Книга - Through Scandinavia to Moscow

Through Scandinavia to Moscow
William Edwards




William Seymour Edwards

Through Scandinavia to Moscow





I

London to Denmark Across the North Sea




    Esbjerg, Denmark, August 25, 1902.

We came down from London to Harwich toward the end of the day. Our train was a “Special” running to catch the steamer for Denmark. We were delayed a couple of hours in the dingy, dirty London station by reason of a great fog which had crept in over Harwich from the North Sea, and then, the boat had to wait upon the tide.

The instant the train backed in alongside the station platform – only ten minutes before it would pull out – there was the usual scramble and grab to seize a seat in the first-carriage-you-can and pandemonium reigned. H is well trained by this time, however, and I quickly had her comfortably ensconced in a seat by a window with bags and shawls pyramided by her side the better to hold a place for me. Meantime, I hurried to a truck where stood awaiting me a well-tipped porter and together we safely stowed two “boxes” into a certain particular “luggage van,” the number of which I was careful to note so that I might be sure quickly to find the “luggage” again, when we should arrive at Harwich, else a stranger might walk off with it as aptly as with his own.

Our “carriage” was packed “full-up” with several men and women, who looked dourly at us and at each other as they sat glumly squeezed together, elbows in each other’s ribs. So forbidding was the prospect confronting me that I did not presume to attempt a conversation. These comrades, however, soon dropped out at the way-stations, until only one lone man was left, when I took heart and made bold to accost him. I found him very civil and, recognizing me to be a foreign visitor, he spoke with freedom. One Englishman never forgives another for sitting beside him, unintroduced, and squeezing him up in a railway carriage; but he harbors no such grudge against his American cousin, equally the victim of British methods.

Our vis-à-vis had been a volunteer-trooper in South Africa, and had just come back to England, after two years’ hardship and exposure. He had given up a good position in order to serve his country, and had been promised that the place would be kept open for him against his return. He tells me he now finds a stay-at-home holds his job. He has “a wife and two little lads to keep,” and so far he has had “no luck in finding work.” There are thousands of others in as bad a fix as he, he says, returned patriots who are starving for lack of work. He denounced the entire Boer-smashing business most savagely and declared that as for South Africa, he “would not take the whole of it for a gift.” We hear this sort of talk everywhere among the people we casually meet. The average Englishman takes small pride in his Army. “It gives fat jobs to the aristocracy, it is death to us,” is what I have heard a dozen times remarked. Our new acquaintance seemed to feel the better for having thus spoken out his mind, and when we parted, wished us a “prosperous voyage.”

The ship was in motion within twenty minutes after our train reached the Harwich pier. To my landsman’s thinking the air was yet murky with the fog. Big sirens were booming all about us. The melancholy clang of tidal bells sounded in sombre muffled tones from many anchored buoys. It was a drear, dank night to leave the land. We moved slowly, sounding our own hoarse whistle all the while. I stood upon the upper deck peering into the mists till we had come well out to sea. There were few boats moving, no big ones. Multitudes of small schooners and sloops rode at anchor, their danger lights faintly gleaming. I wondered we did not run down and crush them, but the pilot seemed to apprehend the presence of another boat even before the smallest ray of light shone through the fog. One or two great ships we came shockingly close upon. At least, I was jarred more than once when their huge black hulks and reaching masts suddenly grew up before me out of the dead white curtain of the mists. The estuary which leads from Harwich to the sea is long and tortuous. Only a pilot who has been born upon it, and from boyhood learned its currents and its tides, its shallows and its shoals, may dare to guide a boat along it, even in broad day. How much greater the skill and knowledge required thus to steer a ship through these labyrinthine channels amidst the fogs and blackness of such a night! The Captain told me he was always uneasy when coming out, no matter when, and never felt safe until far out upon the sea. Even in open water he must keep the sharpest kind of a watch lest some one of the myriad fishing craft which haunt these waters, should lie athwart the way.

The sea was quiet, rolling with a long slow swell. The rising wind soughed softly through the rigging when, toward midnight, I at last turned in.

All day Sunday the North Sea lay smooth and glassy as a pond; no hint of the turmoil and tempest which so often rage upon its shallow depths. We did not see many vessels; far to the north I made out the smoke of a steamer which the captain said was bound for Kristiansand, in Norway; and south of us were a few sail, which I took to be fishing luggers from Holland. Nor were there many seabirds flying. The sky hung low and in the gray air was the feel of a storm in the offing. Toward dark, about eight o’clock, a misty rain settled down upon us, and the rising wind began swashing the dripping waters along the decks. Toward half past nine we descried a dim glimmer in the east, – a beacon light flickering through the night, – and then another with different intervals of flash, a mile or two out upon the left, and then our ears caught the deep bellow of a fog horn across the sea. We were nearing the west coast of the Province of Jutland, in Denmark. Our port lay dead ahead between the lights. Another hour of cautious navigating, for there are many sand bars and shifting shoals along this coast, and we came steaming slowly, very slowly, among trembling lights – fishing smacks at anchor with their night signals burning – and then we crept up to a big black wharf. We were arrived at Esbjerg.

The train for Copenhagen (Kjoebenhavn) would leave at midnight, an eight-hours’ ride and no sleeping car attached.

We decided to stay aboard the ship, sleep peacefully in our wide-berthed stateroom and take a train at eleven o’clock of the morning, which would give us a daylight ride.

We were entering Denmark by the back door. The sea-loving traveler generally approaches by one of the ocean liners which sail direct from New York to Copenhagen; those who find terror in the sea enter by way of Kiel, and an all-rail ride through Holland and Germany, crossing the channel to Ostend, Dieppe, or the Hook. Only the few voyage across the North Sea with its frequent storms – the few who, like ourselves, are good sailors and do not fear the stress of tide and tempest. We were now at Esbjerg, and must cross the entire peninsula of Denmark, its Little Belt, its Big Belt and the large islands of Funen and Zealand to reach our journey’s end.

I am already beginning to pick up the Danish speech, a mixture of English, German, Dutch and new strange throat gutturals, the latter difficult for an American larynx to make. And yet so similar is this mother tongue of Scandinavia to the modern English, that I can often tell what a Dane is saying by the very similarity of the sounds: “Go Morn” – (good morning), “Farvel” – (farewell).

Our fellow passengers were mostly Danes. This is their favorite route for coming home. They are a quiet, rather pensive people. The men, much of the time, were smoking, and drinking beer and a white brandy. The women were often sitting in the smoking room with them, enjoying, I presume, the perfume of tobacco, as every right-minded woman should, and it may be, also finding solace in the scent of the strong brown beer, which they are not themselves indisposed to quaff.

The cooking on this Danish boat has been good. We have keenly appreciated the improvement upon the diet of roast beef, boiled mutton, boiled ham, boiled potatoes, and boiled peas steeped in mint, which we have been compelled to exist upon during the past few weeks in Britain.




II

Esbjerg – Across Jutland, Funen and Zealand, the Little Belt and the Big Belt to Copenhagen – Friends Met along the Way




    Hotel Dagmar (“Dahmar”),
    Copenhagen, Denmark, August 27, 1902.

Here we are in “Kjoebenhavn,” which word you will find it quite impossible properly to pronounce, however strenuously your tongue may try.

My letter, beginning in Esbjerg, was broken short by the necessity of sleep. We wisely remained upon the ship and took full benefit of our comfortable berths. In the morning we were up betimes, obtained a cup of coffee and a roll, and then, sending our bags and baggage to the railway station, set out afoot.

The air was misty, full of a fine drizzling rain. It was regular Scotch and English weather, but the atmosphere was cooler and not so heavy as in Britain. The little stone-and-brick-built town is clean and neat, with its main street well asphalted. It lies on a gentle slope of hillside which lifts from the water. A giant lighthouse, rising from the highest point of land, is the first object to meet the view. Back of this, upon the level summit, lies the best of the town. The buildings are generally of one and two stories, with steep, gabled roofs.

