HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
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HERO TALES
OF THE FAR NORTH
By
JACOB A. RIIS
AUTHOR OF “HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES”
“THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN”
“THE OLD TOWN,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1919
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1910,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1910.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass. U.S.A.
THIS BOOK OF MY DEAD HEROES
I DEDICATE TO MY LIVING HERO
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
MAY IT BE MANY YEARS BEFORE THE LAST CHAPTER
OF HIS SPLENDID WHOLESOME LIFE IS
WRITTEN IN THE PAGES OF OUR
COUNTRY’S HISTORY
FOREWORD
When a man knocks at Uncle Sam’s gate, craving admission to his
house, we ask him how much money he brings, lest he become a
hindrance instead of a help. If now we were to ask what he brings,
not only in his pocket, but in his mind and in his heart, this
stranger, what ideals he owns, what company he kept in the country
he left that shaped his hopes and ambitions,—might it not, if the
answer were right, be a help to a better mutual understanding
between host and guest? For the _Mayflower_ did not hold all who
in this world have battled for freedom of home, of hope, and of
conscience. The struggle is bigger than that. Every land has its
George Washington, its Kosciusko, its William Tell, its Garibaldi,
its Kossuth, if there is but one that has a Joan d’Arc. What we
want to know of the man is: were its heroes his?
This book is an attempt to ask and to answer that question for my
own people, in a very small and simple way, it is true, but perhaps
abler pens with more leisure than mine may follow the trail it has
blazed. I should like to see some Swede write of the heroes of his
noble, chivalrous people, whom lack of space has made me slight
here, though I count them with my own. I should like to hear the
epic of United Italy, of proud and freedom-loving Hungary, the
swan-song of unhappy Poland, chanted to young America again and
again, to help us all understand that we are kin in the things that
really count, and help us pull together as we must if we are to
make the most of our common country.
These were my—our—heroes, then. Every lad of Northern blood, whose
heart is in the right place, loves them. And he need make no
excuses for any of them. Nor has he need of bartering them for the
great of his new home; they go very well together. It is partly
for his sake I have set their stories down here. All too quickly
he lets go his grip on them, on the new shore. Let him keep them
and cherish them with the memories of the motherland. The immigrant
America wants and needs is he who brings the best of the old home
to the new, not he who threw it overboard on the voyage. In the
great melting-pot it will tell its story for the good of us all.
To those who wonder that I have left the Saga era of the North
untouched, I would say that I have preferred to deal here only with
downright historic figures. For valuable aid rendered in insuring
accuracy I am indebted to the services of Dr. P.A. Rydberg, Dr. J.
Emile Blomén, Gustaf V. Lindner, and Professor Joakim Reinhard.
My thanks are due likewise to many friends, Danes by birth like
myself, who have helped me with the illustrations.
J. A. R.
RICHMOND HILL,
June, 1910.
CONTENTS
A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 1
HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE TO GREENLAND 31
GUSTAV VASA, THE FATHER OF SWEDEN 61
ABSALON, WARRIOR BISHOP OF THE NORTH 87
KING VALDEMAR, AND THE STORY OF THE DANNEBROG 125
HOW THE GHOST OF THE HEATH WAS LAID 153
KING CHRISTIAN IV 179
GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 205
KING AND SAILOR, HEROES OF COPENHAGEN 239
THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR ALONE 263
CARL LINNÉ, KING OF THE FLOWERS 277
NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 305
A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA
The Eighteenth Century broke upon a noisy family quarrel in the
north of Europe. Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the royal hotspur
of all history, and Frederik of Denmark had fallen out. Like their
people, they were first cousins, and therefore all the more bent
on settling the old question which was the better man. After the
fashion of the lion and the unicorn, they fought “all about the
town,” and, indeed, about every town that came in their way, now
this and now that side having the best of it. On the sea, which was
the more important because neither Swedes nor Danes could reach
their fighting ground or keep up their armaments without command
of the waterways, the victory rested finally with the Danes. And
this was due almost wholly to one extraordinary figure, the like
of which is scarce to be found in the annals of warfare, Peder
Tordenskjold. Rising in ten brief years from the humblest place
before the mast, a half-grown lad, to the rank of admiral, ennobled
by his King and the idol of two nations, only to be assassinated on
the “field of honor” at thirty, he seems the very incarnation of
the stormy times of the Eleven Years’ War, with which his sun rose
and set; for the year in which peace was made also saw his death.
Peder Jansen Wessel was born on October 28, 1690, in the city of
Trondhjem, Norway, which country in those days was united with
Denmark under one king. His father was an alderman with eighteen
children. Peder was the tenth of twelve wild boys. It is related
that the father in sheer desperation once let make for him a pair
of leathern breeches which he would not be able to tear. But the
lad, not to be beaten so easily, sat on a grind-stone and had
one of his school-fellows turn it till the seat was worn thin, a
piece of bravado that probably cost him dear, for doubtless the
exasperated father’s stick found the attenuated spot.
Since he would have none of the school, his father had him
apprenticed out to a tailor with the injunction not to spare the
rod. But sitting cross-legged on a tailor’s stool did not suit the
lad, and he took it out of his master by snowballing him thoroughly
one winter’s day. Next a barber undertook to teach him his trade;
but Peder ran away and was drifting about the streets when the King
came to Norway. The boy saw the splendid uniforms and heard the
story of the beautiful capital by the Öresund, with its palaces and
great fighting ships. When the King departed, he was missing, and
for a while there was peace in Trondhjem.
