Chapter V: Part II: Aylmer Writes of Norway and Denmark 175 (4)

Have I not told you enough, Judicia, to prove the proposition with which I set out: that there is no more charming journey in the world, when we consider the scenery, the historic associations, our means of conveyance, and our fellow passengers, than this trip through Sweden’s magnificent Göta Canal?

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

TENTH LETTER

Describes the ancient city of Visby; the Gotlanders of old;
their wonderful wealth; their defeat by King Valdemar, and the
vats of gold that he demanded for the city’s ransom. Returning
to more modern days, Midsummer’s Day, the great holiday of
Sweden, is described.

VISBY, June 24.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

Please refer to the map once more, and you will see in the blue water, nearly halfway between the Swedish coast and the Baltic province of Russia, a long, scraggly island, with many capes and indentations. You will see that it is called Gotland, and on its western shore you will see that there is a city called Visby. I do not know that I can give such a traveler and geographer as yourself any real information about Gotland, but I will at least venture to refresh your memory concerning this most interesting island, for a very considerable part of the world’s history for a good many scores of years centered in this piece of sea-washed land, which contains barely twelve hundred square miles of surface.

At one time Visby, which has now dwindled to a somewhat obscure tourist resort, was the London of northern Europe. The East and the West paid their tribute to it. Russia sent her timber and her furs, and England and Germany and Flanders their precious stuffs, which were here exchanged for other precious stuffs and then went their several ways to all parts of Europe.

One of their old ballads tells us:

“The Gotlanders weigh their gold with twenty pound weights,
And play with choicest jewels,
The pigs eat out of silver troughs,
And the women spin with golden distaffs.”

That the old ballad had some foundation in fact is shown us by the splendid ruins that tell us of Visby’s former greatness.

Throughout Gotland there are no less than ninety great Gothic churches, most of them in ruins, while in Visby alone were sixteen of these churches, some of them among the largest in Europe. So much has the city dwindled that in only one of these churches is heard the voice of prayer and praise to-day. The walls of ten others can still be seen, but they are merely magnificent ruins.

That the ancient Gotlanders were proud of their splendid isolation, in the middle of the Baltic, and were not inclined to bend the supple knee to any potentate, is indicated by a tradition that has come down to us, of the ambassador whom these island people sent to the king of Sweden to seek an alliance for mutual offense and defense. This ambassador was named Strabagn, which being interpreted means “Long Legs.”

When he reached Upsala, where was then the royal palace, he found the king and queen dining in their great banquet hall. The king had a grudge against the Gotlanders, whom he considered too toplofty and independent, and so Mr. Longfellow was kept standing in the hall while the royal pair continued their sumptuous meal. At last the king condescended to ask gruffly, “What’s the news from Gotland?” “Nothing” replied Strabagn, “except that a mare on the island has foaled three colts at a birth.” “Ah,” said the king, “and what does the third colt do when the other two are sucking?” “He does as I do,” answered Long Legs; “he stands and looks on.” This stroke of wit pleased the king and queen so much that they invited the ambassador to make a third at their table, and were finally willing to conclude a treaty which was as much to the advantage of Sweden as of Gotland.

The thirteenth century was the Golden Age of Gotland. In this century the great warehouses were built, and it became the commercial metropolis of northern Europe. There were few stronger fortresses in the world, for an enormous stone wall thirty feet high surrounded the city, and from the wall no less than forty-eight huge towers arose.

It does not take much imagination to reproduce ancient Visby, for thirty-eight of the forty-eight towers are still standing. They are more than sixty feet high, and one can see in each of the five stories the holes through which the archers fired their arrows, doubtless winged with death for many a foe, while from the battlemented top of the towers huge stones were thrown from the catapults.

But in spite of Visby’s isolation, and in spite of her mighty fortifications, she was not impregnable as she supposed, for in 1361 Denmark, which in those early days seems to have always been the evil genius of Sweden, sent an army under the command of King Valdemar Atterdag to capture the city. The people behind their strong fortifications at first laughed at him and mustered all their troops to defend the city, but Valdemar was victorious, nearly two thousand of Visby’s noblest defenders were slain, and the city was at the mercy of the Dane.

He would not accept its surrender and accord it the honors of war, even after it had capitulated, but tore down a part of the wall to prove his ruthless might and marched as a conqueror to the center of the city.

One is reminded by Valdemar’s conquest of the hard terms that Pizarro made when he conquered the Peruvians. You remember that for the ransom of King Atahualpa he went into a great room, and drawing a red mark on the wall as high as he could reach he told the Peruvians that they must fill that room with gold as high as the red mark if they would release their king from bondage and save him from death.

King Valdemar did something of the same sort to the Visbyites, for he took the three biggest ale vats that he found in the city and commanded the people to fill them with gold and silver within three hours. So frightened were the inhabitants by his bloodthirsty cruelty that they obeyed, stripping themselves of their golden ornaments, rifling their churches and their treasure-houses, until the big vats were full to the brim.

But even this did not avail to save them from further rapine, for Valdemar made a clean sweep of all that was left and poor Visby was plundered by the rapacious troops of all her riches.

