CHAPTER XXXIV.SWEDEN (Continued).
BY the beautiful island of Drottningholm, on which the king’s mother resides in a palace within a park, that seems the abode of peace and plenty, and along the shores of other islands small and picturesque, but lovely to look on as we pass them on our way, we sail out into Lake Malar.
It is a wide, winding, beautiful sheet of water,—one of the many noble lakes that Sweden holds in her bosom. Two islands in it come so nearly together, that a drawbridge for a railroad stretches across, and opens for us to pass through, and then we sweep out into another expanse of water, the shores skirted with pines and hemlock; no hills in sight, but the scenery is lovely, though lacking grandeur. We are going into the heart of Sweden. Now the shores are cultivated to the water’s edge, and fine farms rise to view, with here and there a red cottage, with a tile roof: all the peasant houses and fisherman cottages are painted with red ochre, cheap, but unpleasant to the eye. Now the shores are bolder, rocky, and great forest trees, fir and spruce, are abundant.
The oldest place in Sweden, and that carries us back into far antiquity, isSigtuna, and we have come to it, on the shores of Lake Malar, about four hours from Stockholm. We are in the midst of the remains of the old pagan worship of Scandinavia, where the altars to heathen deities, whose graves (!) we are going to see to-day, have smoked with human sacrifices.
Odin or Woden (whence comes our Wedensday or Wednesday), a hero of the north,—in time to which history, at least reliable history, runneth not back,—here established the seat of his power, and it took its name from his original title, which was Sigge, and Tuna, which is our word town. Here Sigge, or Odin, reared stone temples, of which the ruins are before us. Here his power became so great, and such the reverence of rude peoples for power, that the temples and altars which he reared to gods whom he worshipped, became, in the eyes and hearts of the people, dedicate to him, whom they came to revere and worship as a god. From this spot the worship of Odin, and afterwards of his son Thor (whence our Thursday), spread through the whole of the North of Europe, and, in spite of the subsequent triumph of Roman Christianity, and then of the Lutheran Reformation, the Odin superstition—a secret, unconfessed, but controlling reverence for those heroic human deities, the hero worship of the human soul—still obtains among the more ignorant classes of the people over all this northern country. The legends that have come down from sire to son, keep alive in successive generations the hidden fear of these false gods, and form the largest part of the unwritten poetry and romance of all Scandinavia.
Pirates from Finland came here and laid waste the fortified town of Odin, and it has again and again been built and destroyed; but here is the remnant of an ancient temple or church, and three towers, which have the highest interest of antiquity (whatever that is) hanging, like mantling ivy, all about them. No one but an antiquary would wish to spend more than a moment in Sigtuna, among its 400 inhabitants. Tyre and Sidon on the sea coast are not so desolate as this spot, which seems accursed for its pagan crimes and impostures in days long since gone by.
Sweet pictures of rural life in Sweden were seen thismorning as we sailed through this Lake Malar. Opposite Sigtuna, and a little farther on, we touched the shore, and landed Professor Olivecrona, of the University of Upsala, with his wife and a party of English friends. He had been to Stockholm to meet them, and bring them up the lake to his country residence in summer. It was a beautiful mansion, very near to the water’s edge, in the midst of woods and delightful walks. The children and servants came down to the landing just in front of the house, to a private wharf, and as the parents went ashore, and four lovely children in their light summer dresses welcomed them, and greeted the friends coming with them, it was a scene of domestic beauty and happiness that quite touched an old man’s heart some three or four thousand miles from home.
More islands, among which our boat makes its tortuous course, coming so near to the rocks that we might easily scrape them; now and then a bare white rock holds its peak solitary above the water, and a bird of prey perches on its top, looking into the deep for his dinner. Now the shores are clothed with green forests, and again we emerge among meadows, and in the bright sun the contrasts of light and shadow, as we pass by the pines and fir trees, are constantly pleasing. An air of infinite quietude pervades the region, and it is painful to believe that it was once a “habitation of cruelty.”
Suddenly a grand old chateau, the ancient residence of the Brahe family, one of the oldest and most illustrious in Sweden, opened on our view. It was built in 1630, and each one of its four towers is surmounted by an orrery, in honor of the famous astronomer whose name alone has made the family famous. A boat comes off from the shore, and takes passengers who wish to visit the house. Its library and museum and galleries of art make it a popular resort. On its walls are portraits of Tycho, and the Ebba Brahe, whom Gustavus Adolphus loved, and would havemarried but for more ambitious schemes of her mother that never came to pass.
