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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of

STARLING W. CHILDS
YALE 1891

HOLLAND AND SCANDINAVIA

SKETCHES

IN

Holland and Scandinavia

BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
Author of "Walks in Romh," " Walks in London," " Cities of Italy,'
" Walks in Paris," Etc.

PHILADELPHIA
DAVID MCKAY, PUBLISHER
1022 MARKET STREET

PREFACE.
The slight sketches in this volume are only the
result of ordinary tours in the countries they
attempt to describe. Yet the days they recall were
so delightful, and their memory — especially of the
tour in Norway — is so indescribably sunny, that I
cannot help hoping their publication may lead others
to enjoy what is at once so pleasant and so easy of
attainment.
Augustus J. C. Hake.
Holmhurst : November 1884.

contents

PAGE
IN HOLLAND  I

IN DENMARK ........ 59

IN SWEDEN ......... 83

IN NORWAY ........ 105

HOLLAND

IN HOLLAND.
\ T Roosendal, about an hour's railway journey
¦*¦ *¦ from Antwerp, the boundary between Belgium
and Holland is crossed, and a branch line diverges
to Breda. Somehow, like most travellers, we could not help
expecting to see some marked change on reaching a
new country, and in Holland one could not repress the
expectation of beginning at once to see the pictures
of Teniers and Gerard Dou in real life. We were
certainly disappointed at first. Open heaths were
succeeded by woods of stunted firs, and then by fields
with thick hedges of beech or alder, till the towers of
Breda came in sight. Here a commonplace omnibus
took us to the comfortable inn of Zum Kroon, and
we were shown into bedrooms reached by an open
wooden staircase from the courtyard, and quickly join
ed the table d'hote, at which the magnates of the town
were seated with napkins well tucked up under their
chins, talking, with full mouths, in Dutch, of which to

4 IN HOLLAND,
our unaccustomed ears the words seemed all in one
string. Most excellent was the dinner — roast meat
and pears, quantities of delicious vegetables cooked
in different ways, piles of ripe mulberries and cake,
and across the little garden, with its statues and
bright flower-beds, we could see the red sails of the
barges going up and down the canals.
As soon as dinner was over, we sallied forth to see
the town, which impressed us more than any Dutch
city did afterwards, perhaps because it was the first
we saw. The winding streets — one of them ending in
a high windmill — are lined with houses wonderfully-
varied in outline, and of every shade of delicate
colour, yellow, grey, or brown, though the windows
always have white frames and bars. Passing through
a low archway under one of the houses, we found
ourselves, when we least expected it, in the public
garden, a kind of wood where the trees have killed all
the grass, surrounded by canals, beyond one of which
is a great square chateau built by William III. of
England, encircled by the Merk, and enclosing an
arcaded court. There was an older chateau of 1350
at Breda, but we failed to find it.
In stately splendour, from the old houses of the
market-place, rises the noble Hervormde Kerk
(Protestant Church), with a lofty octagon tower, and

BREDA. 5
a most characteristic bulbous Dutch spire. Here, as
we wanted to see the interior, we first were puzzled
by our ignorance of Dutch, finding, as everywhere in
the smaller towns, that the natives knew no language
but their own. But two old women in high caps and
gold earrings observed our puzzledom from a window

r^^^^r^,. ft*

THE MARKET-PLACE AT BREDA.

and pointed to a man and a key — we nodded ; the
man pointed to himself, a door, and a key — we
nodded ; and we were soon inside the building. It
was our first introduction to Dutch Calvinism and
iconoclasm, and piteous indeed was it to see so
magnificent a church thickly covered with whitewash,

6 IN HOLLAND.
and the quantity of statues which it contains of
deceased Dukes and Duchesses of Nassau bereft of
their legs and petticoats. Only, in a grand side
chapel on the left of the choir, the noble tomb
of Engelbrecht II. of Nassau, general under the
Emperor Maximilian (1505), remains intact. The
guide lights matches to shine through the transparent
alabaster of the figures ; that of the Duke represents
Death, that of the Duchess Sleep, as they lie beneath
a stone slab which bears the armour of Engelbrecht,
and is supported by figures of Caesar, Hannibal,
Regulus, and Philip of Macedon ; that of Caesar is
sublime. The tomb of Sir Francis Vere in West
minster Abbey is of the same design, and is supposed
to be copied from this famous monument. Outside
the chapel is the tomb of Engelbrecht V. of Nassau.
with all his family kneeling, in quaint headdresses.
The other sights of the church are the brass font in
the Baptistery, and a noble brass in the choir of
William de Gaellen, Dean of the Chapter, 1539. It
will be observed that here, and almost everywhere else
in Holland, the names of saints which used to be
attached to the churches have disappeared ; the
buildings are generally known as the old church, or
new church, or great church.
After a delicious breakfast of coffee and thick

ZEALAND. 7
cream, with rusks, scones, and different kinds of
cheese, always an indispensable in Dutch breakfasts,
we took to the railway again and crossed Zealand,
which chiefly consists of four islands, Noordt Beve-
land, Zuid Beveland, Schouwen, and Walcheren, and
is less visited by the rest of the Netherlanders than
any other part of the country. The land is all cut
up into vast polders, as the huge meadows are called,
which are recovered from the sea and protected by
embankments. Here, if human care was withdrawn
for six months, the whole country would be under
the sea again. A corps of engineers called ' water-
staat' are continually employed to watch the waters,
and to keep in constant repair the dykes, which are
formed of clay at the bottom, as that is more water
proof than anything else, and thatched with willows,
which are here grown extensively for the purpose.
If the sea passes a dyke, ruin is imminent, an alarm
bell rings, and the whole population rush to the
rescue. The moment one dyke is even menaced, the
people begin to build another inside it, and then rely
upon the double defence, whilst they fortify the old
one. But all their care has not preserved the islands
of Zealand. Three centuries ago, Schouwen was
entirely submerged, and every living creature was
drowned. Sc^n afte*" Noordt Beveland was sub-

8

IN HOLLAND.

merged, and remained for several years entirely under
water, only the points of the church spires being
visible. Zuid Beveland had been submerged in the
fourteenth century. Walcheren was submerged as
late as 1808, and Tholen even in 1825. It has been
aptly asserted that the sea to the inhabitants of

EERGEN-OP-Z00M.

Holland is what Vesuvius is to Torre del Greco. How
well its French name of Pays-Bas suits the country !
De Amicis says that the Dutch have three enemies—
the sea, the lakes, and the rivers ; they repel the sea,
they dry the lakes, and they imprison the rivers ; but
with the sea it is a combat which never ceases.

BERGEN OP-ZOOM, GOES. 9
The story of the famous siege of 1749 made us
linger at Bergen-op-Zoom, a clean, dull little town
with bright white houses surrounding an irregular
market-place, and surmounted by the heavy tower of
the Church of S. Gertrude. In the Stadhuis is a fine
carved stone chimney-piece ; but there is little worth
seeing, and we were soon speeding across the rich
pastures of Zuid Beveland, and passing its capital of
Goes, prettily situated amongst cherry orchards, the
beautiful cruciform church with a low central spire
rising above the trees on its ramparts. Every now
and then the train seems scarcely out of the water,
which covers a vast surface of the pink-green flats,
and recalls the description in Hudibras of — ¦
A country that draws fifty feet of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature,
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drown a province, does but spring a leak.
The peasant women at the stations are a perpetual
amusement, for there is far more costume here than in
most parts of Holland, and peculiar square handsome
gold ornaments, something like closed golden books,
are universally worn, on each side of the face.
So, crossing a broad salt canal into the island of
Walcheren, we reached Middleburg, a handsome town
which was covered with water to the house tops when

io IN HOLLAND.
the island was submerged. It was the birthplace of
Zach Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, the inventors of
the telescope, c. 1610. In the market-place is a most
beautiful Gothic townhall, built by the architect
Keldermans, early in the sixteenth century. We
asked a well-dressed boy how we could get into it,
and he, without further troubling himself, pointed the
way with his finger. The building contains a quaint
old hall called the Vierschaar, and a so-called museum,
but there is little enough to see. As we came out
the boy met us. ' You must give me something :
I pointed out the entrance of the Stadhuis to you.'
In Holland we have always found that no one, rich
or poor, does a kindness or even a civility for
nothing !
The crowd in the market-place was so great that
it was impossible to sketch the Stadhuis as we should
have wished, but the people themselves were delight
fully picturesque. The women entirely conceal their
hair under their white caps, but have golden cork
screws sticking out on either side the face, like weap
ons of defence, from which the golden slabs we have
observed before were pendent. The Nieuwe Kerk is
of little interest, though it contains the tomb of Will
iam of Holland, who was elected Emperor of Germany
in 1 250, and we wandered on through the quiet streets,

