GOTHLAND
Scarcely more than fifty miles from the Swedish mainland, with which
communication is maintained by comfortably appointed steamers which
run daily from Nynäshamn, and boasting a mild and delightful climate,
is an island whose history reads like a romance, and whose many relics
of a prehistoric culture mark it out among all time. Forgotten by the
world of commerce and almost unknown to the present-day tourist, the
town of Visby, capital of the island of Gothland, was once an important
commercial centre, the splendour of its churches, merchant houses
and town walls evidencing great wealth, and bearing witness to the
artistic imagination of Swedish master-masons and builders. And as you
steam into its harbour you see a city which for picturesque beauty has
few rivals in the world: tall, graceful spires and city walls built
on natural rock terraces, whose rugged outline of masonry appear to
have been fashioned by a giant of fable, and a coast-line which seems
to rise up in one single sheer cliff, or in terraces with yellow or
blue-grey rocks that tower like mighty ramparts against the sea.
It is not known when the first city of Visby was built, but
archæologists tell us that there was a town on the present site more
than 2000 years before Christ, and only a few years ago men digging in
the market-place near the ruins of St. Catherine’s Church found large
blocks of stone, and under these the ruins of another town, evidently
of the Stone Age.
Long before Visby was born, however, Gothland was already an island
empire and occupied a position in the trade of the Baltic identical to
that occupied by Rhodes or Crete in the Mediterranean.
Of this old Visby we have little record apart from a mention that
is made of it by the Guta Saga when relating certain incidents that
occurred in Gothland during the tenth century, at the time Christianity
was first introduced into the island.
“When the Gothlanders were heathen,” the Saga says, “they sailed
with cargoes to every land, both Christian and heathen. Then saw
the merchants Christian ways in Christian lands, some of them being
baptized and even bringing back priests with them to Gothland. Bothair
of Akeback built a church on the place now called Külstade. But as the
people of the island would not suffer the church but set fire to it
and burned it, he built yet another with feasts and sacrifices at Vi,
which when the people also tried to burn, he climbed upon and said:
‘If ye will burn the church, then shall ye burn me also’. This the
people would not do, as Bothair had as wife the daughter of Likkair
Snälle, who was their ruler at that time, and Likkair enjoined them
not to do this deed. Whereupon the church was left to stand unburned.
It was built in the name of All Saints on the place that is now called
Peter’s Church, and was the first church in Gothland which was left to
stand....”
Vi means place of sacrifice, and Visby means therefore village by the
place of sacrifice, it being evident that the village must even before
this period have enjoyed a certain importance as a religious centre for
a larger or smaller portion of the island population, its inhabitants
being the ancestors of those Teutonic races which fifteen hundred years
ago overthrew the might of imperial Rome and revolutionised the world.
That Gothland was even then a sea power of considerable importance
is proved by the vast treasures in gold and silver which have been
unearthed in the island, and many of the gold coins which have been
found are minted with the profiles of Greek emperors or inscribed in
Roman or Arabic, this evidence showing that the Goths were as adept
in the arts of commerce as they were in those of war. Gothland was
inhabited by a race of bold sea rovers and traders, who sailed down
the rivers of Russia, carrying far and wide their cargoes of pitch,
tar, limestone, and salt, the products of their island. Marauding and
looting as they went, they were hardly welcome guests in the countries
which they visited, and accordingly, not only were able to exchange
or barter their cargoes most profitably for the precious wares, furs,
skins, and honey of Russia, and the woven fabrics, spices, food-stuffs,
and silver ware of the east, but also returned home, their war chests
well replenished with the gold and silver tribute which their unwilling
hosts had paid to rid themselves of their importunate presence.
