properly the Father Matthew of Sweden, came to the front. This was Canon
Wieselgren, who in 1830 began to write and lecture against this awful
national evil, and at last, aided by famous men of science, who made
exhaustive studies of alcoholism, he brought about a complete and blessed
reform in the liquor laws. The tax on whisky was raised so high that
private individuals could neither make nor sell it. Local option was
allowed, and many communities forbade altogether the sale of liquor. At
last the famous Gothenburg system was adopted, and “the monopoly of the
manufacture and sale of spirits was given to a company which is allowed
to make only a fair rate of interest out of the capital employed, and
must hand over the surplus to the community, to be used in the support
of such institutions as may tend to diminish the consumption of liquor
and combat drunkenness.” The company is guaranteed five per cent on its
capital should the sale fall below a certain minimum. This system has the
great advantage that it precludes all desire on the part of the company
and its retail sellers to increase the sale of drink, as the interest on
the capital employed is secured and is not liable to be increased by a
larger output.
There are various other regulations which are of interest to all in our
country, since the liquor problem is always a burning question. The
retail seller must provide food as well as drink, and is not allowed
to sell liquor without food, and then only in a small glass to each
customer. Youths under eighteen years of age cannot buy, and the retail
shops must close at six o’clock. The profits that are made by the company
must be used in providing rooms, free libraries, lectures, sports, and
games, and it is said that the visitors to the seven reading rooms thus
provided in Gothenburg reach half a million every year. Now Sweden and
Norway are the most temperate countries in Europe. A drunken man is
a _rara avis_. Crime has diminished in like proportion, as is to be
expected.
Let me tell you of one more Swedish phenomenon before I close this
letter. During all this visit to Stockholm, and in my previous visits as
well, I have never seen a fire engine go tearing through the streets,
though one could hardly live for a day in Boston or New York without
such an excitement. And yet they have fire engines and horses ready
harnessed day and night in Stockholm, and men sleeping in their boots
ready to drop down through a hole in the floor on to their seat on the
fire engine at any moment. One would think that the men would get tired
of waiting for an event that so seldom happens, and that the horses would
die for lack of exercise, as they undoubtedly would if they had to wait
for a fire to give them a good run.
Do you want to know, Judicia, why the excitement of a fire is so rare in
Stockholm? I will tell you, as my friend, Mr. Thomas, the ex-Minister to
Sweden, has told me. “Once a year, if you live here, two gentlemen will
call on you with book and pencil in hand and carefully examine every
stove in your rooms. They also examine all the flues and chimneys. They
are officers of the municipality, and the patriarchal government of
Stockholm wishes to see that there is no danger of your burning yourself
up.”
If they find that your chimneys are foul, a little boy with a sooty face,
with white teeth and eyeballs shining through the grime, will wait on
you. He will have a rope wound around his neck, with an iron hook on the
end, and you must let him go down your chimney and clean out all the soot
and cinders. You must also comply with twelve regulations when you build
your house, which relate to the material for the walls and the roof, the
construction of the cellar, etc., and the house must not be more than
sixty-eight feet high. If you think these regulations are too severe,
they will at least reduce the size of your insurance bill, for $1.25
will insure your house for $2500 for a year; that is, the premium is a
twentieth of one per cent—less than a quarter part of what it would be in
America. For $17.50 you may insure your house _forever_ for $1000. If it
stands for two hundred years you will never have to pay another cent; so
you see there are some advantages, even if there are some annoyances, in
a paternal government.
I know your aversion to statistics, my dear Judicia, and in spite of
their proverbial dullness it does seem to me rather necessary for one
who would feel the deepest charm of Sweden to know something about the
characteristics of the Swedes and their comparative standing in matters
material and moral with the other nations of Europe. But since, in an
early letter, these matters have been disposed of, I can promise you
in my next something to which your romantic soul will respond more
generously.
Faithfully yours,
PHILLIPS.
FOURTH LETTER
Wherein Phillips tells of the many beautiful excursions from
Stockholm, and soon takes Judicia into the heart of Dalecarlia,
noted for the fertility of its soil and the bright costumes of
its maidens. He also rehearses the romantic story of Gustavus
Vasa, involving the treacherous cruelty of Christian II and
the many hairbreadth escapes of Gustavus, until he roused the
Swedes to fight for and win their freedom.