DORTRECHT. n
till a Gothic arch in an ancient wall looked tempting.
Passing through it we found ourselves in the enclosure
of the old abbey, shaded by a grove of trees, and
surrounded by ancient buildings, part of which are
appropriated as the Hotel Abdij, where we arrived
utterly famished, and found a table d'h6te at 2.30 P.M.
unspeakably reviving.
Any one who sees Holland thoroughly ought also
to visit Zieriksee, the capital of the island of Schou
wen ; but the water locomotion thither is so difficult
and tedious that we preferred keeping to the railways,
which took us back in the dark over the country we
had already traversed, and a little more, to Dortrecht,
where there is a convenient tramway to take travellers
from the station into the town. Here, at the H6tel
de Fries, we found comfortable bedrooms, with board
ed floors and box-beds like those in Northumbrian cot
tages, and we had supper in the public room, separated
into two parts by a dai's for strangers, whence we
looked down into the humbler division, which recalled
many homely scenes of Ostade and Teniers in its
painted wooden ceiling, its bright polished furniture,
its cat and dog and quantity of birds and flowers, its
groups of boors at round tables drinking out of
tankards, and the landlady and her daughter in their
gleaming gold ornaments, sitting knitting, with the

12 IN HOLLAND.
waiter standing behind them amusing himself by the
general conversation.
Our morning at Dortrecht was very delightful, and
it is a thoroughly charming place. Passing under a
dark archway in a picturesque building of Charles V.
opposite the hotel, we found ourselves at once on the
edge of an immense expanse of shimmering river,
with long rich polders beyond, between which the
wide flood breaks into three different branches. Red
and white sails flit down them. Here and there rise
a line of pollard willows or clipped elms, and now and
then a church-spire. On the nearest shore an ancient
windmill, coloured in delicate tints of grey and yellow,
surmounts a group of white buildings. On the left is
a broad esplanade of brick, lined with ancient houses,
and a canal with a bridge, the long arms of which are
ready to open at a touch and give a passage to the
great yellow-masted barges, which are already half
intercepting the bright red house-fronts ornamented
with stone, which belong to some public buildings
facing the end of the canal. With what a confusion
of merchandise are the boats laden, and how gay is
the colouring, between the old weedy posts to which
they are moored !
It was from hence that Isabella of France, with
Sir John de Hainault and many other faithful knights,

DORTRECHT.

13

set out on their expedition against Edward II. and
the government of the Spencers.
From the busy port, where nevertheless they are
dredging, we cross another bridge and find ourselves
in a quietude like that of a cathedral close in England.
On one side is a wide pool half covered with floating
timber, and, in the other half, reflecting like a mirror
the houses on the opposite shore, with their bright
gardens of lilies and hollyhocks, and trees of mountain
ash, which bend their masses of scarlet berries to the
still water. Between the houses are glints of blue
river and of inevitable windmills on the opposite shore.
And all this we observe standing in the shadow
of a huge church, the Groote Kerk, with a nave
of the fourteenth century, and a choir of the fifteenth,
and a gigantic brick tower, in which three long Gothic
arches, between octagonal tourelles, enclose several
tiers of windows. At the top is a great clock, and
below the church a grove of elms, through which
fitful sunlight falls on the grass and the dead red of
the brick pavement (so grateful to feet sore with the
sharp stones of other Dutch cities), where groups of
fishermen are collecting in their blue shirts and white
trousers. There is little to see inside this or any other
church in Holland ; travellers will rather seek for the

14

IN HOLLAND.

memorials, at the Kloveniers Doelen, of the famous
Synod of Dort, which was held 1618-19, in the hope
of effecting a compromise between the Gomarists, or
disciples of Calvin, and the Arminians who followed
Zwingli, and who had recently obtained the name of

GROOTE KERK, DORTRECHT.
Remonstants from the ' remonstrance ' which they
had addressed eight years before in defence of their
doctrines. The Calvinists held .that the greater part
of mankind was excluded from grace, which the

DORTRECHT.

»S

Arminians denied ; but at the Synod of Dort the
Calvinists proclaimed themselves as infallible as the
Pope, and their resolutions became the law of the
Dutch Reformed Church. The Arminians were forth
with outlawed ; a hundred ministers who refused to
subscribe to the dictates of the Synod were banished ;

CANAL AT DORTRECHT.

Hugo Grotius and Rombout Hoogerbeets were im
prisoned for life at Loevestein ; the body of the
secretary Ledenberg,who committed suicide in prison,
was hung ; and Van Olden Barneveldt, the friend of
William the Silent, was beheaded in his seventy-
second year.

1 6 IN HOLLAND.
There is nothing in the quiet streets of Dortrecht
to remind one that it was once one of the most
important commercial cities of Holland, taking
precedence even of Rotterdam, Delft, Leyden, and
Amsterdam. It also possessed a privilege called the
Staple of Dort, by which all the carriers on the Maas
and Rhine were forced to unload their merchandise
here, and pay all duties imposed, only using the boats
or porters of the place in their work, and so bringing
a great revenue to the town.
More than those in any of the other towns of
Holland do the little water streets of Dortrecht recall
Venice, the houses rising abruptly from the canals ;
only the luminous atmosphere and the shimmering
water changing colour like a chameleon, are wanting.
Through the street of wine — Wijnstraat — built
over storehouses used for the staple, we went to
the Museum to see the pictures. There were two
schools of Dortrecht. Jacob Geritse Cuyp (1575),
Albert Cuyp (1605), Ferdinand Bol (161 1), Nicolas
Maas (1632), and Schalken (1643) belonged to the
former ; Arend de Gelder, Arnold Houbraken, Dirk
Stoop, and Ary Schefferare of the latter. Sunshine
and glow were the characteristics of the first school,
greyness and sobriety of the second. But there are
few good pictures at Dort now, and some of the best

ROTTERDAM.

i7

works of Cuyp are to be found in our National
Gallery, executed at his native place and portraying
the great brick tower of the church in the golden
haze of evening, seen across rich pastures, where the
cows are lying deep in the meadow grass. The works
of Ary Scheffer are now the most interesting pictures
in the Dortrecht Gallery. Of the subject ' Christus
Consolator' there are two representations. In the
more striking of these the pale Christ is seated
amongst the sick, sorrowful, blind, maimed, and en
slaved, who are all stretching out their hands to Him.
Beneath is the tomb which the artist executed for his
mother, Cornelia Scheffer, whose touching figure is
represented lying with outstretched hands, in the
utmost abandonment of repose.
An excursion should be made from Dortrecht to
the castle of Loevestein on the Rhine, where Grotius,
imprisoned in 1619, was concealed by his wife in the
chest which brought in his books and linen. It was
conveyed safely out of the castle by her courageous
maid Elsje van Houwening, and was taken at first to
the house of Jacob Daatselaer, a supposed friend of
Grotius, who refused to render any assistance. But
his wife consented to open the chest, and the philo
sopher, disguised as a mason, escaped to Brabant.
It is much best to visit Rotterdam as an excursion

18 IN HOLLAND.
from Dortrecht. We thought it the most odious
place we ever were in — immense, filthy, and not very
picturesque. Its handsomest feature is the vast quay
called the Boompjes, on the Maas. Here and there a
great windmill reminds you unmistakably of where
you are, and the land streets are intersected every
where by water streets, the carriages being constantly
stopped to let ships pass through the bridges. In the
Groote Markt stands a bronze statue of Desiderius
Erasmus — ' Vir saeculi sui primarius, et civis omnium
praestantissimus,' which is the work of Hendrik de
Keyser (1662), and in the Wijde Kerkstraat is the
house where he was born, inscribed ' Haec est parva
domus, magnus qua natus Erasmus, 1467,' but it is
now a tavern. The great church of S. Lawrence — •
Groote Kerk — built in 1477-87, contains the tombs of
a number of Dutch admirals, and has a grand pave
ment of monumental slabs, but is otherwise frightful.
The portion used for service is said to be ' so con
veniently constructed that the zealous Christians of
Rotterdam prefer sleeping through a sermon there,
to any other church in the city.' Part of the rest is
used as a cart-house, the largest chapel is a commo
dious carpenter's shop, and the aisles round the part
which is still a church, where there has been an
attempt at restoration in painting the roof yellow and