Of the treasures thus accumulated, part was melted down and fashioned
into ornaments and vessels, and part was buried in hiding-places
in the island, only a small proportion having so far come into the
possession of archæologists. Of the many tens of thousands of coins
which have been discovered more than half have been dug up in Gothland,
the majority of these being of Arabian, Greek, or Roman origin, and the
remainder of Saxon, Rhine and South German, Turkish, Polish, and even
Hungarian extraction. Of the English coins many date from the reigns of
Kings Edgar and Ethelred, and the Cyfic or Arabian coins, of which over
25,000 have been discovered, were brought from the Caspian Sea during
the eighth and ninth centuries; they were struck principally at Cufa on
the Tigranes. As a Chinese cup and a shell from the Indian Ocean have,
moreover, also been found in graves not far from Visby, it is clear
that the light Viking barques which set sail periodically from this
northern island carried out far-reaching and extensive expeditions to
most parts of the world, and that Gothland can therefore justifiably
claim to have possessed a prosperity which in its own time unfolded
itself in almost fabulous splendour.
Of the early history of the island we have, unfortunately, apart from
what archæology teaches us, nothing but the most hazy traditions,
though the Guta Saga of the thirteenth century tells us that when
the population of Gothland reached a certain figure one-third of the
inhabitants was selected by lot and bidden to leave the country with
all their goods and chattels. “Then were these loth to go,” so the Saga
writes, “but went they to Thor’s stronghold and lived there. Then would
the country not suffer them there but drove them thence. Then went they
forth to Fårö and remained there a time. Even there, however, they were
not permitted to remain but went out to an island near Esthonia called
Dagö, where they lived and built a stronghold for themselves which is
still to be seen. Also there they were unable to subsist, but went by
water called Düna up through Russia. And they proceeded so far that
they finally came to Greece, where they lived until now and still speak
in a tongue somewhat similar to our own.”
There is a hill which is called Torsburgen (Thor’s stronghold), on
which one can still see the remains of the castle where the banished
men of Gothland made their last stand against their countrymen. The
mountain is broad—a huge plateau which is crowned by a forest; and
so steep that on three sides of it, it is almost unscaleable. On the
fourth, approach to it is barred by mighty mile-long walls constructed
of rough boulders, which represent so prodigious an amount of labour,
with their hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of stone, that the
mind is almost staggered by it. In the middle of the forest lies the
castle of Thor, where the last desperate remnant of the rebels made
their final stand before being overpowered by force of numbers, a mass
of fallen stones and boulders and crumbling walls, most of which have
fallen, testifying to the homeric age of which we possess so little
record. When these incidents took place we do not know. We have,
however, been able to estimate that as early as the sixth century
before Christ at the beginning of the Iron Age, the inhabitants of
Gothland began to migrate to other countries, the climate of the island
having suddenly and rapidly become exceedingly cold, and that by the
third century before Christ the island had become almost entirely
depopulated. During the next centuries, however, the population
increased so rapidly that when the Great Migration took place, Gothland
was able to send thousands of Viking auxiliaries to swell the ranks of
the mighty armies that were marching south to make a mass attack on
the Roman Empire.
[Illustration: KALMAR CASTLE]
The Great Age of Gothland did not, however, begin till the twelfth
century, by which time the commercial supremacy of the island had
become so firmly established that not only the northern states of
Europe, but even England, began to adopt the sea laws and coinage
of the enterprising Gothlanders, while the greater part of the more
lucrative trade of northern Europe passed into their hands. The old
steel-yard in London near Blackfriars Bridge was the yard of the
Gothland merchants where they stored their iron and steel merchandise,
while merchants from the island are mentioned as purveyors of miniver
and wax to Henry III. of England. Soon Visby began definitely to take
up its place as the leading commercial settlement of Gothland, while
many foreign merchants settled in the town in the hope of rivalling
the prosperity of the native traders, the Germans coming in such
numbers that at one time more than half the town council and two of
the principal magistrates belonged to that nationality. In 1163 Henry
the Lion, Duke of Lübeck, granted the merchants of Gothland peaceful
entry into his land and extensive trading privileges on condition that
his subjects enjoyed similar rights and immunities in theirs, while a
similar trade alliance was gradually signed between Visby and no less
than thirty other cities which was ultimately to lead to the formation
of the Hanseatic League.