H, in her Scottish “bonnet,” and I, in my raincoat, were quite impervious to wetness, and we spent the morning strolling here and there, stopping to see, among other things, the tubs and tanks of fish in the market square, where fishwives in big, white caps, stood quite heedless of the rain. The fish were almost wholly the famous roed spoette (red spots), one of the flounder family, much resembling the English sole.

Wanting cigars, I was tempted into a little shop, and found it kept by an intelligent young Dane, who instantly confessed to me, in good United States, that he had lived in America and there done well. In fact, it was plain to see that his heart still beat for the great Republic. His father had died and he had come back to Denmark to care for his old mother, and then, he had fallen in love with the blue-eyed daughter of a citizen of Esbjerg, an only child. So now, with several little Danes added to his charge, he was fixed fast in Esbjerg. But he was “always grieving for America,” he said. He delighted to see us, and sent for his young wife, who came smiling in to us with her baby in her arms. H says he told his wife in Danish, that we were Americans just like all others she would see, if she should ever reach New York! So I bought a box of cigars from him, instead of one or two, and found them good smoking and well worth the very moderate cost.

Crossing the market square to a long, low building, which somehow had about it that indefinable air suggestive of a breakfast comfortably cooked, we came to an inn, in the low-ceilinged dining room of which were little tables set about upon the sanded floor. Two or three men of the sea were smoking in one corner, a bar and a red-cheeked barmaid were in another, and two huge, yellow, Great-Dane dogs occupied most of the remaining space. We chose a table by the window and H ordered roed spoette, rolls and coffee. The fish was delicious, possessing a harder, sweeter flesh than the English sole; and rolls with salted butter rejoiced my palate, for I am dreadfully tired of English butter with no salt; and then we were given big brown pancakes with currant jelly, all we could eat. It was a breakfast fit for a Viking. The bill was only three kroner and twenty oere, which equals about eighty-six cents.

At the railway station, a mile from the docks, our tickets, bought in London, gave us the best on the train, better than similar carriages in England, for here they are bigger, with larger windows and the cars are set on trucks.

The journey to Copenhagen was over and through a sandy, flat and slightly rolling country, more carefully tilled and more generally cultivated than in England, with more grain, wheat and rye; with more vegetables, turnips, carrots, cabbage and potatoes. There were cattle, herds of large red cows, for Denmark is now the dairy of all Europe. But I saw no steers, nor beef cattle, fattening for the market, and but few sheep; nor any hogs running afield – the last are probably kept up. The houses are set singly upon the farms, are surrounded by outbuildings, and are usually of one story and often big and rambling with ells and gables, and generally have thatched roofs. The barns are big and substantial. More people are here upon the land than in England, and not living in clustered villages, as in France; the fields are divided usually by hedges. There are sluggish waterways and canals, and ponds where fish are bred and raised for market; and almost every hilltop is capped with a Dutch-looking windmill.

The train moved deliberately. It made from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour, stopping a long time at each station. We hadn’t gone far when a bald-pated, round-headed Herr climbed in and we speedily fell into talk with him. H speaks Danish enough to get on, and I use my pocket dictionary, and pick up what I can. His name was Hansen and he “owns” the “Hotel Kikkenborg,” at “Brammige,” wherever that may be. He told us of the country we were passing through and helped me on the Danish gutturals. You must gurgle the sounds down in your gullet as though you were quite filled with water, and the more profound the depth from which the sound comes forth, the more perfect the speech. We lost him at the first change of cars, when we boarded an immense ferryboat to cross the strait of water called the Little Belt, which separates the main land from the large island of Funen, but we found ourselves again in kindly company, this time, with a gray-bearded man and two ladies, his wife and daughter. He was “Inspector of Edifices” for the Government. They had been spending a few weeks on the island of Fanoe at Nordby, a fashionable seaside resort much patronized by the gentry of Copenhagen. He talked with me in fluent German, and the ladies conversed readily in French, while all spoke with H in Dansk and so we got on, fell fast friends and were introduced to a beau of the Froeken, a young “Doctor” who had “just taken his degree.” We sat together while crossing the island of Funen and on the ferryboat top all through the long sail across the Big Belt which divides Funen from the island of Zealand. Our friends here pointed out to us where it was that Charles X of Sweden, and his army of foot and horse and guns made their dare-devil passage on the ice that night in January, 1658, crossing the Little and Big Belts to Zealand and Copenhagen, forcing the beaten Danes by the Peace of Roskilde to cede the great Provinces of Skaania, Halland and Bleking, which made Sweden forever henceforth a formidable European state, – “God’s work,” the Swedes declared, for these salty waters were never before frozen solid enough to bear an army’s weight, – nor have they been since. We parted only at the journey’s end. Our friends were pleasant people of the aristocratic office-holding class, content to live simply on the modest stipend the Government may grant, who neither speak nor read English, and who listened to the tales of bigness in America with doubting wonder. “A building twenty stories high!” “Impossible!” “Eighty millions of people!” “Incredible!” “America already holds four hundred thousand Danes – one-fifth of the Danish race.” “Ja! Alas! That is too true!” “Our young men are never satisfied to come back to stay when once they have lived in America!” “Our young men don’t return, it’s hard upon our girls.”

Our new found friends, when we lunched upon the big ferryboat, introduced us to that very Danish dish called Smoer Broed, thickly buttered rye bread overlaid with raw herring or smoked goose breast, a Viking dainty – a salty appetizer well calculated to make the Norseman quaff from his flagon with more than usual vim, and to drive an American in hurried search of plain water! These salty snacks of cold bread and cold fish are as eagerly devoured and enjoyed by the Scandinavian as are the peppery, stinging eatables for which every Mexican palate yearns.

It was dusk when we arrived in the large and commodious Main station at Copenhagen. The suburbs of the city were hidden from us by the gathering darkness, and the electric lights were glowing when we left the train.

We missed General and Mrs. C at the station, so great was the crowd, but found them when we came to our hotel, the Dagmar, they having themselves missed us and followed on our track.

There are many good hotels in Copenhagen and this is among the larger and more popular stopping places of the Danes themselves. It is built along the clean Vestre Boulevard, with umbrageous trees in front of it, and possesses that rare thing, an elevator. In the dining room we sit at little tables, and find the cooking much superior to what one generally meets in England. It is more after the French sort, the Danes priding themselves greatly upon their soups and sauces. In our rooms, which look out upon the broad, paved boulevard, the furniture is old style mahogany, very substantial, and in the corner there is one of those immense porcelain stoves reaching to the ceiling, which is the general mode of heating large rooms in these Scandinavian lands.

Copenhagen is a city of four hundred thousand people, one-quarter of the estimated population of Denmark, and the city is growing steadily at the expense of the country, – increasing too fast for a land the population of which is as steadily growing less. English is said to be the fashionable foreign tongue in court circles, by reason of the British royal connection; but among the people the German speech is steadily and stealthily taking a foremost place, and this despite the fact that the Danes dislike Germany and view the Germans with well-founded fear. You will talk to a Dane but a few moments before he is pouring out his heart to you about the atrocious robbery of the splendid Provinces of Sleswik and Holstein, of which Bismarck despoiled the little kingdom nearly forty years ago. Almost half of Denmark was then lopped off at a single blow, – nor England nor Russia interfering to save the Danes, – and now they are ever in uneasy spirit lest Germany encroach yet more upon them and ultimately devour them, land and sea. They feel she is incessantly creeping on to them with all the cunning of a hungry cat.




III

Copenhagen, a Quaint and Ancient City




    Kjoebenhavn, Dannmark,
    (Copenhagen, Denmark), August 28, 1902.