Down in Copenhagen the homeless lad was found wandering about by
the King’s chaplain, who, being himself a Norwegian, took him home
and made him a household page. But the boy’s wanderings had led
him to the navy-yard, where he saw mid-shipmen of his own size at
drill, and he could think of nothing else. When he should have
been waiting at table he was down among the ships. For him there
was ever but one way to any goal, the straight cut, and at fifteen
he wrote to the King asking to be appointed a midshipman. “I am
wearing away my life as a servant,” he wrote. “I want to give it,
and my blood, to the service of your Majesty, and I will serve you
with all my might while I live!”
The navy had need of that kind of recruits, and the King saw to it
that he was apprenticed at once. And that was the beginning of his
strangely romantic career.
Three years he sailed before the mast and learned seamanship,
while Charles was baiting the Muscovite and the North was resting
on its arms. Then came Pultava and the Swedish King’s crushing
defeat. The storm-centre was transferred to the North again, and
the war on the sea opened with a splendid deed, fit to appeal to
any ardent young heart. At the battle in the Bay of Kjöge, the
_Dannebrog_, commanded by Ivar Hvitfeldt, caught fire, and by its
position exposed the Danish fleet to great danger. Hvitfeldt could
do one of two things: save his own life and his men’s by letting
his ship drift before the wind and by his escape risking the rest
of the fleet and losing the battle, or stay where he was to meet
certain death. He chose the latter, anchored his vessel securely,
and fought on until the ship was burned down to the water’s edge
and blew up with him and his five hundred men. Ivar Hvitfeldt’s
name is forever immortal in the history of his country. A few years
ago they raised the wreck of the _Dannebrog_, fitly called after
the Danish flag, and made of its guns a monument that stands on
Langelinie, the beautiful shore road of Copenhagen.
Fired by such deeds, young Wessel implored the King, before he had
yet worn out his first midshipman’s jacket, to give him command of
a frigate. He compromised on a small privateer, the _Ormen_, but
with it he did such execution in Swedish waters and earned such
renown as a dauntless sailor and a bold scout whose information
about the enemy was always first and best, that before spring they
gave him a frigate with eighteen guns and the emphatic warning
“not to engage any enemy when he was not clearly the stronger.” He
immediately brought in a Swedish cruiser, the _Alabama_ of those
days, that had been the terror of the sea. In a naval battle in the
Baltic soon after, he engaged with his little frigate two of the
enemy’s line-of-battle ships that were trying to get away, and only
when a third came to help them did he retreat, so battered that he
had to seek port to make repairs. Accused of violating his orders,
his answer was prompt: “I promised your Majesty to do my best, and
I did.” King Frederik IV, himself a young and spirited man, made
him a captain, jumping him over fifty odd older lieutenants, and
gave him leave to war on the enemy as he saw fit.
The immediate result was that the Governor of Göteborg, the enemy’s
chief seaport in the North Sea, put a price on his head. Captain
Wessel heard of it and sent word into town that he was outside—to
come and take him; but to hurry, for time was short. While waiting
for a reply, he fell in with two Swedish men-of-war having in tow
a Danish prize. That was not to be borne, and though they together
mounted ninety-four guns to his eighteen, he fell upon them like a
thunderbolt. They beat him off, but he returned for their prize.
That time they nearly sank him with three broad-sides. However, he
ran for the Norwegian coast and saved his ship. In his report of
this affair he excuses himself for running away with the reflection
that allowing himself to be sunk “would not rightly have benefited
his Majesty’s service.”
However, the opportunity came to him swiftly of “rightly
benefiting” the King’s service. After the battle of Kolberger
Heide, that had gone against the Swedes, he found them beaching
their ships under cover of the night to prevent their falling into
the hands of the victors. Wessel halted them with the threat that
every man Jack in the fleet should be made to walk the plank, saved
the ships, and took their admiral prisoner to his chief. When
others slept, Wessel was abroad with his swift sailer. If wind and
sea went against him, he knew how to turn his mishap to account.
Driven in under the hostile shore once, he took the opportunity,
as was his wont, to get the lay of the land and of the enemy. He
learned quickly that in the harbor of Wesensö, not far away, a
Swedish cutter was lying with a Danish prize. She carried eight
guns and had a crew of thirty-six men; but though he had at the
moment only eighteen sailors in his boat, he crept up the coast at
once, slipped quietly in after sundown, and took ship and prize
with a rush, killing and throwing overboard such as resisted. In
Sweden mothers hushed their crying children with his dreaded name;
on the sea they came near to thinking him a troll, so sudden and
unexpected were his onsets. But there was no witchcraft about it.
He sailed swiftly because he was a skilled sailor and because he
missed no opportunity to have the bottom of his ship scraped and
greased. And when on board, pistol and cutlass hung loose; for it
was a time of war with a brave and relentless foe.