During this delightful passage of six hours through Lake Malar, in one of the loveliest days of summer, we have not seen a sail nor a steamer, except the return boat of the line that has brought us. And this fact is sufficient to show the utter stagnation of commercial life in the interior of Sweden.
I confess to surprise on coming to Upsala and finding the ancient university here in high prosperity, with all the appliances of education that first-class institutions require. Linnæus, the great botanist, was professor here, and his statue is one of the ornaments of the university. The Hospital,—a new and extensive building,—a royal palace on a hill, the Agricultural College, the Library, &c., with a Botanical Garden and ample parks, suggest to the traveller that in Sweden one might find a home to his mind, if his lot had been cast in this part of the earth.
You have a fondness for old books and manuscripts. Here they are in abundance; not of the sort, perhaps, that most antiquarians would run after, but, nevertheless, very precious and costly.
Bishop Ulfilas, toward the close of the fourth century, translated the four gospels into the Gothic language, and his translation was copied in letters of silver upon vellum of a pale purple color, in characters very like the Runic. This manuscript is the very oldest extant in the Teutonic tongue, and was probably made by the Ostro-Gothic scribes in Italy. It was once owned by an abbey in Westphalia. Then it was treasured up in Cologne; then by the fortunes of war it passed to Konigsberg, and to Amsterdam, with Vossius, on whose death the Swedish chancellor bought it and presented it to the University of Upsala. It is known among biblical scholars as theCodex Argenteus, or Silver Copy, from the style of the lettering.
Upsala.
Upsala.
Upsala.
If you have a taste for Icelandic literature, so refreshing in the heats of summer, here you can find the oldest and coldest of the Eddas; and alongside of them is a Bible with the marginal notes of Luther and Melancthon. Students in and out of the university have free access to these treasures, and the reading-room is a pleasant resort for thosewho love to refresh themselves in the midst of a hundred thousand books, in all tongues and every realm of human thought.
About fifty professors and fifteen hundred students compose the faculty and attendance of this famous university. It was founded in 1477, and has but one rival in Sweden, that at Ludd, founded in 1666. The expense of a student’s education, including board, fees, &c., is about three hundred dollars a year.
No one can be admitted to practise in any of three professions,—law, medicine, or divinity,—without taking his degrees at one of the two universities. Thisensuresa high order of acquirements in professional men, and when we state one fact in addition, that one male person in every 688 in Sweden enjoys an education at the universities, it will be seen that these institutions reach the whole people, and extend their advantages into the midst of the masses. Sweden, and in this respect she is not singular in Europe, has not made the mistake which we in the United States have been making, of multiplying little colleges, and little theological seminaries, one-horse institutions, with the idea that, by bringing a school to the door of every man, or of every church, we should be enlarging the area of education, and multiplying the number of educated men. Thus we have reduced the standard of fitness for professorships. Thus we have diminished the number of students. Lowering the mark to which scholars should aspire, we have cheapened education, suppressed literary ambition, made the professions less attractive, and filled them with an inferior order of men, compared with what they would have been had the standard of great universities, with their high qualifications of professorships and degrees, been maintained. If all the money which has been expended in the maintenance of feeble and famishing colleges and divinity schools had been applied to the education of youth in two,three, or four universities, they would have been far better taught, and the surplus of money over and above the expenses of their education would endow a new university as often as the extension of territory and the increase of population render it necessary.
A student of the university is required to wear a cap of peculiar make, to distinguish him, not in the university town only, but wherever he may travel in Sweden. The cap is white, with a black border, and a rosette of the national colors in front. This requisition is useful in keeping the student upon his good behavior, and also as a peripatetic advertisement of the educational institutions of the country. It is only by slow degrees that our people come into the habit of putting classes into uniform. It is but recently that the police were so clad: now we have letter-carriers, railway officials, &c. The clergy formerly were generally known by a white neckcloth, but that has ceased to be their distinction.
The old cathedral had the appearance of neglect; it was out one side from the busy haunts of men, and this was in its favor, but it seemed to be neglected. Twenty-four whitewashed columns support the roof. In side chapels are the tombs and the remains of the old kings of Sweden. And when I had spelled out some of the Latin inscriptions, and had linked the names of these sleepers with the old-time stories of the land, the venerable cathedral began to take upon itself the form of a great monument of the dead past. And well it might, for the first stones were laid for its foundation in the year 1289, and it was consecrated in 1435. Its dimensions rise into the sublime, for it is 370 feet long, 141 feet wide, and 115 feet high.
