picture. Here and there were houses, mostly the typical dark red with white trimmings, which added a pleasant bit of color, peeping from between the openings in the forests, or well exposed and surrounded by fields. In some of the fields were men plowing with teams of oxen; in others were sheaves of rye or oats stuck on long, pointed stakes to dry. These spitted sheaves in some cases bore ghostly, grotesque resemblance to human beings. The railroad stations were mostly of red brick, with neat grounds frequently planted to flowers.

I have not yet mentioned the water. That deserves a paragraph by itself. If I had not already given you to understand that between Gothenburg and Stockholm there are houses and fields and forests and crags, I should be tempted to state that there is water everywhere. While this is not strictly true, water is astonishingly plentiful and is all mixed up with everything else. It has been said that when, in the act of creation, Jehovah parted the water from the land, he forgot Sweden. It certainly looks as if someone had forgotten. There are ditches between the fields to draw off the water; and lakes, large and small, from which brimming rivers flow, are scattered about in the most extravagant manner. Near Stockholm the lakes are closer together than at the Gothenburg end of the line. With their framing of gray, rocky bluffs and tall, dark forests reflected on their silvery surfaces, occasionally dotted with water lilies in full bloom, these lakes are charming indeed. Swedes have been fond of water since Viking times, you know. And last Friday they seemed to be enjoying their lakes to the full; some were swimming, and splashing and diving, like genuine amphibians; others were in boats—proud little steamers which made the reflected landscape tremble and quiver as they puffed and snorted about with a self-important air, and simple rowboats which glided modestly over the mirrored landscape. The train grazed the margin of one lake in which was a boat-load of laughing white-kerchiefed girls, rowed by a brown-armed young man, laughing, too. They were gathering pond lilies.

As the train entered the city by way of a bridge across the Gotha Canal, we noted a little Gothenburg steamer making its way between the green banks. It had taken about forty-eight hours longer than we to make the trip to the capital. But the trip by canal is a most delightful one, I have been told.

When I used the pronoun we in the foregoing, I did not have in mind the sum total of passengers who traveled in the same train with me from Gothenburg to Stockholm, but rather a woman who occupied the same compartment as I, on the train.

My lady, Fröken Nordstern—which, being interpreted, means Miss North Star—boarded the train at Gothenburg. Her air told me on the instant that she was a kindred spirit, so I responded as cordially as possible to her pleasant “God morgon.” After that it was easy to find an excuse for conversation. I soon found that the fröken was wide-awake and interested in the best things of the present, and zealous to contribute her share to the onward and upward progress of humanity. She spoke English very well; therefore, with my mongrel Scandinavian—which she was so good as to call Swedish—we had ample linguistic media for the expression of our thoughts.

We had exchanged remarks upon the subject of Gothenburg, where she is at the head of a small business house, and had branched out slightly in other directions, when she suddenly turned to me and announced that she would like to ask some rather personal questions. As I liked her, I replied that I was willing, and she proceeded.

Was I a vegetarian?

Theoretically, I stated, I was; the thought of devouring my fellow animals for food was abhorrent to me; but actually I was carnivorous in my habits—a piece of inconsistency made possible by dwarfed powers of imagination.

Was I interested in the peace movement?

Yes.

Did I belong to some organization working to banish from the earth the possibility of nation taking up arms against nation?

No; but I was a teacher of history, and I never lost an opportunity to point out the superiority of plowshares to swords and pruning hooks to spears.

Why didn’t I belong to a peace society? Did I not think that I could be more useful to the cause of peace if I belonged to an organization?

I had never given the matter serious thought, I replied.

Would I join a peace organization when I returned to my own country?

Yes; and I was grateful for the jolt.

My North Star lady now looked more hopeful. Lastly, did I believe in equal suffrage?

Here was my chance to come out strong. I was born a suffragist, I declared.

Fröken Nordstern grasped my hand and gave it a hearty squeeze of comradeship. The last answer evidently counted at least fifty per cent. I judge that I passed the examination with about B+.

