of the Trinity Church, with a roadway inside making an easy ascent to
the strange view of many roofs and many waters which is obtained from
the top. But the most delightful place in Copenhagen is the Palace
of Rosenborg, standing at the end of a stately old garden—where it
was built by Inigo Jones for Christian IV., and containing the room
where the king died, with his wedding dress, and most of his other
clothes and possessions. This palace-building monarch, celebrated
for the drinking bouts in which he indulged with his brother-in-law,
James I. of England, was the greatest dandy of his time, and before
we leave Denmark we shall become very familiar with his portraits,
always distinguished by the wonderful left whisker twisted into a
pigtail falling on one side of the chin. Other rooms in Rosenborg
are devoted to each of the succeeding sovereigns, and filled with
relics and memorials which carry one back into most romantic corners
of Danish history, the ever-alternate succession of Christians and
Fredericks making a most terrible bewilderment, down to the two English
queens, Louisa the beloved and Caroline Matilda the unfortunate. Most
curious amongst a myriad objects of value are the three great silver
Lions—'Great Belt, Little Belt, and Sound'—which, by ancient custom,
appear as mourners at all the funerals of the sovereigns, accompanying
them to Roeskilde and returning afterwards to the palace.
Those interested in such matters will wander as we did through the
more ancient parts of Copenhagen in search of old silver and specimens
of the older Copenhagen china. Formerly the china imitated that of
Miessen, but it has now a more distinctive character, and is chiefly
used in reproducing the works of Thorwaldsen. Copenhagen has no other
especial manufactures.
No visitors to the Danish capital must omit a visit to Tivoli, the
pretty odd pleasure grounds—very respectable too—near the railway
station, where all kinds of evening amusements are provided in
illuminated gardens and woods by a tiny lake, really very pretty.
Here we watched the cars rushing like a whirlwind down one hill and up
another, with their inmates screaming in pleasurable agony; and saw the
extraordinary feats of 'the Cannon King,' who tossed a cannon ball,
catching it on his hands, his head, his feet—anywhere, and then stood
in front of a cannon and was shot, receiving in his hands the ball,
which did nothing worse than twist him round by its force.
[Illustration: ROESKILDE.]
One day we went out—an hour and a half by rail—to Roeskilde, where
a church was first founded by William, an Englishman, in the days of
King Harold Blaatand (Blue-tooth), brother of Canute the Great. It is
dedicated to S. Lucius, because tradition tells that a terrible dragon,
who infested the neighbouring fiord and banqueted on the inhabitants,
was destroyed for ever when the head of the holy Pope S. Lucius was
brought from Rome and presented for his breakfast. The tall spires
of the cathedral rise, slender and grey, from the little town, and
beneath, embosomed in sweeping cornfields, a lovely fiord stretches
away into pale blue distances. Endless kings and queens are buried at
Roeskilde. The earlier sovereigns have glorious tombs, amongst which
the most conspicuous is that of Queen Margaret—'the Semiramis of the
North,' who, born in the prison of Syborg, where her unhappy mother
Queen Helwig was imprisoned by Waldemar Atterhag, and allowed to run
wild in the forest in her childhood, lived to become one of the wisest
of Northern sovereigns, and to unite, by the Act known as 'the Union
of Calmar,' the crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which attained
unwonted prosperity under her sway. There are effigies of Frederic
II. and Christian IV., the grandfather and uncle of our Charles I.,
which recall his type of countenance and have the same peaked beard.
Christian IV., the great palace-builder, whose birth was believed
to have been prophesied by the mermaid Isbrand, was born (April 12,
1577) under a hawthorn tree on the road between Frederiksborg and
Roeskilde, as his mother, Sophia of Mecklenbourg, insisted on taking
walks with her ladies in waiting far longer than was prudent. This
king, his father, and all the later members of his royal house lie,
not in their tombs, but in gorgeous coffins embossed with gold and
silver upon the floor of the church, which has a very odd effect. The
entrance of one of the private chapels is a gate with a huge figure, in
wrought ironwork, of the devil with his tail in his hand. In another
chapel are fine works of Marstrand (1810-75), the best of the pupils
of Eckersberg, who gave the first stimulus to the art of painting in
Denmark, where it has since attained to great eminence.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF FREDERIKSBORG.]
