FAMOUS DANES
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), the famous Danish sculptor, was born in
Copenhagen. His father was an Icelander, his mother a Dane, and both
very poor. Bertel's ambition when a little boy was to work his mother's
spinning-wheel, which, of course, he was never permitted to do. One
bright, moonlight night his parents were awakened by a soft, whirring
sound, and found their little son enjoying his realized ambition. In the
moonlit room he had successfully started the wheel and begun to spin,
much to his parents' astonishment. This was the beginning of his
creative genius, but many years went over his youthful head before he
created the works which made him famous. His father carved wooden
figure-heads for ships, and intended his son to follow the same calling.
Bertel, however, soon showed talent and inclination for something
better, and was sent to the Free School of the Art Academy, there making
great progress. He received very little education beyond what the Art
School gave him, and his youthful days were hard and poverty-stricken.
When his hours at the Academy were over he went from house to house
trying to sell his models, and in this way eked out a scanty living. In
spite of his poverty he was wholly satisfied, for his wants were few.
His dog and his pipe, both necessities for happiness, accompanied him in
all his wanderings.
His true artistic career only began in earnest when he won a travelling
scholarship and went to Rome, where he arrived on his twenty-seventh
birthday. Stimulated to do his best by the many beautiful works of art
which surrounded him, he found production easy, and the classical beauty
of the Roman school appealed to him. Regretting his wasted years, he set
to work in great earnest, and during the rest of his life produced a
marvellous amount of beautiful work. A rich Scotsman bought his first
important work, and the money thus obtained was the means of starting
him firmly on his upward career. This highly talented Dane founded the
famous Sculpture School of Denmark, which is of world-wide reputation.
Thorvaldsen's beautiful designs--which were mainly classical--were
conceived with great rapidity, and his pupils carried many of them out,
becoming celebrated sculptors also. Dying suddenly in 1844, while seated
in the stalls of the theatre watching the play, his loss was a national
calamity. He bequeathed all his works to the nation, and these now form
the famous Thorvaldsen Museum, which attracts the artistic-loving people
of all nations to the city of Copenhagen.
In the courtyard of this museum lies the great man's simple grave, his
beautiful works being contained in the building which surrounds it.
At the top of this Etruscan tomb stands a fine bronze allegorical
group--the Goddess of Victory in her car, drawn by prancing
horses--fitting memorial to this greatest of northern sculptors.
Holger Drachmann was the son of a physician, and quite early in life
became a man of letters. Following the profession of an artist, he
became a very good marine painter. This poet loved the sea in all its
moods, and was never happier than when at Skagen--the extreme northern
point of Jutland--where he spent most of his summers. His painting was
his favourite pastime, but poetry the serious work of his life. He was a
very prolific writer, not only of verse and lyrical poems, but of plays
and prose works, and was a very successful playwright. Drachmann's
personality was a strong one, though not always agreeable to his
countrymen. He had a freedom-loving spirit, and lived every moment of
his life. Some of his best poems are about the Skaw fishermen, and later
in life he settled down among them, dying at Skagen in 1907. He was a
picturesque figure, with white flowing locks, erratic and unpractical,
as poets often are. Like other famous Danes, he chose a unique
burial-place. Away at Grenen, in the sand-dunes, overlooking the
fighting waters of the Skagerack and Cattegat, stands his
cromlech-shaped tomb, near the roar of the sea he loved so much, where
time and sand will soon obliterate all that remains of the Byron of
Denmark.
Nikolai Frederik Grundtvig, the founder of the popular high-schools for
peasants, was born at his father's parsonage, Udby, South Seeland. He
was sent to school in Jutland, and soon learned to love his wild native
moors. While attending the Latin School in Aarhus he made friends with
an old shoemaker, who used to tell him interesting stories of the old
Norse heroes and sagas, often repeating the old Danish folk-songs. The
lad being a true Dane, a descendant of the old vikings, he soon became
very interested in the history of his race. Being sent to the University
of Copenhagen, he chose to study Icelandic in order to read the ancient
sagas, English to read Shakespeare, and German to read Goethe. This
studious youth was most patriotic, and the poetry of his country
appealed to him especially. Øehlenschläger's (a Danish poet) works fired
his poetical imagination.
Grundtvig's poems were for the people, the beloved Jutland moors and
Nature generally his theme. His songs and poems are loved by the
peasants, and used at all their festivals. He wrote songs "that would
make bare legs skip at sound of them," and, "like a bird in the
greenwood, he would sing for the country-folk." So successfully did he
write these folk-songs, that "bare legs" do skip at the sound of them
even to-day at every festivity. He was an educational enthusiast, and
his high-schools are peculiar to Denmark. It is owing to these that the
country possesses such a splendid band of peasant farmers. Being a
priest, he was given the honorary title of Bishop, and founded a sect
called "Grundtvigianere."
This noble man died in 1872, over ninety years of age, working and
preaching till the last, his deep-set eyes, flowing white hair and
beard, making him look like Moses of old.
Adam Øehlenschläger, the greatest Danish dramatist and poet, was a
Professor at the University of Copenhagen, and a marvellously gifted
man. He developed and gave character to Danish literature, and is known
as the "Goethe of the North." Some of his finest tragedies have been
translated into English. These have a distinctly northern ring about
them, dealing as they do with the legends and sagas of the Scandinavian
people. These tragedies of the mythical heroes of Scandinavia, the
history of their race, and, indeed, all the works of this king of
northern poets, are greatly loved by all Scandinavians. Every young Dane
delights in Øehlenschläger as we do in Shakespeare, and by reading his
works the youths of Denmark lay the foundation of their education in
poetry. This bard was crowned Laureate in Lund (Sweden) by the greatest
of Swedish poets, Esaias Tegner, 1829. Buried by his own request at his
birth-place, Frederiksberg, two Danish miles (which means eight English
miles) from Copenhagen, his loving countrymen insisted on carrying him
the whole distance, so great was their admiration for this King of
dramatists.
Niels Ryberg Finsen, whose name I am sure you have heard because his
scientific research gave us the "light-cure"--which has been established
at the London Hospital by our Queen Alexandra, who generously gave the
costly apparatus required for the cure in order to benefit afflicted
English people--was born at Thorshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands.
These islands are under Denmark, and lie north of the Shetlands. His
father was magistrate there. His parents were Icelanders. At twelve
years of age Niels was sent to school in Denmark, and after a few years
at the Grammar School of Herlufholm, he returned to his parents, who
were now stationed in their native town, Reykjavik, the capital of
Iceland. Niels continued his studies there, and when old enough returned
to Denmark to commence his medical work at the University of Copenhagen.
Hitherto he had shown no particular aptitude, but in his medical work he
soon distinguished himself, and his skill gained him a place in the
laboratory. He now began to study the effect of light as a curative
remedy. All his life Finsen thought the sunlight the most beautiful
thing in the world--perhaps because he saw so little of it in his
childhood. He had watched its wonderful effect on all living things,
being much impressed by the transformation caused in nature by the warm
life-giving rays. With observations on lizards, which he found
charmingly responsive to sun effects, he accidentally made his
discovery, and gave to the world this famous remedy for diseases of the
skin, which has relieved thousands of sufferers of all nations.