After that we got on famously. The fröken gave an interesting account of what the Scandinavian people—the very great grandchildren of the warlike old Vikings—were doing to effect permanent peace and good will among the nations; and they are doing much, considering their numbers. Later in the summer she expected to attend the Scandinavian peace congress to be held in Christiania. It would be pleasant, she said, if I could spare the time to attend. It would, indeed, said I. And then I took the opportunity to express the gratification and relief which I had felt that no Scandinavian blood had been shed when Norway separated from Sweden in 1905. Characteristically, after this was spoken, it occurred to me that I might be skating on pretty thin ice; but my pacifist friend showed her breadth of mind by promptly and warmly expressing not only her sympathy with my view but also good-will and best wishes for Norway, adding, however, that she was a loyal Swede.

But equal suffrage was her dearest interest, for she believed that it would greatly increase the weight of the women’s wishes in connection with other reforms; and we talked long upon the subject. Iceland, Finland and Norway had full suffrage, she pointed out; Danish women could vote on many questions; the women of Sweden had had municipal suffrage since 1862, and the lower house of the Swedish parliament had recently passed the bill giving women full suffrage. King Gustav had shown his sympathy towards the reform. The delay was due merely to the conservative upper house. But Scandinavia, she declared, was easily leading Europe in the emancipation of women. This I knew to be a fact; I had swelled with pride over Scandinavia’s progress in this regard long before touching Scandinavian soil. But I did not know, until Fröken Nordstern told me, that Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist whose books I long have loved, was a pioneer in the movement. Swedish women owe much to Miss Bremer, and in token of this, the great national organization for the enfranchisement and social betterment of women was named the Fredrika Bremer Association.

If you secure a chance to read Selma Lagerlöf’s “Ma’mselle Fredrika,” Cynthia, do not let it pass. The story is in the collection entitled “Invisible Links.” My fröken had a copy of the volume with her and took pleasure in reading over again with me the charming, mystical tribute of Miss Lagerlöf, in behalf of Sweden’s “bachelor women,” to the services of Miss Bremer. The story was new to me, but it is certainly one of the finest that Selma Lagerlöf has produced.

We talked also of Ellen Key. I suppose that she is best known in the United States by her book on “The Century of the Child,” which is an attempt to educate parents up to a proper sense of their duty to their children; for Miss Key believes that the education of parents is of far more importance than the education of children. But her books, “The Woman Movement,” “Love and Marriage,” etc., have received considerable American attention, as you probably know. She differs from most feminists in that she constantly emphasizes the mother quality of woman as well as her humanity. In this, I think, she performs a great service. However, there seems little doubt but that Ellen Key’s radical views upon love and marriage have contributed much towards giving the word “feminist” an uncomplimentary connotation. My North Star lady was gratified to learn that I was not scandalized over Miss Key’s views to the point of denunciation; but we agreed that hers seemed rather a dangerous doctrine to preach at the present stage of moral evolution. However, I suppose that prophets are occasionally far ahead of their times.

Some Swedes accuse Miss Key of spreading impure and immoral ideas, Fröken Nordstern said; and they feel that they must apologize to the world for her. Yet many of her critics, when it comes to the question of real nobility of character, are not worthy to tie her shoe strings. For that Ellen Key is a woman of rare character—as well as rare intellect—no one can doubt who knows the facts of her life—a life devoted to the uplift of humanity by teaching, writing, lecturing, and living.

Upon the shores of Lake Vettern, near which our train passed, Ellen Key now lives—lives an abundant life. In fact, the motto over her doorway of “Strand,” her home, is “Memento vivere”—Remember to live. And by her will she has provided in a lovely way to contribute the influence of her personality for mortal good as long as possible after she has gone to join the “choir invisible.” Her beautiful home is to be left just as it is, except for her physical presence, in control of a body of trustees who will invite working women, sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the culture of “Strand,” to come, four at a time, each to spend a month there between April and October, as “the guests of Ellen Key.”

My memory of the long journey across Sweden will always be pleasanter because Fröken Nordstern had a part in it. She was on a very hurried—for Sweden—business trip to the capital and I have not seen her since we parted at the station here. It would be a distinct pleasure to meet her again some time.

Now for Stockholm. It is perfectly charming, whether seen by night or day; but I saw its night beauty first. When the train pulled in, though it was past nine o’clock, darkness had scarcely settled down. The city lights, however, had been turned on, and they glimmered in zig-zag lines across the many canals over which the train rumbled, producing a weird, fairyland effect which quite excited me and promised new interests.