There is no doubt that these were halcyon days for Visby, and that
owing to its position as foremost commercial power in the north it
was able to exercise an authority and prestige in the Councils of the
League that made it almost the sole arbiter of its destinies, while its
wealth was so fabulous that, as an old ballad ran:
The Gothlanders weighed gold with twenty-pound weights
And played with the rarest gems;
The pigs ate out of silver troughs,
And the women spun with distaffs of gold.
To guard against attack, imposing walls were constructed around the
city built on natural rock terraces which soon converted Visby into one
of the strongest fortresses of the age, while it began to rival the
finest towns in Europe in the splendour of its churches, public and
private buildings, and the wealth of its merchant princes.
This being the case, it was no wonder that the city soon began to
attract the cupidity of kings and pirates, and that during these
centuries there were many occasions on which her burghers were called
upon to defend their city, though the time was to come when even her
massive walls and the staunch hearts of her defenders proved inadequate
to ward off attack. Her decline and fall began as soon as internecine
strife arose between her citizens and those of the countryside, and
when open warfare arose between the two camps owing to the resentment
that was felt by the country merchants against those of the town for
claiming the exclusive right to the commerce of the island, her fate
was really sealed. In the spring of 1288 the peasant merchants took up
arms and marched on Visby, the war that ensued proving so indecisive
that King Magnus, who had hitherto exercised a purely nominal
suzerainship on the island, was encouraged to interfere. He invaded it
with a powerful army, put an end to the war, and converted Gothland
into a Swedish province after suppressing all its privileges and
exemptions from taxation. This curtailment of her liberties, coupled
with the displacement of commercial routes owing to the crusades,
the rapid rise of Lübeck as mistress of the Baltic, and the further
wars that were waged against her, hastened the downfall of the city,
though she continued for a time to mint her own coinage and even to
oppose successfully (in 1313) by force of arms the attempts made by
Swedish and other kings to extort fresh taxation from her coffers or
gain possession of her citadel. Then misfortunes began to crowd in
upon the town. Smaller and smaller became its commerce, and thinner
and thinner the streams of silver that poured in from the lands beyond
the sea, while bitterly cold winters and dry summers came with cattle
pests and plagues which mowed down rich and poor alike, the dead and
dying lying in street or square uncared for, polluting the air. Then
finally the end in 1361, when Valdemar, King of the Danes, determined
to take possession of Visby and of what still remained of its wealth.
Landing at Västergarn, where a few hundred peasants who offered
resistance were defeated, he advanced upon the town between burning
homesteads, and after slaughtering 1800 peasants who fought to the
last in defence of the capital, entered the city. Whether or not the
legend is true according to which the burgomaster’s daughter fell in
love with the Danish king and delivered up to him the key of the town,
or that other legend which relates that Valdemar was admitted into
the city through a breach made by the burghers themselves in the hope
of so gaining the whole commerce of the island, now that their rural
competitors had been wiped out, the fact remains that Valdemar looted
the town in spite of its unconditional surrender and compelled the
authorities to hand him over three hogsheads filled with gold, silver,
and precious stones.
[Illustration: RUINS OF BORGHOLM CASTLE, ÖLAND]
In the church of St. Nicholas are two sightless rose windows, each
of which, so a legend tells us, contained a carbuncle so large and
luminous that it served as a beacon to mariners as they steered their
vessels into Visby Harbour. And these King Valdemar carried away with
him when returning home with his booty, only to encounter a storm off
the coast of Gothland, when every ship foundered. To this day the
inhabitants of the island declare that when the sea is calm they have
seen these carbuncles glowing from their resting-place in the deep.
Visby’s star of destiny now set for ever, though it continued to
struggle on in the hope of better things, and again and again the
town was besieged, looted or even burned, Dane, Swede, and pirate
gradually encompassing its ruin. Faster and faster its power on the
sea waned and drew to its end, while its ships were taken and plundered
till none would venture out to sea. At last came the Reformation,
when the treasures of its churches were confiscated and its convents
dissolved, while the decayed and ruined churches which had been its
proud boast were allowed to go to rack and ruin, only the cathedral of
St. Mary being maintained and restored for the new worship. Gradually
their roofs blew asunder, their rafters rotted and their arches
crumbled away, while from the walls stone fell after stone, religious
iconoclasts completing the ruin that others had begun.
