In this chapter Phillips describes a day without a sunrise; his anxiety lest the sun should appear; the wonderful beauties of sunrise and sunset where the sun never appears; the fitful glories of the aurora borealis; the daily bombardment of Kiruna; the great iron mountain from which the bombardment comes; Luleå, the metropolis of the north, and a Lapp encampment in winter.
In this chapter Phillips describes a day without a sunrise; his anxiety lest the sun should appear; the wonderful beauties of sunrise and sunset where the sun never appears; the fitful glories of the aurora borealis; the daily bombardment of Kiruna; the great iron mountain from which the bombardment comes; Luleå, the metropolis of the north, and a Lapp encampment in winter.
Kiruna, January 14.
My dear Judicia,
I wonder if, when you were a girl, you were as much fascinated by Bayard Taylor’s travel books as I was. Did you readViews Afoot, and especially did you gloat over hisNorthern Travels? If you did, you remember how when he got up toward the borders of the arctic circle, though he did not get nearly as far north as Kiruna, he went out of his hotel door one morning and found that the thermometer had sunk to forty degrees below zero. Do you remember with what a sort of rapture he recorded this fact, as though he had now actually reached the land of the aurora borealis, and how he seemed to revel in every degree that the mercury sank? I will not be sure of the exact degree of cold that so rejoiced his soul, for I have not read my Bayard Taylor for many a year, but I was conscious of an experience something like his when I went out on the crisp, frosty streets of Kiruna this morning and watched for the sun which I devoutly hoped would not rise.
By nine o’clock the sky had begun to glow faintly. I wandered about the streets, keeping my eye on the eastern horizon as earnestly as a good Mohammedan faces toward Mecca. Moment by moment the glow, which was at first barely discernible, deepened, and the fleecy clouds grew rosy. Evidently something was doing just below the horizon; but very, very gradually the dawn came on. By ten o’clock the sky was blushing like a modest damsel in the presence of her lover, but still the Lord of Day did not appear. Ten minutes after ten, twenty minutes after, half-past ten! It seemed as though the sun must break above the horizon line at any moment, but still he delayed his coming, while all along the east, and far up toward the zenith, the sky was flushed with such a light, it seemed to me, as never was on sea or shore.
Twenty minutes of eleven, and still he did not appear; ten minutes of eleven, and I could see that the sunrise glories were a trifle dimmed, and a little to the north the beginning of the glorious pageant that attends the setting sun. Eleven o’clock came, and I was sure of it. The sun was setting and not rising. Though the skies were all aflame, and sunset mingled with the dawn, it was very evident that old Sol would not show his face in Kiruna to-day. Hurrah! I have got beyond the sunrise. I am in the land of the Midday Moon!
And why is it not as notable a thing to see a day without a sunrise as to see a day without a sunset? Why do not people travel to northern Sweden or Norway to see the Midday Moon, as well as the Midnight Sun?I venture to say that the phenomena of midwinter are even more glorious than those of midsummer. I cannot imagine that one would see any such wonderful sky tints in summer as in winter. For hours the sun’s beams played upon the feathery clouds of pale blue sky and constantly changed them from glory to glory.
At one time the brilliant tints predominated and the splashes of golden color lighting up the white snow put even Turner’s pictures to the blush. After many minutes these fiery colors changed to exquisite green and blue, and broken, opalescent hues adorned the clouds. Then a red gleam showed under one dark blue cloud. The sun seemed to summon all its strength for one last burst of glory, and the western sky, which I thought had passed its acme, glowed once more with a deep red, as though some vast furnace were throwing its hidden light upon the clouds. For more than four hours this wonderful display lasted, as sunrise faded into sunset, and it was not until nearly three o’clock this afternoon that the last beam of day had entirely faded.
But the beauty of the scene did not consist altogether in the glorious colors of the sunset. All the accessories have made it forever memorable. As I walked to the top of a little eminence near Kiruna, the stillness could almost be felt. A dog barking half a mile away was distinctly audible. The axes of the workmen whom I left building a log-house as I tramped on through the snow and climbed the hillside made a melodious tapping, which could be heard as far as the dog’s bark.
The trees everywhere were loaded with their beautifulburden of snow. The pines and birches seemed in the dim light of the setting sun to have blossomed out like cherry trees in May. The mercury registered only a little below zero, or perhaps some forty degrees of frost, according to Celsius, by whose thermometers the Swedes swear, for I have found no such cold weather as that in which Bayard Taylor revelled. But the zero air was so dry and still that the ordinary clothes which I found necessary and none too much for Boston east winds were entirely sufficient.