At the station, hotel agents were lined up in three rows, but they were so numerous that I was bewildered and sought help of a helmeted policeman who stood near at hand. “Temperance Hotel”! he called, and a properly labeled agent popped out of a line. In a twinkling I was seated in a drosky and on my way. The horse wore an arch of bells which tinkled festively as we drove through the dark, high-walled “foreign-looking” streets; the memory of the long, pleasant day was in the background of my mind; the charm of the first sight of the glimmering, zig-zag lights of Stockholm was in the fore; and I felt exactly as if I were some one else—a character, perhaps, in a story-book with a good ending.

But when the next morning dawned golden and glorious I realized to the full that I was something more enviable than that; I was a happy woman on a vacation in the land of the Swede.

Stockholm has not such a marked personality, such charming quaintness, as Copenhagen; but it is more, much more, beautiful, than Denmark’s capital. If the site had been selected, and the city all planned out by a modern landscape architect, it could scarcely be more charming. The place, however, is nearly seven centuries old and its founder, the Swedish warrior, Birger Jarl, was primarily looking for a good harbor, easily defended, when he selected the passageway between Lake Mälar and the Baltic, and proceeded to fortify the rocky, woodsy islands. It is this alternation of rugged, heavily forested island and mainland, and lake and river and sea which has given this “Venice of the North” a setting much more beautiful than Venice itself. But the hand and brain of the beauty-loving Swede has contributed greatly to the natural attractions. Most of the streets are wide, well-paved, and clean. Here and there, carefully distributed over the city, are little parks, bright with grass and trees and flowers, and further adorned by handsome fountains and by statues of men who have contributed toward the up-building of Sweden. The tasteful bridges which span the broad canals also add their share to the variety. And the buildings, especially the public ones, in many cases combine in an interesting manner an artistic charm with a dignified reserve characteristic of the Scandinavian north.

When in Germany I think that I told you about the “trinkhallen.” The more temperate Swedes have “vattenbutiker” (water shops, or stores). These are little booths, generally at street corners, where one can buy mineral waters, and various other temperance drinks, and little cakes; and may consume them out in the open air, perched on the high seats beside the counter. Vattenbutiker are as strictly respectable as automats, with which Stockholm is adequately supplied.

Are you surprised to learn that Sweden has preferred “water shops” to “drinking halls”? If so, I must tell you that from being among the most drunken and intemperate parts of Europe, as they were fifty years ago, the Scandinavian lands have become temperate and are the leaders in the European “dry” movement. Under Gustav III, who reigned in the last part of the eighteenth century, the manufacture of alcoholic liquors was made a government monopoly. This made the Swedes heavy drinkers, and soon a state of affairs existed which was heading Sweden rapidly towards destruction. In the other Scandinavian countries drunkenness and demoralization were almost as prevalent. But, in 1865, through the efforts of Peter Wieselgren of Gothenburg, the so-called Gothenburg system was introduced. This system provided that the monopoly of liquor distillation be given over to responsible philanthropic companies which controlled the sale and were permitted to retain only five per cent. of the profits from the traffic; the remainder must go to objects of public service. Norway, shortly afterwards, introduced a similar method of regulation and restriction. To me, one very interesting fact about the system is that part of the profits goes towards teaching the evils of intemperance. In Norway, the profits also go towards the building of better roads, the support of the National Theatre in Christiania, the upkeep of children’s hospitals, and other similar useful purposes.

The other Scandinavian lands were promptly influenced by the reform movement in Sweden and Norway; and all over Scandinavia increasingly severe restrictive laws were passed from time to time. The Scandinavian countries are all now well on the highroad towards total prohibition. Indeed, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes are teetotalers. Norway is almost completely under local option; Sweden is well in line; and sentiment is rapidly growing in Denmark. What is of special encouragement to a democrat from the “land of the free” is the fact that the Scandinavian people themselves have come to see the evil of the drink habit, and have cooperated to abolish it. In the Scandinavian lands, you must know, the government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” about as completely as in the United States. I am not at all certain that it is not more so.

Lest I have deluded you into believing that, in consequence of their freedom from evil practices, the Scandinavians have fully qualified for the harps and crowns of the New Jerusalem, I hasten to inform you that Scandinavia is in the grip of the tobacco habit; the people smoke like bad chimneys. And what is worse, the cigarette is the favorite form of the “weed.” All seem to smoke it except the babies. Small boys scarcely in their teens puff lustily at cigarettes; and I have seen several respectable-looking women smoking in the open-air cafés. Among women, however, the practice is limited to the upper middle class and the upper class.