* * * * *
Of all the mediæval splendour attained by Gothland there are
consequently nothing but ruins, but these ruins are in themselves so
wondrous, and the Visby of to-day reflects so many of the features
of the merchant city of Hanseatic times, that few cities are more
interesting to visit. With its many picturesque red-tiled houses and
gables, its many architectural treasures and imposing castellated
walls, its lovely gardens yielding every summer roses of luxuriant
abundance, and its mild climate and many recreational facilities,
Visby is in fact an ideal spot for a holiday.
The first thing that impresses as you land on the island is the mighty
wall that dominates all the surrounding country and encloses the city
almost in its original perfection; vast grey battlemented walls,
mellowed by age and the touch of ivy, with thirty-eight towers which
rise some of them to a height of 70 feet and recall those of Cracow
or Carcassonne, and between them a picturesque series of bartizans
supported by corbels, the whole being among the most perfect specimens
that are still preserved of mediæval fortress architecture.
Of these walls the west or shoreward are considerably older than the
others, it being probable that on the land side the town was at first
only protected by a palisade-crowned rampart which was in course of
time replaced by a wall with crenellated coping and a banquette along
the inner side surmounting a row of pointed blind arches, but towards
the close of the thirteenth century it was still further heightened and
the greater part of the towers erected, the new superstructure of wall
between the towers resting upon the parapet and being only broken by
a series of bartizans. In earlier times, moreover, a number of moats
partly hewn out of the solid rock provided additional security to the
city, though few of these water defences are now visible.
The oldest and most interesting of these towers is undoubtedly the
Powder Tower, the only remaining fortification of the old port, its
heavy barred vaultings and sturdy walls probably dating back to the
eleventh century; but the lover of legend should also linger for a
moment near the Tower of Jungfrutornet, or the Maiden’s Tower, and hear
how the burgomaster’s daughter fell in love with Valdemar and gave
him the key of the city which she had stolen at night from under her
father’s pillow. The story goes that as soon as he sailed for Denmark
the citizens built this tower and immured her alive as a punishment for
her treachery.
The wall undoubtedly owes its imposing effect in a large measure to the
fact that the land outside it is for the most part desolate and devoid
of vegetation, and its vast grey fortifications, which extend their
battlemented tops around the town for more than two and a half miles,
are exceedingly impressive. Before entering the town, however, you
should pass by a certain field lying just outside the walls, where
a very old stone cross is to be found, and also pay a visit to the
mediæval scaffold which is situated to the north of the town near the
old Lepers’ Church of St. Göran. Both are worth visiting.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF VISBY]
The first, Valdemar’s Cross, which is engraved with the likeness of the
Saviour, and a Latin inscription reading as following:
In the year of our Lord 1361, on the third day after St. James, fell
the Gothlanders before the gates of Visby in the hands of the Danes.
Here lie they buried. Pray for them,
is in spite of its old age almost in a perfect state of preservation,
only one arm having been destroyed. It was erected on the very spot
where the peasants of Gothland made their final stand in defence of
Visby against the might of the Danish crown, and near it lie buried
many of the peasants and Danish soldiers who fell on that historic
occasion. Some twenty years ago excavations in this old burial-place
brought to light several hundred skeletons in rusted armour, many of
the shields being pierced with arrows or dented by sword-cuts. It is
believed that these skeletons are the remains of the Danish invaders,
as only the Gothlanders were buried under the cross itself.
The second consists of a mediæval scaffold, three stone pillars once
joined by wooden rafters upon which malefactors were wont to be hanged
in olden times. Grim and menacing, they stand on a high cliff so that
all may see, a lasting memorial of an age when evil-doers were exposed
even in death to the public eye _pour effrayer les autres_.