The Copenhagener declares that his beloved “Kjoebenhavn” is not really an ancient city, although he admits it has been in active business since the middle of the tenth century, nearly one thousand years.

My Danish friends assert that it is my “Yankee eye,” which is so new, and prove the modernity of their town by telling me how many times it has been bombarded, how often sacked and razed, how frequently burned up; and yet, despite their facts, I still make bold to say the city bears the markings of an ancient town.

Long, long ago, even before the time of King Gorm the Old, here were markets by the water’s side, where the fisherman brought his catch, the peasant fetched his eggs and milk and cheese and what the soil might yield, where the itinerant merchant came to show and trade his wares. These handy markets by the sea were at first moved constantly about; by and by they came to be held, year after year, in the self-same spot; the temporary clustered settlement became a lasting town. As the centuries rolled on these market hamlets expanded into a single commercial rendezvous for all the northern world. Thus Copenhagen won her name (Kopman-haven– merchant port) and grew until her commerce made her the heir to the trade and traffic of the Hanseatic League, and she was recognized as supreme mistress of the commerce of the North by London and Bremen, Brussels and Bordeaux, as well as by the merchant fleets of Venice and the Levant.

Those were the days when her Kings and hardy seamen would as lief drink and fight and die as eat and live; their very recklessness made them masters of the North; they even annexed the mighty Norseman, and made Norway a Danish Province; they hammered and held in check their doughty cousins, the Swedes; they brought beneath their sway the Provinces of Skaania, of Halland and of Bleking, the southern portion of what is now known as Sweden; they dominated the cities along the shores of the North and Baltic Seas.

Copenhagen became, in fact as well as in name, the veritable capital of the North. In politics and in intrigue she played the master hand. She gathered to herself the arts and the sciences, the fashion and the elegance, of the North; and to-day, although warlike pride and power have fallen from her, although trade and commerce have lessened in her midst, yet the arts and the sciences, the culture and the elegance are still her own, and the fine old city claims to be as markedly as of yore the intellectual center of the Scandinavian race.

Copenhagen is a flat-lying city; it has no hills in it, while there are many canals and watery lanes which wind through it and lead to the sea, or as the Danes would say the Sund (Sound), – that narrow strait which links the Baltic to the Kattegat, where Denmark and Sweden appear once to have split apart.

The buildings are generally of brick, sometimes of stone, never of wood; they are large and substantial, often four and five stories high, with gabled roofs, sharp and steep, covered with tiles.

In the older parts of the city, the streets are narrow, and twist and turn and change their names even more often than the Rues of Paris. In the newer section, toward the north and northwest, there are long straight boulevards and straight cross streets, and the inevitable air of modern monotony.

The feeling and impression which stole over me the first morning I strolled about the city became almost one of sadness. The wistful, pensive faces of the people; their unobtrusive politeness; the inconsequential traffic of drays and carts along the quiet streets; canals and quays half empty where there should have been big packs of boats; absence everywhere of bustle and ado, – all these were almost pathetic. It might have been a Puritan Sabbath, so silent stood the big stone docks and piers among the lapping waters. There was none of[Pg 17][Pg 18] the ponderous movement of London, none of the liveliness of Paris, nor the busy-ness of Hamburg, of Bremen, of Amsterdam, of Rotterdam and Antwerp, although once Copenhagen was peer of any one. The bales of goods, the tons of merchandise which once filled her lofts and cellars are no longer there. The commerce which once made the city rich and gave her power has ebbed away. She is far fallen into commercial and industrial decay.

The causes which have wrought this collapse of the once great city are, perhaps, difficult to analyze. At least, those Danes with whom I have talked upon the matter are not at all agreed. Nor are they united upon the solution of the problem of restoring the city to the proud place she once held as metropolis of the northern world.

Some tell me that after the demise of the present King, and the passing of Sweden’s ruler to the Halls of Valhalla, then will it be possible for the Scandinavian peoples to come together in one permanent federation, or federal pact, where the Norwegian-Democratic spirit shall instil new energy into the now moribund political body of the sister states, and that then Copenhagen will be the natural capital of this free and potent Scandinavian state, and then will come to her the splendor and dignity justly her due.

Others declare, and declare with a flash of terror in their eyes, that the only hope for Copenhagen, the only hope for the pitiful remnant of the once proud Kingdom of Denmark, is to be wholly devoured by the Hohenzollern Ogre, to be by him chewed fine, gulped down, digested and assimilated as part of the flesh and blood of the waxing German Empire. Then will Copenhagen become the chief seaport of the German Hinterlands to the south, then will the importance of Bremen and Hamburg and Kiel be expanded into the new vigor that will have come to Copenhagen. They point to the inevitableness of this destiny as evidenced by the subtle, silent, incessant encroachment of the German tongue among the people of the city as well as throughout the land, and by the continuous invasion and settlement of the city and country by men and women of German breed. They say the Imperial monster grips them in a clutch whence there is no escape.

Whatever the future may have in store for stricken Denmark and Copenhagen, it is clear enough to the apprehension of the friendly stranger that the noble city is ailing and benumbed. She stagnates, and only revolution and rebirth into a greater Scandinavian state, or Germanic conquest and absorption, will restore her to her former place. It is natural for an American to hope for Denmark and her people a rehabilitation through the uplifting influence of a Scandinavian Republic.

There are fine shops in Copenhagen; behind the unpretentious fronts along the Oestergade, the Amagertorv, the Vimmelskaft and Nygade and neighboring streets is stored great wealth of fabrics and of merchandise. Here we saw the notably handsome pottery and artistic porcelain ware for which Copenhagen is already famous beyond the sea; and H and her mother have delightedly bought several charming pieces of the latter and ordered them sent forward to New York. They have also quite lost their hearts, and certainly their kroners, over the exquisite gold and silver and enamel work manufactured here, while they declare the laces and drawn work – particularly what is called Hedebo– excels anything of the kind they have discovered in London. The Dane is a poet, a dreamer, an artist; he is also a patient artisan, and what he produces ranks among the world’s best work.

Passing along the narrow sidewalks you would never suspect what is stored behind the plain exteriors, for the Dane has not yet learned the art of window display, nor has he acquired the skill of so showing his goods that the buyer is caught at a single glance. If you would purchase, you must have already determined what you want, and then, upon asking for it, will be given liberal choice.

The shops are mostly small, each seller dealing in a single ware. Only one Dane, a wide-awake newcomer from Chicago, has dared to introduce the complex methods of “department” trade. He has opened an immense establishment called the Magazin du Nord, where thus far is done a rushing business. But the conservative merchants of Copenhagen have not yet become so well assured of the success of this innovation that they are willing to follow the example set.

In company with the ladies I have been out all the afternoon along these narrow streets – streets where the narrow sidewalks are altogether insufficient to accommodate the passing crowds, which consequently fill up the middle of the way – and we find the Frus and Froekens of Copenhagen apparently as much devoted to what is called “shopping” as our own fair dames at home. Buxom and yellow-haired and rosy-cheeked, they throng the streets each afternoon. They are comely to look upon, and carry themselves with more graceful carriage than do the women of England. They walk deliberately, with none of the nervous scurry of their transatlantic sisters. Indeed, it is hinted to me, they have not come out so much to buy as to meet some friend or neighbor, and exchange a bit of news or gossip in one of the numerous and cozy cafes where is sold conditterie: – candies and chocolates and coffee and little cakes.

Next to conditterie, the Copenhagener is fondest of his books and the town abounds in bookshops, big and little. Every Dane reads and writes his native tongue, and among the educated, English and French and German are generally understood. In the book stores I visited I was always addressed in English, and found French, German and English and even American books upon the shelves; and more newspapers and magazines are published in Copenhagen, a Danish friend declares, than in any other city in Europe of its size. The Danes have, too, a widely established system of free circulating libraries and book clubs, which extend throughout the countryside of Zealand and Funen and Jutland, as well as in the towns, while Copenhagen is supplied also from the extensive collections of the University and Royal Libraries.