I should like to be able to tell you that I saw the bones of Valdemar Attardag safely encoffined where he could do no more harm, but the next best thing was to see the _Jungfrutornet_, or the “Maiden’s Tower,” where, according to tradition, the noble maid who opened the gates of Visby to the Danish king, whom she loved, was walled up alive. You need not waste much sympathy on this maiden, however, for I am told on good authority that she is a strictly mythical girl, and that her story was invented by the people of Visby to account for what many believed was a somewhat cowardly capitulation of the city to the Danes.

King Valdemar, however, must have had one or two redeeming traits of character, for he erected a great stone cross on the battlefield to commemorate the death of the eighteen hundred citizens whom he slew. The cross can still be seen, scarcely marred by the passage of these five hundred years, and the inscription on it is not a record of triumph so much as a memorial to the dead.

You have noticed, perhaps, that this letter is dated “June 24.” This date may not have any great significance for you, but it is a high day in Sweden, perhaps the most joyous of all the year, for it is Midsummer’s Day, the day without a night in many parts of this northern land.

In almost every village in Sweden you will see to-day a _Majstang_. Perhaps you can guess that a _Majstang_ is a Maypole, though I think I hear you say, “Why have a Maypole in June?” The Swedish word for May, _Maj_, is an ancient term meaning “green leaf,” and June 24 is preëminently the Feast of the Green Leaf.

It is not the somber evergreens, however, that decorate the windows at Christmas time and that stand dressed with Christmas candles and Christmas gifts; the Midsummer Tree is the birch. If it should ever be put to a vote in Sweden, I think the Swedes would decide that the birch is their most beloved tree. It is equally beautiful in summer and in winter. In the former its delicate drooping branches are covered with green, and in the latter with white. There is nothing quite so lovely in the northern latitudes as the birch trees silvered with a thick coating of frost in midwinter, unless it be these same birch trees in their glad green livery in midsummer.

On June 23, in preparation for Midsummer’s Day, all the lads and lassies that you see in the country will have a load of birch boughs on their shoulders. In Stockholm hundreds of wagons and little steamers bring tens of thousands of young birch trees to the city, and every window and doorway is decorated with its delicate green. Even the dray horses are decked out in green, and “the wearing of the green” is more popular in Sweden on June 24 than in Ireland on March 17.

This is the out-of-door festival of the country. At Luleå in the far north the people all flock on Midsummer’s Eve to a mountain near by called Mjaolkudds Berget. Here each family builds a small bonfire and over it makes their coffee, which is supposed to have a peculiar flavor and potency on Midsummer’s Eve. The midnight sun cannot quite be seen from Mjaolkudds Berget, but according to the ancient custom the coffeepot must be placed on the hot coals just as the last rim of his upper disk disappears. Before the coffee is brewed, the upper disk is again visible above the horizon, and then the coffee can be drunk by every member of the family, from the great-grandmother to the youngest scion.

This of all days is a day of life and color in Sweden. Let us not stay in little Visby, with its mournful ruins reminding us of the golden days of Gotland, but go out into the country, for nature is ever fresh and new. She knows nothing about ruins, or, if she does allow some giant tree to totter and fall in the forest, she soon covers up his decaying form with moss and creepers. The colors that we see are not all green by any means, for this is the day when Swedish maidens adopt the bright, ancient costumes of their country, the Crown Princess herself having set the example. The Maypole is set up on every village green, and the children first are given the right of way. Hand in hand they romp around the Maypole, singing the folk songs and the glees which Sweden’s children for many a generation have sung on Midsummer’s Day. Then the older ones take their place, and all is motion and gladness and color and song.

If we should find ourselves in the woods after the day’s festivities are over, we should very likely see some silent, solitary maidens wandering through the fields, in the long twilight which here lasts till midnight. Do not think that they are lovelorn lasses deserted by their swains, for they are simply seeking to know their own fortunes, which Midsummer’s Night reveals to them. In one of the provinces the maiden must pick three flowers each, of three different kinds, and must speak to no one until the next morning. These flowers she puts under her pillow when she goes to bed, and if she has been conscientiously tongue-tied, and has been quite alone when she picked the flowers, and has replied to every question which teasing suitors would put to her only by signs, she will dream of her future husband, and the next morning will know who he is to be.

In other provinces she has to pick nine different kinds of flowers from as many different farms, and this bouquet is even more efficacious than a smaller one. Why should we not have such a midsummer holiday in America? It is true that we have our Fourth of July, which is not very far from the right date, but, however “safe and sane” we may make it, the Fourth of July can never be anything but a patriotic holiday, nor should it be.

Thanksgiving Day is too late in the year for an out-of-door holiday, and the thirtieth of May is dedicated to a sacred celebration all its own. But why should we not have one genuine out-of-door day, a day when we shall see to it that every city child may romp and play in God’s green fields, and when we may make it a joyous duty to thank the Giver of all, not only for the harvests and for the full granaries as on Thanksgiving Day, but for the sun and the green trees and the flowers and grass and everything that makes us glad to be alive? What day could be so good for such a celebration in America as well as in Sweden as Midsummer’s Day?