GOUDA. 1 9
putting up some hideous yellow seats, are a playground
for the children of the town, who are freely admitted
in their perambulators, though for strangers there is a
separate fee for each part of the edifice they enter.
We went to see the pictures in the museum be
queathed to the town by Jacob Otto Boyman, but did
not admire them much. It takes time to accustom
one's mind to Dutch art, and the endless representa
tions of family life, with domestic furniture, pots and
pans, &c, or of the simple local landscapes — clipped
avenues, sandy roads, dykes, and cottages, or even of
the cows, and pigs, and poultry, which seem wonder
fully executed, but, where one has too much of the
originals, scarcely worth the immense amount of time
and labour bestowed upon them. The calm seas of
Van de Welde and Van der Capelle only afford a cer
tain amount of relief. The scenes of village life are
seldom pleasing, often coarse, and never have anything
elevating to offer or ennobling to recall. We thought
that the real charm of the Dutch school to outsiders
consists in the immense power and variety of its
portraits. Hating Rotterdam, we thankfully felt oui selves
speeding over the flat, rich lands to Gouda, where
we found an agricultural fe'te going on, banners
half way down the houses, and a triumphal arch as

20 IN HOLLAND.
the entrance to the square, formed of spades, rakes,
and forks, with a plough at the top, and decorated
with corn, potatoes, turnips, and carrots, and cornu
copias pouring out flowers at the sides. In the
square — a great cheese market, for the Gouda cheese
is esteemed the best in Holland — is a Gothic Stadhuis,
and beyond it, the Groote Kerk of 1552, of which
the bare interior is enlivened by the stained windows
executed by Wonter and Dirk Crabeth in 1555-57.
We were the better able to understand the design of
these noble windows because the cartoon for each
was spread upon the pavement in front of it ; but one
could not help one's attention being unpleasantly dis
tracted by the number of men of the burgher class,
smoking and with their hats on, who were allowed to
use the church as a promenade. Gouda also made an
unpleasant impression upon us, because, expensive
as we found every hotel in Holland, we were no
where so outrageously cheated as here.
It is a brief journey to the Hague — La Haye,
Gravenhage — most delightful of little capitals, with its
comfortable hotels and pleasant surroundings. The
town is still so small that it seems to merit the name
of ' the largest village in Europe,' which was given to
it because the jealousy of other towns prevented its
having any vote in the States General till the time of

THE HAGUE. 21
Louis Bonaparte, who gave it the privileges of a city.
It is said that the Hague, more than any other place,
may recall what Versailles was just before the great
revolution. It has thoroughly the aspect of a little
royal city. Without any of the crowd and bustle
of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, it is not dead like the

THE V1JVER.

smaller towns of Holland ; indeed, it even seems to
have a quiet gaiety, without dissipation, of its own.
All around are parks and gardens, whence wide streets
lead speedily through the new town of the rich bour
geoisie to the old central town of stadtholders, where
a beautiful lake, the Vijver, or fish-pond, comes as a

22 IN HOLLAND.
surprise, with the eccentric old palace of the Binnen-
hof rising straight out of its waters. We had been
told it was picturesque, but were prepared for nothing
so charming as the variety of steep roofs and towers,
the clear reflections, the tufted islet, and the beautiful
colouring of the whole scene of the Vijver. Skirting
the lake,we entered the precincts of the palace through
the picturesque Gudevangen Poort, where Cornelius
de Witte, Burgomaster of Dort, was imprisoned in
1672, on a false accusation of having suborned the
surgeon William Tichelaur to murder the Prince of
Orange. He. was dragged out hence and torn to
pieces by the people, together with his brother Jean
de Witte, Grand Pensioner, whose house remains hard
by in the Kneuterdijk.
The court of the Binnenhof is exceedingly hand
some, and contains the ancient Gothic Hall of the
Knights, where Johann van Olden Barneveld, Grand
Pensioner, or Prime Minister, was condemned to death
' for having conspired to dismember the States of the
Netherlands, and greatly troubled God's Church,' and
in the front of which (May 24, 1619) he was beheaded.
Close to the north-east gate of the Binnenhof is
the handsome house called Mauritshuis, containing
the inestimable Picture Gallery of the Hague, which
will bear many visits, and has the great charm of not

THE HAGUE.

23

being huge beyond the powers of endurance. On the
ground floor are chiefly portraits, amongst which a
simple dignified priest by Philippe de Champaigne,
with a far-away expression, will certainly arrest at
tention. Deeply interesting is the portrait by Raves
teyn of William the Siknt, in his ruff and steel armour

HALL OF THE KNIGHTS, THE HAGUE.

embossed with gold — a deeply lined face, with a slight
peaked beard. His widow, Louie de Coligny, is also
represented. There is a fine portrait by Schalcken
of our William the Third. Noble likenesses of Sir
George Sheffield and his wife Anna Wake, by Van
dyke, are a pleasing contrast to the many works of

24 IN HOLLAND.
Rubens. There are deeply interesting portraits by
Albert Durer and Holbein.
On the first floor we must sit down before the
great picture which Rembrandt painted in his twenty-
sixth year (1632) of the School of Anatomy. Here
the shrewd professor, Nicholaus Tulp, with a face
brimming with knowledge and intelligence, is ex
pounding the anatomy of a corpse to a number of
members of the guild of surgeons, some of whom are
full of eager interest and inquiry, whilst others are in
attentive : the dead figure is greatly foreshortened
and not repulsive. In another room, a fine work of
Thomas de Keyser represents the Four Burgomasters
of Amsterdam hearing of the arrival of Marie de
Medicis. A beautiful work of Adrian van Ostadti
full of light and character — but only represents a
stolid boor drinking to the health of a fiddler, while
a child plays with a dog in the background.
A group of admirers will always be found round
' the Immortal Bull ' of Paul Potter, which was con
sidered the fourth picture in importance in the Louvre,
when the spoils of Europe were collected at Paris.
De Amicis says, ' It lives, it breathes ; with his bull
Paul Potter has written the true ' Idyl of Holland.'
It is, however — being really a group of cattle — not a
pleasing, though a life-like picture. Much more

THE HAGUE. 25
attractive is the exquisite 'Presentation' of Rembrandt
(163 1), in which Joseph and Mary, simple peasants,
present the Holy Child to Simeon, a glorious old
man in a jewelled robe, who invokes a blessing upon
the infant, while other priests look on with interest.
A wonderful ray of light, falling upon the principal
group, illuminates the whole temple. Perhaps the
most beautiful work in the whole gallery is the Young
Housekeeper of Gerard Dou. A lovely young woman
sits at work by an open window looking into a street.
By her side is the baby asleep in its cradle, over which
the maid is leaning. The light falls on the chandelier
and all the household belongingsof awell-to-do citizen :
in all there is the same marvellous finish ; it is said
that the handle of the broom took three days to paint.
There is not much to discover in the streets of the
Hague. In the great square called the Plein is the
statue of William the Silent, with his finger raised,
erected in 1848 'by the grateful people to the father
of their fatherland.' In the fish market, tame storks
are kept, for the same reason that bears are kept at
Berne, because storks are the arms of the town. But
the chief attraction of the place lies in its lovely
walks amid the noble beeches and oaks of the Bosch,
beyond which on the left is Huis ten Bosch, the Petit
Trianon of the Hague, the favourite palace of Queen

26

IN HOLLAND.

Sophie, who held her literary court and died there.
It is a quiet country house, lookingout upon flats, with
dykes and a windmill. All travellers seem to visit it,
¦ — which must be a ceaseless surprise to the extortion
ate custode to whom they have to pay a gulden a head,
and who will hurry them rapidly through some com
monplace rooms in which there is nothing really worth
seeing. One room is covered with paintings of the

SCHEVENINGEN.

Rubens school, amid which, high in the dome, is a
portrait of the Princess Amalia of Solms, who built
the house in 1647.
A tram takes people for twopence halfpenny to
Scheveningen through the park, a thick wood with
charming forest scenery. As the trees become more
scattered, the roar of the North Sea is heard upon the
shore. Above the sands, on the dunes or sand-hills,

DELFT.