The public schools and the University we did not see, for the season was the vacation interval, and the teachers, professors and students were all dispersed. But the schools and University of Copenhagen are modernly equipped. The Dane is intelligent above all else, and he has always paid great heed to the adequate education of his race. Indeed, Copenhagen was the first city in Europe to establish real public schools, opening them in every parish more than three hundred years ago.

There are many Torvs about the city, market-places where all sorts of things have once been sold, but which are now become wide-open public squares. The old word Torv has already lost its ancient meaning, even as has the word Circus, which in London first sounds so strange to American ears. But while the Gammelstorv, the Nytorv, the Kongen’s Nytorv and many others are now degenerated into these mere open breathing spaces between the big buildings of the town, there are yet Torvs where fish, and flowers, meats and vegetables, and things else are offered for sale. The most attractive of them all to me were those where are sold the flowers and the fish.

In the Amagertorv were heaps of pale and puny roses, and diminutive asters and chrysanthemums, along with splendid pansies – “stepmother flowers,” as the Danes call them – and luxuriant piles of mignonette, and big baskets of pinks and phloxes; where rosy-cheeked women, in starched white caps, smilingly urged me to buy, and one Froeken with a wealth of yellow hair and cobalt-blue eyes, pinned on my coat a monstrous pansy for boutonnière.

Among the fishwives of the Gammel Strand there was always lively stir, for their fisk must early find a buyer, and by midday they themselves must be back to their nets and boats. These Danish fishwives, moreover, have a burden of responsibility quite unknown to their English, German, Dutch and French sisters. Not merely must they sell the fish which the men turn over to their keeping, but they must also preserve it hearty and alive, else the dainty Danish housewife will not buy. The fish are kept in large tubs and tanks filled with fresh sea water, where they swim about as keen and lively as they might do in the sea. The buyer scrutinizes the contents of these tubs with a fine and practiced eye; she picks out the fish which swims and splashes to her mind; has it lifted out alive, and carries it home in a bucket of water which she has brought to the market for that purpose. A fish which is dead, a fish which has died of strangulation in the air, is looked upon with horror and rejected as unfit for food by all right-acting Danish stomachs. No dead fish, preserved from becoming stale through the use of chemicals, ever enters a Danish kitchen. Is it any wonder then, that the buxom red-cheeked women and sturdy men of these seafaring lands prefer a square meal of sweet fresh fish to any other! Sauntering along the Strand I espied the cod and mackerel and herring under names I did not know, and everywhere foremost among them all the now familiar roed spoette, the Danish epicure’s delight.

The streets of London are choked with moving vehicles, or those drawn up in line awaiting fares. In Copenhagen one is struck at once by the absence of the equipages of the rich, the very limited number of cabs anywhere about, as well as the small number of heavy drays, even upon the wholesale business streets. One might almost say that the streets would seem deserted if it were not for the pigeons and the dogs. There must be many dove-cotes in Copenhagen and the birds certainly have hosts of friends. But the dog, the unabashed and capricious dog, is the real king of Denmark’s capital. After seeing him in Holland and in France, where his dogship is a faithful co-worker with man, toiling all the long day and longer year to eke out the income of his master, one almost envies the lot of the dogs of Copenhagen. These beasts abound throughout the city; neither tag nor muzzle adorns them, nor do owners seemingly claim them, but from puppyhood to gaunt old age they lead a boisterous and vagabond life, to the terror of small children and their nurses, and the well-gowned women who may chance to cross their trail. Whether they survive through performing the office of scavenger, as do the dogs of Constantinople, I have never been informed, but whatever the cause, the curs of Copenhagen take as full possession of that town as do the tame vultures of Vera Cruz.

We visited, of course, the many objects of interest the tourist is expected to see; we studied the splendid collection of the masterpieces of Thorvaldsen, housed in the stately building where also is set his tomb; we looked at the collection of ethnological relics, one of the most notable in the world; we lingered in the old castle of Charlottenborg, and the new art galleries where are gathered many of the master paintings of which the Danish capital is so proud; we admired the great round tower, up the spiral causeway of which a squadron of dragoons may ride to the very top, and Peter the Great ascended on horseback; we duly marveled at the much bepraised Fredriks Kirke, a marble edifice, smothered beneath a ponderous and ornate dome; and H and I spent a delightful hour in the noble Vor Frue Kirke, where her grandmother was wedded some sixty years ago; the banks and the Bourse, the imposing new Hotel de Ville – the finest modern building in Denmark – the Legislative Palace, Christiansborg and Rosenborg and Amalienborg and Fredriksberg. We saw what of them the public is allowed to see; we also drove and strolled upon the fine wide Lange Linie Boulevard along the water side, shaded by ancient and umbrageous lindens, whence may be viewed the inner and outer harbors and Free Port and the spacious, new and half empty docks, and much of the shipping, and where of a pleasant afternoon the fashion and beauty of the city are wont to ride and drive. We joined in with the multitude upon the long, straight Fredriksberggade, where the life and movement of the city may be watched and studied, even as upon New Orleans’ Canal Street and New York’s Broadway; and we did all else that well instructed Americans are taught to do. But after all, these are the things that Baedeker and the guide books tell about. To me it is ever of higher interest to learn from the people themselves by word and touch what my own senses aid me to see and hear, and so it was only when I met some of my wife’s Danish kin, and a broad and burly Berserker clasped me in his arms and implanted a smacking kiss upon either cheek, ere I knew him to be of her relations, – that I felt my acquaintance begun with the most polished and elegant branch of the Scandinavian race.

Other parts of nights and days we spent with friends in the lovely Tivoli gardens, where all the Copenhagen world, high and low, rich and poor alike, are wont to meet in simple and democratic assemblage, equally bent upon having a good time. “Have you seen Tivoli?” is ever almost the first question a Copenhagener will put. There we watched the famous pantomime in the little open booth beneath the stars, a sort of Punch and Judy show; there we entered the great music hall where the Royal band plays, and the crowded audiences of music-loving Danes always applaud; there we drank the Danish beer which is admitted to be the best on earth – so a Danish neighbor whispered in my ear. Tivoli is the Copenhagener’s elysium. When he is blue he gets himself to Tivoli; when he feels gay he travels to Tivoli; alone or in company he goes to Tivoli, and he goes there as often as time will permit, which is usually every night.

A most difficult problem for Copenhagen has been that of draining and sewering the city. It lies so low, almost at the dead level of the sea, and the tides of these Baltic waters are so insignificant – ten to twelve inches only – that for many centuries Copenhagen has been a most unhealthy city, infected by cesspools, tainted by blind drains, and defiled by accumulated poisons, until its death rate was higher than that of any other city in Europe. But at last the problem is solved. Forced water and giant suction pumps wash and drain out the elaborate system of pipes, and spill the death-laden wastage at a distant point into the sea, and with this transformation Copenhagen has become a measurably healthy city.

Perhaps it is this century-long fight with death, plague and epidemic knocking continually at her doors, which has endowed Copenhagen with so many fine hospitals and public charities for the care of the sick, – few cities in Europe are so elaborately provided. Hand in hand with the hospitals are also institutions for caring for the destitute and very poor. Denmark has never followed England’s pauper-creating system, but the beggar on the street is promptly put in jail, while the deserving poor is given a kindly and helping hand.

One of the most charming spectacles of the city is its extensive public gardens, where the ancient defenses are converted into parks, and the moats are transformed into ponds and little lakes where swans and geese are kept, and boys sail toy boats. The landward side of the city is thus almost encircled with these pleasure grounds. One morning we were crossing one of these gardens, the lovely Oersteds Park, when I caught a pretty picture with my kodak, a little two-years-old tot learning to make her first courtesy to a little boy of four or five. She dropped and ducked and bent her little body with all the grace of a Duchess of the Court.