Before we bid good-by to Gotland and Visby, let us climb in the late evening twilight the ruined towers of the church of St. Nikolaus. From the old wall we can look out to sea, and if our imagination is strong enough, supplemented by a sufficient knowledge of old traditions, perhaps we shall see an eerie, reddish light on the calm waters of the Baltic. This light comes from two great carbuncles in the bottom of the Baltic. These carbuncles once adorned the western gable of the church of St. Nikolaus, where, according to the tradition, “these carbuncles shone with the brightness of the sun at noonday, throughout the night, and served as guiding lights to storm-tossed mariners far out on the Baltic wave. Twenty-four soldiers stood constantly on guard to watch these ruddy gems, the most precious possessions of the church, and no one, on pain of death, might approach the sanctuary after the going down of the sun.”

King Valdemar could not leave such priceless jewels to St. Nikolaus, and so he snatched them from the rose windows which they adorned, put them on his biggest ship, and sailed away to Denmark. But justice followed the sacrilegious freebooter; his ship was wrecked on one of the little islands which line the coast of Gotland, and the king himself barely escaped with his life. The carbuncles sank to the bottom of the sea, which accounts for that strange glow which any one with a vivid imagination can see from the ruined tower of St. Nikolaus as he looks off on the peaceful Baltic.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

ELEVENTH LETTER

Wherein something is told of Sweden’s art and artists; the
ancient rock-cutting of Bohus; the art treasures collected by
the heroes of the Thirty Years’ War; Cederstrom’s picture of
Charles XII; Carl Larsson’s pictures of the home; the mural
paintings of the schoolhouses; also something about Sweden’s
great authors and singers.

STOCKHOLM, June 30.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

With your love for libraries and picture galleries I should not dare to send you this last letter from Sweden without telling you something about the Swedes who have contributed to literature and art, though, if I should attempt to go into the subject exhaustively, I fear that many names of Swedish artists and authors would be unfamiliar even to you.

Sweden’s first and original art gallery is a strange one indeed, for it is unroofed except by the blue dome of heaven, and not a canvas hangs upon its walls. Nevertheless it is one of the most interesting galleries in all Europe. It is found in the province of Bohus, on the west coast of Sweden, north of Gotenburg. Shall we call these old artists sculptors or painters? The material that they used was the solid rock, the face of the cliffs that slopes up gently from level fields. They did not chisel out a statue, but with some bronze tools in lieu of brushes they cut the figures which they would portray in the rock, not making them stand out as does the Lion of Lucerne, but cutting them like solid intaglios in the face of the rock itself.

So shallow are the cuttings that water has to be poured upon them to bring the figures out from the gray rock in which they are cut, but as the water trickles down from the bucket which the stout maiden who acts as guide and guardian of this picture gallery splashes upon the rock, wonderful shapes appear: viking ships, some large enough to be manned by a crew of one hundred men, evidently the warships of the long ago; men on horseback and men on foot; men plowing with yokes of oxen, while now and then there towers above all the men and beasts a gigantic figure with an ax or a thunderbolt in his hand, no doubt the God of War under whose ægis the old Northmen went out to battle.

The most common of these rock pictures are the representations of the viking ships, showing that in those days, as in these, the Scandinavians were great sea-faring people. The prows of these ancient piratical craft one often sees reproduced on the roofs of Swedish and Norwegian houses to-day. Of course these pictures are very crude, very much such as a child of five years of age would draw upon his slate to-day. But that is natural, for you must remember that they were drawn in the childhood of Scandinavia, at least twenty-five if not thirty-five hundred years ago, for it has been proved conclusively that they were chiseled by men of the Bronze Age of Sweden, which lasted from fifteen hundred to five hundred years before Christ.

We are very grateful to you, crude artists of the older time, for your pictures, for they tell us many things about ancient Sweden. They tell us that you sailed the seas in great ships rowed by a hundred men, though you do not seem to have known how to harness the winds to your craft, for we see no signs of masts or sails. We know that you had dogs and cows and horses, and that you plowed your fields with a crooked stick drawn by a pair of oxen. We know that you had carts that ran on two wheels, and that you were expert with spear and shield, and I venture to say that your art museum, old as it is to-day, will last longer than the Pitti or the Uffizi; and long after Macaulay’s New Zealander has gazed upon the ruins of London from his picturesque position upon the bridge, the pictures in your gallery will still lead mankind to speculate upon the kind of folk whom you chiseled in the everlasting rocks. No fire can destroy your gallery, no thief can steal your Mona Lisa, no conqueror can carry away your art treasures.

It is a far cry from the rock galleries of Bohus to the fine collections of old and new masters of which Stockholm and Gotenburg boast. Some of the finest pictures, too, are not found in the metropolis of either eastern or western Sweden, but in the palaces and castles which dot the interior of the country. I have already told you about some of these palaces like Skokloster and others, which contain Correggios and Titians and pictures of Paul Veronese, for in the Thirty Years’ War the mighty Swedish generals fell heir to many of the splendid picture galleries of southern Germany, and all they had to do was to pick out the best pictures by the greatest masters and send them to their northern home.