27

which extend from the Helderto Dunkirk, is abroad
terrace, lined on one side by a row of wooden pavil
ions with flags and porticoes, and below it are long
lines of tents, necessary in the intense glare, while,
nearer the waves, are thousands of beehive-like
refuges, with a single figure seated on each. The flat
monotonous shore would soon pall upon one, yet
through the whole summer it is an extraordinary lively
scene. The placid happiness of Dutch family life has
here taken possession. On Sunday afternoons,
especially, the sands seem as crowded with human
existence as they are represented in the picture of
Lingelbach, which we have seen in the Mauritshuis,
portraying the vast multitude assembled here to wit
ness the embarkation of Charles II. for England.
An excursion must be made to Delft, only twenty
minutes distant from the Hague by rail. Pepys calls
it ' a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in
every street,' and that is a tolerably accurate descrip
tion. It seems thinly inhabited, and the Dutch them
selves look upon it as a place where one will die of
ennui. It has scarcely changed v/ith two hundred
years. The view of Delft by Van der Meer in the
Museum at the Hague might have been painted
yesterday. All the trees are clipped, for in artificial
Holland every work of Nature is artificialised. At

28

IN HOLLAND.

certain seasons, numbers of storks may be seen upon
the chimney-tops, for Delft is supposed to be the stork
town/«r excellence. Near the shady canal Oude Delft
is a low building, once the Convent of S. Agata, with
an ornamented door surmounted by a relief, leading

ENTRANCE TO S. AGATA, DELFT.
into a courtyard. It is a common barrack now, for
Holland, which has no local histories, has no regard
whatever for its historic associations or monuments.
Yet this is the greatest shrine of Dutch history, for it
is here that William the Silent died.

DELFT.

29

Philip II. had promised 25,000 crowns of gold to
any one who would murder the Prince of Orange.
An attempt had already been made, but had failed,
and William refused to take any measures for self-
protection, saying, ' It is useless : my years are in
the hands of God : if there is a wretch who has no
fear of death, my life is in his hand, however I may
guard it.' At length, a young man of seven-and-
twenty appeared at Delft, who gave himself out to be
one Guyon, a Protestant, son of Pierre Guyon, exe
cuted at Besancon for having embraced Calvinism,
and declared that he was exiled for his religion.
Really he was Balthazar Gerard, a bigoted Catholic,
but his conduct in Holland soon procured him the
reputation of an evangelical saint. The Prince took
him into his service and sent him to accompany a
mission from the States of Holland to the Court of
France, whence he returned to bring the news of the
death of the Duke of Anjou to William. At that
time the Prince was living with his court in the con
vent of S. Agata, where he received Balthazar alone
in his chamber. The moment was opportune, but the
would-be assassin had no arms ready. William gave
him a small sum of money and bade him hold him
self in readiness to be sent back to France. With
the money Balthazar bought two pistols from a soldier

3o IN HOLLAND.
(who afterwards killed himself when he heard the use
which was made of the purchase). On the next day,
June io, 1584, Balthazar returned to the convent as
William was descending the staircase to dinner, with
his fourth wife, Louise de Coligny (daughter of the
Admiral who fell in the massacre of S. Bartholomew),
on his arm. He presented his passport and begged
the Prince to sign it, but was told to return later. At
dinner the Princess asked William who was the young
man who had spoken to him, for his expression was
the most terrible she had ever seen. The Prince
laughed, said it was Guyon, and was as gay as usual.
Dinner being over, the family party were about to re
mount the staircase. The assassin was waiting in a
dark corner at the foot of the stairs, and as William
passed he discharged a pistol with three balls and
fled. The Prince staggered, saying, ' I am wounded ;
God have mercy upon me and my poor people.' His
sister Catherine van Schwartzbourg asked, ' Do you
trust in Jesus Christ ? ' He said, ' Yes,' with a feeble
voice, sat down upon the stairs, and died.
Balthazar reached the rampart of the town in
safety, hoping to swim to the other side of the moat,
where a horse awaited him. But he had dropped his
hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was
traced and seized before he could leap from the wall.

DELFT.

3i

Amid horrible tortures, he not only confessed, but
continued to triumph in his crime. His judges be
lieved him to be possessed of the devil. The next
day he was executed. His right hand was burnt off
in a tube of red-hot iron ; the flesh of his arms and
legs was torn off with red-hot pincers ; but he never
made a cry. It was not till his breast was cut open,
and his heart torn out and flung in his face, that he
expired. His head was then fixed on a pike, and his
body cut into four quarters, exposed on the four gates
of the town.
Close to the Prinsenhof is the Oude Kerk with a
leaning tower. It is arranged like a very ugly theatre
inside, but contains, with other tombs of celebrities,
the monument of Admiral van Tromp, 1650 — 'Mar
tinus Harberti Trompius ' — whose effigy lies upon his
back, with swollen feet. It was this Van Tromp who
defeated the English fleet under Blake, and perished,
as represented on the monument, in an engagement
off Scheveningen. It was he who, after his victory
over the English, caused a broom to be hoisted at his
mast-head to typify that he had swept the Channel
clear of his enemies.
The Nieuwe Kerk in the Groote Markt (1412-76)
contains the magnificent monument of William the
Silent by Hendrik de Keyser and A. Quellin (162 1).

32 IN HOLLAND.
Black marble columns support a white canopy over
the white sleeping figure of the Prince, who is re
presented in his little black silk cap, as he is familiar
to us in his pictures. In the recesses of the tomb —
— ' soniptueux et tourmenti, ' as Montegut calls it — are
statues of Liberty, Justice, Prudence, and Religion.
At the feet of William lies his favourite dog, which
saved his life from midnight assassins at Malines,
by awakening him. At the head of the tomb is
another figure of William, of bronze, seated. In the
same church is a monument to Hugo Grotius — ' pro-
digium Europae ' — the greatest lawyer of the seven
teenth century, presented to Henri IV. by Barneveld
as ' La merveille de la Hollande. '
On leaving the Hague a few hours should be
given to the dull university town of Leyden, unless it
has been seen as an afternoon excursion from the
capital. This melancholy and mildewed little town,
mouldering from a century of stagnation, the birth
place of Rembrandt, surrounds the central tower of
its Burg — standing in the grounds of an inn, which ex
acts payment from those who visit it. Close by is the
huge church of S. Pancras — Houglansche Kerk — of
the fifteenth century, containing the tomb of Van der
Werff, burgomaster during the famous siege, who an
swered the starving people, when they came demand-

LEYDEN. 33
ing bread or surrender, that he had ' sworn to defend
the city, and, with God's help, he meant to keep his
oath, but that if his body would help them to prolong
the defence, they might take it and share it amongst
those who were most hungry.' A covered bridge over
a canal leads to the Bredenstrasse, where there is a
picturesque grey stone Stadhuis of the sixteenth
century. It contains the principal work of Cornelius
Engelbrechtsen of Leyden (1468-1533), one of the
earliest of Dutch painters — an altarpiece representing
the Crucifixion, with the Sacrifice of Abraham and
Worship of the Brazen Serpent in the side panels,
as symbols of the Atonement : on the pedestal is
a naked body, out of which springs a tree — the
tree of life — and beside it kneel the donors. The
neighbouring church of S. Peter (13 15) contains
the tomb of Boerhaave, the physician, whose lectures
in the University were attended by Peter the Great,
and for whom a Chinese mandarin found ' a. l'illustre
M. Boerhaave, medecin, en Europe,' quite sufficient
direction. Boerhaave was the doctor who said that
the poor were his best patients, for God paid for
them. The streets are grass-grown, the houses damp, the
canals green with weed. The University has fallen
into decadence since others were established at

34 IN HOLLAND.
Utrecht, Groningen, and Amsterdam ; but Leyden is
still the most flourishing of the four. When William
of Orange offered the citizens freedom from taxes, as
a reward for their endurance of the famous siege, they
thanked him, but said they would rather have a uni
versity. Grotius and Cartesius (Descartes), Arminius
and Gomar, were amongst its professors, and the
University possesses an admirable botanical museum
and a famous collection of Japanese curiosities.
The Rhine cuts up the town of Leyden into end
less islands, connected by a hundred and fifty bridges.
On a quiet canal near the Beesten Markt is the
Museum, which contains the ' Last Judgment ' of
Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533), a scholar of En-
gelbrechtsen, and one of the patriarchs of Dutch
painting. A few minutes bring us from Leyden to Haarlem
by the railway. It crosses an isthmus between the
sea and a lake which covered the whole country
between Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam till 1839,
when it became troublesome, and the States-General
forthwith, after the fashion of Holland, voted its
destruction. Enormous engines were at once em
ployed to drain it by pumping the water into canals,
which carried it to the sea, and the country was the
richer by a new province.

HAARLEM.