Denmark is about the size of three-fifths of West Virginia, comprises fifteen thousand square miles and contains less than two millions of people, – about sixteen hundred thousand. She possesses no deposits of coal or iron, no forests of valuable timber; she has few manufactures. Her people are farmers making a pinched living off the land, raising lean crops and selling butter and cheese, or they are crowded – one-fourth of them, – into the city of Copenhagen, or they are gaining a hardy livelihood upon the sea. And yet this diminutive kingdom puts up $275,000 a year for the keeping of the King, and also provides him and his family, tax free, with palaces and castles, and estates whereon to fish and hunt and play.

To an American mind it is amazing that a competent people will accept and suffer burdens such as these.

In the great state of New York, with its seven millions of people, with wealth of coal and iron, with immense primeval forests, with cities whose commerce expands with a swiftness almost incredible, the Governor is paid $15,000 a year, and allowed a single mansion wherein to dwell. Massachusetts, Vermont and Michigan, and many other commonwealths, pay their Governors but $1,000 per year, without a mansion for their residence.

The mighty Republic of the United States itself, with a continent for domain, and eighty millions of people, pays its President $50,000 per year, and gives him the use of the White House for his home.

Therefore, do you wonder, as I stroll about this fine old city, and look into the unhopeful, wistful faces of its plainly clad, not over-rich nor over-busy people, that I begin to comprehend why Copenhagen holds the highest record for suicides of any city in the world, and why so many of her vigorous, and alert and capable, young men continually forsake their native land for the greater opportunities and freer political and industrial atmosphere of the United States?

The Dane always gets on if you give him half a chance. He is called the “Frenchman of the North.” Graceful and supple in his manners, with a mouthful of courtesies of speech, he is naturally a social diplomat. The blunt Norwegian calls him a fop. The martial Swede sneers at his want of fight. But the Dane has always held his own, and as a financier, a diplomat and man-of-the-world able to make the best out of the situation he may be in, he still gives proof of possessing his full share of the Scandinavian brain.




IV

Elsinore and Kronborg – An Evening Dinner Party




    Helsinoere, Dannmark, August 29, 1902.

We left Copenhagen Friday evening, about four o’clock, from the Nordbane station. We were in plenty of time. Nobody hurries in Denmark. The train of carriages, with their side doors wide open, stood on the track ready to start. Prospective passengers and their friends moved about chatting, or saying good-bye. It was a local train to Elsinore, where it would connect with the ferry across the Sund to Helsingborg and there with the through express to Stockholm and Kristiania, a night’s ride. We would go to Elsinore, and there spend the night, and go on by daylight in the morning.

A good many acquaintances had come down to see us off, just for the sake of friendliness. I had kissed all the rosy-cheeked Froekens and been kissed by the Frus, having dexterously escaped the embraces of the men, when there loomed large before me an immense Dane, near six feet high and proportionate in girth, brown-bearded and blue-eyed, holding an enormous bouquet in either hand, an American flag waving from the midst of each. He made straight for[Pg 31][Pg 32] me, folded me up among the flowers and kissed me joyfully on either cheek, and all before I really knew just what had taken place; then he doffed his hat, and bowing profoundly, presented first to me and then to H one of the bouquets with which he was loaded. And these bouquets were tied up with great white ribbons! Of course, we were evidently but newly wed. We suddenly became of interest to the entire company. Nor was there escape, for General C is well known and popular in Copenhagen. Others now came up and were introduced, and H and I held a levée right then and there, and of kisses and embraces I made no count.

The ride was along the Sund, that lovely stretch of salt water, only a few miles wide, which joins the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. It is more like the Hudson River below West Point than anything I know, except that the shores are low and more generally wooded to the water’s edge. Or, perhaps I should say that it is another and narrower Long Island Sound, as you see it a few miles out from Jamaica Bay. The busy waters were alive with a multitudinous traffic from Russia and Germany and Sweden and Denmark itself, and the fishing vessels that abound along these coasts. Here and there villas and fine country houses peeped out among the trees. The Sund is the joy of the Dane. He loves it, and the stranger who looks upon it does not forget it. One then understands why the Danish poets have sung so loudly of it.

Our way lay through much cultivated land, market gardens sending their produce to Copenhagen, dairy farms where is made some of that famous Danish butter every Londoner prefers to buy, and which is sold all around the world. Here and there we passed a little town, always with its sharp-steepled Lutheran church and dominie’s snug manse along its side. The church, the Lutheran church in Denmark, is no trifling power. It is as bigoted and well entrenched as is the Roman hierarchy in Mexico and Spain. We should have liked to be wedded in the Vor Frue Kirke, where the dear old grandmother had been married. But it is a Lutheran church, and we were Dissenters, and without the pale. Nor could we present the necessary proof. We had no papers to show we had been duly born. Nor had we legal documents to prove that our parents were our very own. Nor could we show papers in proof that we had been christened and were legally entitled to our names, nor that we had been regularly confirmed. Without these documents, sealed and authenticated by the state, and in our case also by the United States, no Lutheran pastor would have dared to try and make us one. So we ran the gauntlet of less stringent English law, in itself quite bad enough, and lost the experience of the quaint Danish ceremonial in the noble church.

At the fine big Government station in Helsinoere (Elsinore) – for the Government owns and runs the railroads in Denmark, just as it does in Germany and much of France – we were met by an aunt and uncle and cousin of H’s. They were a charming old couple, and the son was a young naval engineer (shipbuilder), working in the ship yard at Helsinoere. All have lived in America and speak our tongue. We were to dine with them and spend the evening, when General and Mrs. C would go home on the last train at 10 p. m. I left the ladies together, while D and I strolled over to the ancient, yet formidable, fortress of Kronborg, which for centuries has commanded the gateway to the Baltic. Built of Norwegian granite, when erected it was believed to be impregnable. Its casemates, lofty walls, turrets and towers frowned threateningly across the three-mile strait to Helsingborg in Sweden, and no boat sailed past except it first paid the dues. To-day, these walls of rock, these ramparts in the air, no longer terrify the mariner. Sund taxes are no longer levied! The ancient fortress does little else than fire an occasional salute. But the Danes still love and honor it, and a few soldiers are stationed in it, a solitary guard.

A vista of the Sund I tried to kodak from the top of the great tower, and I bribed a soldier for a dime to let me take his manly form, although a camera is forbidden within the precincts of this place of war.

But Kronborg is famous for other things than mere Danish tolls and wars. Kronborg it is, where Hamlet’s shade still nightly wanders along the desolate ramparts. There it is that the Danish prince beheld his father’s ghost. There he kept watch at night with Horatio and Marcellus. And close by in the park of Marienlyst Castle is Hamlet’s grave. We did not see it, but many pilgrims do.

Then we descended into the deep dungeons, or part of them, and a pretty, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed Danish lass told us tales of Holger Danske, who lives down in the deepest pits, whose long white beard is fast grown to the table before which he sits, and who is to come forth some day and by his might restore to the Danish race its former great position on the earth; and she told us also of the human tragedies which have in past ages been enacted in these keeps. She spoke in soft, lisping, musical Danish, the only sweet Danish I have heard; for the Copenhagen speech is jerky, the consonants are chopped short, and the vowels are deep gurgled in the throat, difficult for foreign ears to comprehend.

After seeing the fortress, we visited an ancient monastery, suppressed when the Roman church was driven from these northern Lutheran lands, and now become an Old Ladies’ Home – shocking transformation in the contemplation of those monkish shades which may yet roam the forsaken cloisters! – of which institution the old uncle is now Superintendent with Government pension for life!