In those days “looting” was not “stealing,” at least in the eyes of the victors, and they had this excuse at least, that the pictures and works of art, if _they_ had not taken them, would have fallen into worse hands. They would have reminded you that their great opponent Tilly, when he captured Heidelberg and destroyed the library, could find no better use for the most valuable manuscripts than to use them as a litter for his horses. In this way the Codex Argenteus, of which I have before written you, was taken when the Swedes captured Prague and sent on its far journey to Upsala.

I am afraid that most of the names of Swedish artists would hardly be recognized by you, though I think you would admire some of their paintings as much as I do. I have time and room in this letter to tell you of only two that greatly interested me.

Baron Cederstrom devoted himself to the period of Charles XII, whose tragic story you remember. Cederstrom’s greatest picture shows the body of the king borne on a stretcher by a dozen soldiers over the dreary, snow-covered, mountainous defiles that separate Norway from Sweden. “The pathos of this pitiable end to so glorious a career appears in the attitude of a solitary mountain huntsman, who, with his boy and dog, stands by the wayside as the procession passes. He is the only one to doff his fur cap and salute the remains of one who but a short time before made half Europe tremble, while the other half was lost in amazement at his extraordinary fortunes and prodigious victories.”

Another artist whose pictures are of unusual interest is Carl Larsson, the most popular artist in Sweden to-day. He is the painter of the home, of the fireside and the nursery, of the sitting room and the kitchen, of the boy and girl and the grandmother as well. His own son and daughter figure in many of his pictures.

One that especially impressed me was a canvas representing this same son and daughter gazing at a skull on the center table in their home. The look of serious half-comprehension on the girl’s face as she points out the skull to her brother, and of half-frightened awe with which he gazes at it, will not soon fade from my mind. Another portrait of his daughter leaning against a birch tree, the white bark and new leaves no purer than her own sweet face, is also a picture to be remembered. It has been copied upon so many postcards that the Swedes, at least, are not likely to forget it.

Mr. Von Heidenstam well characterized Larsson when he says: “His audacity, his love of novelty and adventure, the freshness of his impressions, the youthfulness of his enthusiasms, and his whole vision of life are Scandinavian to the core. In his pictures of home life, mostly taken from his own home, he is genial, happy, fond of bright colors, of flowers and sunshine, enraptured with existence, and prone to see its bright side.”

The Swedes are wise in not relegating all the paintings of their best artists to museums or picture galleries, which are seldom visited by the people, but many of the higher and even primary schools in Stockholm and other cities have been adorned with mural paintings by their best artists: Larsson, Prince Eugene, Oscar Björck, Thegerstrom, and Nils Kreuger are all well-known painters, who have put some of their best work upon the walls of Sweden’s schoolhouses, picturing landscapes, national customs, and some of the great events in Sweden’s history, and placing them where Sweden’s children cannot help being impressed by them.

I cannot honestly say that the chief charm of Sweden consists in the spell which her artists have woven about her, and I suppose few people would come to Sweden to study art. Her real fascination lies in her glorious out-of-doors—in her noble forests, her shimmering lakes, her glorious snow fields and frost sculpture in winter, her rushing rivers and turbulent rapids—all these things I have tried to tell you about, and this is the raw material of the artist.

Compared with Italy or Spain, Sweden’s art is yet very young, but, with such models as nature’s lavish hands has furnished on every side, it seems to me very probable that the great artists of the future will be found in these Scandinavian lands.

I wish they would spend more time in Lapland in midwinter. I wish they would paint for us the little trees that Jack Frost converts into white coral every day. I wish they would paint for us the rare combination of sunrise and sunset, and the glowing sky where the sun never rises at all. I wish they would show him to us not only on the longest day of the year at midnight, as they have often done, but on the shortest days, as he peers timidly above the horizon, or goes bowling along for an hour or two on its very edge. These are pictures which no country but Sweden furnishes in their perfection, and pictures which the Swedish artist could most easily reproduce and which would make his canvas immortal.

The authors of Sweden are many and well beloved. I can name but two of them here, though I fear the Swedes will never forgive me if I do not mention Bellman, their Robert Burns, and some others. I pick out these two because they are as well beloved in America as in Sweden. Tegnér is one of them. He may be called, perhaps, the Macaulay of Sweden, only his lays are not those of ancient Rome, but of ancient Sweden. Someone has said that “his heroic poems sent a thrill through old and young when first they were published.” He became popular throughout all Europe, and more than fifty translations of his poems are found in a dozen different European languages.

Longfellow made him known and loved by American readers by his beautiful translation of the _Children of the Lord’s Supper_. “The scene in the country church, decked out with flowers and evergreens for the solemn ceremony, the rustic boys and girls bowing and curtsying as they made their responses before the assembled congregation, and the attitude and words of the patriarchal pastor are all true to life.”