His reconnoitring expeditions he always headed himself, and
sometimes he went alone. Thus, when getting ready to take
Marstrand, a fortified seaport of great importance to Charles, he
went ashore disguised as a fisherman and peddled fish through the
town, even in the very castle itself, where he took notice, along
with the position of the guns and the strength of the garrison,
of the fact that the commandant had two pretty daughters. He was
a sailor, sure enough. Once when ashore on such an expedition,
he was surprised by a company of dragoons. His men escaped, but
the dragoons cut off his way to the shore. As they rode at him,
reaching out for his sword, he suddenly dashed among them, cut
one down, and, diving through the surf, swam out to the boat, his
sword between his teeth. Their bullets churned up the sea all about
him, but he was not hit. He seemed to bear a charmed life; in all
his fights he was wounded but once. That was in the attack on the
strongly fortified port of Strömstad, in which he was repulsed with
a loss of 96 killed and 246 wounded, while the Swedish loss footed
up over 1500, a fight which led straight to the most astonishing
chapter in his whole career, of which more anon.
All Denmark and Norway presently rang with the stories of
his exploits. They were always of the kind to appeal to the
imagination, for in truth he was a very knight errant of the sea
who fought for the love of it as well as of the flag, ardent
patriot that he was. A brave and chivalrous foe he loved next to a
loyal friend. Cowardice he loathed. Once when ordered to follow a
retreating enemy with his frigate _Hvide Örnen_ (the White Eagle)
of thirty guns, he hugged him so close that in the darkness he ran
his ship into the great Swedish man-of-war _Ösel_ of sixty-four
guns. The chance was too good to let pass. Seeing that the _Ösel’s_
lower gun-ports were closed, and reasoning from this that she
had been struck in the water-line and badly damaged, he was for
boarding her at once, but his men refused to follow him. In the
delay the _Ösel_ backed away. Captain Wessel gave chase, pelted her
with shot, and called to her captain, whose name was _Söstjerna_
(sea-star), to stop.
“Running away from a frigate, are you? Shame on you, coward and
poltroon! Stay and fight like a man for your King and your flag!”
Seeing him edge yet farther away, he shouted in utter exasperation,
“Your name shall be dog-star forever, not sea-star, if you don’t
stay.”
“But all this,” he wrote sadly to the King, “with much more which
was worse, had no effect.”
However, on his way back to join the fleet he ran across a
convoy of ten merchant vessels, guarded by three of the enemy’s
line-of-battle ships. He made a feint at passing, but, suddenly
turning, swooped down upon the biggest trader, ran out his boats,
made fast, and towed it away from under the very noses of its
protectors. It meant prize-money for his men, but their captain did
not forget their craven conduct of the night, which had made him
lose a bigger prize, and with the money they got a sound flogging.
The account of the duel between his first frigate, _Lövendahl’s
Galley_, of eighteen guns, and a Swede of twenty-eight guns reads
like the doings of the old vikings, and indeed both commanders
were likely descended straight from those arch fighters. Wessel
certainly was. The other captain was an English officer, Bactman by
name, who was on the way to deliver his ship, that had been bought
in England, to the Swedes. They met in the North Sea and fell to
fighting by noon of one day. The afternoon of the next saw them at
it yet. Twice the crew of the Swedish frigate had thrown down their
arms, refusing to fight any more. Vainly the vessel had tried to
get away; the Dane hung to it like a leech. In the afternoon of the
second day Wessel was informed that his powder had given out. He
had a boat sent out with a herald, who presented to Captain Bactman
his regrets that he had to quit for lack of powder, but would he
come aboard and shake hands?
The Briton declined. Meanwhile the ships had drifted close enough
to speak through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel shouted over from
his quarter-deck that “if he could lend him a little powder, they
might still go on.” Captain Bactman smilingly shook his head,
and then the two drank to one another’s health, each on his own
quarter-deck, and parted friends, while their crews manned what was
left of the yards and cheered each other wildly.
Wessel’s enemies, of whom he had many, especially among the
nobility, who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this
incident to bring him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic,
they declared, and they demanded that he be degraded and fined. His
defence, which with all the records of his career are in the Navy
Department at Copenhagen, was brief but to the point. It is summed
up in the retort to his accusers that “they themselves should be
rebuked, and severely, for failing to understand that an officer in
the King’s service should be promoted instead of censured for doing
his plain duty,” and that there was nothing in the articles of war
commanding him to treat an honorable foe otherwise than with honor.
It must be admitted that he gave his critics no lack of cause.
His enterprises were often enough of a hair-raising kind, and he
had scant patience with censure. Thus once, when harassed by an
Admiralty order purposely issued to annoy him, he wrote back: “The
biggest fool can see that to obey would defeat all my plans. I
shall not do it. It may suit folk who love loafing about shore, but
to an honest man such talk is disgusting, let alone that the thing
can’t be done.” He was at that time twenty-six years old, and in
charge of the whole North Sea fleet. No wonder he had enemies.
However, the King was his friend. He made him a nobleman, and gave
him the name Tordenskjold. It means “thunder shield.”
“Then, by the powers,” he swore when he was told, “I shall thunder
in the ears of the Swedes so that the King shall hear of it!” And
he kept his word.