As I came down the hill, the workmen were still busy on their log house in the deepening twilight. A Yankee in a white slouch hat must be a rarity in these altitudes in winter, but they did not pause in their work or exhibit any curiosity at the sight of an outlander. Perhaps their natures partake of the largeness and solitude of their great forests and snow fields, and they are not moved by the curiosity which affects other mortals. After watching them for a few moments, I left them fitting their logs together without nails or spikes, sawing and cutting with bare hands in this zero weather as though it were balmy June.
But even when the last ray of the setting sun (which had never risen) had faded away, the glories of the Arctic night did not disappear. Indeed they had but just begun, for the aurora borealis began to shoot out its wavy lines of fire in the northern sky. Higher and higher the waves mounted toward the zenith, until they arched overhead. Palpitating like a living thing, the white would change to green, and the green to a reddishglow, and all the time the streamers that seemed to be shooting up as from a mighty volcano on either side of the North Pole waved and wavered like banners in the wind; now being folded in upon themselves, then flaunted out to their full width, as though Erebus himself were blowing upon them.
But the interests of Kiruna are not altogether centered in the far horizon. At half-past eight in the morning, and again at half-past four in the afternoon, I was startled by a series of tremendous explosions. They could not be thunderclaps, for there were few clouds in the sky and not the slightest indication of a storm.
Over and over again the thundering volleys rolled, and as I looked toward the west I could see a vivid flash in the darkness preceding the thunderclap by some seconds. And yet the flash and the thunder did not seem to come from the sky, but from a massive hill, which bulked dimly against the horizon, across an intervening valley. You have already guessed what the bombardment was. It came from the mighty iron mountain of Kiruna and was the explosion of the dynamite charges which every morning and every afternoon are set off to loosen the ore. More like a rapid-fire Gatling gun perhaps than like thunderclaps the explosions became, after the first few shots, and from various parts of the mountain, high up and low down, and to the right and the left, one could see the dull flashes and hear the reverberating roar, scores of shots every minute, until perhaps two hundred had been fired.
This iron mountain accounts for a lot of things in this part of the world. This was the magnet which drew the railway, the most northerly railway on the face of the earth, up so far through the dreary Lapland wilds. Do not suppose for a moment that the Swedes were so philanthropic as to build the road for the sake of a few Americans who wanted to see the Midday Moon or the Midnight Sun (for you must know that you can see his Majesty from the top of Kiruna’s iron mountain all day long if you happen to be there any day during the latter part of June). No, it was this great loadstone mountain that compelled the thrifty Swedes to build a railway through the snow a thousand miles north of Stockholm. Their enterprise was well repaid, for this mountain is from fifty to sixty per cent solid iron, and the best iron in the world.
From Kiruna it is transported nearly one hundred miles farther north to Narvik, across the Norwegian border, where there is an ice-free port all the year round, and where great ships are constantly waiting within its quiet fjord to transport sections of Kiruna’s iron mountain to New York and Philadelphia and London and Hamburg and Boston. There is another iron hill some five or six miles from Kiruna, from which the ore is shipped by overhead electric skids to Kiruna and thence transported by rail to Narvik. Indeed it is said by geologists that all the hills about this little Arctic metropolis are full of iron, and they are not likely to be exhausted for a thousand years to come.
Kiruna reminds me of a hustling American town morethan any other that I have seen in this part of the world. It is only fourteen years old, and yet it has ten thousand inhabitants; hundreds of well-built houses; a good electric tramway, which carries the miners back and forth from the works on the mountain to their homes in the little city; four fine schoolhouses, and a big church with a huge bell tower, situated at some little distance from the sanctuary.
Let us not plume ourselves on the thought that we have all the enterprise in the world, or lay the flattering unction to our souls that no one else can build a city in a decade, for here is one with all the conveniences and comforts and many of the luxuries of life; and if we go another hundred miles farther north we shall find a still larger town, less than twelve years old, with good blocks of stores, large residences, and splendid wharves, to which the commerce of the world pays tribute; for Narvik, where the sun does not rise for a month or six weeks in wintertime, is even younger than Kiruna. To-morrow I intend to go to Luleå (pronounce itLuleo, for the little circle over theagives it theosound), and I will finish this arctic letter there.
Luleå on the Baltic.
A funny, if chilly, experience awaited me when I arrived here last night. It was well on toward midnight, and, though a crowd of fellow passengers disembarked from the third-class cars, there was no hotel porter ortragerordienstmanto tell me where I should go. Mysomewhat aged Baedeker had not informed me of the name of a single hotel.
The only individual who took any interest in me was a small boy, and from his voluble Swedish and more comprehensible gestures I felt that he wished to lead me to a hotel. Having nothing better to do, I followed my diminutive guide. It was very cold, at least twenty degrees below zero, the severest weather I have seen at all in this northland. The streets were dark, for most of the electric lights had been put out, but I followed the small boy trustingly. When I seemed to waver in my allegiance, he would run back and urge me on. At last we came to a house which had few signs of being a hostelry. I suspect it was his mother’s humble residence. I followed him in at the door, and he discoursed fluently to the lady of the house, apparently telling her of my needs. She looked quite as blank as I did, but at last she opened a door into a somewhat shabby parlor and gave me to understand that I could sleep on the lounge if I wished to.
