ROSKILDE
Between fair fields the fjord
With winding waters, snake-like,
Creeps inward from the salt sea.
Where viking hordes have harried,
Fare peaceful folk to market.
High tower the tall twin spires.
Beneath, in silent splendour
Lie the dead kings of Dane-realm.
This pleasant, quiet country town is named from its springs, referred
to in the last part of the word (p. 115). The uncertainty about the
first syllable has apparently led to the invention of a founder named
Roe, who seems to have so much in common with Port of Portsmouth and
King Cole of Colchester--that he never existed except to account for a
name.
The atmosphere of a small cathedral city such as Trollope describes is
so peculiarly English that no one would expect to find it reproduced in
a foreign land. The association of nearly all Continental cathedrals
with houses and market-place makes the impression produced wholly
different from that of the grey towers and long roofs that appear over
the trees of an English Close.
But at least in the fact that the cathedral is almost the only object
of great interest, the centre of the whole district, the ancient
Danish capital resembles a small English city. The atmosphere of
farming and of pleasant country life, the general sense of repose, the
way in which the cathedral rises among gardens and flowers a short
distance away from the market-place, all do something to recall that
most typical cathedral city, the ancient capital of Sussex--while the
beautiful fretted fjord, bordered by low, sloping meadows, and the port
almost destitute of shipping save for the fishing boats, bear very
considerable resemblance to Chichester Harbour and Dell Quay. Knut the
Rich is associated with that English district too, his daughter is
buried in Bosham Church. He must have been frequently reminded while
there of the peaceful country round his Danish capital.
The story of Roskilde takes us pretty near the dawn of strictly Danish
history, when the country was closely linked in politics with the
British Isles.
At the present time, however, it is not so picturesque a city as
Copenhagen; there are but few old houses and only a single mediæval
church, that of St. Mary, has survived, in addition to the great
Cathedral of St. Lucius. Even the Raadhus, or Town Hall, in the very
ample market place, was rebuilt not long ago.
The founder of the Danish monarchy was Gorm the Old (p. 12); he first
united all the land. About 935 he was succeeded by Harald of the Blue
Tooth (Blaatand). Him the Holy Roman Emperor was to some extent able
to control and insisted on his becoming a Christian. Traditionally at
any rate he was the founder of Roskilde Cathedral, erecting a church
of staves where before no church had been. Men say, the _Heimskringla_
informs us, that Keisar Otto II. was the gossip of his son, Svein
Twibeard. So lightly, however, did Twibeard regard the solemn ceremony
of his baptism that, heading the pagan party, he flung his father from
the throne and began to reign himself about the year 985. More than
once he changed his creed, but it seems that he happened to be trowing
in the faith of the White Christ at the time of his unlamented death.
He it was who fought against Olaf Tryggvison in the famous Long Worm at
Svoldr, but he left when the fighting was of the sharpest and much folk
fell. Nevertheless his Norwegian ally, Earl Eric, who had a beaked ship
wondrous great, captured the Long Worm itself, when Olaf Tryggvison
leapt into the deep sea and was never heard of more.
While at war with Ethelred the Redeless in "England it betid there that
King Svein, the son of Harald, died suddenly anight in his bed; and it
is the say of Englishmen that Edmund the Holy did slay him after the
manner in which the holy Mercury slew Julian the Apostate."[50] He is
buried according to tradition under the Castle Hills at Gainsborough on
the Trent.
He had won a firm position on English soil, and notwithstanding the
victory of Ethelred the Redeless and St. Olaf at London Bridge, his
son, Knut the Rich, the Mighty, the Great--for so he is variously
called--eventually established his power both in England and Denmark.
Many a man has been improved by adversity, many spoiled by great
success. But, as Dr. Hodgkin points out,[51] two great characters
in history, Cæsar Augustus and Knut the Rich, vastly improved their
behaviour after realising their very highest flights of ambition. Each
was in a sense the founder of an empire, one of them the mightiest and
in influence the most enduring dominion that the earth has ever known,
the other was of the flimsiest and most ephemeral. Indeed it began to
crumble before the founder died. English communications were in those
early centuries mainly with the Scandinavian lands, by whose people
many parts of the British Isles had been settled, and that Knut's dream
of a great northern empire was never realised we have some cause for
regret. Far more promising schemes, however, would have been destroyed
by the two savages by whom he was succeeded. By Northmen speaking
French, under the great William, descendant of Rolf Wend-afoot, whom
no horse could bear, English foreign relations were suddenly changed
in 1066. Hitherto it had seemed likely England might form the focus of
a great dominion of the North, henceforth she was closely bound to the
central lands of Europe.
Had the empire of Knut the Rich been maintained its capital would
probably have been Roskilde from the convenience of its position, or
if the wealth and importance of England had made it desirable that the
chief city should be there, it would most likely have been drawn to
some place much nearer to Denmark than Winchester.