The district around Roeskilde, and indeed the greater part of Denmark,
is devoted to corn, for there is no country in Europe, except
England and Belgium, which can compete with this as a corn-grower.
It is curious that though the neighbouring Sweden and Norway are so
covered with pines, no conifer will grow in Denmark except under most
careful cultivation. The principal native tree is the beech, and the
beech woods are nowhere more beautiful than in the neighbourhood of
Copenhagen. The railway to Elsinore passes through the beautiful beech
forests which are familiar to us through the stories of Hans Christian
Andersen. Here, near a little roadside station, rises the Hampton Court
of Denmark, the great Castle of Frederiksborg, the most magnificent
of the creations of Christian IV., which John of Friburg erected for
that monarch, who looked personally into the minutest details of
his expenses, and so raised this structure, glorious as it is, with
an economy which greatly astonished his thrifty parliament. In the
depths of the beech woods is a great lake, in the centre of which, on
three islands united by bridges, rises the palace, most beautiful in
its time-honoured hues of red brick and grey stone, with high roofs,
richly sculptured windows, and wondrous towers and spires. Each view
of the castle seems more picturesque than the last. It is a dream
of architectural beauty, to which the great expanse of transparent
waters and the deep verdure of the surrounding woods add a mysterious
charm. A gigantic gate tower admits the visitor to the courtyard, where
Christian IV., with his own hand, chopped off the head of the Master
of the Mint, which he had established here, who had defrauded him.
'He tried to cheat us, but we have cheated him, for we have chopped
his head off,' said the King. Inside, the palace has been gorgeously
restored since a great fire by which it was terribly injured in 1859.
The chapel, with the pew of Christian IV.—'bedekammer,' prayer
chamber, it is called—is most curious. There is a noble series of
the pictures of the native artist Carl Bloch, recalling the works of
Overbeck in their majesty and depth of feeling, but far more forcible.
A drive of four miles through beech woods leads to the comfortable
later palace of Fredensborg, built as 'a Castle of Peace' by Frederick
IV. and Louisa of Mecklenbourg, with a lovely garden, and a view of the
Esrom lake down green glades, in one of which is a mysterious assembly
of stone statues in Norwegian costumes.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ELSINORE.]
We may either take the railway or drive by Gurre from hence to
Elsinore (Helsingor), where the great castle of Kronberg rises, with
many towers built of grey stone, at the end of the little town on a
low promontory jutting out into the sea. Stately avenues surround
its bastions, and it is delightful to walk upon the platform where
the first scene of Shakspere's 'Hamlet' is laid, and to watch the
numberless ships in the narrow Sound which divides Denmark and
Sweden. The castle is in perfect preservation. It was formerly used
as a palace. Anne of Denmark was married here by proxy to James VI.
of Scotland, and here poor Caroline Matilda sate daily for hours at
her prison window watching vainly for the fleet of England which she
believed was coming to her rescue. Beyond the castle, a sandy plain
reminding us of Scottish links, covered with bent-grass and drifted
by seaweed, extends to Marienlyst, a little fashionable bathing place
embosomed in verdure. Here a Carmelite convent was founded by the wife
of Eric IX., that Queen Philippa—daughter of Henry IV. of England—who
successfully defended Copenhagen against the Hanseatic League, but was
afterwards beaten by her husband, because her ships were defeated at
Stralsund, an indignity which drove her to a monastic life. Hamlet's
Grave and Ophelia's Brook are shown at Marienlyst, having been invented
for anxious inquirers by the complaisant inhabitants. Alas! both
were unknown to Andersen, who lived here in his childhood, and it is
provoking to learn that Hamlet had really no especial connection with
Elsinore, and was the son of a Jutland pirate in the insignificant
island of Mors. But Denmark is the very home of picturesque stories,
which are kept alive there by the ballad literature of the land,
chiefly of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but still known to
rich and poor alike as in no other country. For hundreds of years
these poetical histories have been the tunes to which, in winter, when
no other exercise can be taken, people dance for hours, holding each
other's hands in two lines, making three steps forwards and backwards,
keeping time, balancing, or remaining still for a moment, as they sing
one of their old ballads or its refrain.
[Illustration: TOWER OF HELSINGBORG CHURCH.]