35

Haarlem, on the river Spaarne, stands out distinct
in recollection from all other Dutch towns, for it has
the most picturesque market-place in Holland — the
Groote Markt — surrounded by quaint houses of
varied outline, amidst which rises the Groote Kerk

MARKET-PLACE, HAARLEM.

of S. Bavo, a noble cruciform fifteenth-century
building. The interior, however, is as bare and
hideous as all other Dutch churches. It contains a
monument to the architect Conrad, designer of the
famous locks of Katwijk, ' the defender of Holland
against the fury of the sea and the power of

36 IN HOLLAND.
tempests.' Behind the choir is the tomb of the poet
Bilderdijk, who only died in 1831, and near this the
grave of Laurenz Janzoom — the Coster or Sacristan
— who is asserted in his native town, but never be
lieved outside it, to have been the real inventor of
printing, as he is said to have cut out letters in wood,
and taken impressions from them in ink, as early as
1423. His partisans also maintain that whilst he
was attending a midnight mass, praying for patience
to endure the ill-treatment of his enemies, all his
implements were stolen, and that when he found
this out on his return he died of grief. It is further
declared that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the
brother of Gutenberg, and that it was thus that the
honour of the invention passed from Holland to
Germany, where Gutenberg produced his invention
of movable type twelve years later. There is a
statue of the Coster in front of the church, and, on
its north side, his house is preserved and adorned
with his bust.
Amongst a crowd of natives with their hats on,
talking in church as in the market-place, we waited
to hear the famous organ of Christian Mulier
(z735— 38), and grievously were we disappointed with
its discordant noises. All the men smoked in
church, and this we saw repeatedly ; but it would

HAARLEM. 37
be difficult to say where we ever saw a Dutchman
with a pipe out of his mouth. Every man seemed
to be systematically smoking away the few wits he
possessed. Opposite the Groote Kerk is the Stadhuis, an old
palace of the Counts of Holland remodelled. It
contains a delightful little gallery of the works of
Franz Hals, which at once transports the spectator
into the Holland of two hundred years ago — such is
the marvellous variety of life and vigour impressed
into its endless figures of stalwart officers and hand
some young archers pledging each other at banquet
tables and seeming to welcome the visitor with jovial
smiles as he enters the chamber, or of serene old
ladies, ' regents ' of hospitals, seated at their council
boards. The immense power of the artist is shown
in nothing so much as in the hands, often gloved,
dashed in with instantaneous power, yet always
having the effect of the most consummate finish at a
distance. Behind one of the pictures is the entrance
to the famous ' secret-room of Haarlem,' seldom seen,
but containing an inestimable collection of historic
relics of the time of the famous siege of Leyden.
April and May are the best months for visiting
Haarlem, which is the bulb nursery garden of the
world. ' Oignons a fleurs ' are advertised for sale

38 IN HOLLAND.
everywhere. Tulips are more cultivated than any
other flowers, as ministering most to the national
craving for colour; but times are changed since a
single bulb of the tulip ' L'Amiral Liefkenshoch '
sold for 4,500 florins, one of 'Viceroy' for 4,200,
and one of ' Semper Augustus' for 13,000.
Now we entered Amsterdam, to which we had
looked forward as the climax of our tour, having
read of it and pondered upon it as ' the Venice of
the north ; ' but our expectations were raised much
too high. Anything more unlike Venice it would
be difficult to imagine : and there is a terrible want
of variety and colour ; many of the smaller towns of
Holland are far more interesting and infinitely more
picturesque. A castle was built at Amsterdam in 1204, but
the town only became important in the sixteenth
century, since which it has been the most commercial
of ancient European cities. It is situated upon the
influx of the Amstel to the Y, as the arm of the
Zuider Zee which forms the harbour is called, and it
occupies a huge semicircle, its walls being enclosed
by the broad moat, six and a half miles long, which
is known as Buitensingel. The greater part of the
houses are built on piles, causing Erasmus to say
that the inhabitants lived on trees like rooks. In

AMSTERDAM.

39

the centre»of the town is the great square called
Dam, one side of which is occupied by the handsome
Royal Palace — Het Palais — built by J. van Kampen
in 1648. The Nieuwe Kerk (1408-1470) contains a
number of monuments to admirals, including those of
Van Ruiter — ' immensi tremor oceani ' — who com-

MILL NEAR AMSTERDAM.

manded at the battle of Solbay, and van Speyk,
who blew himself up with his ship in 1831, rather
than yield to the Belgians. In the Oude Kerk of
1300 there are more tombs of admirals. Hard by,
in the Nieuwe Markt, is the picturesque cluster of

40 IN HOLLAND.
fifteenth-century towers called S. Anthvonieswaag,
once a city gate and now a weighing-house.
But the great attraction of Amsterdam is the
Picture Gallery of the Trippenhuis, called the Rijks
Museum, and it deserves many visits. Amongst the
portraits in the first room we were especially attracted
by that of William the Silent in his skull-cap, by
Miereveld, but all the House of Orange are repre
sented here from the first to the last. We also see
all the worthies of the nation — Ruyter, Van Tromp
and his wife, Grotius and his wife, Johann and
Cornelis de Witt, Johann van Oldenharneveldt, and
his wife Maria of Utrecht, a peaceful old lady in a
ruff and brown dress edged with fur, by Moreelse.
The two great pictures of the gallery hang opposite
each other. That by Bartholomew van der Heist,
the most famous of Dutch portrait-painters, repre
sents the Banquet of the Musqueteers, who thus
celebrated the Peace of Westphalia, June 18, 1648.
It contains twenty-five life-size portraits, is the best
work of the master, and was pronounced by Sir
Joshua Reynolds to be the ' first picture of portraits
in the world.' The canvas is a mirror faithfully
representing a scene of actual life. In the centre
sits the jovial, rollicking Captain de Wits with his
legs crossed. The delicate imitation of reality is

AMSTERDAM. 41
equally shown in the Rhenish wine-glasses, and in
the ham to which one of the guests is helping
himself. The rival picture is the ' Night Watch ' of Rem
brandt (1642), representing Captain Frans Banning
Kok of Purmerland and his lieutenant Willem van
Ruytenberg of Vlaardingen, emerging from their
watch-house on the Singel. A joyous troop pursue
their leader, who is in a black dress. A strange light
comes upon the scene, who can tell whence ? Half
society has always said that this picture was the
marvel of the world, half that it is unworthy of its
artist ; but no one has ever been quite indifferent to it.
Of the other pictures we must at least notice, by
Nicholas Maas, a thoughtful girl leaning on a cushion
out of a window with apricots beneath ; and by Jan
Steen, ' The Parrot Cage,' a simple scene of tavern
life, in which the waiting-maid calls to the parrot
hanging aloft, who looks knowingly out of the cage,
whilst all the other persons present go on with their
different employments. In the ' Eve of S. Nicholas,'
another work of the same artist, a naughty boy finds
a birch-rod in his shoe, and a good little girl, laden
with gifts, is being praised by her mother, whilst
other children are looking up the chimney by which
the discriminating fairy Befana is supposed to have

42 IN HOLLAND.
taken her departure. There are many beautiful
works of Ruysdael, most at home amongst water
falls ; a noble Vandyke of ' William II. ' as a boy,
with his little bride, Mary Stuart, Charles I.'s
daughter, in a brocaded silver dress, and the famous
Terburg called ' Paternal Advice' (known in England
by its replica at Bridgewater House), in which a
daughter in white satin is receiving a lecture from
her father, her back turned to the spectator, and
her annoyance, or repentance, only exhibited in her
shoulders. Another famous work of Terburg is ' The
Letter,' which is being brought in by a trumpeter to
an officer seated in his uniform, with his young wife
kneeling at his side. Of Gerard Dou Amsterdam
possesses the wonderful ' Evening School,' with four
luminous candles, and some thoroughly Dutch chil
dren. A girl is. laboriously following with her finger
the instructions received, and a boy is diligently
writing on a slate. The girl who stands behind,
instructing him, is holding a candle which throws a
second light upon his back, that upon the table
falling on his features ; indeed the painting is often
known as the ' Picture of the Four Candles.'
Through the labyrinthine quays we found our
way to the Westerhoof to take the afternoon steamer
to Purmerende for an excursion to Broek, 'the

BROEK. 43
cleanest village in the world.' Crossing the broad
Amstel, the vessel soon enters a canal, which some
times lies at a great depth, nothing being visible but
the tops of masts and points of steeples; and which
then, after passing locks, becomes level with the tops
of the trees and the roofs of the houses. We left the
steamer at T Schouw, and entered, on a side canal,
one of the trekschuiten, which, until the time of
railroads, were the usual means of travel — a long
narrow cabin, encircled by seats, forms the whole
vessel, and is drawn by a horse ridden by a boy (het-
jagerte) — a most agreeable easy means of locomo
tion, for movement is absolutely imperceptible.
No place was ever more exaggerated than Broek.
There is really very little remarkable in it, except
even a greater sense of dampness and ooziness than
in the other Dutch villages. It was autumn, and
there seemed no particular attempt to remove the
decaying vegetation or trim the little gardens, or to
sweep up the dead leaves upon the pathways, yet
there used to be a law that no animal was to enter
Broek for fear of its being polluted. A brick path
winds amongst the low wooden cottages, painted blue,
green, and white, and ends at the church, with its
miniature tombstones.
The most interesting excursion to be made from