The columns within are capped with carvings of grotesque beasts, strangely out of taste in the house of God. Linnæus lies buried here, and a splendid mural tablet and bronze medallion portrait of him adorn the wall. Here lie GustavusWasa and two of his wives, and a long series of fresco paintings in seven compartments celebrate the great events in the life of this illustrious man. Here, too, is a tomb of John III., remarkable for this,—that it was made in Italy, was lost at sea on its way here, was fished up sixty years afterwards, and brought to this spot.
The sacristan was very kind in revealing to our not very reverent eyes the precious things here kept for special exhibition to those who would pay for the privilege. With this understanding we were permitted to behold crowns and sceptres, a gold cup two feet high, a dagger that had been stuck into a king, and a statue of the old god-king Thor! This last is not worshipped here, but is cherished as a memorial of the times when paganism was prevalent, and as a trophy of the triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness.
About three miles north of Upsala, the seat of the great university, is Old Upsala, more sacred than any other spot in Sweden: for here are the lofty mounds which tradition has consecrated as graves of the gods,—the gods who aforetime were held in reverent awe and honor by the Scandinavian race, and who, to this day, hold some sort of sway over the rude masses of the North.
We rode out in carriages from the university, and passed in sight of the house which covers the Mora Stone,onwhich the kings of Sweden were chosen and crowned. It is made of about twelve different stones joined and inscribed with the names of the monarchs who have been elected by the voice of the people. In 1780 the house was built over it by Gustavus III., but that was seven centuries after the first inscription upon it; for here it is written that Sten Kil was chosen in 1060, and seven others, down to Christian I., in 1457. Gustavus Wasa met his subjects here in mass-meeting and addressed them from this stone in 1520. The hoar of ages, with all the memories of therevolutions of these centuries, gathers on this spot. It is now only a shrine for pilgrims with antiquity on the brain, who wander the world over to see what the worldhasbeen. I have a large development of that weakness, and it has a great gratification in this part of Europe: more, indeed, than it had in Egypt; less than in Palestine. In the Holy Land the sacred associations with the religion we love makes every acre of it dear to the heart: we take pleasure in every stone, and favor all the dust of Judea. With less awe,—indeed, with no awe,—but with wonder, we now come to Old Upsala, to the graves of the pagan deities.
They are three conical mounds, about fifty feet in height, very regular in shape, with a broad plateau at the summit, and the unvarying tradition of the country is, that the largest of the mounds is the grave of Odin; the next, that of Thor; and the smallest, the grave of Freytag, Odin’s daughter. In all probability these are natural hillocks artificially reduced to these regular forms, and superstitiously set apart in the minds of the people as the graves of persons to whom their ancestors paid divine honors. To this hour, the name of Odin is used as that of a demon king, and “Go to Odin” is the profane execration which answers to the modern imprecation, “Go to the devil.”
On this spot the great temple to Odin was erected, and his worship maintained with horrid rites and ceremonies. The altars here have smoked with human blood and burnt sacrifices. In the sacred groves that surrounded the temple these savage deities were propitiated with all manner of offerings, parents laying their children with their own hands upon the altars, and slaying them in the face of heaven. A record still exists of seventy-two bodies being seen suspended at one time from the limbs of trees in this grove; men, and lower animals than men, if any animals are lower than such men, being offered in company to please the deities of the wood.
We entered the old church, the tower of which is said to be a part of the temple. This tower is the most ancient building in Scandinavia. A rude stone image of a human being, uncared for and lying in total neglect and dirt, was pointed out as an idol of Thor, that had once and often been worshipped on this spot and honored with these human sacrifices. It seemed more likely that it was a bogus image, and, therefore, all the more fitting to be presented as one of the false gods of a superstitious race, whose reverence is not yet so thoroughly extinguished as to prevent them from leaving hay on the highway at night, to feed the horses of Odin when he comes riding through the country on his missions of destruction.
On the reach of the Reformation to this region, the great battle of faith was fought on this spot. Here Gustavus Wasa, in his robes of royalty, addressed the crowds of pagan people, and besought them to turn from their idols to the living God. They replied with sullen rage, and threatened him with death. He finally flung off his robes, and told them they might have Odin for their king if they would, but he would not be their king unless they would worship the Lord God Almighty and his Son Jesus Christ. This was the decisive hour and word. They yielded, but only an outward obedience, a lip service, and it required long years and generations to extirpate the pagan worship from the minds of the people. One king of Sweden, Domold, was actually offered in sacrifice on Odin’s altar to propitiate the gods when the people were suffering by famine. And when Eric V., in 1001, embraced the Christian religion and destroyed the temple, the tower of which is said to be standing now as part of this church, the people in their fury put him to death.
