It was well on toward midnight, and, though a crowd of fellow passengers
disembarked from the third-class cars, there was no hotel porter or
_trager_ or _dienstman_ to tell me where I should go. My somewhat aged
Baedeker had not informed me of the name of a single hotel.
The only individual who took any interest in me was a small boy, and
from his voluble Swedish and more comprehensible gestures I felt that he
wished to lead me to a hotel. Having nothing better to do, I followed
my diminutive guide. It was very cold, at least twenty degrees below
zero, the severest weather I have seen at all in this northland. The
streets were dark, for most of the electric lights had been put out,
but I followed the small boy trustingly. When I seemed to waver in my
allegiance, he would run back and urge me on. At last we came to a house
which had few signs of being a hostelry. I suspect it was his mother’s
humble residence. I followed him in at the door, and he discoursed
fluently to the lady of the house, apparently telling her of my needs.
She looked quite as blank as I did, but at last she opened a door into a
somewhat shabby parlor and gave me to understand that I could sleep on
the lounge if I wished to.
I declined the invitation, for I remembered having passed in the dark a
house that looked more like a hotel. Going back through the frosty air, I
soon found it, and over the door made out the legend _Privat Hotellet_.
Here, much to my joy, I found a large room, nicely heated, with two beds,
a huge, white monument of a stove, and a whole picture gallery, though
not all by the old masters, on the wall, and all this for seventy-five
cents a day. To be sure I could get neither bite nor sup in this _Privat
Hotellet_, but what did that matter when almost at the next door I
found, in the morning, a restaurant on whose generous tables were piled
mounds of butter, stacks of oat cakes at least two feet high, a peck of
small potatoes, unlimited milk and coffee, pickled fish, fried fish, cold
meat, everything on the most lavish scale, and all for sixty _öre_, or
fifteen cents?
But you should have seen my fellow boarders eat! They were all hardy
tars, who had sailed the Baltic for many a year, when the ice does not
interfere with their trade, and the way they made those viands disappear
was a caution to a dyspeptic. Even Aylmer, who has just joined me here
on his way south from northern Norway (did I forget to give you this
interesting piece of information, Judicia?), could not keep up with them.
He said that they could give the boys in the college commons a good
handicap and then beat them in the race through the breakfast, hands
down—but then they had the advantage of being able to use both knife and
fork with equal dexterity.
Luleå, as you have already gathered, is on the banks of the Baltic;
in fact, it is on its extreme northern shore, and the sea here is so
charged with fresh water from the more than two hundred rivers that flow
into it from the Swedish and the Finnish shores that it is like a great
fresh-water lake, and freezes in its northern end as solidly as Moosehead
or Winnepesaukee. As we wandered down to the shore the next morning
after our hotel adventure, we could see nothing but a vast expanse of
snow-covered ice. Only a few large schooners and small steamers, frozen
solidly into the ice, convinced us that this was indeed the Baltic Sea.
Luleå is a very presentable town, quite the metropolis of this part of
the world. Many of the blocks are of brick and stone. A splendid church
of cathedral dimensions stands in the center of the town, broad streets
lined with well-built houses radiate from it on every side, and an
enormous hotel overlooking the Baltic makes an attractive bid for summer
visitors, though at this time of year it is closed as tight as a bank
vault.
I must not forget to tell you about the glorious snow and frost of Luleå.
We have seen it everywhere throughout northern Sweden, as I have before
told you, but never in such absolute perfection as in this favored
town. This is, indeed, the Spell of Sweden. The slight fogs which often
envelop this region for a little time and then disappear leave their
beautiful frescoing upon every tree and bush and telegraph wire and
fence post. Rather, perhaps, I should say they do the work of a sculptor
and transform everything into pure white marble. Every smallest twig is
covered thick with rime, never less than two inches deep. Strike the tree
a sharp blow with your cane and a perfect shower of snow will descend,
powdering you from head to foot, unless you quickly stand from under. But
the next morning the tree will be covered once more by this invisible
sculptor with powdery marble, and again it stands statuesque and lovely
in its immaculate white against the sky.