Between these imposing walls the life of the town, now a ghost of its
former self, pulses lazily through narrow and crooked cobbled streets
which are lined with low-eaved and small windowed wooden or stone
houses;[3] and along these disused byways of travel, whose very name
is an inspiration, are ruins of churches and abbeys, cathedrals and
dwellings, that date from the Hanseatic age and attest the glory of
Visby’s past. The whole effect is extremely picturesque, in spite of
the intrusion here and there of certain houses, products of more recent
times; while interspersed among these and brightened, moreover, in
many places by greenery and the famous rose gardens that you will find
sandwiched in the most unlikely places, are high and stately gabled
houses, the residences of the merchant princes of the Middle Ages. And
the ruins of ten wondrous stone churches, dating from the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, whose yellow ivy-clad walls and graceful arches and
columns provide the most convincing of testimonies not only of Visby’s
former greatness and prosperity but of the hold which religion then
occupied in the heart of her citizens.
[3] Many of the latter being built from stones taken from the old
churches.
Of the older houses many are well preserved and had their origin in the
prosperous days of the town in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
They are characterised by high narrow façades and gables with corbel
steps, and arches that span the streets and provide the city with one
of its characteristic features. The stateliest of these old mansions
are those that are found along the Strandgatan in close proximity to
the mediæval harbour, one of their typical features consisting of
church-like cellars which are canopied by cross vaultings on slender,
graceful columns, and usually divided into two stories by a flooring of
beams placed at half the height of the ceiling. The house containing
the museum of the town, a magnificent collection of Gothlandic mediæval
art, “Gothlands fornsal,” possesses such a cellar, a portion of the
floor originally dividing it into two stories having been removed
to suit the requirements of the museum; but this mansion, unlike
many of the mediæval buildings of the town, shows nothing on its
exterior to betray its great age. Among those who have preserved their
old-world exterior best are the well-known Old Apothecary’s shop “Gamla
apoteket”, also in the Strandgatan, which dates from the days of King
John of England, the Liljehorns’ house, and the hotel Visby Börs in the
same street, and certain groups of houses in Hansgatan, as again the
woodshed of the bishop’s palace in Drottensgatan and the Burmeister
House.[4] Many of these mediæval houses were obviously utilised for
business purposes and occasionally contained as many as eight stories.
[4] Whose wall and ceiling decorations date from 1650.
Even more striking, however, are the ruins of the splendid stone
churches which are dotted here and there through the irregular streets
and lanes, the view that these command from their towers being one of
surpassing loveliness; an interesting cathedral which was consecrated
in 1225 and is still in use to-day, and ten wonderful old ruins, relics
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries which represent every style of
architecture in the Middle Ages except the late Gothic. I doubt if any
town in Europe of anything like the size of Visby or even much larger
can present anything architecturally of so engrossing an interest.
The Cathedral of St. Mary was originally built as a basilica,
_i.e._ with three aisles, of which the middle one was the highest.
It also had a vaulted transept with an apse adjoining, and was lighted
by windows which perforated the clerestory above the roof of the side
aisles. Of this original building only the lower part of the great west
tower and part of the transept are preserved, the remainder of the
church having undergone many alterations. Shortly before the middle
of the thirteenth century the original chancel was replaced by the
present choir, while the beautiful and still preserved Bridal Porch was
constructed in the south gable of the transept. New side aisles were
then substituted for the old, corresponding in height and width with
the nave, their roofs being so arranged that every vaulted square had
its own saddle roof with the gable facing the length of the building,
while every second column separating the aisles was pulled down, these
changes having the effect of converting the entire interior into a
single whole except for the chancel and tower chapels. Some time before
1400 a large hall, whose walls were superimposed directly over the
colonnades, was erected over the vaulting of the nave and another
roof laid over it, to whose walls new slanting roofs were joined for
the side aisles. In this manner the exterior of the cathedral was
considerably heightened and again looked like a basilica, though
nothing was changed in the interior of the church itself. About the
same period the towers, now altogether too low for the remainder of the
church, were raised to their present height.