And then we came to the cozy home where the ladies were already met. We entered a narrow doorway, a sort of interior storm door, and turned to the right into a comfortable sitting room, beyond which was the dining room, with the table set. The aunt is a gentle, round-faced, rosy-cheeked little woman, in a white lace cap and the prettiest of manners. With her was an old spinster friend, Froeken– , a slim, wizen-faced dame of sixty, in brown stuff dress, with tight sleeves and close fitting waist, and old lace at the throat, fastened by a big mediaeval-looking gold brooch, and with a gold chain about her neck. She possessed very small, bright black eyes, and lips that stuck straight out. She courtesied, – dropped down straight about ten inches and came up quick, a sort of bob – smiled, and said in Danish, “she was rejoiced to meet H’s ‘Mand.’” All were very friendly, and H to have caught a Mand, sure enough, was treated with distinction.

The table was set for eight; there was beer in glass decanters, cold fried fish, cold smoked goose breast, cold smoked salmon (raw), cold sardines, cold calveshead jelly, cold beef loaf, cold bread, black bread, rye bread, cold rolls (hard and shiny with caraway seeds in them), gooseberry jelly, spiced currants, and also tea, this latter piping hot. At each place was set a pile of salted butter (at least a pound) on a little dish. I sat next “Tante,” with Froeken– across the table from me, her black eyes boring me through with steady gleam. You take your fish up by the tail and eat him as you would a piece of bread. “Butter him thick, yes, thick,” “Tante” said to me. I laid on about half an inch, she did, they all did. It was delicious butter and that fish went down wonderfully slick. The goose breast was good, but I discerned it to have been a gander. The raw herring I did not find so attractive as the goose. There were also several sorts of cheese, of which every one ate much. You put a heavy layer of butter on your bread, then a layer of thin cut cheese, then a layer of herring or sardine or salmon, and eat it fast. There was no hot food, there never is. The rule is to stow away cold fish, butter and cheese, and wash it down with the strong brown beer. The sweets are then taken to top off with. Pickles and preserves together – just like the Germans. (I have not yet run into the sour foods in which the German stomach delights.) Having begun with a mild cheese, you gradually ascend to the strongest with the final sweets. H says the meal was only “supper,” not dinner, but I confess I am so mixed on these Scandinavian meals, that I cannot yet tell the difference. At breakfast, the Danes take only a cup of coffee and a roll, the Spanish Desayuno; not even an egg, nor English jam. About one or two o’clock in the day, they dine, having soups, meats (roast or boiled), fish (fresh and salt), vegetables and beer. At night, it is about as I have told you, and they often dare to add a little more cold fish and cheese before they finally retire. The soups at dinner are very good; and the meats are better cooked than at a British table, on which, after a while, all meats begin to taste alike, and you grow tired to death of the eternal boiled potatoes, and boiled peas steeped in mint. I have had very nice cauliflower at Danish tables, and the lettuce of their salads is delicate and crisp, while the coffee of the Danes, like that of the Dutch, is better than you will find in either England, Germany or France; it seems to be the real thing, with neither chicory nor hidden beans. The Danes are skilful cooks, although their palates seem to be fondest of cold victuals and raw smoked fish.

We stayed the night in a comfortable inn, close by the water side, an ancient ale house where sailors used to congregate in the halcyon days when all passing ships must lay-to at Helsinoere to pay the tolls then levied by the King, hard by where now the fishing boats tie up. There were many of these and one in particular was continually surrounded by an excited crowd. It had just arrived loaded down to the decks with a catch of herring. The fishermen had had the luck to run into one of those rare and extraordinary schools of herring which are sometimes chased into the protecting waters of the Sound by a whale or other voracious enemy outside. The nets had been let quickly down and millions of fish as quickly drawn up. The boat had been filled to sinking, and word flagged to brothers of the craft to hasten up and partake of the abounding catch. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of herring had been caught within a few hours by the fishermen of Helsinoere alone, to say nothing of what were taken by the crews of other fishing boats along the coast. The entire population of the little town is now busy cleaning and salting fish, fish that will feed them well and keep them easy in stomach until the winter shall be past and the spring be come again. Women were selling fish along the streets, boys were peddling fish, how many for a cent I do not know, and men were giving fish, gratis, to whosoever would carry them away. These extraordinary catches do not often happen. No such luck had befallen Helsinoere for many a day. It may be years before it again occurs. The fisherman of these northern waters sails forth upon his cruise each day inflamed with very much the same spirit of adventurous quest as in America are we who, living upon the land, drill wells for oil or dig for gold.

Helsinoere is rich to-night, and the herring is her king.




V

Across the Sund to Sweden and Incidents of Travel to Kristiania




    Kristiania, Mission Hotel,
    Pilestradiet 27 (Alfheim), August 31, 1902.

Hilsen Fra Kristiania!

Our ancient tavern, the Sleibot, in Elsinore, cared for us most comfortably. We were given a large room looking out over the waters of the Sund, with wide small-paned casemented windows, and a great porcelain stove and giant wooden bedstead. For breakfast we had fresh herring, the fish which will now form the chief diet of Helsinoere for many a month, and more of the good Danish coffee. The bill for lodging and breakfast was seven kroner (about $1.90) for us two.

The dear old couple were on hand to see us off, and waved farvel as we boarded the immense ferryboat which takes on, if needful, an entire train, but usually only the baggage cars, for through travel to Swedish and Norwegian points. The boats are long and wide and strong, and smash their way through the floes of drifting ice the winter through, for this outlet of the Baltic is rarely frozen solid for any length of time. The four-miles passage is made in twenty minutes, and after we got under way, it was not long before even massive Kronborg faded upon the view, and we were making fast to the pier at Helsingborg, in Sweden.

In England, owing to the smallness of the tunnels and the present cost of enlarging them, the railway management is compelled to keep to the ancient diminutive style of carriage first introduced sixty years ago. But here, in these northern lands, where railway building is of more recent date, although the gauge is the same as in Britain, the carriages are half as large again, and are many of them almost as long as our American cars, so that the riding in them is much easier than there. And in Norway I have already seen cars which, except for being shorter, were exactly like our own.

We traveled first along the sea, then through a flat country. There were scores of sails upon the Kattegat, a multitude of ships and barques and brigs, schooners and sloops, and small fishing smacks, and larger fishing luggers going far out upon the North Sea. There were also many black hulks in tow of big tugs carrying coal to the Baltic cities, and steamers bound for English and German ports and even for America. The waters were alive with the busy traffic.

We passed wide meadows and much grass land. Cows were feeding upon these fields, red cows mostly, with herders to watch over them. The cows were tethered each to a separate iron pin sunk in the ground, all in a single row; and thus they eat their way across an entire meadow, – an animated mowing machine. Now and then we returned to the shore of the sea, passing some fishing village nestled along the rocks, or we rolled through forests of small birches, pines and spruce.