When the rime is not so thick, magical nature transforms the trees and
shrubs into white coral, and the little arctic bushes, which can never
grow to any great height, stand up above the snow in such a way that you
can scarcely believe that some ancient sea has not receded and left a
forest of coral exposed to view.
The only spot of color in this white wilderness is made by the
mountain-ash tree which the Luleåns have induced to grow in one of their
parks. These trees are covered thickly with bright red berries, which
the English sparrows—unfortunately even the Arctic cold and snows cannot
drive them away—rejoice in. They pick out the kernels of the berries and
cover the snow beneath with the blood-red husks.
One most delightful excursion we must take you upon. It can be made from
almost any point in Lapland, but Luleå is as good a starting point as
any. It is a visit to the nomadic Lapps who abound in this region. We
often see these little fellows, with their yellow faces, about the color
of snuff, of which I understand they are inordinately fond, and their
slanting Mongolian eyes, as they come into the towns with their reindeer
hitched to long sledges. These patient animals furnish them with almost
all that they need—meat and tents and clothing and milk; thread made from
their sinews and needles from their bones. When the Lapps want a little
money for tobacco or coffee they drive a deer into the neighboring town
and sell him for whatever his carcass will bring.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.]
But you must see them in their native habitat to really know the Lapps.
So we hired a sledge whose low runners raise one but a few inches from
the crisp snow, stuck our feet into the abundant straw, tucked around
us the warm reindeer robes, pulled our caps over our ears, and told our
driver to do his best to find a Lapp camp. This is not always easy, for
the Lapps are genuine gypsies in their liking for a nomadic life, and
they are here to-day, there to-morrow, and somewhere else the next day.
However our driver had an idea in what direction they might be found,
and, after half a dozen English miles, or about one Swedish mile, we
heard a tremendous barking of dogs and knew that we were approaching our
goal, for the one indispensable quadruped, aside from the reindeer, in a
Lapp encampment, is a barking dog, and often a good many of him. It was
not a large camp, only a single family of Lapps with perhaps twenty or
thirty reindeer and half a dozen dogs. Their only shelter, even when the
mercury reaches fifty below zero, is this reindeer-skin tent, with a hole
in the top and quite loose around the sides.
A miserable fire burned in the center of the tent, and some of the smoke
found its way through the hole in the top. But hospitality is not unknown
even in these snowy wilds, and our hosts at once set to work to make us
a cup of coffee, their one luxury, which they knew their visitors would
appreciate. To be sure the cup and coffeepot looked almost as dirty as
the faces of our hosts, but who minds a few microbes more or less among
the millions you are constantly swallowing. To be sure, also, our hosts
expected a gift of several times the value of the cup of coffee, but
that was purely a gift and not by any means payment for value received.
I cannot say that I fell in love with the Lapps or their surroundings,
but I must confess that I conceived a new admiration for the missionary
spirit of Prince Bernadotte, the brother of the King of Sweden, who I
understand has sometimes come to this far north region to preach to the
Laplanders.
He once informed me that the only time he was ever in Russia was when
he stepped across the boundary of Swedish Lapland into Finnish Lapland,
and then only a few feet on the other side. I suppose that a Swedish
prince would very likely be _persona non grata_ in the dominions of the
reactionary Czar.
A half-hour in the Lapp settlement was enough for a complete
disillusionment concerning the joys of nomadic life in Lapland, and
we were glad to turn our faces once more toward the thriving little
metropolis of the north Baltic.
Faithfully yours,
PHILLIPS.
SEVENTH LETTER
Contains a glimpse of the history of Sweden as suggested by the
monuments of Stockholm; Birger Jarl; Bridget, the saint without
a monument; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism;
Charles XII, who conquered half of Europe; Linnæus, the lover
of flowers; John Ericsson, the inventor of the “Monitor.”
STOCKHOLM, January 17.