From Odin, or Woden, as he was called, comes our Weden’s-day, and from Thor our Thur’s-day, and from Fry-tag our Fri-day; and these every-day words make linksof association to connect our times with those fearful days, now past and gone for ever.
I was surprised by finding the practice of dining out of doors in summer quite as common here as in France. On our return from Upsala to Stockholm, Dr. Scholberg went with us to spend part of a day at the Deer Park, a vast tract of land in easy reach from the capital, that has been set apart for the use of the people. It is entered through a grand gateway, ornamented with a bronze deer on each side; within are villas and cafes, and theatres and concert-rooms. Long drives over country roads take us under majestic old trees,—oaks and elms, pines and spruce; and now and then we pass parties taking their mid-day or evening meal under the trees, or among the beautiful gardens that surround their houses. Our ride takes us up and down hill, in sight often of the sea: one has a taste of the country, rare indeed to be had so near the town. The quickest way to get there is to take one of the many little steamers that ply, like our omnibuses or street-cars, among the waters of this northern Venice; but many of them do not hold as many passengers as a horse-car carries. They are just like a large row-boat, with sharp bows and stern, and a boiler in the middle. They require but very little coal, and, being driven with great care, very seldom, if ever, blow up the people sitting so near to the boiler and all its works, as to suggest continually the idea that it would require no great effort to scald the company. If our American people could do any thing with moderation, they might introduce these little iron steamers with great usefulness into the North and East Rivers, and, indeed, into the waters of all our great cities. We often availed ourselves of them, for they run everywhere, and the fare is lower than in our city cars. A few minutes of fast running brought us to Deer Park, and our Swedish doctor led us to what was considered the best restaurant in the place. Hundreds of people werealready there to dine, and at the middle of the day. It did not speak well for the industry and habits of the people, that so many of them could thus quit business at such an hour and go off out of town to their dinner. And Stockholm is the only city in the North where there is such a class of people. The city has the name of being very like Venice in this matter. And here they were in the middle of the day, hundreds of people, away from home, and making a business of eating and drinking.
Dinner was a study and an art. They had some science in it. There was an ante-prandium and the prandium, and the dessert and the post-prandium, and more post that I did not see; but what I did may be set down to give you an idea of the Swedes at dinner. First, every gentleman steps to a side table and takes a glass of schnapps, or gin, or other liquor that he prefers, and appetizes himself by eating of salt fish, dried tongue, cold meats, bread and cheese, making a very satisfactory snack or lunch, which would serve most of men for a fair dinner. The second course is soup, and one who is recently from Paris needs a little education to make it pleasant to his taste. Then follow salmon, chicken, roast beef, pudding, ice cream, jellies; and with these dishes, which are served one after another, and all to be eaten, are the usual trimmings of bread and butter, with vegetables to any extent. When this bill of fare—a dinner to order, and exquisitely cooked and served in good style—is disposed of, you are expected to indulge in the national punch, an oily, fiery, pungent liquor, that should not be taken without medical advice; yet it may be that it assists digestion after the organs have been overladen with such a dinner as I have just eaten and described. Now, it is not unlikely that such dinners are very largely enjoyed by the people, for all that I have mentioned may be had for seventy-five cents! And as you pay for just what you order, and no more, it is possible to make a sufficient dinnerfor half the money, and thousands do. We protracted our stay till the evening (not the dark) came on, and rode to the charming rural retreat for the royal household, and had the pleasure of gratifying our democratic eyes by seeing the ladies of the family taking their tea out of doors, so muchin the same way that other people take theirs, we should not have suspected them of being any thing more than common, had we not been told of it, and actually had seen the august servant, with a white wig and pompous strut, bringing the “tea things” out to the little table in the garden. So many other little family circles did we see enjoying themselves in the same way, that we could readily see it was a national habit, and quite in harmony with those domestic pictures which Frederika Bremer has made us so familiar with in her letters about Swedish homes.
Costumes of Sweden.
Costumes of Sweden.
Costumes of Sweden.
One thing impressed me daily in these north countries of Europe,—the general content and comfort of the people. The climate has not helped them to this, for it is far less favorable to general enjoyment than that of the south. But there is an amount of industry, intelligence, and morality, that make a contrast easily marked between the people of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and the inhabitants of Spain and Italy. I find no such masses of squalid vice and misery here, as one may easily see in Naples or Seville.
Sweden has all the elements of a great and good people. She is making progress, too, in moral and intellectual culture, and her people are rising in the scale of social enjoyment. I notice these things in the rural districts even more than in the cities, which are so much the same all the world over.