44 IN HOLLAND.
Amsterdam is that to the Island of Marken in the
Zuider Zee — a huge meadow, where the peasant
women pass their whole lives without ever seeing
anything beyond their island, whilst their husbands,
who with very few exceptions are fishermen, see
nothing beyond the fisher-towns of the Zuider
Zee. There are very picturesque costumes here,
the men wearing red woollen shirts, brown vests>
wooden shoes, fur caps, and gold buttons to their
collars and knickerbockers ; the women, embroidered
stomachers, which are handed down for generations,
and enormous white caps, lined with brown to show
off the lace, and with a chintz cover for week days,
and their own hair flowing below the cap over their
shoulders and backs.
An evening train, with an old lady, in a diamond
tiara and gold pins, for our companion, took us to the
H elder, and we awoke next morning at the pleasant
little inn of Du Burg upon a view of boats and nets
and the low-lying Island of Texel in the distance.
The boats and the fishermen are extremely pic
turesque, but there is nothing else to see, after the
visitor has examined the huge granite Helder Dyke,
the artificial fortification of north Holland, which
contends successfully to preserve the land against the
sea. There is an admirably managed Naval Institute

THE HELDER.

45

here. It was by an expedition from the Helder that
Nova Zembla was discovered, and it was near this
that Admirals Ruyter and Tromp repulsed the English
fleet. Texel, which lies opposite the Helder, is the
first of a chain of islands — Vlieland, Terschelling,
and Ameland, which protect the entrance of the
Zuider Zee.
The country near the Helder is bare and desolate
in the extreme. It is all peat, and the rest of Holland
uses it as a fuel mine. It was here that the genius of
Ruysdael was often able to make a single tree, or even
a bush rising out of the flat by a stagnant pool, both
interesting and charming to the spectator. We crossed
the levels to Alkmaar, which struck us as being alto
gether the prettiest place in the country and as pos
sessing all those attributes of cleanliness which are
usually given to Broek. The streets, formed of bricks
fitted close together, are absolutely spotless, and every
house front shines fresh from the mop or the syringe.
Yet excessive cleanliness has not destroyed the pic,
turesqueness of the place. The fifteenth-century
church of S. Lawrence, of exquisitely graceful ex-
terior, rises in the centre of the town, and, in spite of
being hideously defaced inside, has a fine vaulted roof,
a coloured screen, and, in the chancel, a curious tomb
to Florens V., Count of Holland, 1296, though only

46

IN HOLLAND.

his heart is buried there. Near the excellent Hotel
du Burg is a most bewitching almshouse, with an old
tourelle and screen, and a lovely garden in a court
surrounded by clipped lime-trees. And more charm
ing still is an old weigh-house of 1582, for the cheese,
the great manufacture of the district, for which there

APPROACH TO ALKMAAR.

is a famous market every Friday, where capital cos
tumes may be seen. The rich and gaily painted facade
of the old building, reflected in a clear canal, is a
perfect marvel of beauty and colour ; and artists
should stay here to paint — not the view given here,
but another which we discovered too late — more in
front, with gable-ended houses leading up to the

ALKMAAR, HOORN.

47

principal building, and all its glowing colours repeated
in the water.
It is three hours' drive from Alkmaar to Hoorn,
a charming old town with bastions, gardens, and

THE WEIGH-HOUSE, ALKMAAR.

semi-ruined gates. On the West Poort a relief com
memorates the filial devotion of a poor boy, who
arrived here in 1579, laboriously dragging his old
mother in a sledge, when all were flying from the

48 IN HOLLAND.
Spaniards. Opposite the weighing-house for the
cheeses is the State College, which bears a shield with
the arms of England, sustained by two negroes. It
commemorates the fact that when Van Tromp defeat
ed the English squadron, his ships came from Hoorn
and on board were two negroes, who took from the
English flagship the shield which it was then the cus
tom to fix to the stern of a vessel, and brought it back
here as a trophy. Hoorn was one of the first places in
Holland to embrace the reformed religion, which
spread from hence all over the country, but now not
above half the inhabitants are Calvinists.
In returning from Alkmaar we stopped to see
Zaandam, quite in the centre of the land of windmills,
of which we counted eighty as visible from the station
alone. They are of every shade of colour, and are
mounted on poles, on towers, on farm buildings, and
made picturesque by every conceivable variety of prop,
balcony, gallery, and insertion. Zaandam is a very
pretty village on the Zaan which flows into the Y,
with gaily painted houses, and gay little gardens, and
perpetual movement to and from its landing-stage.
Turning south from thence, a little entry on the right
leads down some steps and over a bridge to some
cottages on the bank of a ditch, and inside the last
of these is the tiny venerable hovel where Peter the

UTRECHT.

49

Great stayed in 1697 as Peter Michaeloff. It retains
its tiled roof and contains some old chairs and a box-
bed, but unfortunately Peter was only here a week.
The evening of leaving Zaandam we spent at
Utrecht, of which the name is so well known from

MILL AT ZAANDAM.

the peace which terminated the war of the Spanish
succession, April 11, 1715. The town, long the seat
of an ecclesiastical court, was also the great centre of
the Jansenists, dissenters from Roman Catholicism
under Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, condemned by

5°

IN HOLLAND.

Alexander VII. in 1656, at the instigation of the
Jesuits. The doctrines of Jansenius still linger in its
gloomy houses. Every appointment of a bishop is
still announced to the Sovereign Pontiff, who as regu-

PAUSHUIZEN, UTRECHT.

larly responds by a bull of excommunication, which is
read aloud in the cathedral, and then immediately
put away and forgotten. Solemn and sad, but pre
eminently respectable, Utrecht has more the aspect of
a decayed German city than a Dutch town, and so

KAMPEN.

5i

has its Cathedral of S. Martin (1254-67), which,
though the finest Gothic building in Holland, is only
a magnificent fragment, with a detached tower (132 1-
82) 338 feet high. The interior as usual is ruined by
Calvinism and yellow paint. It contains the tomb of
Admiral van Gent, who fell in the battle of Solbay.
The nave, which fell in- 1674, has never been rebuilt.
The S. Pieterskerk (1039) and S. Janskerk. offer noth
ing remarkable, but on a neighbouring canal is the
quaint Paushuizen, or Pope's house, which was built
by Pope Adrian VI. (Adrian Floriszoom) in 15 17.
Near this is the pretty little Archiepiscopal Museum,
full of mediaeval relics.
The interesting Moravian establishment of Zeist
may be visited from Utrecht.
From Utrecht we travelled over sandy flats to
Kampen, near the mouth of the wide river Yssel, with
three picturesque gates — Haghen Poort,Cellebroeders
Poort, and Breeders Poort ; and a town hall of the
sixteenth century. Here, as frequently elsewhere in
Holland, we suffered from arriving famished at mid
day. All the inns were equally inhospitable : ' The
table d'hote is at 4 P. M. : we cannot and will not be
bothered with cooking before that, and there is noth
ing cold in the house.' ' But you have surely bread
and cheese ? ' ' Certainly not — nothing.'

52

IN HOLLAND.

At Zwolle, however, we found the Kroon an ex
cellent hotel with an obliging landlord ; and Zwolle,
the native place of Terburg (1608), is a charming old

CELLEBROEDERS POORT, KAMPEN.

town with a girdle of gardens, a fine church (exter
nally), and a noble brick gateway called the Sassen-
poort. It was more the desire of seeing something of the

LEE U WARDEN.

53

whole country than anything else, and a certain de
gree of misplaced confidence in the pleasant volumes
of Harvard, which took us up from Zwolle, through

SASSENPOORT, AT ZWOLLE.