MY DEAR JUDICIA,
My last letter left us in a Lapp camp on the northern edge of the Gulf
of Bothnia, surrounded by dirty Lapps, yelping dogs, and ruminating
reindeer; and here I am, after three days, in Stockholm again, while
Aylmer has gone back to his beloved Norway, striking across Sweden and
over the mountain by rail to Trondhjem, since he was unwilling, as he
said, to “waste any time in Sweden.”
Imagine, Judicia, the superciliousness of youth! To waste time in Sweden,
the land of heroes and patriots, the land of Gustavus Adolphus and
Charles XII, the land that saved northern Europe for liberty and freedom
of conscience. Wasting time in Sweden, indeed!
What should you say to the idea of studying a little Swedish history
with me, with the help of the monuments of Stockholm? Some people, I
know, consider monuments a great bore and hasten by them with scarcely a
glance, but that is because they do not know the delightful stories that
they can tell with their bronze or marble lips.
Let us first call upon Birger Jarl. We find him on Riddarholmen, standing
erect on a lofty marble pillar, with his shield and his sword, his steel
armor and his helmet, looking down from his lofty pedestal as though he
would say to us: “What have I to do with you, upstart Americans, you
children of a day, whose nearest western shore even was not discovered by
Columbus for more than two hundred years after I sailed the seas in my
viking ships.”
The great _Jarl_ seems to have been the first one to have discovered the
impregnable position which Stockholm’s islands offered for defense. To
be sure there was quite a population on these islands before Birger’s
time, but he was a man of far-seeing vision, as his position on his lofty
monument indicates, so he made of Stockholm one great fort. On every side
it was surrounded by water, the great Lake Mälar, and the two rushing
rivers that carried its waters to the Baltic.
Birger was never anything but a _Jarl_, but he was the greatest of all
the earls, and so powerful that he was able to place his son Magnus above
all his brother earls, and made him the first king of Sweden. Magnus was
not unworthy of his name, for he too was a great ruler for those rude
times, though if the son was Magnus I think the father should be called
Major, if not Maximus, for he really founded the kingdom of Sweden, as
well as the city of Stockholm.
Sweden of course had a history before the days of Birger and Magnus, but
it is so mixed up with that of Norway and Denmark, who were really the
predominant partners in those early days, that I shall have to resign
St. Olaf and some of the other exceedingly interesting worthies of that
time to the pen of Aylmer, thus giving him, my dear Judicia, a vast
advantage in his efforts to claim for Norway your favorable verdict.
I must remark in passing, however, that St. Olaf, or King Olaf
Haraldson of Norway, to give him his full title, once found himself
and all his fleet shut up in Lake Mälar by chains stretched across its
western outlet. This was in the year 1007; so in order to get out of
his _cul-de-sac_, he dug a shallow channel across a neck of land that
prevented him from making his way into the Baltic, that he might thus
evade the clutches of Olaf Skötkonung of Sweden. Nature favored his
project, and the strong current that sets from the great lake to the
Baltic Sea soon wore a wide thoroughfare, through which the king and all
his ships escaped into the Baltic and thence home to Norway. This channel
made of a former peninsula the island of Staden, so that the Swedes may
thank St. Olaf for making one of the three great islands of their capital
which Birger Jarl found it so easy to fortify and defend.
A monument that I have been looking for but have not yet found, though
there may be one somewhere in Stockholm, is a memorial to St. Bridget.
If any Swedish woman deserves a monument, surely it is this same saint
“Birgitta,” as she is called in Swedish. In my youth I naturally supposed
that St. Bridget was an Irish lady; but she was a pure Swede, and a Swede
of the mystical type, in some respects not unlike a fellow countryman
of more modern days—the great Swedenborg. She devoutly believed that she
received many revelations from Christ and the Virgin Mary, which are
preserved to this day in large tomes.
She lived before the Reformation, but was none the less a reformer of
the first order. The rule of her abbey, which she believed was enjoined
by Christ himself, made chastity, humility, and voluntary poverty the
first requisites. “No member of the convent could possess the smallest
piece of money; nor even touch silver or gold except when necessary for
embroidery, and then only after permission obtained from the abbess. The
nuns ate the simplest food and fasted three days in the week. To remind
them of their mortality, a bier always stood at the church door, and near
the cloister yawned an open grave. Thither these devout women repaired
every day, and the abbess threw a handful of earth into the pit, while
the sisters repeated psalms and prayers.”[1]
In these days, when the social pendulum has swung so far to the other
extreme, there is something worthily heroic in this story of good
Birgitta. There is a tonic in it, like a strong east wind, that blows
away the miasma of modern social life.