It was in a wild evening, with huge blue foam-crested waves rushing
down the Sound, that we crossed in ten minutes to Helsingborg in
Sweden, mounted for the sunset to the one huge remaining tower of its
castle, and sketched as typical of almost all village towers in Denmark
the belfry of the church where King Eric Menred was married to the
Swedish princess Ingeborga.
_IN SWEDEN._
It is not beautiful in Sweden, but it is very pretty; if everything
were not so very much alike, it would be very pretty indeed. The whole
country as far north as Upsala is like an exaggerated Surrey—little
hills covered with fir-woods and bilberries, brilliant, glistening
little lakes sleeping in sandy hollows, but all just like one another.
We turned aside in our way from Helsingborg to the north to visit the
old university of Lund, the Oxford of Sweden, a sleepy city, where the
students lead a separate life in lodgings of their own, only being
united in the public lectures; for in Sweden, as in Italy, the taking
of a degree only proves that the graduates have passed a certain number
of examinations, not, as in England, that they have lived together
for three years at least, forming their character and taste by mutual
companionship and intimacy. The cathedral of Lund is a most noble
Norman building, with giants and dwarfs sculptured against the pillars
of its grand crypt, and a glorious archbishop's tomb, green and mossy
with damp.
[Illustration: THE JUNCTION OF LAKE MALAR AND THE BALTIC, STOCKHOLM.]
An immense railway journey, by day and night through the endless
forests, brought us to Stockholm, where we arrived in the early
morning. Though the town is little beyond an ugly collection of
featureless modern streets, the situation is quite exquisite, for the
city occupies a succession of islets between Lake Malar and the Baltic,
surrounding, on a central isle, the huge Palace built from stately
designs of Count Tessin in the middle of the last century, and the old
church of Riddarholmen, where Gustavus Adolphus and many other royal
persons repose beneath the banner-hung arches.
It sounds odd, but, next to the Palace, the most imposing building
in Stockholm is certainly the Grand Hotel Rydberg, which is most
comfortable and economical, in spite of its palatial aspect. There
is no table d'hôte, and everything is paid for at the time, in the
excellent restaurant on the first floor of the hotel. Here, a side
table is always covered with dainties peculiarly Swedish, corn and
birch brandy, and different kinds of potted fish, with fresh butter
and olives, and it is the universal custom in Sweden to attack the
side table before sitting down to the regular dinner. The rooms in
the hotel are excellent, and their front windows overlook all that is
most characteristic in Stockholm—the glorious view down the fiord of
the Baltic: its farther hilly bank covered with houses and churches;
the bridge at the junction of the Baltic and Lake Malar, which is the
centre of life in the capital, and the little pleasure garden below,
where hundreds of people are constantly eating and drinking under the
trees, and whence strains of music are wafted late into the summer
night; the mighty palace dominating the principal island, and the
little steam gondolas, filled with people, which dart and hiss through
the waters from one island to another. In Stockholm, where waters
are many and bridges few, these steam gondolas are the chief means of
communication, and we made great use of them, the passages costing
twelve oëre, or one penny. The great white sea-gulls, poising over the
water-streets or floating upon the waves, are also a striking feature.
The museums of Stockholm have little to call for any especial notice,
except a grand statue of the sleeping Endymion from the Villa Adriana,
and the curious collection of royal clothes down to the present date, a
gallery of costume like that which once existed in London at the Tower
Royal. The chief curiosity which the Swedish collection contains is
the hat worn by Charles XII. when he was killed, in which the upward
progress of the bullet can be traced, proving that the king's death was
caused by an assassin, and not the result of a chance shot from the
walls of Frederikshald. No especial features mark the interior of the
Palace, though the Royal Stable for a hundred and forty-six horses is
worthy of a visit; and the churches are uninteresting, except perhaps
S. Nicholas, the coronation church, which contains the helmet and
spurs of S. Olaf, stolen from Throndtjem. Riddarholmen can scarcely
be regarded as a church; it is rather a great sepulchral hall hung
with trophies, having a few tombs on the floor of the building, and
vaults opening under the side walls, in which the different groups
of royal persons are buried together in families. Under a chapel on
the left lies Gustavus Adolphus, the justly popular great-grandson of
Gustavus Wasa, who fell at the battle of Lutzen, and who, as soldier,
general, and king, ever knew true merit, and laboured for the glory of
his country rather than for his own. In the opposite chapel repose the
present royal family, descendants of Bernadotte, Prince of Pontecorvo,
the only one of Napoleon's generals whose dynasty still occupies a
throne. He began life as a common soldier, and his election as Charles
XIV. of Sweden was chiefly due to the kindness with which he treated
Swedish prisoners taken in the Pomeranian wars. But the Swedes have
never had cause to repent of their choice, and their reigning house is
probably the most popular in Europe. The coffins of those members of
the royal family who have died within the memory of man are ever laden
with fresh flowers.