Knut's own associations with Roskilde were by no means uniformly
happy. Indeed it was there that he was guilty of one of the worst acts
in his career. In 1017 "King Knut rode up to Roiswell the day before
Michaelmas with a great following. Earl Wolf, his brother-in-law, had
arrayed a banquet for him. The earl gave him entertainment full noble,
but the king was unjoyous and scowling. The earl wrought many ways to
make him gleesome, but the king was short and few-spoken. The earl
bade him play at the chess, and that he yeasaid, so they got them a
chessboard and played. Earl Wolf was a man quick of word and unyielding
in all things; he was the mightiest man in Denmark next after King
Knut.... Now when they had been playing a while at the chess Earl Wolf
checked the king's knight. The king put his move back and bade him play
another. The earl got angry, cast down the table and went away. The
king said: 'Runnest thou away now, Wolf the Craven?' The earl turned
back in the door and said: 'Further would'st thou have run in the Holy
River if thou mightest have brought it about; nor didst thou call me
Wolf the Craven when I thrust in to the helping of thee when the Swedes
were beating you like hounds.'
"Therewith the earl went out and went to sleep, and a little afterwards
the king himself went to sleep.
"The next morning as the king clad himself he said to his foot-swain,
'Go thou to Earl Wolf,' says he, 'and slay him.' The swain went and was
away a while and came back. The king said: 'Didst thou slay the earl?'
'I did not slay him, for he had gone to Lucius' church.'
"There was a man hight Ivar the White, a Norwegian of kin. The king
said to Ivar: 'Go, and slay the earl.' Ivar went to the church and
up into the quire, and thrust a sword through the earl, and forthwith
Earl Wolf lost his life. Then went Ivar to the king and had his bloody
sword. Said the king: 'Slewest thou the earl?' 'I slew him,' says he.
The king said: 'Then thou hast well done.'
"But after the murder of the earl the monks let lock the church; but
the king sent men to the monks, bidding them to open the church and to
sing the Hours there, and they did even as the king bade. And when the
king came to the church he endowed it with great estates, so that they
made a wide countryside, and thereafter this stead arose greatly."
The harbour was an almost ideal one in those days, and Knut remained
there with a great host of ships all through harvest. He evidently felt
that the land given to the Cathedral of St. Lucius had quite atoned for
the crime. His life work was in one sense a failure. The fabric he had
reared fell down but much remained. As his latest biographer has said:
"The great movement that culminated in the subjection of Britain was
of vast importance for the North; it opened up new fields for western
influences; it brought the North into touch with Christian culture; it
rebuilt Scandinavian civilisation."[52]
Knut's nephew, called Svein Wolfson (or Estridsen), the son of the
murdered man, was King of Denmark from 1047 till 1076, and he did much
for history writing in the north by his conversations with his friend,
the famous chronicler, Canon Adam of Bremen.[53] His courtiers had once
become very drunk in the palace hall at Roskilde, and without much
delicacy they began discussing their master's want of bravery and lack
of skill or success in war. Such conversations are always overheard,
and in this case there was quite enough truth in the remarks to make
them excessively disagreeable to the king. He relieved his mind by
causing all the disputants to be killed while at church next day; then
he went to service himself. But an English monk named William, whom he
had made Bishop of Roskilde, like another Ambrose, sternly barred his
way, nor was he allowed to enter and attend the Eucharist till he had
humbly appeared in the garb of a penitent and craved the pardon of the
Church. A few days later he imitated Knut by granting to the see a vast
tract of land. It seems to have included the site of Copenhagen (p.
131).
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. LUCIUS, ROSKILDE]
(1.) Passage to Episcopal Palace. (2.) Transept. (3.) Chapel of S.
Lawrence. (4.) Chapel of S. Brita. (5.5.) Porches. (6.) North-west
Tower, forming Chapel of S. Siegfrid. (7.) South-west Tower, forming
the Bethlehem Chapel. [_Face page 118_
During the eleventh century a stone church replaced Bluetooth's
building of logs. Knut the Holy, King of Denmark (1080-86), gave what
help he could. The fact that this structure was on the same site
as the present cathedral may help to account for the extraordinary
irregularities in setting out the extremely simple ground plan.
The church is almost wholly of brick, heavily buttressed and rather
German in appearance; it must have been still more so originally when
each bay of the aisles had a gable of its own. With its tall western
spires and little central flèche, it reminds one of the Cathedral at
Lübeck, but is a very much finer church. All the original parts were
erected during the thirteenth century, the builders working east to
west, delayed by fires in 1234 and 1284.[54]
A magnificent monument in the quire fitly commemorates the greatest of
all the honoured dead that rest within this simple and most impressive
church. On an altar-tomb of great beauty and well restored is the
canopied effigy of a lovely woman, who died in 1412. No student of
history can tread here unmoved. We are in the presence of the most
far-seeing of all the sovereigns of the North: the noble Margaret of
whom the great _Chronicle of Lübeck_ says, "When men saw the wisdom and
strength that were in this royal lady, wonder and fear filled their
hearts." She was a daughter of Waldemar Atterdag (p. 161), and had
married the King of Norway. "Great marvel it is to think that a lady,
who, when she began to govern for her son found a troubled kingdom, in
which she owned not money or credit enough to secure a meal without
the aid of friends, had made herself so feared and loved in the short
term of three months, that nothing in all the land was any longer
withheld from her."