Whatever we may think of her, she made a tremendous impression upon
Sweden, an impression which is fresh and vivid to this day, as anyone who
studies the history of Sweden speedily discovers. St. Bridget was a woman
of tremendous courage. She knew how to reprove the Pope as well as the
King. Moreover, her influence was not confined to Sweden, for she spent
much time in Rome and is acknowledged throughout the whole Catholic world
as one of their greatest saints.
Again come with me to one of the chief squares of Stockholm, and there we
will see the figure of the noblest Swede of them all, Gustavus Adolphus,
the hero of Protestantism, the victor of a score of hard-fought battles.
I will not take you to the monument of Gustavus Vasa, the grandfather of
Gustavus Adolphus, for we have already traced his glorious career from
the days when he was a hunted fugitive in Dalecarlia to the day when he
mounted in triumph the Swedish throne at Stockholm.
But great as was the grandfather, his grandson Adolphus was greater
still, as a general, as a reformer, as a man. Between the days of the
grandfather and the grandson Sweden had thrown off the power of the
Roman church, whose possessions had been seized by the crown; and two
of the immediate disciples and pupils of Luther, the brothers Olaus and
Laurentius Petri, had firmly established the reformed religion throughout
the kingdom.
An unhappy interregnum between grandfather Vasa and grandson Adolphus,
who ascended the throne in 1611, had left Sweden in a parlous state, with
foes without and fightings within. The great king and general succeeded
in shutting out Russia from the Baltic and capturing one of the important
provinces of Poland, Livland, which also bordered on the Baltic. But
it was not until 1630 that Gustavus Adolphus became a mighty figure
in European history. For twelve years the German Protestants had been
putting up a courageous but losing fight with the overwhelmingly superior
Catholic forces of Europe. Little by little they had been beaten, and
their power was being gradually circumscribed.
“In 1630 it seemed as though the continent of Europe was hopelessly
doomed to fall beneath the united supremacy of the Papacy and the Empire.
From the southern shore of the Baltic Wallenstein, the great leader of
the imperial forces, stretched his hand threateningly to grasp the Baltic
Sea and its approach, the sound, which chief means of communication with
the ocean had become for Sweden a matter of vital importance to keep
open. As much to defend the independence as the Protestantism of Sweden,
Gustavus Adolphus was forced to go to Germany and there assail the enemy
on his own ground. Within the short period of two years he succeeded by
his brilliancy both as a warrior and a statesman in changing the fate of
the world.”[2]
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
Lion-Guarded Statue of Charles XIII in King’s Garden, Stockholm.]
His brilliant exploits in Germany were confined to two short years.
His great victory at Breitenfeld in 1631 was followed by the battle of
Lützen in 1632, which cost Sweden and the world the victor’s life. But
though the war raged for sixteen years longer, the Protestant cause
was never again hopeless. The victory of Adolphus turned the tide, and
his noble personal friend and chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, maintained
the prestige of Sweden as one of the great powers of the world, fully
recognized in the Peace of Westphalia, which in 1648 closed the bloody
Thirty Years’ War.
As I stand before the fine equestrian statue of Gustavus, I take off my
hat to that noble warrior and reformer, even though it is frosty winter
weather, and, as I look at his majestic figure, I can hear the Swedish
army on the battlefield of Lützen singing the king’s own hymn of triumph:
“Fear not, O little flock, the foe
That madly seeks your overthrow.”
It has been truly said the “sword of Gustavus Adolphus was mighty as the
pen of Luther.”
Every year on the sixth of November a great procession of Swedes with
bands and banners, led by the famous choral societies of Stockholm,
proceeds through the streets on a triumphal march to the Church of the
Knights, where the great king lies buried, a spot forever sacred to the
lovers of freedom.
