COPENHAGEN
Dumb was the sea, and if the beech-woods stirred,
'Twas with the nesting of the grey-winged bird
Midst its thick leaves....
Great things he suffered, great delights he had,
Unto great kings he gave good deeds for bad;
He ruled o'er kingdoms where his name no more
Is had in memory, and on many a shore
He left his sweat and blood to win a name
Passing the bounds of earthly creatures' fame.
_Ogier the Dane_, by WILLIAM MORRIS.
Though the capital of an Empire which spreads from the Tropics to
the near vicinity of the Northern Pole,[58] and by far the largest
of Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen is yet so placed that many of her
citizens look from their own windows over foreign soil. The capital
is almost at the very eastern point of the wide-flung yet restricted
dominions of Denmark.
A flight of but a dozen miles would carry an aeroplane on to Swedish
soil; only twice that distance off is the University city of Lund, so
famous in the annals of the Northern Church and so long on Danish soil.
Copenhagen is a very pleasant town, and almost all its chief buildings
exemplify the architectural ideals of the Renaissance. Street upon
street of houses, white stucco or red brick, adorned with pilaster and
pediment and cornice, covered with tall pantiled roofs; many bearing
the dates of their birth-years two or three centuries ago; these give
the capital an old-world, most attractive look, a picturesqueness that
is sternly denied to most so modern towns. Steeples of character to
match, frequently tower above the roofs, while very constant parks and
squares, long avenues of broad-leafed trees and cool-looking fountains,
some of them real works of art, do much to make this town a very
delightful place.
Canals, somewhat numerous open-air markets and innumerable cafés,
whose tables and chairs under trees or awnings encroach on the
broad pavements, make the Danish metropolis a rather characteristic
Continental town. In some ways, perhaps, it has less individuality
than the other capitals of the Northlands. Less romantically situated,
much larger, far easier to reach from more southern parts, it has much
of the bright boulevard atmosphere of Paris. Tivoli Park and the cafés,
with many other like attractions, draw crowds of visitors, not only
from every part of the small kingdom, but also from the very prosperous
section of Sweden across the Sound, which was Danish till 1658, and has
by no means lost its affection for the city that it knew as the capital
of old.
Copenhagen is an epitome of Denmark herself, the prosperous metropolis
of an extremely industrious and well-ordered community that likes
to be amused. There is but little rotten in the state of Denmark
to-day. Though fallen from possessing the widest empire of the north
to the limits of a mere province, she yet thrills with vigorous life,
an object lesson on many points that no land can afford to ignore.
Copenhagen is not really very unlike a large German town, though the
Danes are not pleased to be told so, and it lacks the numerous uniforms
and those minute and detailed regulations for the welfare and good
order of the population that so characterise the Fatherland itself.
Magnificently equipped with boulevards, palaces and parks, cut through
by fine waterways and roadways, the city rather strangely lacks any
conspicuous central point. The Danes boast that their large buildings
are schools, while those of England are factories and those of Germany
barracks, but the headquarters of one of the chief Universities of
earth possess little architectural splendour. The view of the city from
the deck of an approaching steamer is not particularly impressive;
nothing except a few steeples rises above the general line of the
houses.
Life is lived in the Danish capital. Some of the numerous bright
restaurants do not close their doors till 3 a.m., and there is much
of the all-night activity that is the unrestful pride of many of the
cities of America. To-morrow blends with to-day; some citizens have not
reached their beds while others are starting on the activities of next
morning. But happily this unquiet atmosphere does not seem to penetrate
individuals. The Copenhagener does not desire to be for ever talking
about his hustling town.
While so much that is of the old world still survives in Copenhagen,
it is on the whole an intensely modern town, rather dominated by its
stretches of asphalt and trolley-trams and ever growing lines of flats.