I declined the invitation, for I remembered having passed in the dark a house that looked more like a hotel. Going back through the frosty air, I soon found it, and over the door made out the legendPrivat Hotellet. Here, much to my joy, I found a large room, nicely heated, with two beds, a huge, white monument of a stove, and a whole picture gallery, though not all by the old masters, on the wall, and all this for seventy-five cents a day. To be sure I could get neither bite nor sup in thisPrivat Hotellet, but what did that matter whenalmost at the next door I found, in the morning, a restaurant on whose generous tables were piled mounds of butter, stacks of oat cakes at least two feet high, a peck of small potatoes, unlimited milk and coffee, pickled fish, fried fish, cold meat, everything on the most lavish scale, and all for sixtyöre, or fifteen cents?
But you should have seen my fellow boarders eat! They were all hardy tars, who had sailed the Baltic for many a year, when the ice does not interfere with their trade, and the way they made those viands disappear was a caution to a dyspeptic. Even Aylmer, who has just joined me here on his way south from northern Norway (did I forget to give you this interesting piece of information, Judicia?), could not keep up with them. He said that they could give the boys in the college commons a good handicap and then beat them in the race through the breakfast, hands down—but then they had the advantage of being able to use both knife and fork with equal dexterity.
Luleå, as you have already gathered, is on the banks of the Baltic; in fact, it is on its extreme northern shore, and the sea here is so charged with fresh water from the more than two hundred rivers that flow into it from the Swedish and the Finnish shores that it is like a great fresh-water lake, and freezes in its northern end as solidly as Moosehead or Winnepesaukee. As we wandered down to the shore the next morning after our hotel adventure, we could see nothing but a vast expanse of snow-covered ice. Only a few large schoonersand small steamers, frozen solidly into the ice, convinced us that this was indeed the Baltic Sea.
Luleå is a very presentable town, quite the metropolis of this part of the world. Many of the blocks are of brick and stone. A splendid church of cathedral dimensions stands in the center of the town, broad streets lined with well-built houses radiate from it on every side, and an enormous hotel overlooking the Baltic makes an attractive bid for summer visitors, though at this time of year it is closed as tight as a bank vault.
I must not forget to tell you about the glorious snow and frost of Luleå. We have seen it everywhere throughout northern Sweden, as I have before told you, but never in such absolute perfection as in this favored town. This is, indeed, the Spell of Sweden. The slight fogs which often envelop this region for a little time and then disappear leave their beautiful frescoing upon every tree and bush and telegraph wire and fence post. Rather, perhaps, I should say they do the work of a sculptor and transform everything into pure white marble. Every smallest twig is covered thick with rime, never less than two inches deep. Strike the tree a sharp blow with your cane and a perfect shower of snow will descend, powdering you from head to foot, unless you quickly stand from under. But the next morning the tree will be covered once more by this invisible sculptor with powdery marble, and again it stands statuesque and lovely in its immaculate white against the sky.
When the rime is not so thick, magical nature transforms the trees and shrubs into white coral, and thelittle arctic bushes, which can never grow to any great height, stand up above the snow in such a way that you can scarcely believe that some ancient sea has not receded and left a forest of coral exposed to view.
The only spot of color in this white wilderness is made by the mountain-ash tree which the Luleåns have induced to grow in one of their parks. These trees are covered thickly with bright red berries, which the English sparrows—unfortunately even the Arctic cold and snows cannot drive them away—rejoice in. They pick out the kernels of the berries and cover the snow beneath with the blood-red husks.
One most delightful excursion we must take you upon. It can be made from almost any point in Lapland, but Luleå is as good a starting point as any. It is a visit to the nomadic Lapps who abound in this region. We often see these little fellows, with their yellow faces, about the color of snuff, of which I understand they are inordinately fond, and their slanting Mongolian eyes, as they come into the towns with their reindeer hitched to long sledges. These patient animals furnish them with almost all that they need—meat and tents and clothing and milk; thread made from their sinews and needles from their bones. When the Lapps want a little money for tobacco or coffee they drive a deer into the neighboring town and sell him for whatever his carcass will bring.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.
But you must see them in their native habitat to really know the Lapps. So we hired a sledge whose lowrunners raise one but a few inches from the crisp snow, stuck our feet into the abundant straw, tucked around us the warm reindeer robes, pulled our caps over our ears, and told our driver to do his best to find a Lapp camp. This is not always easy, for the Lapps are genuine gypsies in their liking for a nomadic life, and they are here to-day, there to-morrow, and somewhere else the next day.