In the king’s park in Stockholm we find another interesting statue,
that of Charles XII. He stands with his sword in one hand pointing with
powerful finger to the Baltic, on whose shores he gained his greatest
victories.
As I gazed at the noble statue, I thought how this great-grandson of
Gustavus Vasa came to the throne as a boy of fifteen years of age. How
three years after, Russia, with Peter the Great for her emperor; Poland,
then the great power of central Europe; Saxony and Denmark all united
their forces to crush this eighteen-year-old king and the country for
which he fought so bravely. But he was equal to them all. One after
another he conquered Denmark, Prussia, and Poland in the field, and for
nine years with Sweden, a little nation of only two and a half millions
of people at his back, he held them all at bay.
“With an army of eight hundred half-starved, half-frozen Swedes on a
chill November morning he charged upon forty thousand Russians behind
intrenchments at Narva and put them to utter rout, taking in prisoners
alone more than double his little army.”
Many were his vicissitudes; defeated after nine years of victory by the
Russians at Pultava, he had to flee to Turkey, hoping to enlist the
sympathies of the Sultan against the Russians. For five years he remained
there in exile, and then, almost alone, in an incredibly short space of
time, made his way across Europe, and for years more fought the battles
of Sweden against mighty odds, but with indomitable courage and often
with success, until a bullet at the battle of Fredrikshald in Norway
put an end to this heroic life and at the same time closed the era of
Sweden’s greatness.
I cannot take you to all the statues of Stockholm to-day, Judicia, but
there are two others which I think we must visit. As a lover of flowers
you would never forgive me if we did not together make our obeisance
before the monument of Linnæus. It is true that he is associated more
particularly with Upsala and its university, where I hope later to see
his grave, but he has a worthy statue in Stockholm in the Humlegård.
There he stands in a benignant attitude that befits a great naturalist.
I am glad that he is surrounded by the trees and plants and flowers that
he loved so well and did so much to make us familiar with.
When a man is preëminently distinguished in one line, his services to the
world in other directions are apt to be overlooked. Linnæus was not only
a great botanist, but a distinguished physician and a brilliant writer
on geographical subjects. He traveled much throughout Sweden, and our
knowledge of Swedish life in the eighteenth century is largely due to his
interesting and accurate accounts of his travels. He is said also to have
created a new style of Swedish prose, and to have been as eminent as a
teacher as he was as an investigator.
You would hardly recognize him under his Swedish name, Carolus a Ljnné,
or Carl von Linné, as he is more commonly called. Linné was the most
prominent lecturer of his time, we are told. “When he took a ramble,
discoursing as he went and ‘demonstrating Flora’s charming children’ then
Botany became the _scientia amabilis_, a knowledge of which was an honor
for all, from royalty down to the poorest peasant.”
As I gazed at his statue, however, I could not help thinking, with a
sense of mild pity, of the millions of school children with no great
gifts for botanical research who have struggled over the two hard names
which he set the fashion of assigning to every plant, one for the genus
and one for the species; and who have studied, with many a groan, his
system of identifying plants which seem to them as dry as the herbariums
which they have been compelled to collect and arrange.
One other statue, among the latest erected in Stockholm, is of peculiar
interest to Americans, for it commemorates the man who, more than any
other inventor, saved the Union in the terribly black days of ’63. This
man was Captain John Ericsson, the son of a Swedish miner, “born and
brought up in a miner’s hut in the backwoods of Sweden.” On Sunday,
September 14, 1890, the body of Ericsson was given over by America to the
perpetual care of Sweden, his native land. It had been brought from New
York in the warship _Baltimore_ by Captain Schley, who afterwards won his
laurels on the coast of Cuba.
The body was placed on a beautiful pavilion, directly in front of the
statue of Charles XII and very near one of Stockholm’s principal quays.
With solemn ceremonies and appropriate words the body was conveyed by
Captain Schley to the American Minister, and by him given over to the
Swedish government, a Swedish admiral accepting it in behalf of his
country.