Charles had determined to take Denmark with one fell blow. He had
an army assembled in Skaane to cross the sound, which was frozen
over solid. All was ready for the invasion in January 1716. The
people throughout Sweden had assembled in the churches to pray
for the success of the King’s arms, and he was there himself to
lead; but in the early morning hours a strong east wind broke up
the ice, and the campaign ended before it was begun. Charles then
turned on Norway, and laid siege to the city of Frederikshald,
which, with its strong fort, Frederiksteen, was the key to that
country. A Danish fleet lay in the Skagerak, blocking his way of
reënforcements by sea. Tordenskjold, with his frigate, _Hvide
Örnen_, and six smaller ships (the frigate _Vindhunden_ of sixteen
guns, and five vessels of light draught, two of which were heavily
armed), was doing scouting duty for the Admiral when he learned
that the entire Swedish fleet of forty-four ships that was intended
to aid in the operations against Frederikshald lay in the harbor of
Dynekilen waiting its chance to slip out. It was so well shielded
there that its commander sent word to the King to rest easy;
nothing could happen to him. He would join him presently.
Tordenskjold saw that if he could capture or destroy this fleet
Norway was saved; the siege must perforce be abandoned. And Norway
was his native land, which he loved with his whole fervid soul. But
no time was to be lost. He could not go back to ask for permission,
and one may shrewdly guess that he did not want to, for it would
certainly have been refused. He heard that the Swedish officers,
secure in their stronghold, were to attend a wedding on shore the
next day. His instructions from the Admiralty were: in an emergency
always to hold a council of war, and to abide by its decision. At
daybreak he ran his ship alongside _Vindhunden_, her companion
frigate, and called to the captain:
“The Swedish officers are bidden to a wedding, and they have
forgotten us. What do you say—shall we go unasked?”
Captain Grip was game. “Good enough!” he shouted back. “The wind is
fair, and we have all day. I am ready.”
That was the council of war and its decision. Tordenskjold gave
the signal to clear for action, and sailed in at the head of his
handful of ships.
The inlet to the harbor of Dynekilen is narrow and crooked, winding
between reefs and rocky steeps quite two miles, and only in
spots more than four hundred feet wide. Half-way in was a strong
battery. Tordenskjold’s fleet was received with a tremendous fire
from all the Swedish ships, from the battery, and from an army of
four thousand soldiers lying along shore. The Danish ships made
no reply. They sailed up grimly silent till they reached a place
wide enough to let them wear round, broadside on. Then their guns
spoke. Three hours the battle raged before the Swedish fire began
to slacken. As soon as he noticed it, Tordenskjold slipped into the
inner harbor under cover of the heavy pall of smoke, and before the
Swedes suspected their presence they found his ships alongside.
Broadside after broadside crashed into them, and in terror they
fled, soldiers and sailors alike. While they ran Tordenskjold
swooped down upon the half-way battery, seized it, and spiked its
guns. The fight was won.
But the heaviest part was left—the towing out of the captured
ships. All the afternoon Tordenskjold led the work in person,
pulling on ropes, cheering on his men. The Swedes, returning
gamely to the fight, showered them with bullets from shore. One
of the abandoned vessels caught fire. Lieutenant Toender, of
Tordenskjold’s staff, a veteran with a wooden leg, boarded it just
as the quartermaster ran up yelling that the ship was full of
powder and was going to blow up. He tried to jump overboard, but
the lieutenant seized him by the collar and, stumping along, made
him lead the way to the magazine. A fuse had been laid to an open
keg of powder, and the fire was sputtering within an inch of it
when Lieutenant Tönder plucked it out, smothered it between thumb
and forefinger, and threw it through the nearest port-hole. There
were two hundred barrels of powder in the ship.
Tordenskjold had kept his word to the King. Not as much as a yawl
of the Dynekilen fleet was left to the enemy. He had sunk or
burned thirteen and captured thirty-one ships with his seven, and
all the piled-up munitions of war were in his hands. King Charles
gave up the siege, marched his army out of Norway, and the country
was saved. The victory cost Tordenskjold but nineteen killed and
fifty-seven wounded. On his own ship six men were killed and twenty
wounded.
Of infinite variety was this sea-fighter. After a victory like
this, one hears of him in the next breath gratifying a passing whim
of the King, who wanted to know what the Swedish people thought of
their Government after Charles’s long wars that are said to have
cost their country a million men. Tordenskjold overheard it, had
himself rowed across to Sweden, picked up there a wedding party,
bridegroom, minister, guests, and all, including the captain of
the shore watch who was among them, and returned in time for the
palace dinner with his catch. King Frederik was entertaining Czar
Peter the Great, who had been boasting of the unhesitating loyalty
of his men which his Danish host could not match. He now had the
tables turned upon him. It is recorded that the King sent the party
back with royal gifts for the bride. One would be glad to add that
Tordenskjold sent back, too, the silver pitcher and the parlor
clock his men took on their visit. But he didn’t. They were still
in Copenhagen a hundred years later, and may be they are yet. It
was not like his usual gallantry toward the fair sex. But perhaps
he didn’t know anything about it.