Interesting as is the Cathedral of St. Mary, the ruins of the other
houses of worship that once served the spiritual needs of Visby’s
thirty thousand people are, in my opinion, infinitely more arresting
in their loveliness. The force of their appeal lies, I imagine, in the
picture which they afford of an age when religion was not a hollow
sham but a reality to which every man readily turned, not only in
those moments of trial when even the careless remember the claim of
the Deity, but also in those more prosperous times when men rapidly
develop an illusory sense of their own power and might. Visby in her
heyday supported no less than sixteen churches and the island nearly a
hundred, many of these being vast structures of mediæval splendour, to
whose adornment many precious metals and jewels had been lavished and
many great artists had contributed a quota.
Near the walls are the beautiful towers of St. Drotten and St. Lars,
sister churches which are said to have been built by two maiden sisters
who hated one another so heartily that each erected her own church in
order not to sit together in the same place of worship.
St. Drotten has a square tower which is reminiscent of the western
tower of the cathedral and is built in one piece with an almost
quadrate nave, while St. Lars, which is cruciform in shape and shows
a marked Byzantine influence, impresses by virtue of its majestic
proportions, its characteristically high arched paired windows, and its
massive vaulted rooms that fill in the corners of the cross and open
to its arm, no ingenuity having so far accounted for the triforia that
are hollowed in its walls at various heights and facing the nave of the
church.
St. Nicholas, which like St. Lars has wonderful long slender windows,
is a three-aisled church, with a square chancel and a pentagonal apse,
which was originally built as a basilica, and then so altered that
the height of the three aisles is now the same. It was taken over by
the Dominicans about 1220 when they arrived in Visby, the decorative
sculptures of the doorways being very similar to those found in the
bridal porch of St. Mary’s.
St. Clement’s, as it stands to-day, also belongs to the same period,
_i.e._ about the middle of the thirteenth century, but within its
walls are the foundations of three, if not more, older church edifices,
the first probably dating back to about 980, a circumstance that speaks
eloquently of the wealth and love of building that characterised the
Great Age of Visby, since it is clear that none of these churches were
destroyed by human agency, this period being then almost the only one
during which the island remained at peace with the world.
The other ruined churches of Visby include the churches of St. John
and St. Peter, which was the successor of Botair’s wooden church to
which I have already alluded, and also St. Olaf’s Tower, which is
almost identical to the western tower of the cathedral, all these being
interesting specimens of twelfth-century architecture, but none that
I have mentioned, except perhaps St. Lars, are as quickening to the
imagination, or as remarkable for the beauty of their architectural
features, as the churches of St. Catherine and the Holy Ghost.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF VISBY]
The first, which was dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria,
belonged to the Franciscan friars who settled in Visby in 1233, but
only acquired its definite form with its graceful columns and lofty
vaultings in 1413, its beautiful columns and arches remaining to this
day in an almost perfect state of preservation. The second, which
belonged to the charitable institution of the Holy Ghost, consists of
an octagonal tower with two vaulted stories and two separate floors,
with a common chancel and an apse that is let into its eastern wall.
Original in conception and better preserved than most of the ruins of
the city, the Church of the Holy Ghost ranks perhaps as the finest
church of the island.
Of the hundred or more churches which are to be found in other parts
of Gothland, the more interesting are undoubtedly those which date
back to the twelfth century or even further, such as the richly
decorated wooden church of Hemse, now preserved in the Historical
Museum at Stockholm, the church Garde with its plain nave and Byzantine
paintings, the churches of Dalhem and Stånga, and the large Cistercian
convent church in Roman constructed after the designs of the French
Cistercians, the simple grandeur of whose arches and columns recall
those of another Rome; yet even the other more modern churches often
present interesting features. Distinguished by plain wall surfaces and
an almost entire lack of the buttress system that characterises Gothic
architecture in the west, they possess a style that is pure Gothic and
yet are strongly national in tendency. Their towers are very varied
in shape, but usually tall and slender, while the interiors convey an
impression of great spaciousness, thanks to the height of their slender
columns, the solidity of their vaultings, and the wide span of their
equally high arches. Speaking for myself, however, I confess to have
derived greater pleasure from seeing the many wonderful carved portals,
baptismal fonts, and well-preserved wood carvings, some of these the
work of the greatest sculptors of the age, that abound in the island,
many of the roods, figures of the Madonna and statues of saints, which
have been preserved, possessing a very high artistic value. In this
respect I rather fancy the little island of Gothland is perhaps richer
than almost any country in the world save France and Germany, the
beauty and originality of its wood carvings and decorative sculpture
providing further proof of the exceedingly high culture attained by
its citizens in the days of their prosperity. No lover of beauty should
therefore fail to pay a visit to a few of these old churches, and
especially to Viklau and Öja. The first possesses the only known wood
carving attributed to the famous cathedral workers of Chartres, the
leading sculpture centre in the twelfth century; the second an equally
beautiful rood that is generally held to be the work of a French
sculptor of the thirteenth century.