A really magnificent feature, by the chief square next the Tivoli Park,
emblematic of the soaring ambition of the place, is the new Raadhus or
City Hall. Built in 1894, it is a beautiful specimen of Renaissance
architecture in brick, raising a tall spire toward heaven, enclosing a
couple of courts, one of them an open garden with a fountain in the
centre, the other cloistered and roofed with glass. The adornments are
very pleasing, appropriate to the style and use, tile mosaic of fish
and bird, tree designs in relief or stencilling over the walls. The
upper portions may be gained by a lift that never stops; on one side
the cars are always going up and on the other down.
The site of the city, like its name, Copenhagen or merchants' harbour,
is not romantic, though extremely convenient for travel and trade. It
looks straight over the Sound to Sweden and the entrance to the Baltic;
the arm of the sea that divides Zealand from the small island of Amager
(p. 143) also penetrates the town and adds to the water-front available
for wharves. It was on a little backwater of this channel that in the
twelfth century Bishop Axel (Absalon) raised on Church lands a castle,
which was called by his own name, to protect the merchants from the
pirates infesting the Sound.[59] Little he suspected that round it
would grow up a town to supplant his cathedral city.
Copenhagen was made the capital in 1443 by Christopher, the Bavarian,
just after he had been recognised as King in Sweden and Norway as well
as in Denmark itself. He was not a popular monarch. The Swedes called
him the stumpy little German, and he thought them a free-spoken folk.
When men complained that pirates were ravaging the coasts and were
probably supported by Eric, the king who had been deposed, Christopher
answered that, having been deprived of three kingdoms, a man could
hardly be blamed for stealing a dinner now and then. Perhaps if the
dinners had been stolen from the palace and not from their own houses
the people would more readily have seen the joke.
Thus, Copenhagen is a mediæval town, but it has no buildings earlier
than the creations of that most accomplished sovereign, Christian IV.,
who could sail a ship and navigate the fjords and swim and leap and
fence and fight and ride and drive and speak many languages and explain
the course of the stars and drink enough wine and beer to astonish the
court of his brother-in-law, James I. of England. If he really designed
the buildings that he raised, as it seems he truly did, he was also an
architect of no mean power.
The Bourse, which he erected about 1624, presents a long low façade
to one of the quays and its high roof is relieved by large gabled
dormer windows. From the top of the tower in the centre four dragons
look down and coil their tails heavenward together to form a spire
about a hundred and fifty feet high.[60] Another of his works is the
Round Tower,[61] originally used as the observatory. It is entirely
filled by a brick slope up which one may walk with ease to the top,
corkscrewing round a pillar. Over the metal parapet that bears the date
1643, there is a splendid view across wide miles of steep roofs covered
with curving tiles, relieved by many a tree and the tall masts of many
a ship. And the other spires and towers and domes of the city make a
really splendid array, especially the quaint steeple of Vor Frelsers
Kirke, round whose outside an open stairway winds to the gold ball at
the top. Across the Sound loom up low Swedish hills, but the city is
too vast to allow a view of Danish country of any decipherable sort.
Over thirteen miles of choppy sea appears the small isle of Hveen, now
famous for its hares, where in 1580 Tycho Brahe built his observatory
and "wielded the sword, not to smite flesh and blood, but to strike
out a clearer path up to the stars of heaven. For Holger Danske (p.
146) can come in many forms; so that through all the world one sees the
might of Denmark."[62]
In this teeming womb of royal kings one expects to see palaces, and
very numerous they are, now in many cases put to every kind of useful
purpose, from the framing of laws to the display of things curious
and rare. But the sneer of Samuel Laing in 1839 that Copenhagen has
more palaces in her streets and squares than ships in her harbour has
long ceased to be true. The haven of merchants again has a busy trade;
canals and shipping and docks are met with on every hand.
Two palaces, Rosenborg and Fredericksborg, were erected (or begun)
by the same fourth Christian king, and fine specimens of Danish
Renaissance they are, far better in general effect than in detail.
Walls mostly of brick, carved work of stone, tall metal-covered roofs
and lofty open windowed spires. The palace of Rosenborg contains a
beautiful array of furniture and weapons and china and jewels, the
collection of several kings.