Close by the Riddarholmen Church is the most picturesque bit of
street architecture in Stockholm, where a statue of Burger Jarl, the
traditional founder of the town, forms a foreground to the chapel of
Gustavus Adolphus and one of the many bridges.
[Illustration: RIDDARHOLMEN, STOCKHOLM.]
In saying that Stockholm is not picturesque one may seem to have
spoken disparagingly, but, nevertheless, it is perfectly charming:
there is so much life and movement upon its blue waters, and its many
little public gardens give such a gay aspect to the buildings. Of
these, the chief is the Kongsträgården, surrounding a statue of Charles
XIII., where the pleasant Café Blanche is filled all the evening with
an animated crowd, gossiping and eating ices under the verandah and
shrubberies, and listening to the music. While we were staying in
Stockholm a hundred Upsala students came in their white caps to sing
national melodies in the Catherina Church. We lived through two hours
of fearful heat to hear them, and most beautiful it was. King Oscar II.
was present—a noble royal figure and handsome face. He is the ideal
sovereign of the age—artist, poet, musician, student, equally at home
in ancient and modern languages, profoundly versed in all his duties,
and nobly performing them.
We had intended going often, as the natives do, to dine amongst
the trees and flowers at Hasselbacken, in the Djurgården, a wooded
promontory, to which little steamers are always plying, but, alas!
during eight of the ten July days we spent at Stockholm it rained
incessantly. We were so cold that we were thankful for all the winter
clothes we brought with us, and were filled with pity for the poor
Swedes in being cheated out of their short summer, of which every day
is precious. The streets were always sopping, but, in the covered
gondolas, we managed several excursions to quiet, damp palaces on the
banks of lonely fiords—Rosendal, remarkable for a grand porphyry vase
in a brilliant little flower garden; and Ulriksdal, with its clipped
avenues and melancholy creek.
Our limited knowledge of Swedish often caused us to embark in amusing
ignorance as to whither we were going, and led us into many a surprise.
One day we set off, intending to go to Drottningholm, but, on reaching
the quay, found the steamer just gone. At that moment such a fearful
storm of rain came on that we were obliged to rush for shelter wherever
we could, and the nearest point of refuge was the deck of the steamer
_Mary_, which instantly started. We feared we might be bound for
the Baltic, and, failing to make any one understand us, resolved to
disembark at the first landing-place. But then the rain was worse than
ever, and we allowed ourselves to be carried on down Lake Malar, till
our boat turned into a little creek, and landed us on the pier of a
manufacturing town. We had not reached the end of the pier, however,
before the rain came on again in such convulsive torrents that we fled
back to the _Mary_, which again started on its travels, and this time,
after stopping at many little ports, conveyed us back to Stockholm.
When we asked the captain what we were to pay for our voyage, he said,
'Oh, nothing;' and very much amused he and his crew seemed to be by our
ignorance and adventures.
[Illustration: THE GRAVES OF THE GODS.]
We had a fine day for our excursion by railway to Upsala, whence we
hired a little carriage to take us on to Old Upsala, about three
miles distant. A drive across a dull, marshy plain brings one to a
delightfully wild district of downs, covered with hundreds of little
sepulchral mounds like Wiltshire barrows, amid which three great
tumuli, standing close together, are said to mark the graves of Odin,
Thor, and Freya—heroes in their lifetime, gods in their death. Close
beside them for centuries rose the temple which was the most sacred
shrine of Scandinavian worship. It glittered all over with gold, and
a golden chain, nine hundred ells in circumference, ran round its
roof. In the temple were three statues, around which hovered all the
principal mythological traditions of the north. The central figure was
that of Odin or Wodan, the wizard-king, who is said to have come in
the dawn of Swedish history from his domains of Asir, which extended
from the Euxine to the Caspian, and whose capital was Asgard. He
landed in Funen, where he founded Odense, and left his son Skjöld as a
sovereign. Thence he passed into Sweden, and established his government
at Sigtuna, not far from Upsala. His existence is affirmed by the Saxon
Chronicle. He was called 'the Father of Victory,' for if he laid his
hands on the heads of his generals, and predicted their success when
they went out to battle, that success never failed them. He was also,
says Snorro Sturlesen, 'the Father of all the arts of modern Europe.'