Then we find him, after an unsuccessful attack on Göteborg that
cost many lives, sending in his adjutant to congratulate the
Swedish commandant on their “gallant encounter” the day before,
and exchanging presents with him in token of mutual regard. And
before one can turn the page he is discovered swooping down upon
Marstrand, taking town and fleet anchored there, and the castle
itself with its whole garrison, all with two hundred men, swelled
by stratagem into an army of thousands. We are told that an officer
sent out from the castle to parley, issuing forth from a generous
dinner, beheld the besieging army drawn up in street after street,
always two hundred men around every corner, as he made his way
through the town, piloted by Tordenskjold himself, who was careful
to take him the longest way, while the men took the short cut to
the next block. The man returned home with the message that the
town was full of them and that resistance was useless. The ruse
smacks of Peder Wessel’s boyish fight with a much bigger fellow who
had beaten him once by gripping his long hair, and so getting his
head in chancery. But Peder had taken notice. Next time he came to
the encounter with hair cut short and his whole head smeared with
soft-soap, and that time he won.
The most extraordinary of all his adventures befell when, after the
attack on Strömstad, he was hastening home to Copenhagen. Crossing
the Kattegat in a little smack that carried but two three-pound
guns, he was chased and overtaken by a Swedish frigate of sixteen
guns and a crew of sixty men. Tordenskjold had but twenty-one,
and eight of them were servants and non-combatants. They were
dreadfully frightened, and tradition has it that one of them wept
when he saw the Swede coming on. Her captain called upon him to
surrender, but the answer was flung back:
“I am Tordenskjold! Come and take me, if you can.”
With that came a tiny broadside that did brisk execution on
the frigate. Tordenskjold had hauled both his guns over on the
“fighting side” of his vessel. There ensued a battle such as Homer
would have loved to sing. Both sides banged away for all they were
worth. In the midst of the din and smoke Tordenskjold used his
musket with cool skill; his servants loaded while he fired. At
every shot a man fell on the frigate.
Word was brought that there was no more round shot. He bade them
twist up his pewter dinner service and fire that, which they did.
The Swede tried vainly to board. Tordenskjold manœuvred his smack
with such skill that they could not hook on. Seeing this, Captain
Lind, commander of the frigate, called to him to desist from the
useless struggle; he would be honored to carry such a prisoner into
Göteborg. Back came the taunt:
“Neither you nor any other Swede shall ever carry me there!” And
with that he shot the captain down.[1]
When his men saw him fall, they were seized with panic and made off
as quickly as they could, while Tordenskjold’s crew, of whom only
fourteen were left, beat their drums and blew trumpets in frantic
defiance. Their captain was for following the Swede and boarding
her, but he couldn’t. Sails, rigging, and masts were shot to
pieces. Perhaps the terror of the Swedes was increased by the sight
of Tordenskjold’s tame bear making faces at them behind his master.
It went with him everywhere till that day, and came out of the
fight unscathed. But during the night the crew ran the vessel on
the Swedish shore, whence Tordenskjold himself reached Denmark in
an open boat which he had to keep bailing all night, for the boat
was shot full of holes, and though he and his companions stuffed
their spare clothing into them it leaked badly. The enemy got the
smack, after all, and the bear, which, being a Norwegian, proved so
untractable on Swedish soil that, sad to relate, in the end they
cut him up and ate him.
King Charles, himself a knightly soul and an admirer of a gallant
enemy, gave orders to have all Tordenskjold’s belongings sent
back to him, but he did not live to see the order carried out. He
was found dead in the rifle-pits before Frederiksteen on December
11, 1718, shot through the head. It was Tordenskjold himself who
brought the all-important news to King Frederik in the night
of December 28,—they were not the days of telegraphs and fast
steamers,—and when the King, who had been roused out of bed to
receive him, could not trust his ears, he said with characteristic
audacity, “I wish it were as true that your Majesty had made me a
schoutbynacht,”—the rank next below admiral. And so he took the
step next to the last on the ladder of his ambition.
Within seven months he took Marstrand. It is part of the record
of that astonishing performance that when the unhappy Commandant
hesitated as the hour of evacuation came, not sure that he had done
right in capitulating, Tordenskjold walked up to the fort with a
hundred men, half his force, banged on the gate, went in alone and
up to the Commandant’s window, thundering out:
“What are you waiting for? Don’t you know time is up?”
In terror and haste, Colonel Dankwardt moved his Hessians out, and
Tordenskjold marched his handful of men in. When he brought the
King the keys of Marstrand, Frederik made him an admiral.
It was while blockading the port of Göteborg in the last year of
the war that he met and made a friend of Lord Carteret, the English
Ambassador to Denmark, and fell in love with the picture of a young
Englishwoman, Miss Norris, a lady of great beauty and wealth,
who, Lord Carteret told him, was an ardent admirer of his. It was
this love which indirectly sent him to his death. Lord Carteret
had given him a picture of her, and as soon as peace was made he
started for England; but he never reached that country. The remnant
of the Swedish fleet lay in the roadstead at Göteborg, under the
guns of the two forts, New and Old Elfsborg. While Tordenskjold was
away at Marstrand, the enemy sallied forth and snapped up seven
of the smaller vessels of his blockading fleet. The news made him
furious. He sent in, demanding them back at once, “or I will come
after them.” He had already made one ineffectual attempt to take
New Elfsborg that cost him dear. In Göteborg they knew the strength
of his fleet and laughed at his threat. But it was never safe to
laugh at Tordenskjold. The first dark night he stole in with ten
armed boats, seized the shore batteries of the old fort, and spiked
their guns before a shot was fired. The rising moon saw his men
in possession of the ships lying at anchor. With their blue-lined
coats turned inside out so that they might pass for Swedish
uniforms, they surprised the watch in the guard-house and made them
all prisoners. Now that there was no longer reason for caution,
they raised a racket that woke the sleeping town up in a fright.