Another of your best-loved authors, Judicia, I must remind you, was also a Swede—Frederika Bremer. She was also more than a writer of charming tales. She was an ardent champion of woman’s rights, but I warrant you she would never have used dynamite in obtaining them, or have poured paint into letter boxes to secure “votes for women.” Her good work for their uplift is still carried on by the “Frederika Bremer Union.” It protects and encourages women who are struggling to make a place for themselves in the world, and seeks in every way to raise the standard of woman’s work and wages. Our former American Minister, Mr. Thomas, gives an interesting account of a call he made upon her in 1864, nearly fifty years ago, only a year before her death:

“Up three flights of a stone stairway to a little landing, I make my way,” he says. “A curtsying Swedish maid answers my knock and shows me into a cozy sitting room. Presently a little old woman with a decided stoop in her shoulders enters and meets me with extended hand and a pleasant smile, bidding me welcome with one of the sweetest voices I ever listened to. This was one forenoon in January, 1864. The cozy sitting room was in Stockholm in the fourth story of a brick house, on the long Drottning-Gatan, and the little old woman was Frederika Bremer, the great Swedish novelist.”

This was in the darkest period of our Civil War. Mr. Thomas asked Miss Bremer for her autograph for the Sanitary Commission Fair, soon to be held in New York, explaining that the proceeds would be devoted to the sick and wounded soldiers. “It will give me real joy,” she said, “to do anything to help on liberty in America, or to comfort the soldiers who have become disabled in fighting for it.” Her eyes beamed brightly as she spoke, and her whole manner showed how actively she was interested in our cause and country.

“This interesting _tête-à-tête_ gave me the best opportunity for observing Miss Bremer,” continues Mr. Thomas. “The stoop of her shoulders was hid in the ample cushions of her easy chair. A neat, white lace cap covered her head. Her gray hair was brushed straight back from a noble, lofty forehead, white as marble, and her mild blue eyes beamed with a tender compassion that made one forget the great author in the sympathizing friend and compelled me to call her beautiful, for beauty of soul shone forth in every glance.”

I have quoted this intimate description, for there are few living Americans who have actually seen and talked with the gentle authoress, and I fear me there are few Americans who read her books to-day, but you have not forgotten how, in our early days, her pure and wholesome novels were justly admired and loved.

Do you remember the little girl who for some childish misdemeanor was shut up in a dark closet as a punishment, and how she found there Miss Bremer’s _Home Life_, and how she lay down at full length on the floor, placing the book as near the crack of the door as she could, reading the story nearly half through before the time of her punishment had expired? She gained more from her punishment than anyone but herself knew, for Frederika Bremer’s charming picture of home life remained with her as an inspiration through all her life.

Speaking of our early days, Judicia, I was reminded that we must belong to a former generation when I asked Aylmer when we were together in Luleå what he knew about Jenny Lind, the great Swedish soprano. Would you believe it, he had never heard of her? The singer who made the greatest sensation in America of anyone that ever crossed the ocean; the singer who was as good as she was beautiful, and whose voice was no purer or sweeter than her life! We at least know how the ticket offices were besieged by eager thousands who wished to hear her voice, and what extravagant prices, as they were then considered, were paid for her concerts. And yet Aylmer had never heard of this most famous of all northern warblers, of this great philanthropist, as she became in her later life! Moreover he confided to me that he had never heard of Christine Nilsson, a more modern singer of almost equal fame. Well, well, we must be growing antiquated!

There is one man who to be sure cannot be classed as an artist or an author, and yet I suppose he has done more for literature as well as for science and the cause of peace than any other man in Sweden. This is Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, an article which we chiefly associate with war, but which has really done more to revolutionize mining and engineering. Thanks to dynamite, it has been possible to bore the mighty tunnels through the Alps; to knock down the iron mountains of northern Sweden and send them off piecemeal to other parts of the earth; to dig the subways of New York and Boston and Chicago, and to tunnel the North River for the commuters of Manhatten. No man ever did more good with his vast wealth, or disposed of it more wisely when he died, than Alfred Nobel, and now each year magnificent awards of some forty thousand dollars each are given by this foundation to people who have achieved great things in physics, in medicine, in literature, and for peace.

You will observe, Judicia, that I have not bored you with any stories of Swedish games and sports, of skiing and ski jumping, of bobsleighing and rodeling, and that I have not even alluded to Swedish gymnastics. There is a method in my seeming madness, for though I am much interested in these matters, especially in the out-of-door sports, I am not quite so wild about them as is Aylmer, and, since they are common to all Scandinavia, I will leave them for him to describe and thus give his Norway a great advantage, when you come to hold the scales of justice between the eastern and western lands of the peninsula. But I beg you to remember that Sweden is quite as famous in these particulars as her sister kingdom across the mountains.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

TWELFTH LETTER

Relates to Finland; why it should be included in Scandinavia;
its earlier and later history; its degradation by Russia; the
charming journey from Stockholm to Åbo; and tells of a winter
adventure in the Gulf of Bothnia.