In the same compartment with ourselves sat a couple of young Germans. They were much interested in each other. I noticed that the lady’s rings were most of them shining new, and one, a large plain gold ring, was in look particularly recent and refulgent. H came to the same conclusion also at about the very same moment. The two were surely a bridal pair. And they talked German, and looked out across us through the wide windows as though we were never there. So I spoke to my wife in good United States, and we agreed that these two were newly wed. And then the bride’s noble face and fine brown eyes appealed to me, and I declared her to be the loveliest woman I had yet seen this side the sea. The while she and her Mann still conversed in low, soft German. But it now seemed to me that they looked out across us with a kindlier feeling in their eyes and, in a surreptitious way, the German beauty was peeping at the fine large diamond on H’s left hand (the wedding ring she had already succeeded in making look dull and old). At Goteborg (Gothenburg) our train drew up for half an hour’s wait. Here that portion of it going to Stockholm would be cut loose from our own, and another engine would take us to the north. Along with most of the other passengers the young German and I also got out, leaving the two ladies in the car. At the counter of the big lunch room I watched the ever hungry Norsemen stowing away cold fish and cheese, and was in somewhat of a dilemma what to take, when the German husband of the lovely bride came up to me in a most friendly way, and suggested that I would enjoy a certain sort of fish and thin brown cake, which seemed to be one of the popular objects of attack by the voracious multitude. And he spoke to me in perfect English of the educated sort. He had evidently quite understood my flattering comments upon his bride, and was now my fast friend. I did not show surprise, but took his hint, and afterward we strolled up and down the platform, munching our snack, while he told me that he was a “barrister from Cologne.” “Yes, on his wedding trip.” He had “learned English in the German schools,” he said, and had “never been in England or America.” His wife, he admitted, “could not speak English,” but “could read it and understand it when others talked!” He told me of the German courts, and of his long years of study before he was admitted to the bar. When they left us a few miles further on, for their way lay up through the lakes and forests of Sweden, we parted as old friends, and they promised to visit us if ever they should come across the sea; our unsuspecting admiration had won their hearts!

About 4 p. m., we dined at the small station of Ed, our first example of Swedish railway dinner-serving on an elaborate scale. The train was a long one. There were many passengers. The fish and cheese consumed at Gothenburg was long since shaken down. We were genuinely hungry. But when the train came to a stop there was no rush to the restaurant, nor attempt of every man to get ahead of the one in front of him. The passengers took their leisure to get out, and walked deliberately toward the big eating room. The food was set upon a long central table. There were hot soups, hot boiled fowl, hot meats, an abundance of victuals, cold and salt. There were piles of plates, of napkins and of knives and forks. Everyone helped himself, and ate standing or carried his food to a little table and sat at ease. This latter plan we followed. Rule: Eat all you will, drink as much beer as you desire, take your own time, the train will wait, and when you are quite satisfied pay a single kroner (twenty-seven cents). There is no watching to see how much you may consume. You eat your fill, you pay the modest charge, you go your deliberate way. However slow you may be the train will wait!

We now traversed a barren country of marshy flats; with skimp timber, chiefly small birch and spruce. Toward dusk it was raining hard. The long twilight had fairly begun when we crossed the Swedish border and a few miles beyond stopped at Fredrikshald, where is a famous fortress against the Swedes, besieging which, King Charles XII was killed. Here a customs’ officer walked rapidly through the car, asked a few questions and passed us on. Our trunks had been marked “through” from Helsinoere, so we had no care for them until we should arrive in Kristiania. But that there should be still maintained a customs’ line between the sister kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, which are ruled by a common King, may perhaps surprise the stranger unacquainted with the peculiar and somewhat strained relations ever existing between these kindred peoples.

For many hundreds of years (since 1380) Norway had been a province of Denmark. Her language and that of the Dane had grown to be almost the same, the same when written and printed, and differing only when pronounced. But in 1814, the selfish powers of the Holy Alliance handed over Norway to the Swedish crown as punishment to Denmark for being Napoleon’s friend, and threatened to enforce their arbitrary act by war. So Norway yielded to brute force, and accepted the sovereignty of Napoleon’s treacherous Marshal Bernadotte, the Swedish King, but she yielded nothing more, and to this day has preserved and yet jealously maintains her own independent Parliament, her own postal system, her own separate currency and her Custom Houses along the Swedish line. And you never hear a Norwegian speak of any other than of the “King of Sweden.” “He is not our King,” they say, “we have none.” “We are ruled by the King of Sweden, but Norway has no[Pg 45][Pg 46] King.” Cunning Russia, it is said, cleverly spends many rubles in order that this independent spirit shall be kept awake, and the war force of Sweden thereby be so much weakened. Russia might even to this day be able to nourish into war this ancient feud between the kindred breeds, if it were not that in her greed of power she has shown the cloven foot. The horror of her monstrous tyranny in Finland already finds echo among the Norwegian mountains. “We are getting together,” a Norwegian said to me. “We have got to get together, however jealous we may be of one another. We must, or else the Russian bear will hug us to our death, even as now he is cracking the ribs of helpless Finland.” And when I suggested that little Denmark should be taken within the pale, and a common Scandinavian Republic be revived in more than ancient force to face the world, he declared that already a movement toward this end was set afoot, and only needed a favorable opportunity to become a living fact.

At 11 p. m. we arrived at Kristiania in a pouring rain, and at General C’s recommendation, came to this curious and comfortable hotel. Like many other hotels in Norway, it is kept by women, and seems to be much patronized by substantial Norwegians of the nicer sort. It is on the top floor of a tall building, and you pass up and down in a rapid modern elevator. It is kept as clean as a pin, and the beds we sleep in are the softest, freshest in mattress and linen we have seen this side the sea. We have also passed beyond the latitude of blankets and are come to the zone of eider down. Coverlets, light, buoyant, and delightfully warm now keep us from the cold, and in our narrow bedsteads we sleep the slumber of contented innocence. We have a large well-furnished chamber, all for two kroner per day (fifty-four cents). When we entered the long, light breakfast hall this morning, we saw a single table running the length of the room, a white cloth upon it, and ranged up and down, a multitude of cheeses big and little, cow cheese and goat cheese, and many sorts of cold meat, beef and pork and mutton, and cold fish and salt fish. And there were piles of cold sliced bread and English “biscuits” (crackers). The coffee, or milk if you wish it, is brought in, and in our case so are fresh soft-boiled eggs. A group of evidently English folk near us had a special pot of Dundee marmalade. The Norwegians take simply their coffee or milk, with cheese and cold fish and the cold bread. Our breakfast cost us twenty cents apiece.

To-day the city is washed delightfully clean, the heavy rain of the night having cleared streets and atmosphere of every particle of dust and grime. We have driven all about in an open victoria. It is a splendid town, containing some two hundred thousand inhabitants. It lies chiefly upon a sloping hillside with a deep harbor at its feet. Like Copenhagen, it is the capital of its country, and the seat of the Norwegian Government, of the Supreme Law Courts, and of the Storthing or National Congress or Parliament. At the end of the wide Karl Johans Gade stands the “Palace of the Swedish King,” a sombre edifice, now rarely occupied. Kristiania is also the literary and art center of the Norse people. Here Ibsen lives, here Bjoernstjoerne Bjoernsen would live, if Swedish intolerance did not drive him into France. The types of men and women we see upon the streets are the finest we have met since coming over sea. Tall and well-built, light-haired and blue-eyed, the men carry themselves with great dignity. The women are, many of them, tall, their backs straight, not the curved English spine and stooping shoulders. All have good chins, alert and initiative. The Norwegians are the pick of the Scandinavian peoples. They are the sons and daughters of the old Viking breeds which led the race. They are to-day giving our northwestern states a population able, fearless and progressive, no finer immigration coming to our shores. Senators and Governors of their stock are already making distinguished mark in American affairs.

It was not long before we perceived that in Kristiania, as in Copenhagen, we were also very close to the great Republic; except that, perhaps, here we discovered a keener sympathy with American feeling, a closer touch with the American spirit.

Those Norwegians whom we have met speak good United States, not modern English. You hear none of the English sing-song flutter of the voice, none of its suppression of the full-sounded consonant, but the even, clear, precise accent and intonation of the well-taught American mouth. And our friends tell us that it is much easier for them to learn to speak the American tongue than to master the often extraordinary inflexion of spoken English as pronounced in Britain. I am gaining a great respect for these Scandinavian and Norwegian peoples. They are among the finest of the races of the European world.

We have driven not merely through the beautiful city and its parks, and beheld the wide view to be had from the tower at its highest point, but we have also visited the ancient Viking ship, many years ago discovered and dug out of the sands along the sea, a measured model of which was so boldly sailed across the Atlantic, and floated on Lake Michigan, at Chicago, in 1892.