However our driver had an idea in what direction they might be found, and, after half a dozen English miles, or about one Swedish mile, we heard a tremendous barking of dogs and knew that we were approaching our goal, for the one indispensable quadruped, aside from the reindeer, in a Lapp encampment, is a barking dog, and often a good many of him. It was not a large camp, only a single family of Lapps with perhaps twenty or thirty reindeer and half a dozen dogs. Their only shelter, even when the mercury reaches fifty below zero, is this reindeer-skin tent, with a hole in the top and quite loose around the sides.
A miserable fire burned in the center of the tent, and some of the smoke found its way through the hole in the top. But hospitality is not unknown even in these snowy wilds, and our hosts at once set to work to make us a cup of coffee, their one luxury, which they knew their visitors would appreciate. To be sure the cup and coffeepot looked almost as dirty as the faces of our hosts, but who minds a few microbes more or less among the millions you are constantly swallowing. To be sure, also, our hosts expected a gift of several times the valueof the cup of coffee, but that was purely a gift and not by any means payment for value received.
I cannot say that I fell in love with the Lapps or their surroundings, but I must confess that I conceived a new admiration for the missionary spirit of Prince Bernadotte, the brother of the King of Sweden, who I understand has sometimes come to this far north region to preach to the Laplanders.
He once informed me that the only time he was ever in Russia was when he stepped across the boundary of Swedish Lapland into Finnish Lapland, and then only a few feet on the other side. I suppose that a Swedish prince would very likely bepersona non gratain the dominions of the reactionary Czar.
A half-hour in the Lapp settlement was enough for a complete disillusionment concerning the joys of nomadic life in Lapland, and we were glad to turn our faces once more toward the thriving little metropolis of the north Baltic.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.
Contains a glimpse of the history of Sweden as suggested by the monuments of Stockholm; Birger Jarl; Bridget, the saint without a monument; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism; Charles XII, who conquered half of Europe; Linnæus, the lover of flowers; John Ericsson, the inventor of the “Monitor.”
Contains a glimpse of the history of Sweden as suggested by the monuments of Stockholm; Birger Jarl; Bridget, the saint without a monument; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism; Charles XII, who conquered half of Europe; Linnæus, the lover of flowers; John Ericsson, the inventor of the “Monitor.”
Stockholm, January 17.
My dear Judicia,
My last letter left us in a Lapp camp on the northern edge of the Gulf of Bothnia, surrounded by dirty Lapps, yelping dogs, and ruminating reindeer; and here I am, after three days, in Stockholm again, while Aylmer has gone back to his beloved Norway, striking across Sweden and over the mountain by rail to Trondhjem, since he was unwilling, as he said, to “waste any time in Sweden.”
Imagine, Judicia, the superciliousness of youth! To waste time in Sweden, the land of heroes and patriots, the land of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, the land that saved northern Europe for liberty and freedom of conscience. Wasting time in Sweden, indeed!
What should you say to the idea of studying a little Swedish history with me, with the help of the monuments of Stockholm? Some people, I know, consider monuments a great bore and hasten by them with scarcely a glance, but that is because they do not know the delightful stories that they can tell with their bronze or marble lips.
Let us first call upon Birger Jarl. We find him on Riddarholmen, standing erect on a lofty marble pillar, with his shield and his sword, his steel armor and his helmet, looking down from his lofty pedestal as though he would say to us: “What have I to do with you, upstart Americans, you children of a day, whose nearest western shore even was not discovered by Columbus for more than two hundred years after I sailed the seas in my viking ships.”
The greatJarlseems to have been the first one to have discovered the impregnable position which Stockholm’s islands offered for defense. To be sure there was quite a population on these islands before Birger’s time, but he was a man of far-seeing vision, as his position on his lofty monument indicates, so he made of Stockholm one great fort. On every side it was surrounded by water, the great Lake Mälar, and the two rushing rivers that carried its waters to the Baltic.
Birger was never anything but aJarl, but he was the greatest of all the earls, and so powerful that he was able to place his son Magnus above all his brother earls, and made him the first king of Sweden. Magnus was not unworthy of his name, for he too was a great ruler for those rude times, though if the son was Magnus I think the father should be called Major, if not Maximus, for he really founded the kingdom of Sweden, as well as the city of Stockholm.
Sweden of course had a history before the days of Birger and Magnus, but it is so mixed up with that of Norway and Denmark, who were really the predominantpartners in those early days, that I shall have to resign St. Olaf and some of the other exceedingly interesting worthies of that time to the pen of Aylmer, thus giving him, my dear Judicia, a vast advantage in his efforts to claim for Norway your favorable verdict.