Friesland, the cow-paradise, to Leeuwarden, its an
cient capital. Sad and gloomy as most other towns of
Holland are, Leeuwarden is sadder and gloomier still.
Its streets are wide and not' otherwise than handsome,

54 IN HOLLAND.
but they are almost deserted, and there are no objects
of interest to see unless a leaning tower can be called
so, with a top, like that at Pisa, inclined the other way,
to keep it from toppling over. An hour's walk from
the town there is said to be a fine still-inhabited castle,
and, if time had allowed, respect for S. Boniface would
have taken us to Murmerwoude, where he was mar
tyred (June 8, 853), with his fifty-three companions.
King Pepin raised a hermitage on the spot, and an
ancient brick chapel still exists there.
Here and elsewhere in Friesland nothing is so
worthy of notice as the helmets — the golden helmets
of the women- — costing something equivalent to 25/.
or 30/., handed down as heirlooms, fitting close to
the head, and not allowing a particle of hair to be
visible. In the late evening we went on to Groningen, a
university town with a good hotel (Seven Provincen),
an enormous square, and a noble tall Gothic tower of
1627, whence the watchman still sounds his bugle.
Not far off is Midwolde, where the village church has
fine tombs of Charles Jerome, Baron d'Inhausen and
his wife, Anna von Ewsum.
As late as the sixteenth century this province was
for the most part uninhabited — savage and sandy, and
overrun by wolves. But three hundred years of hard

D EVEN TER. 55
work has transformed it into a fertile country, watered
by canals, and sprinkled with country houses. Agri
culturally it is one of the richest provinces of the
kingdom. This is mostly due to its possessing a race
of peasant-farmers who never shrink from personal
hard work, and who will continue to direct the plough
whilst they send their sons to the university to study
as lawyers, doctors, or churchmen. These peasant
farmers or boers possess the bcklemregt, or right of
hiring land on an annual rent, which the landlord can
never increase. A peasant can bequeath his right to
his heirs, whether direct or collateral. To the land,
this system is an indescribable advantage, the cultiva
tors doing their utmost to bring their lands to perfec
tion, because they are certain that no one can take
away the advantage from themselves or their de
scendants. On leaving Groningen we traversed the grey, mo
notonous, desolate district of the Drenthe, sprinkled
over at intervals by the curious ancient groups of
stones called Hunnebedden, or beds of death (Hun
meaning death), beneath which urns of clay contain
ing human ashes have been found. From Deventer
(where there is an old weigh-house, and a cathe
dral of S. Lievin with a crypt and nave of 1334),
time did not allow us to make an excursion to

56 IN HOLLAND.
the great royal palace of Het Loo, the favourite
residence of the sovereigns. The descriptions in
Harvard rather made us linger unnecessarily at Zut-
phen, a dull town, with a brick Groote Kerk (S. Wal-
purgis) which has little remaining of its original
twelfth-century date, and a rather picturesque ' bit '
on the walls, where the ' Waterpoort ' crosses the
river like a bridge.
At Arnhem, the Roman Arenacum, once the resi
dence of the Dukes of Gueldres, and still the capital
of Guelderland, we seemed to have left all the charac
teristics of Holland behind. Numerous modern villas,
which might have been built for Cheltenham or
Leamington, cover the wooded hills above the Rhine.
In the Groote Kerk (1452) is a curious monument of
Charles van Egmont, Due de Gueldres, 1538, but
there is nothing else to remark upon. We intended
to have made an excursion hence to Cleves, but des
perately wet weather set in, and, as Dutch rain often
lasts for weeks together when it once begins, we were
glad to hurry England-wards, only regretting that we
could not halt at Nymegen, a most picturesque place,
where Charlemagne lived in the old palace of the
Valckhof (or Waalhof, residence on the Waal), of
which a fragment still exists, with an old baptistery,
a Stadhuis of 1534, and a Groote Kerk containing a

CHARACTERISTIC TOWNS. 57
noble monument to Catherine de Bourbon (1469),
wife of Duke Adolph of Gueldres.
We left Holland feeling that we should urge our
friends by all means to see the pictures at Rotterdam,
the Hague, and Amsterdam, but to look for aH other
characteristics of the Netherlands in such places as
Breda, Dortrecht, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Zwolle.

DENMARK

IN DENMARK.
TT^ORMERLY the terrors of a sea-voyage from
¦*- Kiel deterred many travellers from thinking of
a tour in Denmark or Sweden, but now a succession
of railways makes everything easy, and while nothing
can be imagined more invigorating or pleasant, there
is probably no pleasure more economical than a sum
mer in Scandinavia. Those who are worn with a
London season will feel as if every breath in the
crystal air of Denmark endued them with fresh health
and strength, and then, after they have seen its old
palaces and its beech woods and its Thorwaldsen
sculptures, a voyage of ten minutes will carry them
over the narrow Sound to the soft beauties of genial
Sweden and the wild splendours of Norway.
Either Hamburg or Liibeck must be the starting-
point for the overland route to Denmark, and the
old free city of Liibeck, though quite a small place,
is one of the most remarkable towns in Germany.
We arrived there one hot summer afternoon, after a

62 IN DENMARK.
weary journey over the arid sandy plains which
separate it from Berlin, and suddenly seemed to be
transported into a land of verdure. Lilacs and
roses bloomed everywhere ; a wood lined the bank
of the limpid river Trave, and in its waters — beyond
the old wooden bridge — were reflected all the tallest
steeples, often strangely out of the perpendicular, of
many-towered Liibeck. A wonderful gate of red
brick and golden-hued terra-cotta is the entrance
from the station, and in the market-place are the
quaintest turrets, towers, tourelles, but all ending in
spires. The lofty houses, so full of rich colour, throw
cool shade on the streets on the hottest summer
day ; and we enjoyed a Sunday in the excellent
hotel, with wooden galleries opening towards a splash
ing fountain in a quiet square, where a fat constable
busied himself in keeping everybody from fulfilling
any avocation whatever whilst service was being per
formed in the churches, but let them do exactly as
they pleased as soon as it was over.
It must, at best, be a weary journey across West
Holstein, through a succession of arid flats varied by
stagnant swamps. We spent the weary hours in
studying Dunham's ' History of Denmark, Sweden,
and Norway,' which cannot be sufficiently recom
mended to all Scandinavian travellers. The glowing

SLESWIG. 6s
accounts in the English guide books of a lake and an
old castle beguiled us into spending a night at Sles-
wig, but it turned out that the lake had disappeared
before the memory of man, and that the castle was a
white modern barrack. The colourless town and its
long sleepy suburb, moored as if upon a raft in the
marshes, straggle along the edge of a waveless fiord.
At the end is the rugged cathedral like a barn, with
a belfry like a dovecot, and inside it a curious altar-
piece by Hans Briiggemann, pupil of Albert Diirer,
and the noble monument of Frederick I., the first
Lutheran King of Denmark ; while richly carved
doors at the sides of the church admit one to see how
the grandmother of the Princess of Wales and various
other potentates lie — Danish fashion — in gorgeous
exposed coffins without any tombs at all. Every
where roses grow in the streets, trained upon the
house walls ; and, up the pavement, crowds of the
children were hurrying in the early morning, carrying
in their hands the shoes they were going to wear when
they were in school. In the evenings these children
will not venture outside the town, for over the marshes
they say that the wild huntsman rides, followed by
his demon hounds and blowing his magic horn. It is
the spirit of Duke Abel the fratricide, who, in the
fens, murdered his brother Eric VI. of Denmark, and

64 IN DENMARK.
who was afterwards lost there himself, falling from
his horse, and being dragged down by the weight of
his armour. To give rest to his wandering spirit, the
clergy dug up his body and despatched it to Bremen,
but there his vampire gave the canons no peace,
so they sent the corpse back again, and now it lies
once more in the marshes of Gottorp.
Most unutterably hideous is the country through
which the railway now travels, wearisome levels only
broken here and there by mounds, probably sepul
chral. A straight line with tiny hillocks at intervals
would do for a sketch of the whole of Sleswig and
the greater part of Funen and Zealand. In times of
early Danish history it was a frequent punishment to
bury criminals alive in these dismal peat mosses.
Twelve hours of changelessly flat scenery bring
travellers from Hamburg to Frederikshaven, where
we embark upon the Little Belt, the luggage-vans of
the train being shunted on board the steamer. Im
mediately opposite lie the sandy shores of Funen,
and in a few minutes we are there. Then four hours
of ugly scenery take us across the island. It is only
necessary to look out at the little town of Odense,
called after the old hero-god, which was the birth
place of Hans Christian Andersen in 1805. The
cathedral of Odense contains the shrine of the sainted

NYBORG, KORSOR. 65
King Canute IV. (1080-86), who was murdered
while kneeling before the altar, owing to indignation
at the severe taxation to which the love of Church
endowment had incited him.
Nyborg, where we meet the sea again, will recall
to lovers of old ballads the story of the innocent
young knight Folker Lowmanson, and his cruel death
here in a barrel of spikes, from the jealousy of
Waldemar IV. for his beautiful queen Helwig, and
how, to know his fate —
With anxious heart did Denmark's Queen
To Nyborg urge her horse,
And at the gate his bier she met,
And on it Folker's corse.
Such honour shown to son of knight
I never yet could hear ;
The Queen of Denmark walked on foot
Herself before his bier.
In tears then Helwig mounted horse
And silent homeward rode,
For in her heart a life-long grief
Had taken its abode.
At Nyborg we embark on a miserable steamer for
the passage of the Great Belt. It lasts an hour and a
half, and is often most wretched. On landing at
Korsor travellers are hurried into the train which is
waiting for the vessel.