Now, to return to Sweden’s capital. Riddarholmen, or the Island of the Knights, was one of the first three islands of the city to be fortified. On a square on this island is a statue of Birger Jarl mounted on a lofty pillar, from which he gazes over the happy city whose foundations he laid. This chieftain also conquered Finland and, hence, secured the basis of the later “Greater Sweden.” Though never crowned King of Sweden himself—largely because he was absent fighting the Finns when a vacancy occurred in the kingship—he was, nevertheless, the “father of the Folkungar Kings” and was really the power behind the throne during the rule of his son Waldemar. As a member of the “gentler sex” you will be interested to know that Birger had laws passed which gave to daughters half as much of the property of their parents as sons received, which, though still leaving room for amendment, was a decided improvement upon nothing.

For nearly a century and a half after the rise of Birger Jarl to royal power, Sweden remained an independent nation; but, in 1397, by the union of Calmar, she, with Norway and Denmark, became a member of the Scandinavian federation. This was in the days of Queen Margaret, daughter of the Danish King Waldemar IV, and widow of Haakon VI of Norway. At first Margaret ruled the two countries as regent for her son Olaf, but in her rule she showed such wisdom that when Olaf died, though there was no precedent for a female sovereign in the Scandinavian lands, the Danish nobles elected her as their “sovereign lady, princess, and guardian of all Denmark”; and the Norwegians followed suit. But the Queen herself adopted the modest title, “Margaret, by the Grace of God, daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark.”

It happened that Sweden was at the time under the rule of Albert of Mecklenberg, who was far more German than Swedish in his interests. Albert was also one of the early “antis”; he poked fun at Margaret’s sex and gave her to understand that in exercising sovereign power she was out of her “sphere.” Meanwhile, through the oppression of his Swedish subjects and the favor which he showed to the Germans, Albert made himself so hated in Sweden that the Swedish nobles appealed to the Danish queen to be their ruler. Here was a choice opportunity for revenge which Margaret did not let slip; she invaded Sweden, overcame Albert and his German army and took Albert himself prisoner.

Statue of Birger Jarl, Stockholm

Museum of the North, Stockholm

Then came the Union of Calmar, formed in the name of Eric of Pomerania, Margaret’s grand nephew, who was chosen her heir; Margaret, however, was the real ruler of the Scandinavian lands as long as she lived. The treaty stipulated that the union should be a merely personal one and that each kingdom should retain its own nationality and laws. But Margaret had a vision of a Scandinavian nation; consequently, she worked towards the amalgamation of the three peoples by appointing Swedes to local offices in Denmark and Danes to similar positions in Sweden, and by other welding devices. It was a magnificent idea, and worthy of the great stateswoman that Margaret was. But it was doomed to failure. Though the Queen apparently tried to be prudent and tactful, the patriotic Swedes naturally viewed her as the usurper of their national liberties. Under the stupid Eric and his successors, dissatisfaction increased; the fifteenth century was punctuated with Swedish revolts. None proved successful, however, before the monster Christian II of Denmark had massacred in the Stockholm market place nearly one hundred Swedish nobles, after they had sworn allegiance to him.

This Stockholm “blood bath,” as the Swedes say, “drowned the union of Calmar”; and it nerved Gustav Vasa, son of one of the murdered nobles, to become the George Washington of Sweden. Supported, first by the mountain people of Dalecarlia, and later by the Swedes as a whole, he drove out the Danish oppressors, gave back to Sweden her independence, and in 1523 became the first king of the powerful house of Vasa.

But to return to the square guarded by the statue of Birger Jarl. Near the high-pedestaled figure is Riddarholms Kyrkan, the Westminster Abbey of Sweden. Here rest many of the Swedish celebrities, royal and otherwise, good and bad together. The building itself is handsome—in Gothic style with rich windows. The floor is largely composed of slabs marking tombs of notable Swedes, in some cases three centuries dead. In places on the pavement the carved reliefs have been nearly obliterated by the tread of feet of intervening generations. Around the sides are the chapels in which are buried many Swedish rulers. As I looked at the tombs behind the gratings, I remembered what happened to the royal French remains at the time of the Revolution and made a new and stronger resolution in favor of cremation.