Esbjerg--Across Jutland, Funen and Zealand, the Little Belt and the
Big Belt to Copenhagen--Friends Met Along the Way.
HOTEL DAGMAR ("Dahmar"),
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, _August 27, 1902_.
Here we are in "Kjoebenhavn," which word you will find it quite
impossible properly to pronounce, however strenuously your tongue may
try.
My letter, beginning in Esbjerg, was broken short by the necessity of
sleep. We wisely remained upon the ship and took full benefit of our
comfortable berths. In the morning we were up betimes, obtained a cup
of coffee and a roll, and then, sending our bags and baggage to the
railway station, set out afoot.
The air was misty, full of a fine drizzling rain. It was regular
Scotch and English weather, but the atmosphere was cooler and not so
heavy as in Britain. The little stone-and-brick-built town is clean
and neat, with its main street well asphalted. It lies on a gentle
slope of hillside which lifts from the water. A giant lighthouse,
rising from the highest point of land, is the first object to meet the
view. Back of this, upon the level summit, lies the best of the town.
The buildings are generally of one and two stories, with steep,
gabled roofs.
H, in her Scottish "bonnet," and I, in my raincoat, were quite
impervious to wetness, and we spent the morning strolling here and
there, stopping to see, among other things, the tubs and tanks of fish
in the market square, where fishwives in big, white caps, stood quite
heedless of the rain. The fish were almost wholly the famous _roed
spoette_ (red spots), one of the flounder family, much resembling the
English sole.
Wanting cigars, I was tempted into a little shop, and found it kept by
an intelligent young Dane, who instantly confessed to me, in good
United States, that he had lived in America and there done well. In
fact, it was plain to see that his heart still beat for the great
Republic. His father had died and he had come back to Denmark to care
for his old mother, and then, he had fallen in love with the blue-eyed
daughter of a citizen of Esbjerg, an only child. So now, with several
little Danes added to his charge, he was fixed fast in Esbjerg. But he
was "always grieving for America," he said. He delighted to see us,
and sent for his young wife, who came smiling in to us with her baby
in her arms. H says he told his wife in Danish, that we were Americans
just like all others she would see, if she should ever reach New York!
So I bought a box of cigars from him, instead of one or two, and found
them good smoking and well worth the very moderate cost.
Crossing the market square to a long, low building, which somehow had
about it that indefinable air suggestive of a breakfast comfortably
cooked, we came to an inn, in the low-ceilinged dining room of which
were little tables set about upon the sanded floor. Two or three men
of the sea were smoking in one corner, a bar and a red-cheeked barmaid
were in another, and two huge, yellow, Great-Dane dogs occupied most
of the remaining space. We chose a table by the window and H ordered
_roed spoette_, rolls and coffee. The fish was delicious, possessing a
harder, sweeter flesh than the English sole; and rolls with salted
butter rejoiced my palate, for I am dreadfully tired of English butter
with no salt; and then we were given big brown pancakes with currant
jelly, all we could eat. It was a breakfast fit for a Viking. The bill
was only three _kroner_ and twenty _oere_, which equals about
eighty-six cents.
At the railway station, a mile from the docks, our tickets, bought in
London, gave us the best on the train, better than similar carriages
in England, for here they are bigger, with larger windows and the cars
are set on trucks.
The journey to Copenhagen was over and through a sandy, flat and
slightly rolling country, more carefully tilled and more generally
cultivated than in England, with more grain, wheat and rye; with more
vegetables, turnips, carrots, cabbage and potatoes. There were cattle,
herds of large red cows, for Denmark is now the dairy of all Europe.
But I saw no steers, nor beef cattle, fattening for the market, and
but few sheep; nor any hogs running afield--the last are probably kept
up. The houses are set singly upon the farms, are surrounded by
outbuildings, and are usually of one story and often big and rambling
with ells and gables, and generally have thatched roofs. The barns are
big and substantial. More people are here upon the land than in
England, and not living in clustered villages, as in France; the
fields are divided usually by hedges. There are sluggish waterways and
canals, and ponds where fish are bred and raised for market; and
almost every hilltop is capped with a Dutch-looking windmill.