MORA, DALECARLIA, January 10.
MY DEAR JUDICIA,
I told you in a former letter, did I not, about the pretty maidens from
Dalecarlia whom one often meets in their bright costumes on the streets
of Stockholm, as well as the “Member from Dalecarlia,” who relieves the
solemn monotony of the Riksdag with his ancient provincial costume.
Attracted by these brilliant birds of passage, I am going to take you
to-day to the very heart of Dalecarlia, where they live, for it is the
most interesting province in all Sweden.
Stockholm has the distinct advantage, not only of being a most
interesting city in itself, but of being a center from which you can
easily make excursions to any part of Scandinavia, east or west, or north
or south; and, believe me, in whichever direction you start you will have
no regrets that you did not take some other excursion, for each one has
its own peculiar fascination.
A story is told of a young English couple who came to Stockholm for
their honeymoon. They thought a week would be sufficient to exhaust the
attractions of the city and its environs. Without guide or guide book
they started out one morning, taking one of the little steamers, not
knowing or caring whither they went or where they would bring up. So
delighted were they with this trip that the next day they took another,
and the next still another, and so on every day for three months they
made a different excursion over the waterways of Sweden, coming back to
Stockholm every night; and even then they had not exhausted the possible
trips. Indeed there are more than two hundred of these little steamers
that ply through the canals and the lakes, and along the Baltic coast.
One of the delights of Sweden is its infinite variety.
If it were summer time we would take one of these little steamers along
the coast directly north to Gafle; but at this time of year it is more
convenient to take the comfortable train, which in a few hours will land
us in the very heart of Dalecarlia, or Dalarne, as the Swedes usually
call it.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Some Girls of Dalecarlia.]
The province has many attractions. Smiling valleys, which one can see
even under their blanket of snow must be abundantly productive, are
frequently crossed by strong rivers rushing to the Baltic. The Dal
especially is a splendid stream, while Lake Siljan, a great sheet of
water in the very heart of the province, with peaceful shores sloping
gently back from its blue waters on every side, adds the last touch to
the sylvan scene. I am writing of it as it is in summer, but I am always
in doubt whether these Swedish landscapes are more beautiful in white or
green.
The quaint costumes of the Dalecarlians, as you can imagine, add
immensely to the interest of the country. It is the only province of
Sweden, so far as I know, that retains its ancient dress and glories in
it. In some parts each parish has its own peculiar costume, and, as is
natural and appropriate, the ladies are far brighter in plumage than the
men.
As you know, I am not good at describing a lady’s dress. How often have
you upbraided me for not being able to tell you what the bride wore? Let
me then borrow the description of a connoisseur in these matters: “Bright
bits of color were the maidens we met along the road. The skirts of
their dresses were of some dark-blue stuff, except in front. Here, from
the waist down, for the space that would be covered by an ample apron,
the dress was white, black, yellow, red, and green, in transverse bars
about two inches wide. Each bar was divided throughout its entire length
by a narrow rib or backbone of red, and these gaudy stripes repeated
themselves down to the feet. The waist of these dresses was very low,
not much more than a broad belt, and above this swelled out their white
chemise, covering the bust and arms, and surmounted with a narrow lace
collar around the neck. Outside the collar was a gaudy kerchief, caught
together on the breast by a round silver brooch with three pendants. On
their heads was a black helmet of thick cloth, with a narrow red rib
in the seams. The helmet rose to a point on top, and came low down in
the neck behind, where depended two black bands ending in red, woolly
globes that played about their shoulders. Under the helmet might be seen
the edge of a white kerchief bound about their brows, and beneath the
kerchief escaped floods of golden ringlets that waved above bright blue
eyes and adown brown, ruddy cheeks. In cold weather the maids and the
matrons also wear a short jacket of snowy sheepskin with the wool inside.”
But the greatest charm to me about Dalecarlia is not in the lovely
pastoral scenery, or even in the bright costumes and brighter faces of
its maidens, but in its noble, soul-stirring history, for here is where
Sweden’s Independence Day dawned, and to the devout Swede every foot of
the province is sacred soil.