ÅBO, FINLAND, July 1.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

I wonder if you are asking why I include Finland in the letters which we submit to you in regard to the relative merits of the different parts of Scandinavia. Do I hear you say that Finland is a part of Russia, and that the Finns are not even of Aryan stock like the Swedes, but are descendants of Turanian tribes, “first cousins to the Hungarians, and forty-second cousins to the Turks”?

Nevertheless, in spite of all this, I must maintain that Finland is more a part of Scandinavia and more nearly related to the Swedes in customs, temperament, and manner of life than to any other nation. The Swedes were the people who found the Finns in barbaric heathenism, who Christianized and civilized them, though it must be acknowledged that, in doing this, they conquered and sometimes exploited them at the same time. For four hundred and fifty years after this conquest by Sweden the Finns constituted a loyal and devoted part of the Swedish kingdom, speaking the Swedish language almost as freely as their own, adopting Swedish laws and customs, and equal in political and social rights to their neighbors across the Gulf of Bothnia.

It was only about a hundred years ago that they were conquered by the Russians, when, after centuries of struggle, Sweden’s domains were rent in twain.

To prove my contention that to all intents and purposes Finland should be considered a part of Scandinavia, I must remind you that long before the Finns came to Finland the southern part of their country was doubtless inhabited by Scandinavians. One writer tells us that they were there “thousands of years before the Finns arrived.” But way off beyond Persia were some Turanian tribes, related to the Mongols and the Manchus, who started on that everlasting trek toward the west, which, since the days of the Pharaohs, seems to have urged the Eastern peoples on toward the setting sun.

They seem to have tarried in Persia for awhile and to have brought with them some Persian coins, which to this day are occasionally unearthed in Finland. On and on they pressed, the first of the Eastern hordes to cross the Ural mountains, until they came, some to the banks of the Danube and others to the shores of the Baltic. The tribes who settled the fertile plains of Hungary are the Magyars of to-day; those who pushed on to the Baltic Sea are the Finns.

Eric XI of Sweden was the first king to turn his attention particularly toward Finland. He seems to have desired not only the conquest of the Finns but their conversion to Christianity, and so he is known both as King Eric and St. Eric. It was no easy job, however, to conquer this slow, obstinate, patient race, and it was one hundred and fifty years, or, to be exact, in 1293, that Sweden’s conquest was complete. She soon set an example to all future conquerors, an example by which Great Britain has so well profited in these later days by giving perfect liberty to the conquered peoples and confirming their liberties by an irrevocable law.

Nothing better ever happened to the Finns than this conquest by the Swedes. Christianity, civilization, education, and an invaluable training in liberty under law was the result, until the descendants of those wild tribes from the steppes of Asia have become one of the most civilized, enlightened, and perhaps the best educated nation in the world.

Says Ernest Young, in his interesting book on Finland: “It is a remarkable fact that the Finnish and Swedish populations of Finland, though running like two different streams beside each other without blending, never rose against each other, but, on the contrary, always stood side by side in the same rank whenever sword was drawn at home or abroad. There was rivalry between them, but no oppression.… The laws and social order of Sweden were introduced without resistance into a country where law and society did not exist before. The people grew into these new forms, applied them according to their characters, and became familiar with them as their own.”

Would that Russia could have learned a lesson that Sweden taught to all the world, concerning conquered provinces. At first it seemed as though she had done so, and no one ever spoke fairer words to a conquered people than Czar Alexander I spoke to the Finns through the Governor-general in the “Act of Assurance,” given to the first Finnish Diet that convened after the cession of Finland to Russia by the Swedes.

At first it seemed as though these fair promises would be fulfilled, and for a time, doubtless, Finland was better off under Russian rule than she had been during the hundreds of years previously when she had been the battleground, continually tramped over by Swedish and Russian soldiers, and reddened with their blood as well as by that of her own citizens.

Each succeeding Czar seems to have treated Finland according to his own whims, or those of his prime minister, and with little consideration to the fundamental laws of the land so solemnly guaranteed and sworn to by each Czar as he came to the throne.

Little by little the Russians have been filching away the liberties of the Finns, depriving them of one boon after another, and ever threatening them with still direr evils. Finnish soldiers are no longer allowed to enlist for the defense of their fatherland, but instead they must pay a tribute to Russia and allow uncleanly Russian soldiers to be quartered in the beautiful barracks built for their own troops. Finnish stamps are no longer good for letters that go outside of Finland, and the _marks_ and _pennys_ in which they have reckoned their currency from time immemorial must give way to the more awkward _ruble_ and _kopeck_ with which they would prefer to have nothing to do.

In mean and picayunish ways the government interferes with their liberties. For instance, the people voted not long ago for the prohibition of alcoholic drinks, but the Czar, in his superior wisdom, doubtless absolutely inspired by his ministers, decreed that prohibition was not good for the Finns (and very likely not good for the Russian revenues), and so vetoed the law which had met with universal favor.

The Finnish Diet meets in a rather shabby and antequated building, but the people have obtained a good site for a new parliament house and have raised the money for the construction of a splendid building that would ornament the fine city of Helsingfors. Now the Czar tells them that they cannot afford a new building, and withholds his approval, so that they cannot do what they please with their own money. Some think that since he has had no use for a Finnish parliament, and soon intends to suppress it altogether, he sees no use for a parliament house.