[Illustration: HOJBROPLADS, COPENHAGEN] [_Face page 134_
Other of the palaces are fine examples of the severer Classic work
of the eighteenth century erected when Europe had learned to call
barbaric all that the Christian centuries had raised, so ceased merely
to apply Classical details to Gothic designs, and could admire nothing
but plain copies of the work of Greece and Rome. The Amalienborg
(Winter Palace, etc.) surrounds a fine octagonal court with Ionic
pilasters, balustrades and urns, over which rise high tiled roofs.
In the centre of the court is a metal statue to King Frederick V.,
famed as the patron of science and art. It was erected by the Asiatic
Trading Company which once made Denmark an Indian power, for the king's
interest in the East was great, and he dispatched Niebuhr to Arabia in
1761.[63]
Another eighteenth century palace, called Prindsens because the Crown
Prince adorned it when in 1744 it was erected round its court, is
now the National Museum. Even in the earliest age when "beasts were
slaying men" Denmark was the abode of oyster-eating humanity which has
left us the world-famed kitchen middens that make so fascinating to us
the first beginnings of our race. This collection is of extraordinary
interest as letting us trace in a general way the whole story of
mankind from the time when he chipped flints into implements and built
cromlechs of unshapen stones to the days when he learned to preach the
message of peace from pulpits of Renaissance architecture and to shoot
his fellows with long guns.
As is natural in Denmark the collection of prehistoric implements is
extremely representative and large. We see man armed with rude axes of
flint or variegated marble and women adorned with amber beads, during
the long, long millenniums of the two ages of stone. We see the swords
and knives and the tree-trunk coffins of those who had learned the
secret of the metals and substituted for stone first blunt bronze and
then sharp iron. We see the works of Egypt and Assyria, of Greece and
Rome, and of all the cultured races of the South. We see the beginning
of civilisation in the North and the spoils of the Viking Age, the
gold and jewels brought to Denmark by foray or by trade. We see the
North becoming Christian and building churches of stone or staves and
the Scandinavian countries moulding themselves into what they are
to-day.[64] For purely educational purposes and for stimulating the
imagination few museums on earth have quite the same power as this
one.[65]
Denmark is a country where education is a serious thing, and in
few capitals may one learn so much as here. No amount of _merely_
technical instruction would give the Danes the technical skill that
they possess. If any doubt the real and practical usefulness of good
general education, this small country can supply the object-lesson
that he needs; if any do not know just what education means, the Danes
have hit upon a definition that is of real value and much comfort too.
"Education is that which survives when all that was learned has been
forgotten."
Much of the spirit of the Norse fills the air of the Danish capital,
but the town is too young to be mentioned in the sagas; to many of
the heroes of the Danes there are monuments in streets and memorials
in galleries, but they do not give their atmosphere to the town. The
spirit of the city is rather that of solid achievement by a great
people which no longer rests its pride on glory gotten in war. And if
the nations of mankind were to be judged on the same principle that was
applied to the holders of the Talents Denmark would be very near the
top. The extreme richness of her small homeland is a still unexploded
myth. If it were an American state it would be one of the most thinly
settled areas of the country, outside the actual mountains. Denmark's
place in the modern world is due to education and to nothing else. The
sole fertility of the land is in the brains of her children. If America
were occupied by a sufficient population of Danes she might almost take
a contract to supply the solar system with food.[66]
Even in a city of so many associations and despite the noble army of
Danish worthies who have written their names in broader or fainter type
across its streets, it is still the great name of Thorwaldsen that more
than any other dominates Copenhagen. "Sylvanus" tells the truth in his
remark: "Men speak not, think not of the king; they ask you, 'Have you
seen the Frue kirk?' or Church of our Lady, within whose walls are the
twelve apostles of Thorwaldsen, with the grandest, most holy conception
of the Saviour, the chisels of future ages may vainly essay to surpass.