The commander of the other fort sent out a boat to ascertain the
cause. It met the Admiral’s and challenged it, “Who goes there?”
“Tordenskjold,” was the reply, “come to teach you to keep awake.”
It proved impossible to warp the ships out. Only one of the seven
lost ones was recovered; all the rest were set on fire. By the
light of the mighty bonfire Tordenskjold rowed out with his men,
hauling the recovered ship right under the guns of the forts, the
Danish flag flying at the bow of his boat. He had not lost a single
man. A cannon-ball swept away all the oars on one side of his boat,
but no one was hurt.
At Marstrand they had been up all night listening to the
cannonading and the crash upon crash as the big ships blew up. They
knew that Tordenskjold was abroad with his men. In the morning,
when they were all in church, he walked in and sat down by his
chief, the old Admiral Judicher, who was a slow-going, cautious
man. He whispered anxiously, “What news?” but Tordenskjold only
shrugged his shoulders with unmoved face. It is not likely that
either the old Admiral or the congregation heard much of that
sermon, if indeed they heard any of it. But when it was over, they
saw from the walls of the town the Danish ships at anchor and heard
the story of the last of Tordenskjold’s exploits. It fitly capped
the climax of his life. Sweden’s entire force on the North Sea,
with the exception of five small galleys, had either been captured,
sunk, or burned by him.
The King would not let Tordenskjold go when peace was made, but he
had his way in the end. To his undoing he consented to take with
him abroad a young scalawag, the son of his landlord, who had more
money than brains. In Hamburg the young man fell in with a gambler,
a Swedish colonel by name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had
and much more besides. When Tordenskjold heard of it and met the
Colonel in another man’s house, he caned him soundly and threw him
out in the street. For this he was challenged, but refused to fight
a gambler.
“Friends,” particularly one Colonel Münnichhausen, who volunteered
to be his second, talked him over, and also persuaded him to give
up the pistol, with which he was an expert. The duel was fought at
the Village of Gledinge, over the line from Hanover, on the morning
of November 12, 1720. Tordenskjold was roused from sleep at five,
and, after saying his prayers, a duty he never on any account
omitted, he started for the place appointed. His old body-servant
vainly pleaded with his master to take his stout blade instead of
the flimsy parade sword the Admiral carried. Münnichhausen advised
against it; it would be too heavy, he said. Stahl’s weapon was a
long fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous second made no
objection. Almost at the first thrust he ran the Admiral through.
The seconds held his servant while Stahl jumped on his horse and
galloped away. Tordenskjold breathed out his dauntless soul in the
arms of his faithful servant and friend.
His body lies in a black marble sarcophagus in the “Navy Church”
at Copenhagen. The Danish and Norwegian peoples have never ceased
to mourn their idol. He was a sailor with a sailor’s faults. But
he loved truth, honor, and courage in foe and friend alike. Like
many seafaring men, he was deeply religious, with the unquestioning
faith of a child. There is a letter in existence written by him
to his father when the latter was on his death-bed that bears
witness to this. He thanks him with filial affection for all his
care, and says naïvely that he would rather have his prayers
than fall heir to twenty thousand daler. His pictures show a
stocky, broad-shouldered youth with frank blue eyes, full lips,
and an eagle nose. His deep, sonorous voice used to be heard, in
his midshipman days, above the whole congregation in the Navy
Church. In after years it called louder still to Denmark’s foes.
When things were at their worst in storm or battle, he was wont
to shout to his men, “Hi, _now_ we are having a fine time!” and
his battle-cry has passed into the language. By it, in desperate
straits demanding stout hearts, one may know the Dane after his own
heart, the real Dane, the world over. Among his own Tordenskjold is
still and always will be “the Admiral of Norway’s fleet.”
Footnotes:
[1] He was not mortally wounded, and Tordenskjold took him prisoner
later at the capture of Marstrand.
HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE TO GREENLAND
When in the fall of 1909 the statement was flashed around the
world that the North Pole had at last been reached, a name long
unfamiliar ran from mouth to mouth with that of the man who claimed
to be its discoverer. Dr. Cook was coming to Copenhagen, the daily
despatches read, on the Danish Government steamer _Hans Egede_. A
shipload of reporters kept an anxious lookout from the Skaw for
the vessel so suddenly become famous, but few who through their
telescopes made out the name at last upon the prow of the ship
gave it another thought in the eager welcome to the man it brought
back from the perils of the Farthest North. Yet the name of that
vessel stood for something of more real account to humanity than
the attainment of a goal that had been the mystery of the ages. No
such welcome awaited the explorer Hans Egede, who a hundred and
seventy-two years before sailed homeward over that very route,
a broken, saddened man, and all he brought was the ashes of his
best-beloved that they might rest in her native soil. No gold medal
was struck for him; the people did not greet him with loud acclaim.