I must remark in passing, however, that St. Olaf, or King Olaf Haraldson of Norway, to give him his full title, once found himself and all his fleet shut up in Lake Mälar by chains stretched across its western outlet. This was in the year 1007; so in order to get out of hiscul-de-sac, he dug a shallow channel across a neck of land that prevented him from making his way into the Baltic, that he might thus evade the clutches of Olaf Skötkonung of Sweden. Nature favored his project, and the strong current that sets from the great lake to the Baltic Sea soon wore a wide thoroughfare, through which the king and all his ships escaped into the Baltic and thence home to Norway. This channel made of a former peninsula the island of Staden, so that the Swedes may thank St. Olaf for making one of the three great islands of their capital which Birger Jarl found it so easy to fortify and defend.
A monument that I have been looking for but have not yet found, though there may be one somewhere in Stockholm, is a memorial to St. Bridget. If any Swedish woman deserves a monument, surely it is this same saint “Birgitta,” as she is called in Swedish. In my youth I naturally supposed that St. Bridget was an Irish lady; but she was a pure Swede, and a Swede of the mystical type, in some respects not unlike a fellowcountryman of more modern days—the great Swedenborg. She devoutly believed that she received many revelations from Christ and the Virgin Mary, which are preserved to this day in large tomes.
She lived before the Reformation, but was none the less a reformer of the first order. The rule of her abbey, which she believed was enjoined by Christ himself, made chastity, humility, and voluntary poverty the first requisites. “No member of the convent could possess the smallest piece of money; nor even touch silver or gold except when necessary for embroidery, and then only after permission obtained from the abbess. The nuns ate the simplest food and fasted three days in the week. To remind them of their mortality, a bier always stood at the church door, and near the cloister yawned an open grave. Thither these devout women repaired every day, and the abbess threw a handful of earth into the pit, while the sisters repeated psalms and prayers.”[1]
In these days, when the social pendulum has swung so far to the other extreme, there is something worthily heroic in this story of good Birgitta. There is a tonic in it, like a strong east wind, that blows away the miasma of modern social life.
Whatever we may think of her, she made a tremendous impression upon Sweden, an impression which is fresh and vivid to this day, as anyone who studies the history of Sweden speedily discovers. St. Bridget was a woman of tremendous courage. She knew how to reprove thePope as well as the King. Moreover, her influence was not confined to Sweden, for she spent much time in Rome and is acknowledged throughout the whole Catholic world as one of their greatest saints.
Again come with me to one of the chief squares of Stockholm, and there we will see the figure of the noblest Swede of them all, Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of Protestantism, the victor of a score of hard-fought battles. I will not take you to the monument of Gustavus Vasa, the grandfather of Gustavus Adolphus, for we have already traced his glorious career from the days when he was a hunted fugitive in Dalecarlia to the day when he mounted in triumph the Swedish throne at Stockholm.
But great as was the grandfather, his grandson Adolphus was greater still, as a general, as a reformer, as a man. Between the days of the grandfather and the grandson Sweden had thrown off the power of the Roman church, whose possessions had been seized by the crown; and two of the immediate disciples and pupils of Luther, the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri, had firmly established the reformed religion throughout the kingdom.
An unhappy interregnum between grandfather Vasa and grandson Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, had left Sweden in a parlous state, with foes without and fightings within. The great king and general succeeded in shutting out Russia from the Baltic and capturing one of the important provinces of Poland, Livland, which also bordered on the Baltic. But it wasnot until 1630 that Gustavus Adolphus became a mighty figure in European history. For twelve years the German Protestants had been putting up a courageous but losing fight with the overwhelmingly superior Catholic forces of Europe. Little by little they had been beaten, and their power was being gradually circumscribed.
“In 1630 it seemed as though the continent of Europe was hopelessly doomed to fall beneath the united supremacy of the Papacy and the Empire. From the southern shore of the Baltic Wallenstein, the great leader of the imperial forces, stretched his hand threateningly to grasp the Baltic Sea and its approach, the sound, which chief means of communication with the ocean had become for Sweden a matter of vital importance to keep open. As much to defend the independence as the Protestantism of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus was forced to go to Germany and there assail the enemy on his own ground. Within the short period of two years he succeeded by his brilliancy both as a warrior and a statesman in changing the fate of the world.”[2]
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.Lion-Guarded Statue of Charles XIII in King’s Garden, Stockholm.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Lion-Guarded Statue of Charles XIII in King’s Garden, Stockholm.
His brilliant exploits in Germany were confined to two short years. His great victory at Breitenfeld in 1631 was followed by the battle of Lützen in 1632, which cost Sweden and the world the victor’s life. But though the war raged for sixteen years longer, the Protestant cause was never again hopeless. The victory of Adolphus turned the tide, and his noble personal friend and chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, maintained theprestige of Sweden as one of the great powers of the world, fully recognized in the Peace of Westphalia, which in 1648 closed the bloody Thirty Years’ War.