The figures, larger than life and thrown _into_ life by the immortal
Icelander, teem with varying expression and deep feeling."
The exterior of the church is severely plain; indeed, it is very ugly,
with two ranges of windows and a tower stuck through the sloping roof,
a hexastyle Doric portico against it. This last feature in itself is,
however, a thing of much beauty and its tympanum has sculptures by
Thorwaldsen.[67]
The inside is very truly one of the most impressive in Europe. Not
that the actual architecture rises very far above the commonplace.
The aisles open by round arches with heavy piers between; Doric
colonnades above sustain the deeply panelled tunnel vault; there is
an unlighted apse. Here, over the altar, stands the famous statue of
Christ, one of the most striking in the world; the face radiates divine
compassion, the hands are stretched out to all who come. In front an
angel holds a font-shell, and against each pier is the figure of one
of the Apostles. The supreme excellence of these glorious statues in
white marble with their effective drapery and the absence of any other
attempt at ornament renders the interior of this church striking in an
extraordinary degree. There is an element of almost barbaric display in
the huge number of works of art collected in many Gothic churches, and
there is truth in the Japanese contention that not more than a single
picture or figure should be displayed at the same time. If the statues
were removed from the church one would hardly cross the street to see
it, but were they erected in St. Paul's Cathedral they would lose more
than half their effect.
The only criticism that one can possibly make on Thorwaldsen is that
his long sojourn in Rome seems to have given him a little trace of
the softness of the South, a certain absence of virility that, slight
as it is, attracts instant attention in the North. Not a trace of
this appears in the figure of St. Paul: determination on every line
of the strong face, clinched by the position of the left hand on the
sword.[68] There is a large collection of the Master's works in the
mongrel-Egyptian Valhalla next Christiansborg Palace (p. 131), in the
centre of whose court Thorwaldsen sleeps beneath ivy trailing on the
ground. Grace, tenderness, youth, beauty, and gentle mirth--these were
the inspirations that gave his hand power. Nothing fearful or terrible
is among his works. No agony like the Niobe or the Laocoon, never even
the crucifixion of the Saviour. Even in sepulchral monuments he strove
to lessen the gloom of death by symbols of a deathless life.[69]
Even with Thorwaldsen fresh in mind, it is probably safe to say that
the name of no Copenhagener, past or present, is so well-known in
England and America as that of Hans Andersen, unrivalled as the teller
of fairy tales. Few would maintain that he was the greatest of the
Danes or the most illustrious alumnus of the University, but not very
many are seriously interested in statuary, and in science still fewer,
while all children love stories and there is an atmosphere about those
of Hans Andersen of which most of us are conscious more or less from
the cradle to the grave.
In the rather risky work of foretelling the future Andersen was at any
rate as successful as any one else. "Yes, in years to come we shall fly
on the wings of steam high in the air, over the mighty ocean. The young
inhabitants of America will visit the old Continent of Europe. They
will come to admire the ancient monuments and ruined cities, just as we
make pilgrimages to the fallen glories of Southern Asia.
"In years to come they will certainly visit us....
"The airship comes: it is crowded with passengers, for the journey
is quicker than by sea.... The passengers will tread the country of
Shakespeare, as the intellectual ones of the party have it--the home of
politics and machinery, as others say.
"Here they stay for a whole day: they are a busy race, but they can
afford so much time for England and Scotland.
"On they go, through the tunnel under the Channel to France.
"One whole day is given to Germany and one to the North--the birthplace
of Oerstedt and Linnæus--to Norway, home of the ancient heroes and of
the Normans. Iceland is taken on the return journey: the Geyser foams
no longer, Hekla is extinguished; but an eternal stone table of the
Saga still holds fast the island rock in the midst of the stormy seas."