To get fully into this tonicky, patriotic atmosphere we must go around
the great lake to Mora, on its northwestern shore. Then we will walk a
mile out into the country, for you will not mind a little walk through
the snow on a beautiful crisp morning like this, until we come to a
square, stone building, which is peculiar in having a large door but no
windows. The custodian, who lives near by, unlocks the massive door, and
we find on entering that what we have come to see is all underground.
Opening a trapdoor in the center of the building, our guide precedes us
down half a dozen steps until we stand on the floor of a small cellar,
less than ten feet square and perhaps seven feet high. Here was enacted
the homely scene which was the turning point in Sweden’s history. The
cackling geese that saved Rome, the spider that inspired Bruce to another
heroic effort for Scotland’s freedom, were not more necessary to the
story of these nations than was Margit, wife of Tomte Matts Larsson, who
placed a big tubful of Christmas beer which she had been brewing over
this trapdoor so that the bloodthirsty Danes, who were eagerly searching
for Gustavus Vasa, never suspected that he was hidden in the cellar
beneath.
But in order to understand the full significance of this rude cellar and
the importance to the history of Sweden of Margit’s ready wit, we must
go back to Stockholm in imagination and transport ourselves by the same
ready means of conveyance back nearly four hundred years to the later
months of 1520, when Christian II of Denmark, who was a Christian only
in name, was crowned king of Sweden in the Church of St. Nikolaus at
Stockholm.
Christian had been provoked by the opposition of the leading Swedes to
the union of their country with Denmark and with their attempt to set up
a king of their own. At last he determined to crush out all opposition,
and with a great army he ravaged the country, conquered the provinces
one after the other, and, as we have seen, was at last crowned king in
Stockholm.
He appeared to be on especially good terms with the nobles of the country
that he had conquered, and invited them all, together with the chief men
of Stockholm and the most distinguished ecclesiastics of the country,
to the great festivities connected with his coronation. Suddenly, and
mightily to their amazement, they all found themselves arrested and
thrown into various dungeons on the charge of treason to the king. The
city was put in a state of siege. The muzzles of big guns threatened
the people at every street corner. But the prisoners were not kept long
in suspense. Soon the gates of the palace, in whose dungeons they were
confined, were flung open and, surrounded by soldiers and assassins, they
were marched to a central square.
First Bishop Matthias was brought forth. “As he knelt with hands pressed
together and uplifted as in prayer, his own brother and his chancellor
sprang forward to take a last farewell. But at that very moment the
headsman swung his broadsword. The bishop’s head fell and rolled on the
ground toward his friends, while his blood spurted from the headless
trunk.”
One by one the other victims followed—twelve senators, three mayors, and
fourteen of the councilors of Stockholm—until, before the sun set on that
black Thursday, November 8, 1520, eighty-two of Sweden’s best and noblest
men had paid the penalty of their love of freedom and their hatred of
tyranny. This was but the beginning. Other outrages followed. The noble
ladies of Sweden were carried off to Copenhagen and there thrown into
dungeons. This massacre is called in history “Stockholm’s Blood Bath.”
The unchristian Christian by this massacre seems to have merely whetted
his appetite for blood, for on his return to Denmark the next month he
glutted his insane desire for the lives of his best people by many
another murder.
A touching story is told of such a scene in Jönköping. He beheaded
Lindorn Rabbing and his two little boys, eight and six years of age.
The elder son was first decapitated. “When the younger saw the flowing
blood which dyed his brother’s clothes, he said to the headsman, ‘Dear
Man, don’t let my shirt get all bloody like brother’s, for mother will
whip me if you do.’ The childish prattle touched the heart of even the
grim headsman. Flinging away his sword, he cried: ‘Sooner shall my own
shirt be stained with blood than I make bloody yours, my boy.’ But the
barbarous king beckoned to a more hardened butcher, who first cut off the
head of the lad, and then that of the executioner who had shown mercy.”
Do you wonder, Judicia, that the hearts of the Swedes were mad with grief
and anger? Yet they seemed utterly cowed, stunned, so terrible were their
disasters, and it appeared impossible that help should arise from any
quarter.
But Sweden’s darkest day was just before its dawn, and the one who was to
accomplish her deliverance from tyrants forever was a young man four and
twenty years of age. His father, Erik Johansson, was one of the noblemen
whose blood reddened the streets of Stockholm on that awful November
day, while his mother and sisters were carried off to languish in the
dungeons of Copenhagen. Just as the ax was about to strike its fatal
blow, a messenger came in hot haste from the king offering pardon to Erik
Johansson, but he would not accept it from such a monster, and he cried
out: “My comrades are honorable gentlemen. I will, in God’s name, die the
death with them.”