As I stand before the fine equestrian statue of Gustavus, I take off my hat to that noble warrior and reformer, even though it is frosty winter weather, and, as I look at his majestic figure, I can hear the Swedish army on the battlefield of Lützen singing the king’s own hymn of triumph:
“Fear not, O little flock, the foeThat madly seeks your overthrow.”
“Fear not, O little flock, the foeThat madly seeks your overthrow.”
“Fear not, O little flock, the foeThat madly seeks your overthrow.”
“Fear not, O little flock, the foe
That madly seeks your overthrow.”
It has been truly said the “sword of Gustavus Adolphus was mighty as the pen of Luther.”
Every year on the sixth of November a great procession of Swedes with bands and banners, led by the famous choral societies of Stockholm, proceeds through the streets on a triumphal march to the Church of the Knights, where the great king lies buried, a spot forever sacred to the lovers of freedom.
In the king’s park in Stockholm we find another interesting statue, that of Charles XII. He stands with his sword in one hand pointing with powerful finger to the Baltic, on whose shores he gained his greatest victories.
As I gazed at the noble statue, I thought how this great-grandson of Gustavus Vasa came to the throne as a boy of fifteen years of age. How three years after, Russia, with Peter the Great for her emperor; Poland, then the great power of central Europe; Saxony and Denmark all united their forces to crush this eighteen-year-oldking and the country for which he fought so bravely. But he was equal to them all. One after another he conquered Denmark, Prussia, and Poland in the field, and for nine years with Sweden, a little nation of only two and a half millions of people at his back, he held them all at bay.
“With an army of eight hundred half-starved, half-frozen Swedes on a chill November morning he charged upon forty thousand Russians behind intrenchments at Narva and put them to utter rout, taking in prisoners alone more than double his little army.”
Many were his vicissitudes; defeated after nine years of victory by the Russians at Pultava, he had to flee to Turkey, hoping to enlist the sympathies of the Sultan against the Russians. For five years he remained there in exile, and then, almost alone, in an incredibly short space of time, made his way across Europe, and for years more fought the battles of Sweden against mighty odds, but with indomitable courage and often with success, until a bullet at the battle of Fredrikshald in Norway put an end to this heroic life and at the same time closed the era of Sweden’s greatness.
I cannot take you to all the statues of Stockholm to-day, Judicia, but there are two others which I think we must visit. As a lover of flowers you would never forgive me if we did not together make our obeisance before the monument of Linnæus. It is true that he is associated more particularly with Upsala and its university, where I hope later to see his grave, but he has a worthy statue in Stockholm in the Humlegård. Therehe stands in a benignant attitude that befits a great naturalist. I am glad that he is surrounded by the trees and plants and flowers that he loved so well and did so much to make us familiar with.
When a man is preëminently distinguished in one line, his services to the world in other directions are apt to be overlooked. Linnæus was not only a great botanist, but a distinguished physician and a brilliant writer on geographical subjects. He traveled much throughout Sweden, and our knowledge of Swedish life in the eighteenth century is largely due to his interesting and accurate accounts of his travels. He is said also to have created a new style of Swedish prose, and to have been as eminent as a teacher as he was as an investigator.
You would hardly recognize him under his Swedish name, Carolus a Ljnné, or Carl von Linné, as he is more commonly called. Linné was the most prominent lecturer of his time, we are told. “When he took a ramble, discoursing as he went and ‘demonstrating Flora’s charming children’ then Botany became thescientia amabilis, a knowledge of which was an honor for all, from royalty down to the poorest peasant.”
As I gazed at his statue, however, I could not help thinking, with a sense of mild pity, of the millions of school children with no great gifts for botanical research who have struggled over the two hard names which he set the fashion of assigning to every plant, one for the genus and one for the species; and who have studied, with many a groan, his system of identifying plantswhich seem to them as dry as the herbariums which they have been compelled to collect and arrange.
One other statue, among the latest erected in Stockholm, is of peculiar interest to Americans, for it commemorates the man who, more than any other inventor, saved the Union in the terribly black days of ’63. This man was Captain John Ericsson, the son of a Swedish miner, “born and brought up in a miner’s hut in the backwoods of Sweden.” On Sunday, September 14, 1890, the body of Ericsson was given over by America to the perpetual care of Sweden, his native land. It had been brought from New York in the warshipBaltimoreby Captain Schley, who afterwards won his laurels on the coast of Cuba.