A delightful description of the writer himself is given us by Lady
Wilde: "Hans Andersen was described to me as a tall, white-haired
old man, with the most gentle and lovable manners. The son of a poor
tailor, with no inheritance from nature or fortune save his genius,
he gained a distinguished position in society and was an immense
favourite in Copenhagen. He read nothing but his own works, and always
talked as if fresh from Fairyland. The children adored him, and he was
never so happy as when he gathered a circle of them round him, while
he enchained their attention with some magical story fresh woven from
his brain, and made them laugh or weep as he chose, with the mirth or
pathos of his strange fancies."
Southward the city leaps a narrow arm of sea and spreads on to the
kitchen-garden island of Amager or Amak. During the early sixteenth
century King Christian II., brother-in-law to the Emperor Charles
V. famed for his noble work in organising schools in the cities and
instituting a system of posts, but infamous for a stupendous crime that
crushed the achievement of the great Margaret in the dust (p. 217),
invited farmers and gardeners from the Low Countries to colonise Amak.
Great was the benefit both to immigrants and Danes; the fertile island
still retains much of old Flemish ways and imports the old costumes of
Holland into the markets of the Danish capital.
Of Anglo-Danish relations during the Napoleonic wars, of Nelson's
victory in 1801 and Wellesley's in 1807, silence is better than
words. The conqueror at Trafalgar has immortal fame without the added
laurels won in the Sound, the hero of Waterloo needs not to add to his
victories the operations against this town. No Dane could be expected
to look back on those miserable events but with indignation, few
English but with very deep regret. Necessary, perhaps, those actions,
but wretched all the same. We live in better days. The presence of
the Church of St. Alban in the lovely gardens by the very citadel, a
sanctuary to whose erection Danish Queen Alexandra contributed, is a
witness for all time that the relations between Denmark and England
to-day are of no ordinary kind. The tall Gothic spire is an ornament
to the city and one of its landmarks from the harbour, but there might
have been advantages in less purely English architecture and perhaps
dedication to some Danish saint.[70]
The environs of the capital are made as delightful as those of Paris
by the lovely beech-woods that cover so much of the land, and by the
haunting beauty of the views across the Sound. A few miles north of the
city is the famous Dyrehaven, or deer-park, a vast expanse of gently
undulating woods or grass land with a large water-lily-covered pond,
where deer roam about under a few old oaks and many beeches, often
so close together that they have soared instead of being allowed to
spread. Beech woods are very dear to the Danes, and in the Kunst Museum
at Copenhagen there is a striking picture by Philipsen of which they
form the subject.[71] On a low hill in the park is the Eremitagen, a
hunting-lodge, in which the king can look out from his own house over
soil that another rules.
Along the Sound front there peep out from the woods just one or two
old thatched cottages with heavy logs along their ridges, but far
more prominent are the modern villages, which are largely made up
of restaurants and hotels. Very many too are the summer cottages of
prosperous citizens; far toward the north they spread along the shore,
the bungalow kind of thing that has long been frequent in America and
is beginning to become naturalised in England too.
A tale is told of a Danish husband, not famous for the best of tempers,
who proposed to his wife that they should celebrate their silver
wedding, but rather weariedly she suggested that instead they might
wait five years and then commemorate their Thirty Years' War. This must
have been a most exceptional state of affairs, if one may judge from
Danes one has the pleasure of knowing, or from what one may see of
the race making holiday at these seaside resorts. No European people
seems to get more out of life and into life than the always cheerful
inhabitants of this small land. It is the mark of true genius that,
shut out from so much, they have made still more of what remains.
Less than thirty miles north of Copenhagen, where the Sound is
straitest, stands the town that is next best known to the world of all
on Danish earth. The call of the future dominates Copenhagen, but the
romance of the past still broods over Elsinore, or Helsingör, where
Kronborg Castle looks across the narrow sea. How it seems to Danish
minds can hardly be better told than in Hans Andersen's simple and yet
holding tale.
"Kronborg Castle stands in Denmark, close to the Oere Sound, through
which tall ships sail by in hundreds, English, Russian, and Prussian.