The train moved deliberately. It made from twenty to twenty-five miles
an hour, stopping a long time at each station. We hadn't gone far when
a bald-pated, round-headed _Herr_ climbed in and we speedily fell into
talk with him. H speaks Danish enough to get on, and I use my pocket
dictionary, and pick up what I can. His name was Hansen and he "owns"
the "Hotel Kikkenborg," at "Brammige," wherever that may be. He told
us of the country we were passing through and helped me on the Danish
gutturals. You must gurgle the sounds down in your gullet as though
you were quite filled with water, and the more profound the depth from
which the sound comes forth, the more perfect the speech. We lost him
at the first change of cars, when we boarded an immense ferryboat to
cross the strait of water called the Little Belt, which separates
the main land from the large island of Funen, but we found ourselves
again in kindly company, this time, with a gray-bearded man and two
ladies, his wife and daughter. He was "Inspector of Edifices" for the
Government. They had been spending a few weeks on the island of Fanoe
at Nordby, a fashionable seaside resort much patronized by the gentry
of Copenhagen. He talked with me in fluent German, and the ladies
conversed readily in French, while all spoke with H in _Dansk_ and so
we got on, fell fast friends and were introduced to a beau of the
Froeken, a young "Doctor" who had "just taken his degree." We sat
together while crossing the island of Funen and on the ferryboat top
all through the long sail across the Big Belt which divides Funen from
the island of Zealand. Our friends here pointed out to us where it was
that Charles X of Sweden, and his army of foot and horse and guns made
their dare-devil passage on the ice that night in January, 1658,
crossing the Little and Big Belts to Zealand and Copenhagen, forcing
the beaten Danes by the Peace of Roskilde to cede the great Provinces
of Skaania, Halland and Bleking, which made Sweden forever henceforth
a formidable European state,--"God's work," the Swedes declared, for
these salty waters were never before frozen solid enough to bear an
army's weight,--nor have they been since. We parted only at the
journey's end. Our friends were pleasant people of the aristocratic
office-holding class, content to live simply on the modest stipend
the Government may grant, who neither speak nor read English, and who
listened to the tales of bigness in America with doubting wonder. "A
building twenty stories high!" "Impossible!" "Eighty millions of
people!" "Incredible!" "America already holds four hundred thousand
Danes--one-fifth of the Danish race." "Ja! Alas! That is too true!"
"Our young men are never satisfied to come back to stay when once they
have lived in America!" "Our young men don't return, it's hard upon
our girls."
[Illustration: MY INSTRUCTOR IN DANISH.]
Our new found friends, when we lunched upon the big ferryboat,
introduced us to that very Danish dish called _Smoer Broed_, thickly
buttered rye bread overlaid with raw herring or smoked goose breast, a
Viking dainty--a salty appetizer well calculated to make the Norseman
quaff from his flagon with more than usual vim, and to drive an
American in hurried search of plain water! These salty snacks of cold
bread and cold fish are as eagerly devoured and enjoyed by the
Scandinavian as are the peppery, stinging eatables for which every
Mexican palate yearns.
It was dusk when we arrived in the large and commodious Main station
at Copenhagen. The suburbs of the city were hidden from us by the
gathering darkness, and the electric lights were glowing when we left
the train.
We missed General and Mrs. C at the station, so great was the crowd,
but found them when we came to our hotel, the Dagmar, they having
themselves missed us and followed on our track.
[Illustration: OUR DANISH FRIENDS.]
There are many good hotels in Copenhagen and this is among the larger
and more popular stopping places of the Danes themselves. It is built
along the clean Vestre Boulevard, with umbrageous trees in front of
it, and possesses that rare thing, an elevator. In the dining room we
sit at little tables, and find the cooking much superior to what one
generally meets in England. It is more after the French sort, the
Danes priding themselves greatly upon their soups and sauces. In our
rooms, which look out upon the broad, paved boulevard, the furniture
is old style mahogany, very substantial, and in the corner there is
one of those immense porcelain stoves reaching to the ceiling, which
is the general mode of heating large rooms in these Scandinavian
lands.
Copenhagen is a city of four hundred thousand people, one-quarter of
the estimated population of Denmark, and the city is growing steadily
at the expense of the country,--increasing too fast for a land the
population of which is as steadily growing less. English is said to be
the fashionable foreign tongue in court circles, by reason of the
British royal connection; but among the people the German speech is
steadily and stealthily taking a foremost place, and this despite the
fact that the Danes dislike Germany and view the Germans with
well-founded fear. You will talk to a Dane but a few moments before he
is pouring out his heart to you about the atrocious robbery of the
splendid Provinces of Sleswik and Holstein, of which Bismarck
despoiled the little kingdom nearly forty years ago. Almost half of
Denmark was then lopped off at a single blow,--nor England nor Russia
interfering to save the Danes,--and now they are ever in uneasy spirit
lest Germany encroach yet more upon them and ultimately devour them,
land and sea. They feel she is incessantly creeping on to them with
all the cunning of a hungry cat.
[Illustration: THE KRYSTAL GADE AND ROUND TOWER, COPENHAGEN.]