The Finns number only three millions of people, and the Russians on their very borders, people of an alien race and an alien religion, who have scarcely yet emerged from barbarism, are more than a hundred million strong, and that tells the whole story.

The trek that was begun by the Finns before the Christian Era has been again taken up since Russia began to stamp out their liberties. More than three hundred thousand of them have come to our shores, and no people should receive a heartier welcome in Yankee land than they.

“In 1894 a statue to their beloved Czar, Alexander II, was unveiled at Helsingfors, a statue which is one of the noblest works of art in the capital and which is still often decorated with wreaths and flowers by the grateful Finns. It is almost unbelievable that when this statue was unveiled the Governor-general forbade the singing of an ode written for that occasion, because he took the phrase ‘The Father of Finnish liberties’ to imply a condemnation of his less enlightened successor.”

Perhaps you would like to read a translation of one verse of this ode, which tells of the gratitude of the Finnish people to the one who restored their liberties, while at the same time it shows how far removed from such praise is a government which could prohibit the singing of such a hymn. Here is the first verse:

“Hail noble prince! From town and land
Our greetings come, from isle and strand,
From forest, hill and dale.
Wherever Finland’s folks may rest,
Their debt for all they value best,
In love to thee they pay.”

This excursion into Swedish history is longer than I intended, and has prevented me from telling you before that I left Stockholm last night on one of the delightful little steamers that ply across the Gulf of Bothnia from Sweden’s capital to Åbo, the ancient capital of Finland.

It is a charming sail. Much of the time we were within sight of land, and some of the most picturesque land in the world. A perfect swarm of islands of all sizes and shapes guard the coasts both of Finland and Sweden. Some of these islands are tree-clad down to the water’s edge; others are bare, gaunt, smooth rocks, whose surface has been washed by ten thousand storms—I was about to say ten thousand tides when I remembered that the Baltic is almost a tideless sea. It is a sea, too, that is being constantly conquered by the land, for, through some unexplained action of mighty subterranean forces, without volcanic shock or earthquake tremor, the land both of the Swedish and Finnish shores is gradually rising. On the northern end of the Baltic the land gains on the water at the rate of about four feet in a hundred years, and that the sea is at a very different level from what it was some thousands of years ago is shown by the fact that the remains of viking ships are found on the tops of very considerable hills at some distance from the shores.

After sailing across a strip of clear water free from islands, between which we thread our way for three hours after leaving Stockholm, we come to Mariehamn, about halfway between the two shores. Then comes another little stretch of clear water, and then another great archipelago like the one on the Swedish shore, and between hundreds of little islands and great islands our steamer makes its way to its berth in the port of Åbo.

Very much like its neighboring shore on the opposite side is the approach to Åbo. Some of the islands are mere bare rocks, sticking their heads only a few feet above the surface of the sea, while others contain farms and forests and a considerable population. Many beautiful villas adorn some of these islands, and a rare place they afford for a holiday or a summer residence.

But the Finnish shore can boast islands enough to furnish one for every day of a decade, and before the next decade is over very likely some new ones will arise above the surface of the water, like the one which had almost come to the surface in 1907, but not near enough to be charted, or to prevent the wreckage of the Czar’s yacht upon it.

Sweden and Finland rest upon the same submerged plateau of solid rock, which adds another proof to my contention that, for all practical and descriptive purposes at least, Finland must still be considered a part of Scandinavia.

Though one crosses the Gulf of Bothnia in the night, he does not cross in the dark, for at this midsummer season there is no real darkness in this fairyland of midnight dawn. I was reminded very forcibly by contrast of the last time I crossed this bit of blue sea, for it was then a white sea. As far as the eye could reach, it could rest upon nothing but ice, solid fields of it, to the north and south, to the east and west.

Soon after we started it grew dark, for it was midwinter then. A blinding snowstorm came on; the road-way between the ice floes was a narrow one, and, that we might keep a straight course, a powerful searchlight rigged to the foremast was set blazing, and its blinding white light, far out over the expanse of ice and snow, showed the narrow line of blue through which we must steer. Sometimes we would pass a steamer with a searchlight of her own, dazzling us for a moment with her radiance, while we returned the compliment by throwing our searchlight into her eyes.

Men with lanterns and sledges came from the towns on the shore, far out from the land, to get the cargo meant for their port, and could come right up to the steamer’s side, for the ice made a continual wharf forty miles long to the sea.

When we struck the ice on the Finnish shore we found a different “proposition,” which the little _Wellamo_ attacked right bravely, and for six hours or more we made good headway. When the ice was only three or four inches thick she would go through it as a cat would go through a pan of cream; when it was six or eight inches thick it was like plowing through soft butter; when it grew to be a foot thick it was like cutting our way through a stiff old cheese; and when the ice became two feet thick or more it was too much for the _Wellamo_, powerful as her engines were.