The body was placed on a beautiful pavilion, directly in front of the statue of Charles XII and very near one of Stockholm’s principal quays. With solemn ceremonies and appropriate words the body was conveyed by Captain Schley to the American Minister, and by him given over to the Swedish government, a Swedish admiral accepting it in behalf of his country.
All around the catafalque were magnificent floral emblems contributed by Americans and Swedes alike, and on the coffin itself was aMonitormade of immortelles, in the American and Swedish colors, a white dove perched on the turret. This was the offering of the Swedish-American ladies who had crossed the Atlantic with the body. After these ceremonies the coffin was borne in state through the streets of Stockholm and carried to the little town of Filipstad, near which he was born.On the spot where the great funeral pavilion stood, by Stockholm’s quay, is now the monument to the inventor of theMonitor, the savior of the American Union, strong and massive as the man whom it commemorates. It will always be to every American the most admired of Stockholm’s many statues.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.
Wherein a jump is made from midwinter to midsummer, and the water journey from Stockholm to Upsala is described, during which the palace of Drottningholm is passed, and the famous ruins of Sigtuna, Skokloster Palace, with its rare art treasures, until we reach Upsala, the university town of Sweden, the “City of Eternal Youth,” with its thirteen “Nations.” Also something about the Codex Argenteus, the noble cathedral with its noted graces, as well as Gamla Upsala with the tumult of Odin, Thor, and Frey.
Wherein a jump is made from midwinter to midsummer, and the water journey from Stockholm to Upsala is described, during which the palace of Drottningholm is passed, and the famous ruins of Sigtuna, Skokloster Palace, with its rare art treasures, until we reach Upsala, the university town of Sweden, the “City of Eternal Youth,” with its thirteen “Nations.” Also something about the Codex Argenteus, the noble cathedral with its noted graces, as well as Gamla Upsala with the tumult of Odin, Thor, and Frey.
Upsala, June 15.
My dear Judicia,
It is a long time, is it not, since last I tried to impress you with the charm of Sweden. Do not think for a moment, however, that I have given up the pleasant task. It is, as you know, simply because other duties have interfered with the pleasure of telling you about this part of the great northern peninsula, and in my more brief and fragmentary letters I could not attempt to do justice to this interesting part of the earth’s surface. Now it is approaching midsummer, the glad, high days of all Scandinavia.
But to go back a little in my story. What a glorious season is spring in these northern latitudes! I pity the people who must spend all their lives in the tropics and never know the joy of seeing old mother earth wake up from her long winter’s nap.
Considering its latitude, spring comes wonderfully early in Scandinavia. Even in February you can see the yellowing of the willow trees, and the catkins begin to show their downy faces on many a bush. Very early in March you will see little girls from the country on the streets of Stockholm and Upsala, selling the earliest wild flowers, that look like our hepaticas. Soon the ice in the great lakes in the southern part of Sweden breaks up, and from the Mälar huge cakes, on which you might build a little house and float out to sea, come rushing down through the city to the Baltic.
Perhaps you remember that when in midwinter I went to the far North to see a sunless day my railway journey took me through the university city of Upsala. In this balmy June weather I want you to go with me by boat, for it is by far the most interesting and picturesque way. Starting from the Riddarholmen quay of Stockholm, we are soon out upon the great lake which adds so much beauty to Stockholm’s environments. On all sides of us are Sweden’s vast forests of pine and birch, clothing the gentle hills to their very top and coming down to the shore until their feet are almost washed by Mälar’s ripples. On through a long, narrow arm of the lake we steam, being admitted to new beauties by floating bridges that open their doors for us as we approach. Each turn in the channel reveals something a little more beautiful than the last scene.
Nor is it rural loveliness alone that enchants one with this journey, for we are constantly getting glimpses ofcharming villas, old chateaux, castles, and occasional ruins, each one of which is alive with historic interest.
The great palace of Drottningholm, with its beautiful gardens, a favorite residence of the kings of Sweden, is one of the first palaces that we see. Soon after the chateau of Lennartsnäs appears, and we remind ourselves that it was once owned by Lennart Torstenson, a hero of the Thirty Years’ War, with whom I fear that neither you nor I are acquainted. And now we come to the old city of Sigtuna, whose inhabitants, like many of the people of Palestine, are indebted to their ancestors for the modest degree of prosperity which they enjoy to-day.
A famous American preacher once published an oft-quoted sermon on the “dignity of human nature as disclosed by its ruins,” if I remember the title correctly. The former dignity of Sigtuna is certainly disclosed by its ruins, for above the few and humble dwellings of the present day rise the ruins of three mighty churches, St. Olaf, St. Per, and St. Lars.
Sigtuna was destroyed by the Esthonians from Russia, when they raided Sweden away back in the year 1181. It is said that they carried off two great silver doors from one of these churches, and if you go to Novgorod, in Russia, perhaps you will see them doing duty in some Greek Orthodox church of the present day.