By the Union of Calmar in 1397, she arranged the eternal federation
of the four Scandinavian realms on principles acceptable to all. One
King should reign, but each land should maintain its proper laws. The
Northlands realised the blessings of her rule, and all that she did was
so good that even her wretchedly unworthy successors took a century and
a quarter to undo her work.
Womanish, perhaps unworthy, yet by no means unprovoked, her mocking
insults to the captured Swedish King, Albert the Elder of Mecklenburg.
This carpet-bagger's German hirelings had been scattered by her troops,
and she dressed him in the garments of a fool with a tail of nineteen
yards in length depending from his cap. Natural but unnecessary return
for his offensive gifts of an apron and a long gown and a whetstone to
sharpen her needles!
To her memory (in part) are the beautiful miserere stalls on whose
canopies are Scripture scenes, set up in 1420 by Bishop Jens Andersen.
By her was fitted the Bethlehem Chapel under the south-west tower.
Strong, indeed, in life, but yet more strong in death, the appeal
of the great queen! Even now the world is a loser because the
Scandinavian realms are torn. Very truly spake a Swedish writer whom
Otté quotes, but does not name: "Death made an end of Queen Margaret's
life, but it could not make an end of her fame, which will endure
through all ages. Under her hands the three kingdoms enjoyed a degree
of strength and order to which they had long been strangers before her
time, and which neither of the three regained till long after her."
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL FROM NORTH-WEST] [_Face page 122_
Other royal monuments are many here, but it need not be assumed that
the fairest of them mark the livers of the noblest and most useful
lives. Many of them are in the numerous chapels which have been added
beyond the aisles of this church from the fourteenth century to the
eighteenth. They alter the character of the building very much.[55]
Combined with the absence of any transept projection they make the plan
of the church look very confused.
Those who departed centuries ago are laid away with decency in vaults.
But in later days a far less seemly custom has grown up; the coffins
are merely ranged in rows upon the chapel floors. They seem to be at
rest when they are of marble or stone, and so, too, perhaps when of
solid metal, but most are only of oak, covered with black velvet. It is
almost impossible to dismiss the idea that the victims of some disaster
await the last solemn rites. There is something weirdly gruesome in
this vast Valhalla of the unburied dead. Abraham desired decorously to
bury his dead out of his sight, but the rulers of Denmark must for ever
merely lie in state. In ancient Egypt an empty coffin was sometimes
placed upon the table that the feasters might remember death. They who
say their prayers in this cathedral in the very presence of the dead
must surely learn that lesson with much more force. To kneel on the
same floor where coffins lie must be far more impressive than merely to
learn from storied urn and animated bust of those who sleep below.
Trondhjem Cathedral, the noblest of Scandinavian churches, is without
mediæval monuments, at Upsala there are few; this church is in very
truth the most historical building of the North. Several of the
monarchs that here rest bore rule over all the Norse. Saints of all
three kingdoms have here some part. To St. Brita is hallowed a chapel
on the north, to St. Siegfrid one under the northern tower. St. Olaf
(Danish Oluf) and St. Knut are among those whose effigies are painted
in the Chapel of Three Kings.
Few fences break up the wide fields that extend round the town to the
sea. Cattle are invariably tethered, pasture is valuable, and none of
it must be trampled down. Sprinkled about are white farmhouses covered
with tiles or with thatch. Many small-holders have purchased their land
with money borrowed from the State. Sir Rider Haggard[56] has recently
described their condition, and pointed out what England may learn.
Denmark is, or rather has been, so progressively indifferent to the
past that but few old buildings still adorn her open fields. When it
was considered necessary for a self-respecting Scandinavian nation to
establish an open-air museum,[57] the needful old farm buildings had
to be brought from parts of old Denmark that are now either Swedish or
German. Nothing had escaped rebuilding on strictly Danish soil.
At first sight Danish farming looks rough, thistles may not seldom
be seen growing luxuriantly among the oats. Danish landscapes indeed
frequently look rather more American than European with something
of that ungroomed appearance and absence of hedges that is so
characteristic of a new country. In purely dairy farming, none the
less, Danes practically lead the world, and that despite their poor
soil and the need for sheltering stock from the rigours of a long
winter. Though about a hundred and seventy-four of them live on each
square mile, they manage to send away food that they do not need to the
value of about twenty millions sterling every year.
Age-long the connection between this pleasant land and the British
Isles. Roskilde and Winchester were twin capitals of the middle
empire of which England formed a part, after the legions of Rome had
departed, before the British had built a dominion in the world for
themselves. Nor is the impression the Danes left on England by any
means worn away. A Danish resident in Middlesbrough, taking a walk
with an English friend over the Cleveland Moors, found himself able to
understand the dialect of the folk of those wild hills, while their own
countryman could not.
Political links with Denmark are to-day centred mainly in the relations
of kings and queens. But the great smoky cities of the United Kingdom
have their chief source of the necessaries of life in this quiet and
green countryside.
[Illustration]