She would fall back and butt the ice again and again and again, but it was of no use. She would crunch it under her forefoot, and would almost rise on top of it, but it would always pile itself up in resistless masses in front of her.

Another ice-breaker came out from the Finnish shore to help us, but she proved of no avail, and was soon fast and tight in the ice two hundred yards from us. All day long the captain and crew worked to get us free. A dozen men with ice picks and axes hewed away at the frosty enemy that held us fast, but why the captain let them wear out their muscles in attempting the impossible I could not understand, for a tribe of Brownies might just as well attempt to level the Andes.

Families of seals came up through their breathing holes to look at us. They usually consisted of the old father and mother seal and one or two white, shaggy little babies, that looked like little polar bears. They were very tame and would let me go within twenty feet of them, when I left the steamer to pay them a visit. Then they would waddle off into the water. Sometimes a mother seal would poke her baby off the ice floe into the water out of harm’s way, which the little fellow apparently resented, for he would shake his shaggy head and scramble up on the ice again.

Surrounded by these interesting and novel scenes, we spent thirty hours ice-bound in the Baltic. Then the biggest ice-breaker of all, the _Sampo_, came to our rescue and landed us safely in Finland, after two nights and a day in the ice floe.

I was forcibly reminded of this memorable journey, because last night we sailed on the same stanch little steamer, the _Wellamo_, across smiling waters and between charming islands, with the sun to light our way for the most part instead of the electric lights, and when we reached the harbor there was that same benevolent old _Sampo_, the ice-breaker, that released us from our imprisonment, lying at the wharf. Her occupation is gone for the present, for, until next winter at least, she will not have to relieve any smaller steamers in distress, but can shove her ugly but useful nose in and out among the islands, whose people doubtless welcome her coming as we so gladly welcomed her on that January night which I have described.

The interesting sights and peoples whom I found on my arrival in Åbo I must describe in another letter.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

THIRTEENTH LETTER

Relates to Åbo, the ancient capital of Finland; tells of
its famous castle and the picture of the scene once enacted
there; its market place; its hospitable people; its fine old
Cathedral; the tombs of the heroes of the Thirty Years’ War and
of Queen Katherine, the peasant queen of Sweden.

ÅBO, FINLAND, July 10.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

Finland has four important commercial ports—Åbo, Hangö, Helsingfors, and Viborg. The two former are available in winter, for though not ice free, as the experience I related in the last chapter proves, the icebreakers can usually plow their way through and reach their berths in the course of time. Helsingfors and Viborg, however, are usually impossible in the winter time.

I was not sorry that my engagements led me first to Åbo, for historically it is the most interesting town in Finland. It is true that it is robbed of its ancient glory as the capital of the country and the seat of its great university, for both the capital and the university have been removed within the last hundred years to the more eligible site of Helsingfors. But Åbo has lost little time in crying over spilt milk or bewailing its ancient glories. Especially of late she has been making the most of her fine situation, as the city nearest to its neighbor, Sweden, and has greatly developed its commercial possibilities.

The port is a mile or more away from the heart of the city, with which it is connected by a line of electric cars. Almost the first thing that I saw on landing was a huge building covered with gray plaster. I found it difficult to decide whether it was a warehouse, a factory, or a prison. I was wrong in all my guesses, for it was Åbo’s famous castle, one of the great historic landmarks of Finland, and now converted into a museum, where one can study the costumes, the ancient armor, the furniture, and the articles of home life of this hardy, vigorous race.

The scene of one of the most interesting pictures that I ever saw is laid in this old castle. It is by Edelfelt, and now hangs in the national gallery at Helsingfors.

In a room of state in the old fortress lies an open coffin, in which is seen the face of a stern warrior with a long, flowing beard. Another soldier is standing by, with wrath upon his features, and, violating the sanctity of death, he pulls violently at the dead man’s beard. A lady of noble mien is standing near, resentment and haughty indignation depicted on her queenly face.

The great picture, perhaps the most famous and dramatic one ever painted by a Finnish artist, tells its own story, and when we know a little of Finnish history we can easily interpret it. The old man in the coffin is Klas Fleming, the commander of the castle; the soldier standing by and pulling the dead man’s beard is Duke Carl of Sweden, afterwards King Charles IX, who was striving to gain the throne and whom the Finns had vigorously opposed in favor of Sigismund their king. The duke could not capture the castle while the old commander was alive, but when he was killed it soon capitulated.

Angry at the long resistance, Duke Carl could only vent his wrath by showing an indignity to the dead. Turning to the commandant’s wife, who was standing by, he said, “If your husband were living his head would not be as safe as it is now.” But the countess, undaunted, replied, while her eyes flashed fire, “If he were living, your highness would not be here.”

There are two more very interesting centers in Åbo of which I must tell you. One is the market place, and the other the ancient cathedral. In the market place one can learn what people are to-day; in the cathedral one can learn from the monuments and the inscriptions something of what they were seven hundred years ago.

These open markets in the central square of most European cities are a great institution, and if Americans really want to reduce the cost of living, about which we all talk so much and so vehemently, they cannot do better than to establish such a country market in every considerable town throughout the Union.