They all greet the old fortress with their cannon, 'Boom!' And the
castle answers, 'Boom!' That is the way the cannon say 'Good morning'
and 'Good evening.' In the winter, when no ships sail by, and the Sound
is covered with ice right up to the Swedish coast, it looks just like
an inland street. Danish and Swedish flags are flying; Danes and Swedes
cry to each other, 'good morning,' and 'good night,' but not with
cannon--no, with a kindly clasp of the hand. One brings to the other
biscuits and white bread, for foreign fare is always the sweetest. But
the most beautiful sight of all is the grand old castle, in whose deep
inaccessible vaults sits Holger Danske. He is clad in mail armour; his
head rests on his strong arms; his long beard has grown into the marble
table, where he sits asleep. He dreams, and in his dream he sees all
that happens in his native land. Every Christmas Eve an angel comes to
him, and tells him that his dreams are true, but that he may sleep on
undisturbed for a while longer. Denmark is not yet in danger, but if
the danger ever comes Holger Danske will spring to his feet, the table
will shiver to pieces as he draws away his beard, and the hero will lay
about him, so that every land shall ring with the story.
"An old grandfather sat one evening telling his little grandson all
this tale of Holger Danske, and the child knew well that what his
grandfather said was true. As the old man spoke, he finished off a
large wooden figure of Holger Danske which was to ornament the prow of
a ship, for the grandfather was a carver in wood, and had carved many
a figure-head from which a good ship was to take her name. Now he had
just carved Holger Danske, standing proudly with his long beard; in one
hand he held his flashing sword; in the other the Danish shield.
"'It is the finest national arms in the world,' said the old man.
'Lions and hearts--emblems of strength and love!' He looked at the
topmost lion and thought of King Knut, who chained England fast to
Denmark's throne; he looked at the second lion and thought of Waldemar,
who gave peace to Denmark, and subdued the Vandal's lands; he looked
at the third lion and thought of Margaret, who united into one Sweden,
Norway and Denmark. But as he looked at the hearts they burned and
brightened into flames; each stirred in its place, and by its side
stood a spirit.
"But the little child in bed saw clearly the old Kronborg towering
above the Oere Sound; he saw the real Holger Danske, sitting alone in
the deep vault, his beard grown fast to the marble table, dreaming of
all that happened overhead. Holger Danske dreamed too of all that went
on in the little room; he heard every word, and nodded in his dreams.
"'Yes,' he cried, 'keep me in your hearts and in your memory, ye
Danish folk. In the hour of danger, I shall be at hand.'
"And the clear daylight fell over Kronborg; the wind bore along the
sound of the hunting horns from the country round; the ships sailed by
with their greeting 'Boom, boom!' And Kronborg answered 'Boom! Boom!'
But Holger Danske woke not, let them thunder as loud as they might, for
they only meant 'good morning!' 'good evening!'"
In this castle too in 1589 James VI. (and afterwards I.) was married
to his Danish bride. That was only by proxy so far as the Scot was
concerned, but the next year Queen Anne brought her husband to sojourn
at the well-loved spot.
By the sea is a long sandy beach and dark woods cover the flat lands
behind. The superb castle was rising, or re-rising, from the ground
during Shakespeare's younger years (1577-85); he first went to London
the year after it was done. A grand sample of Renaissance work, it
stands four-square to all the winds and protects a court within;
details are carved in solid stone. And at each angle rises a tower,
all different in design and height. A light for the shipping burns in
one.[72] The architect was G. F. Stahlmann.
The world fame of Elsinore is owed very largely to the immortal
English bard who probably never was there. On the flat terrace between
castle and sound Hamlet spoke with his father's ghost. The tale of
Amlet or Hamlet seems to be derived from some old saga of a Jutish
prince,[73] and the _Ambales Saga_ gives an Icelandic form of the
legend.
True, indeed, that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, like his other plays, whose
scene is laid abroad, lacks special local colour. But it is no weak
link between Denmark and the world of English speech that the scene of
one of the great masterpieces of Saxon literature, indeed of all the
writings of the earth, is laid on Danish soil.
[Illustration]