The King and his court paid scant attention to him, and he was
allowed to live his last days in poverty. Yet a greater honor is
his than ever fell to a discoverer: the simple natives of Greenland
long reckoned the time from his coming among them. To them he was
in their ice-bound home what Father Damien was to the stricken
lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Grenfell is to the fishermen of
Labrador.
Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Greenland, was a Norwegian of
Danish descent. He was born in the Northlands, in the parish of
Trondenäs, on January 31, 1686. His grandfather and his father
before him had been clergymen in Denmark, the former in the town of
West Egede, whence the name. Graduated in a single year from the
University of Copenhagen, “at which,” his teachers bore witness,
“no one need wonder who knows the man,” he became at twenty-two
pastor of a parish up in the Lofoden Islands, where the fabled
maëlstrom churns. Eleven years he preached to the poor fisherfolk
on Sunday, and on week-days helped his parishioners rebuild the old
church. When it was finished and the bishop came to consecrate it,
he chided Egede because the altar was too fine; it must have cost
more than they could afford.
“It did not cost anything,” was his reply. “I made it myself.”
No wonder his fame went far. When the church bell of Vaagen called,
boats carrying Sunday-clad fishermen were seen making for the
island from every point of the compass. Great crowds flocked to
his church; great enough to arouse the jealousy of neighboring
preachers who were not so popular, and they made it so unpleasant
that his wife at last tired of it. They little dreamed that they
were industriously paving the way for his greater work and for his
undying fame.
The sea that surges against that rockbound coast ever called its
people out in quest of adventure. Some who went nine hundred years
ago found a land in the far Northwest barred by great icebergs; but
once inside the barrier, they saw deep fjords like their own at
home, to which the mountains sloped down, covered with a wealth of
lovely flowers. On green meadows antlered deer were grazing, the
salmon leaped in brawling brooks, and birds called for their mates
in the barrens. Above it all towered snow-covered peaks. They saw
only the summer day; they did not know how brief it was, and how
long the winter night, and they called the country Greenland. They
built their homes there, and other settlers came. They were hardy
men, bred in a harsh climate, and they stayed. They built churches
and had their priests and bishops, for Norway was Christian by
that time. And they prospered after their fashion. They even paid
Peter’s Pence to Rome. There is a record that their contribution,
being in kind, namely, walrus teeth, was sold in 1386 by the Pope’s
agent to a merchant in Flanders for twelve livres, fourteen sous.
They kept up communication with their kin across the seas until the
Black Death swept through the Old World in the Fourteenth Century;
Norway, when it was gone, was like a vast tomb. Two-thirds of its
people lay dead. Those who were left had enough to do at home; and
Greenland was forgotten.
The seasons passed, and the savages, with whom the colonists
had carried on a running feud, came out of the frozen North and
overwhelmed them. Dim traditions that were whispered among the
natives for centuries told of that last fight. It was the Ragnarok
of the Northmen. Not one was left to tell the tale. Long years
after, when fishing vessels landed on that desolate coast, they
found a strange and hostile people in possession. No one had ever
dared to settle there since.
This last Egede knew, but little more. He believed that there were
still settlements on the inaccessible east coast of Greenland where
descendants of the old Northmen lived, cut off from all the world,
sunk into ignorance and godlessness,—men and women who had once
known the true light,—and his heart yearned to go to their rescue.
Waking and dreaming, he thought of nothing else. The lamp in his
quiet study shone out over the sea at night when his people were
long asleep. Their pastor was poring over old manuscripts and the
logs of whalers that had touched upon Greenland. From Bergen he
gathered the testimony of many sailors. None of them had ever seen
traces of, or heard of, the old Northmen.
To his bishop went Egede with his burden. Ever it rang in his
ears: “God has chosen you to bring them back to the light.” The
bishop listened and was interested. Yes, that was the land from
which seafarers in a former king’s time had brought home golden
sand. There might be more. It couldn’t be far from Cuba and
Hispaniola, those golden coasts. If one were to go equipped for
trading, no doubt a fine stroke of business might be done. Thus
the Right Reverend Bishop Krog of Trondhjem, and Egede went home,
disheartened.
At home his friends scouted him, said he was going mad to think
of giving up his living on such a fool’s chase. His wife implored
him to stay, and with a heavy heart Egede was about to abandon
his purpose when his jealous neighbor, whose parishioners had
been going to hear Egede preach, stirred up such trouble that his
wife was glad to go. She even urged him to, and he took her at
her word. They moved to Bergen, and from that port they sailed on
May 3, 1721, on the ship _Haabet_ (the Hope), with another and
smaller vessel as convoy, forty-six souls all told, bound for the
unknown North. The Danish King had made Egede missionary to the
Greenlanders on a salary of three hundred daler a year, the same
amount which Egede himself contributed of his scant store toward
the equipment. The bishop’s plan had prevailed; the mission was to
be carried by the expected commerce, and upon that was to be built
a permanent colonization.
Early in June they sighted land, but the way to it was barred
by impassable ice. A whole month they sailed to and fro, trying
vainly for a passage. At last they found an opening and slipped
through, only to find themselves shut in, with towering icebergs
closing around them. As they looked fearfully out over the rail,
their convoy signalled that she had struck, and the captain of
_Haabet_ cried out that all was lost. In the tumult of terror that
succeeded, Egede alone remained calm. Praying for succor where
there seemed to be none, he remembered the One Hundred and Seventh
Psalm: “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and brake their bands in sunder.” And the morning dawned clear,
the ice was moving and their prison widening. On July 3, _Haabet_
cleared the last ice-reef, and the shore lay open before them.