Tradition has endowed him with every miraculous power. He could change
his looks at pleasure—to his friends most beautiful, but a demon to
his enemies. By his eloquence he captivated all who heard him, and
as he always spoke in verse he was called 'the Artificer of Song.'
His verses were endowed with such magic power that they could strike
his enemies with blindness or deafness, or could blunt their weapons.
To listen to the sweetness of his music even the ghosts would come
forth and the mountains would unfold their inmost recesses. He was
the inventor of Runic characters. He could slaughter thousands at a
blow, and he could render his own followers invulnerable. At his will
he could assume the form of beasts; at his word the fire would cease
to burn, the wind to blow, or the sea to rage. If he hurled his spear
between two armies, it secured victory to those on whose side it fell.
The dwarfs (Lapps) had built for him a ship called _Skidbladner_, in
which he could cross the most dangerous seas with safety; but when
he did not want to use it, he could fold it up like a handkerchief.
Everything was known to Odin, for did he not possess the mummified head
of his enemy Mimir, which was all-wise, and he had only to consult it?
Yet, with all these gifts and attributes, Odin remained human; he had
no power over death. When he felt his end approaching he assembled
all his friends and followers, and, giving himself nine wounds in
a circle, allowed himself to bleed to death. The body of the great
chieftain was burnt, and his ashes were buried under the mound of
Upsala; but his spirit was believed to have gone back to the marvellous
home in the Valhalla of Asgard, of which he had so often spoken, and
whither he had always said that he should return. Henceforward it was
considered that all blessings and mercies were gifts sent by Odin.
The younger Edda tells that all who die in battle are Odin's adopted
children. The Valkyriae pick them out upon the battle-field and conduct
them to the Valhalla, where they have perpetual life in the halls
of Odin. Their days are spent in hunting or the joys of imaginary
combats, and they return at night to feast upon the inexhaustible
flesh of the boar Sahrimnir, and to drink, out of horn cups, the mead
formed from the milk of a single goat, which is strong enough nightly
to intoxicate all the heroes. Huge logs constantly burn within the
palace of Odin, for warmth is the northern idea of heaven, while in
their hell it is eternal winter. When a Scandinavian chieftain died in
battle, not only were his war-horse and all his gold and silver placed
upon his funeral-pyre, but all his followers slew themselves that he
might enter the halls of Odin properly attended. The more glorious the
chieftain the greater the number who must accompany him to Valhalla.
To rejoin Odin in Asgard became the height of a warrior's ambition.
It is recorded of Ragnar Lodbrok that when he was dying no word of
lamentation was heard from him: on the contrary, he was transported
with joy as he thought of the feast preparing for him in Odin's
palace. 'Soon, soon,' he exclaimed, 'I shall be seated in the pleasant
habitation of the gods, and drinking mead out of carved horns! A brave
man does not dread death, and I shall utter no word of fear as I enter
the halls of Odin.' But stranger than all the legends concerning Odin
is the fact that his memory is still so far fresh that 'Go to Odin' is
yet used by the common people where an uncivil wish as to the lower
regions would find expression in England. The fourth day of the week
still commemorates Odin or Wodan—in old Norse Odinsdgr, in Swedish and
Danish Onsdag, in English Wednesday.
On the right hand of Odin, in the temple of Upsala, sate the statue of
Freyja, or Freyer, represented as a hermaphrodite, with the attributes
of productiveness. Freyja was the goddess of love, who rode in a car
drawn by wild cats. She knew beforehand all that would happen, and
divided the souls of the dead with Odin. She is commemorated in the
sixth day of the week, that Freytag or Freyja's Day which in Latin is
Dies Veneris, or Venus' Day.