At this time, however, we are but birds of passage in Kristiania. We may not linger to become more intimately acquainted with the noble town; we are arranging for a ten days’ journey by boat and carriage through the fjords and mountain valleys, and region of the mighty snow-fields and glaciers of western Norway. We must now go on, and postpone any intimate knowledge of the city until another day.

H is quite ready for this trip. She wears a corduroy shirt waist of deep purple shade, and has brought with her one of those short, simply-cut walking-skirts, of heavy cloth. A natty toque sets off her head. She is fitly clad. And my eyes are not the only ones that note this fact, as I observed to-day when, to avoid[Pg 49][Pg 50] a shower, we sought shelter under the pillared portico of the Storthing’s fine edifice in the central square. As we stood there, waiting for the rain to cease, I noticed a small, fair-haired, quietly-dressed woman intently staring at the skirt. Each hem and tuck and fold and crease and gore she studied with the steadfast eye of the connoisseur. And so absorbed did she become that she grew quite oblivious of our knowledge of her interest. Around and around she circled, until at last we left her still taking mental notes. Some other woman in Kristiania, we are quite sure, will soon be wearing a duplicate of this well made costume from New York.




VI

A Day Upon the Rand Fjord and Along the Etna Elv – To Frydenlund – Ole Mon Our Driver




    Frydenlund, Norge, September 1, 1902.

We left Kristiania about seven o’clock this morning and drove six kilometers to Grefsen, a suburb where the new railway comes in, which will ultimately connect the capital with Bergen on the west coast. Grefsen is up on the hills back of the city. The cars of the train we traveled in were long like our own and also set on trucks, the compartments being commodious, like the one we rode in from Helsingborg.

We traversed a country of spruce forests, rapid streams, small lakes and green valleys; with red-roofed farmsteads, cattle, sheep and horses in the meadows, and yellowing fields of oats and rye, just now being reaped; where men were driving the machines and women raking the fallen grain, all a beautiful, fertile, well-populated land with big men, big women, rosy and well set up, usually yellow-haired and blue-eyed.

About ten o’clock we arrived at Roikenvik, on the Rand Fjord, a sheet of dark blue water about two miles wide and thirty or forty long, with high, fir-clad mountains on either hand; with green slopes dotted with farm buildings, and occasional hamlets where stopped our tiny steamboat, the Oscar II. This fjord is more beautiful than a Scottish loch, for here the mountains are heavily timbered with fir to their very summits, while the hills of Scotland are bare and bleak.

We sat contentedly upon the upper deck inhaling the keen, fresh air, watching the picturesque panorama and noting the passengers crowded upon the forward deck below. They were chiefly farmers getting on and off, intelligent, self-respecting, well-appearing men, and full of good humor. One old gentleman with snowy whiskers, who resembled an ancient mariner, which I verily believe he was, seemed to hold the center of attention and many and loud were the shouts which his quaint jests brought forth. He evidently delivered a lecture upon my big American valise, pointing to it and explaining its excellent make, and his remarks were apparently to the credit of the owner, and of America whence it came.

Just before the bell summoned us to dinner in the after cabin, I noticed a skiff rowing toward us, one of the three men in it waving his hat eagerly to our Captain, who immediately stopped the boat until they drew beside us, when two of them, clean-cut, rosy-faced, young six-footers, came up, hand over hand, on a rope which was lowered to them. They were born sailors, like all Norwegians. I snapped my kodak as their skiff drew near us, and the first news the Captain gave them was to apprise them of that fact. They appeared to be greatly flattered by the attention. They laughed and bowed and looked at me as much as to say, “How much we should like a copy of the photograph, if we knew enough English to ask for it,” but they were too diffident to make the suggestion through their Captain friend.

With the Captain himself, I became well acquainted; an alert man of affairs, who had knocked about the world on Norwegian ships and visited the greater ports of the United States. He gave me an interesting account of Norse feeling at the time of the outbreak of the Spanish war, saying to me, “I am from Bergen. I am a sailor like the rest of our people, and with about a thousand more of my fellow countrymen I went over at that time to New York. I was boatswain on the warship – and I served through the Spanish war. When we heard that there was likely to be trouble and got a hint that you wanted seamen, I gathered the men together and we went over and enlisted and others followed. Yes, there were several thousands of us, altogether, on your American warships, ready to give up our lives for the great Republic. Next to Norway, your great, free country, where already live half of the Norwegian race, lies closest to our hearts. We were ready to give up our lives for the stars and stripes. When the war was over most of us came back again. In the summer time I am captain of this boat, in the winter seasons I go out upon the sea. If America ever needs us again we are ready to help her. We Norwegians will fight for America whenever she calls.”

Then he spoke of Norway and the growing irritation of the Norwegian people against the assumptions of Sweden. “It is true that the Swedes are our kin, but we have never liked them. The Norwegians are democrats. We have manhood suffrage, and each man is equal before the law. In Sweden, there is a nobility who are privileged, and while the Swedish people submit to the aristocrats running the Government over there, we Norwegians will never permit them to run us. If it were not for fear of Russia, we would fall apart, but the Russian bear is hungry. If he dared he would eat us up. If it were not for England he would devour Sweden now, and then there would be no hope for Norway. The Russian Czar wants our harbors, our great fjords, as havens for his fleets, and he would like to fill his ships with Norwegian seamen. So we fret and growl at Sweden, but we can’t afford really to have trouble with her any more than she can afford to fall out with us. We must stand together if we are to maintain our national independence, but nevertheless, we are full of fear for the future. I am apprehensive that the bear will some day satisfy his hunger. France will hold down Germany, who just now claims to be our friend also. England will be bought off by Russian promises in some other quarter of the world, and then, we shall be at the mercy of the Czar. God help us when that day comes! Those of us who can will fly to America, all except those who die upon these mountains. The Russians may finally take Norway, but it will then be a devastated and depeopled land. America is our foster mother. Our young men go to her. We are always ready to fight for her!”

As I looked into his strong blue eyes, which gazed straight at me, I felt that the man meant everything he said, and was expressing not alone his personal sentiment, but also the feeling of the sturdy, seafaring people of whom he was so fit a type, and I wondered what the Spaniard would have thought if he had known when he sent his fleets across the sea – fleets deserted by the Scotch engineers who, in times of peace, had kept their engines clean – that the United States could call at need, not merely upon its own immense population, but might equally rely upon the greatest seafaring folk of all the world to fill her fighting ships.

After three and a half hours’ sail – about thirty miles – we came to the end of the fjord at Odnaes, where was awaiting us a true Norwegian carriage, a sort of landau or trille with two bob-maned Norwegian ponies, in curious harness with collar and hames thrusting high above the neck. We had dined on the boat; we had only a valise, a hand-bag and our sea-rugs. We were soon in the carriage and began our first day’s drive, a journey of fifty-four kilometers (thirty-two miles), before night.

Our driver was presented to us as “Ole Mon;” and the English-speaking owner of the carriage informed us that Ole (“Olie”) Mon spoke fluently our tongue. He was a sturdily built, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed man some forty years of age with a gray moustache and smooth, weather-beaten face. He drove these tourists’ carriages in summer, he said; in the winter he took to the sea. We soon discovered his English to be limited to a few simple phrases, while when he ran to the end of his vocabulary he never hesitated to put in a fit Norwegian word. He was proud of his acquaintance with the foreign tongue, and delighted to exercise his knowledge of it. His chief concern in life was to take care of the ponies. He continually talked to them as though they were his boys, and at any excuse for a stop, always had nosebags filled with oat meal ready to slip on and give them a lunch. The ponies are not over eight or ten hands high, but are powerfully muscled, and they are as sleek and tame as kittens. We believe that we have a treasure in Ole Mon, and I expect to learn much from him about the country we traverse, for he is glib to talk.





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