The Eskimos came out in their kayaks, and the boldest climbed
aboard the ship. In one boat sat an old man who refused the
invitation. He paddled about the vessel, mumbling darkly in a
strange tongue. He was an Angekok, one of the native medicine-men
of whom presently Egede was to know much more. As he stood upon
the deck and looked at these strangers for whose salvation he had
risked all, his heart fell. They were not the stalwart Northmen he
had looked for, and their jargon had no homelike sound. But a great
wave of pity swept over him, and the prayer that rose to his lips
was for strength to be their friend and their guide to the light.
Not at once did the way open for the coveted friendship with the
Eskimos. While they thought the strangers came only to trade they
were hospitable enough, but when they saw them build, clearly
intent on staying, they made signs that they had better go. They
pointed to the sun that sank lower toward the horizon every day,
and shivered as if from extreme cold, and they showed their
visitors the icebergs and the snow, making them understand that
it would cover the house by and by. When it all availed nothing
and the winter came on, they retired into their huts and cut the
acquaintance of the white men. They were afraid that they had come
to take revenge for the harm done their people in the olden time.
There was nothing for it, then, but that Egede must go to them, and
this he did.
They seized their spears when they saw him coming, but he made
signs that he was their friend. When he had nothing else to give
them, he let them cut the buttons from his coat. Throughout the
fifteen years he spent in Greenland Egede never wore furs, as
did the natives. The black robe he thought more seemly for a
clergyman, to his great discomfort. He tells in his diary and in
his letters that often when he returned from his winter travels it
could stand alone when he took it off, being frozen stiff. After
a while he got upon neighborly terms with the Eskimos; but, if
anything, the discomfort was greater. They housed him at night in
their huts, where the filth and the stench were unendurable. They
showed their special regard by first licking off the piece of seal
they put before him, and if he rejected it they were hurt. Their
housekeeping, of which he got an inside view, was embarrassing in
its simplicity. The dish-washing was done by the dogs licking the
kettles clean. Often, after a night or two in a hut that held half
a dozen families, he was compelled to change his clothes to the
skin in an open boat or out on the snow. But the alternative was to
sleep out in a cold that sometimes froze his pillow to the bed and
the tea-cup to the table even in his own home. Above all, he must
learn their language.
It proved a difficult task, for the Eskimo tongue was both very
simple and very complex. In all the things pertaining to their
daily life it was exceedingly complex. For instance, to catch one
kind of fish was expressed by one word, to catch another kind in
quite different terms. They had one word for catching a young seal,
another for catching an old one. When it came to matters of moral
and spiritual import, the language was poor to desperation. Egede’s
instruction began when he caught the word “kine”—what is it? And
from that time on he learned every day; but the pronunciation was
as varied as the workaday vocabulary, and it was an unending task.
It proceeded with many interruptions from the Angekoks, who
tried more than once to bewitch him, but finally gave it up,
convinced that he was a great medicine-man himself, and therefore
invulnerable. But before that they tried to foment a regular
mutiny, the colony being by that time well under way, and Egede
had to arrest and punish the leaders. The natives naturally clung
to them, and when Egede had mastered their language and tried to
make clear that the Angekoks deceived them when they pretended to
go to the other world for advice, they demurred. “Did you ever see
them go?” he asked. “Well, have you seen this God of yours of whom
you speak so much?” was their reply. When Egede spoke of spiritual
gifts, they asked for good health and blubber: “Our Angekoks give
us that.” Hell-fire was much in theological evidence in those
days, but among the Eskimos it was a failure as a deterrent. They
listened to the account of it eagerly and liked the prospect. When
at length they became convinced that Egede knew more than their
Angekoks, they came to him with the request that he would abolish
winter. Very likely they thought that one who had such knowledge of
the hot place ought to have influence enough with the keeper of it
to obtain this favor.
It was not an easy task, from any point of view, to which he had
put his hands. As that first winter wore away there were gloomy
days and nights, and they were not brightened when, with the return
of the sun, no ship arrived from Denmark. The Dutch traders came,
and opened their eyes wide when they found Egede and his household
safe and even on friendly terms with the Eskimos. Pelesse—the
natives called the missionary that, as the nearest they could
come to the Danish _präst_ (priest)—Pelesse was not there after
blubber, they told the Dutchmen, but to teach them about heaven
and of “Him up there,” who had made them and wanted them home with
Him again. So he had not worked altogether in vain. But the brief
summer passed, and still no relief ship. The crew of _Haabet_
clamored to go home, and Egede had at last to give a reluctant
promise that if no ship came in two weeks, he would break up. His
wife alone refused to take a hand in packing. The ship was coming,
she insisted, and at the last moment it did come. A boat arriving
after dark brought the first word of it. The people ashore heard
voices speaking in Danish, and flew to Egede, who had gone to bed,
with the news. The ship brought good cheer. The Government was well
disposed. Trading and preaching were to go on together, as planned.
Joyfully then they built a bigger and a better house, and called
their colony Godthaab (Good Hope).