His son, Gustavus, had also been summoned to Stockholm by the king;
but he suspected mischief, for he had already been a wanderer for two
years in the wilds of Sweden to escape Christian’s wrath, so he did not
obey the order. When he heard of the massacre, he at once fled from his
hiding-place on the banks of Lake Mälar and sought refuge in Dalecarlia.
Here he adopted the costume of the country as a disguise. He put on a
homespun suit of clothes. He cut his hair squarely around his ears, and
with a round hat, and an ax over his shoulder he started out to arouse
the Swedish people to make one more last stand for liberty.
Here in beautiful Dalecarlia he had innumerable adventures. I should have
to write a volume if I attempted to tell them all. On one occasion he
was let down from a second-story window of a farmhouse by a long towel
held by Barbro Stigsdotter, a noble Swedish woman whose husband had
taken the side of the king. She deserves a place beside our own Barbara
Frietchie, and I wish I were another Whittier to immortalize her. When
her dastardly husband returned with twenty Danish soldiers to arrest the
young nobleman, Gustavus was nowhere to be found, and we are told that
Arendt Persson never forgave his wife this deed.
Another good story is told about Gustavus at Isala not far away. Here the
hunted fugitive was warming himself in the little hut of Sven Elfsson,
while Sven’s wife was baking bread. Just at this unlucky moment the
Danish spies who were searching for him broke into the hut. But with rare
presence of mind and noble patriotism, with which Swedish women seem to
have been preëminently endowed, she struck him smartly on the shoulder
with the long wooden shovel with which she was accustomed to pull her
loaves out of the oven, at the same time shouting in a peremptory voice:
“What are you standing here and gaping at? Have you never seen folks
before? Out with you into the barn!”
The Danish soldiers could not believe that a peasant woman would treat
a scion of the nobility like that, and concluded that after all he was
not the man they were looking for. Sven himself seems to have been as
patriotic as his wife, for when the soldiers had retired for a little he
covered Gustavus up deep in a load of straw and drove him out farther
into the forest. But the suspicious soldiers could not be so easily
put off their scent, and, suspecting that there might be somebody or
something of importance under the straw, they stuck their spears into it
over and over again. At last, satisfied that there was nothing there,
they rode on.
But soon drops of blood began to trickle through the straw upon the
white snow, and in order to allay the suspicions of the Danes, who
might come up with him at any moment, Sven gashed his horse’s leg, that
they might suppose that the blood came from the animal and not from
anything concealed in his sledge. At Isala to-day we see the barn of good
Sven Elfsson, and just in front of it a monument telling of Gustavus’
hairbreadth escape. Fortunately the wounds received by him under the
straw were not serious, and after many days and many adventures he
reached Lake Siljan and the little village of Mora, where we first saw
him concealed in Larsson’s cellar, over whose door good Margit had put
her tub of Christmas beer.
Christmas Day came at last in the sad year of 1520, as it has in many a
glad year since for the people of Sweden, and the Dalecarlians flocked to
the church at Mora. After the church service, as they streamed along the
road to their homes, a young man of noble mien suddenly mounted a heap of
snow by the roadside and in burning words, made eloquent and forceful not
only by his bitter indignation but by his terrible sufferings as well, he
rehearsed the perfidy and cruelty of the Danes, and urged the Swedes to
assert their rights as free men and save their country.
But the people were tired of fighting and overawed by the savage
Christian and his myrmidons, and they begged him to leave them in peace.
The poor young nobleman had exhausted his resources; he had fired his
last shot, and so in despair of arousing the people to fight for freedom,
since in Dalarne of all the provinces he expected to find the spirit of
liberty not quite dead, he fastened his long skis on his feet, took a
staff in his hand, and disappeared into the forest.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Where Gustavus Adolphus Rests among Hard-Won Battle Flags.]