The three masters who are principally responsible for the building
of the churches of Gothland are Le Frans, Botwid and Sighafr, all
three justly reputed in their age as leaders of their art; but many
other talented artists, whose names have purposely remained concealed
under a _nom de guerre_, have contributed their quota to the
embellishment and building of these splendid mediæval monuments. It has
been calculated that over 400 churches would now be left standing in
this tiny island as a record of the tremendous ecclesiastical building
activity which took place in Gothland from the earliest Christian times
to the middle of the fourteenth century, if the Goths had been spared
the series of catastrophes which was destined to leave them the easy
prey of pirates and marauders, and I should say that this figure is
probably underestimated.
There is one further characteristic found in these churches, moreover,
that should appeal to the lover of folk-lore. It appears that Gothland,
like Scandinavia and Great Britain, was in the Bronze Age a great
centre of sun worship, and that this adoration of the Sun god (Bal)
lingered on in spite of Christianity among the many customs that have
survived to show a pagan influence.
Many of the dances, for instance, which are given round the Beltane
fires on Midsummer Eve are 3000 years old and date from that period,
while the remains of a sun chariot have also been discovered not far
from Visby; but what is even more interesting is the fact that the
chief door of practically every church in the island faces south and
yet lies as near to the west as possible. This has undoubtedly to do
with the cult of the sun, as the good people of Visby sought in this
manner to conciliate both their new and old convictions. Even to-day
the peasants of the island never dance or spin on Thursday (the day of
Thor, the god of thunder), this being the one day of the week when in
pagan times they were unable to pay their worship to the Sun god.
[Illustration: SUNDAY AT RÄTTVIK, DALECARLIA]
Apart from the churches and a few well-preserved merchant houses dating
from Hanseatic times, such as the famous merchant mansion of Kattlunda
in the south of the island, which was obviously designed for defence
against an enemy, the interior of Gothland has little to offer in the
way of scenic attractions, if we except the luxuriantly beautiful
groves and “leafy meadows” which are found interspersed here and there
among the desolate fen and woodland, and occasional patches of wheat
and beet sugar characterising the scenery. With these exceptions,
everything worth seeing is concentrated along the coasts. Along the
west are romantically wild cliffs and downs, with here and there a
pleasant little cove or inlet, and the two lonely Karl islands with
their steep cliffs and a bird life so varied that it is difficult to
believe any human being has ever set foot on the island; along the
east, broad open bays, sandy shores, and rocky promontories worn away
by the sea and moulded into strange fantastic shapes recalling those
seen in the wildest parts of the Breton coast or the Giant’s Causeway;
to the south a low shore and headland fringed with Hoburgen’s mighty
rocks; and to the north the large island of Fårö with its impressive
drift sands and the wild-looking Isle of Sandö, where forest and sand
are ever waging a fight for existence: a scenery, in short, which for
sheer grandeur and picturesqueness resembles no other in the world, and
over which I have seen sunsets flaming with almost southern splendour.
Truly Gothland is an ideal spot for a holiday, and with its many
imposing ruins of a vanished culture, its wild scenery and coast line,
its mild climate and its pleasant seaside resorts of Snäckgärdsbaden,
Kneippbyn and Slite, all easily accessible from Visby by rail or motor,
combines a sufficiency of attractions that should make it a favourite
resort for any traveller who is desirous of exploring new and strange
ground.