But the most interesting palace that we see on our way to Upsala is Skokloster. You will see that there is more than a suspicion of a cloister in this name, for the Cistercian nuns once lived in these woods in a forestcloister. But the palace that we see was erected by the great Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Wrangel, and by studying its treasures you can learn more in half a day about the Thirty Years’ War than by reading a small library of books. It is still in the possession of the descendants of the Field Marshal, and I venture to say there is no more interesting collection in the world of the relics of the titanic struggle that freed Europe from her long thralldom.
I did not count them, but I am told that there are over twelve hundred guns and eight hundred swords and daggers, most of them the relics of this war. An immense library, a splendid collection of old manuscripts, rare pictures, and porcelain make the palace far more interesting than most museums. There is one treasure which I have since read about and which I am very sorry I did not see. It is a little gold ring containing a ruby set in diamonds. “This is the ring the great Gustavus Adolphus gave to his first and only true love, the beautiful and gifted Ebba Brahe, on their betrothal. The diamond ring that Ebba gave to Gustavus in return is preserved in the sacristy of the cathedral at Upsala.”
Five of the love letters of Gustavus are still preserved, and no lover ever wrote more ardently or charmingly. But the course of true love is not any more likely to run smoothly with princes than with other people. Indeed I am not sure but the average man has a decided advantage over a prince in that respect. For though Gustavus and Ebba were betrothed, they were neverallowed to marry. The old queen would not allow Gustavus to have a Swedish subject for his wife, but made him marry a German princess with few brains and small personal attractions compared with Ebba Brahe, while Ebba married a Swedish Field Marshal. This accounts for the fact that her engagement ring is treasured at Skokloster to-day, for the son-in-law of Field Marshal Wrangel belonged to the Brahe family, in whose possession it has remained ever since.
Does not this little romance seem to bring the great warrior a little nearer to us? As we think of that little ruby ring, he is no longer a demigod, but a disappointed lover, a lovelorn wooer, “sighing like a furnace”; thinking, no doubt, unutterable things about the stern old queen who would not let him have his own way.
It gives us a glimpse, too, of the influence of woman in those old days. Even the most advanced suffragette of the present time cannot make a British Prime Minister bend to her will, while one woman in the olden days was enough to make the greatest warrior of Christendom quail and give up the one on whom he had set his heart’s affection.
But if Skokloster detains us too long, I shall not be able to bring you to Upsala to-day. A few hours after leaving Skokloster, we enter the little Fyris River, which winds through a wide plain and takes us close to the heart of Sweden’s most famous university town.
One can tell that he is in a college town before the boat ties up at the wharf, for students in white caps have come down to the wharf to meet other studentsin white caps, who are coming back to their college duties. There are two thousand of them here, and nearly one hundred and fifty professors and instructors. A beautiful name has been given to Upsala by someone who calls it the “City of Eternal Youth.” A happy name indeed for any college town, where every six or eight years the student body wholly changes, and with every year new blood and young life is injected into the veins of the old institution.
Some educationalists think that our college course in America is too long, and that young men are consequently obliged to begin their life work too late. What would they say to Upsala, I wonder, where the course is from six to ten years, though the average age of entering is nineteen. Philosophy, law, and theology exact six years of study on the average, before the examinations can be successfully passed, while medicine requires eight or ten. Surely the doctors of Sweden should be well equipped for their life work.
Another unique feature of Upsala University is the institution of the “Nations.” These Nations are something like the Greek-letter societies of American colleges, with the important distinction that every student at Upsala must join one of the Thirteen Nations, and there is none of the snobbishness which is beginning to characterize some of our Greek-letter societies.
These Thirteen Nations all have buildings or rooms of their own, and each one is named after one of the provinces of Sweden, while a distinctive flag waving over the building shows what Nation inhabits it. Thechief university building is worthy of any institution on either side of the Atlantic, but there is no great group of buildings or splendid quadrangle, and the first effect of Upsala as a university town is rather meager and disappointing. A homely brick building with a round tower at either end was formerly a royal palace, but is now used by the university.
Gustavus Adolphus, who had a hand in almost everything of importance in ancient Sweden, gave the university a splendid endowment, and sent back to it from his battlefields many of the spoils of war, among others a great library from Wurzburg, Germany. It is said that at the same time he forwarded the Twelve Apostles in silver and the golden Virgin Mary from the Wurzburg cathedral to the Swedish mint to be coined intokroner. He doubtless felt, like his great English prototype, Cromwell, that the apostles should “go about doing good.”
The chief treasure of Upsala is an old, time-worn parchment manuscript, in many respects the most interesting book in the world, for it is the only original Gothic manuscript extant and the only early source of information concerning the Gothic language, the oldest of all Teutonic tongues.