Day after day he made his solitary way through the woods and over the
snow fields, for he knew that the spies of Denmark were on his track. He
had almost approached the borders of Norway, where he intended to seek
an asylum, when he heard a sound of approaching runners, and then the
glad cry, which must have sounded like music in his ears: “Come back,
Gustav; we of Dalecarlia have repented. We will fight for Fatherland if
you will lead us.” We can imagine how gladly he responded and how eagerly
he returned with the two ski-runners to Mora. Here the people elected him
“lord and chieftain over Dalarne and the whole realm of Sweden.”
As a snowball grows in size as it rolls down the hill until it becomes
an irresistible avalanche, so the peasants of Sweden gathered around
Gustavus, sixteen at first, then two hundred. In a month there were four
hundred, and he had won his first victory at Kopparberget. There he
spoiled the Egyptians and divided the spoil among his followers, which
of course did not diminish his popularity. Soon the four hundred grew to
fifteen hundred, and the hundreds became thousands.
But the Danes were not to give up without a struggle. Six thousand men
were sent out against the patriots, who had now mustered five thousand
men to oppose them on the banks of the river Dal, on the edge of the
province nearest to Stockholm. The Danes were mightily surprised when
told that the Swedes were so determined to win that they would live on
water and bread made from the bark of trees. One of their commanders
cried out: “A people who eat wood and drink water, the devil himself
cannot subdue, much less any other.”
The Danes were utterly defeated, their _morale_ very likely being
affected by these terrible stories of the wood-eating Dalecarlians.
Some of them were driven into the river and drowned, and the rest flew
helter-skelter, broken and defeated, back to their headquarters. Of
course the war was not entirely over, but the young hero knew no defeat,
and finally, on June 23, 1523, on Midsummer’s Eve, which is a holiday in
Sweden second only to Christmas, Gustavus Vasa, who had been unanimously
elected king by the Riksdag, rode triumphantly into his nation’s capital.
He showed his religious character by going first to the cathedral, where
he kneeled before the high altar and returned thanks to Almighty God; and
here in my story I may well leave the man who freed his country from the
Danish yoke—the George Washington of Sweden.
You are such a stanch patriot, Judicia, and such a hater of tyrants, dead
or alive, that I know I need not apologize for writing somewhat at length
of this glorious period in Swedish history.
Faithfully yours,
PHILLIPS.
FIFTH LETTER
Wherein are described the glories of an Arctic winter; the
comfort of traveling beyond the polar circle (with a brief
philological excursion); the inexpressible beauties of the
“European Lady of the Snows”; the unique railway station of
Polcirkeln, and the regions beyond.
KIRUNA, LAPLAND, January 15.
MY DEAR JUDICIA,
I wonder if you remember how I wrote you some years ago about a journey I
made toward the arctic circle in midwinter, and how enraptured I was with
the still, cold days, the wonderful frosty rime on every bush and fence
rail, and the dawn and twilight glories of the low-running Arctic sun.
Well, finding myself in Sweden again in winter, I resolved to push my
explorations a little farther toward the North Pole and to enjoy once
more, if possible, one of the most delightful experiences of my life.
The former journey was made about the middle of February, if I remember
rightly, and certain engagements obliged me to turn my face southward
before I had nearly reached the “farthest north” which I longed for.
This time I resolved that I would not be robbed of a single zero joy,
but would, if possible, catch the sun napping; that is, that I would get
beyond that degree of latitude where for days at a time he never shows
his face above the rim of the horizon, and where the mild-mannered moon
almost rivals his power at midday.
In order to do this, and to find the sun hibernating, I had to leave
Stockholm early in January, for, though he goes to bed in many parts
of Lapland late in November, he rises and shakes out his golden locks
before the middle of January, unless you go to the most northern point
of Scandinavia, and then you get out of Swedish Lapland into Norway. So
you see I had no time to lose, if I would catch the sun in bed, and must
leave other charms of Sweden in winter as well as in summer for later
letters.
To go far beyond the arctic circle in winter is not much to brag about in
Sweden, for you can make the journey quite as comfortably as you can go
from New York to Chicago, and the distance, by the way, from Stockholm to
Kiruna is about the same.
Do not suppose, however, that we have any “Twentieth Century Limited” in
this part of the world. The Lapland flier takes about thirty-eight hours
to make the distance, but one need have no fear of dashing into another
flier at the rate of fifty miles an hour, for the Lapland express runs
only three times a week in either direction.
[Illustration: A Typical Swedish Landscape in Winter.]