66 IN DENMARK.
Now the country improves a little. Here and
there we pass through great beech woods. Down
the green glades of one of them a glimpse is caught
of the college of Sor6. It occupies the site of a
monastery founded by Asker Ryg, a chieftain who,
when he departed on a journey of warfare, vowed that
if the child to which his wife, Inge, was about to give
birth proved to be a girl, he would give his new
building a spire, but a tower if it were a boy. On his
return he saw two towers rising in the distance. Inge
had given birth to twin sons, who lived to become
Asbiorn Snare, celebrated in the ballad of ' Fair
Christal,' and Absalon, the warrior Bishop of Roes-
kilde — ' first captain by sea and land.' Absalon is
buried here in the church of Soro, which contains the
tomb of King Olaf, the shortlived son of the famous
Queen Margaret ; of her cruel father, Waldemar
Atterdag, whose last words expressed regret that he
had not suffocated his daughter in her cradle ; and
of her grandfather, Christopher II. , with his wife,
Euphemia of Pomerania. Soon we pass Ringsted,
which is scarcely worth stopping at, though its church
contains the fine brass of King Erik Menred (13 19)
and his queen, Ingeborga, and though twenty kings
and queens were entombed there before Roeskilde
became the royal place of sepulture. Amongst them

RINGSTED. 67
lies the popular Queen Dagmar, first wife of Waldemar
II. , still celebrated in ballad literature, for there is
scarcely a Dane who is ignorant of the touching story
of ' Queen Dagmar's Death,' which begins
Queen Dagmar is lying at Ribe sick,
At Ringsted is made her grave,
and which contains her last touching request to her
husband, and her simple confession of the only ' sin '
she could remember —
Had I on a Sunday not laced my sleeves,
Or border upon them sewn,
No pangs had I felt by day or night,
Or torture of hell-fire known.
Tradition tells us that the dismal town of Ringsted
was founded by King Ring, a warrior who, when he
was seriously wounded in battle, placed the bodies of
his slain heroes and that of his queen, Alpol, on board
a ship laden with pitch, and going out to the open
sea, set the vessel on fire, and then fell upon his
sword. In the twilight we pass Roeskilde, and at ioj P.M.
long rows of street lamps reflected in canals show
that we have reached Copenhagen.
To those whose travels have chiefly led them
southwards there is a great pleasure in the first
awaking in Copenhagen. Everything is new — the

68 IN DENMARK.
associations, the characteristics, the history ; even the
very names on the omnibuses are suggestive of the
sagas and romances of the North ; and though the
summer sun is hot, the atmosphere is as clear as that
of a tramontana day in an Italian winter, and the air
is indescribably elastic. The comfortable Hdtel
d'Angleterre stands in the Kongens Nytorv, a modern
square, with trees surrounding a statue in the centre,
but there are glimpses of picturesque shipping down
the side streets, and hard by is a spire quite ideally
Danish, formed by three marvellous dragons with
their tails twisted together in the air. Tradition
declares that it was moved bodily from Calmar, in
the south of Sweden. It rises now from a beautiful
building of brick erected in 1624 by Christian IV.,
brother-in-law of James I. of England, and used as
the Exchange.
Not far off is the principal palace — Christiansborg
Slot, often rebuilt, and very white and ugly. It
was partially destroyed by fire in 1884. Besides
the royal residence, its vast courts contain the
Chambers of Parliament, the Royal Library, and a
Picture Gallery chiefly filled with the works of native
artists, amongst which those of Marstrand and Bloch
are very striking and well worthy of attention.
A queer building in the shadow of the palace,

COPENHAGEN. 69
which attracts notice by its frescoed walls, is the
Thorwaldsen Museum, the shrine where Denmark has
reverentially collected all the works and memorials of
her greatest artist — Bertel Thorwaldsen. Though

THE DRAGON TOWER, COPENHAGEN,

his family is said to have descended from the Danish
king Harold Stildetand, he was born (in 1770) the son
of one Gottschalk, who, half workman, half artist, was
employed in carving figures for the bows of vessels.

70 IN DENMARK.
From his earliest childhood little Bertel accompanied
his father to the wharfs and assisted him in his work,
in which he showed such intelligence that in his
eleventh year he was allowed to enter the Free School
of Art. Here he soon made wonderful progress in
sculpture, but could so little be persuaded to attend
to other studies that he reached the age of eighteen
scarcely able to read. In his twenty-third year he
obtained the great gold medal, to which a travelling
stipend is attached, and thus he was enabled to go to
Rome, where, encouraged at first by the patronage of
Thomas Hope, the English banker, he soon reached
the highest pitch of celebrity. Denmark became
proud of her son, so that his visits to his native town
in 1 8 19 and 1837 were like triumphal progresses, all
the city going forth to meet him, and lodging him
splendidly at the public cost ; but his heart always
clung to the Eternal City, which continued to be
the scene of his labours. Of his many works per
haps his noble lion at Lucerne is the best known. He
never married, though he was long attached to a
member of the old Scottish house of Mackenzie, and
he died on a visit to Copenhagen in 1844.
In accordance with Thorwaldsen's own wish, he
rests in the centre of his works. His grave has no
tombstone, but is covered with green ivy. All around

COPENHAGEN. 71
the little court which contains it are halls and galleries
filled with the marvellously varied productions of his
genius, arranged in the order of their execution — casts
of all his absent sculptures and many most grand
originals. Especially beautiful are the statue of
Mercury, modelled from a Roman boy, of which the
original is in the possession of Lord Ashburton, and
the exquisite reliefs of the Ages of Love, and of Day
and Night, the two latter resulting from the inspiration
of a single afternoon. But all seem to culminate in
the great Hall of Christ, for though the statues here
are only cast from those in the Vor Frue Kirche, they
are far better seen in the well-lighted chamber than
in the church. The colossal figures of the apostles
lead up to the Saviour in sublime benediction ; perhaps
the statues of Simon Zelotes and the pilgrim S. James
are the noblest amongst them. In the last room are
gathered all the little personal memorials of Thor
waldsen — his books, pictures, and furniture.
The Museum of Northern Antiquities should also
be visited and the Tower of the Trinity Church, with
a roadway inside making an easy ascent to the strange
view of many roofs and many waters which is obtained
from the top. But the most delightful place in Copen
hagen is the Palace of Rosenborg, standing at the end
of a stately old garden — where it was built by Inigo

72 IN DENMARK.
Jones for Christian IV., and containing the room where
the king died, with his wedding dress, and most of his
other clothes and possessions. This palace-building
monarch, celebrated for the drinking bouts in which

THE ROSENBORG PALACE, COPENHAGEN.

he indulged with his brother-in-law, James I. of
England, was the greatest dandy of his time, and
before we leave Denmark we shall become very
familiar with his portraits, always distinguished by

COPENHAGEN. 73
the wonderful left whisker twisted into a pigtail falling
on one side of the chin. Other rooms in Rosenborg
are devoted to each of the succeeding sovereigns, and
filled with relics and memorials which carry one back
into most romantic corners of Danish history, the
ever-alternate succession of Christians and Fredericks
making a most terrible bewilderment, down to the
two English queens, Louisa the beloved and Caroline
Matilda the unfortunate. Most curious amongst a
myriad objects of value are the three great silver
Lions — ' Great Belt, Little Belt, and Sound ' — which,
by ancient custom, appear as mourners at all the
funerals of the sovereigns, accompanying them to
Roeskilde and returning afterwards to the'palace.
Those interested in such matters will wander as
we did through the more ancient parts of Copenhagen
in search of old silver and specimens of the older
Copenhagen china. Formerly the china imitated that
of Miessen, but it has now a more distinctive character,
and is chiefly used in reproducing the works of Thor
waldsen. Copenhagen has no other especial manu
factures. No visitors to the Danish capital must omit a visit
to Tivoli, the pretty odd pleasure grounds — very re
spectable too — near the railway station, where all
kinds of evening amusements are provided in illu-

74 IN DENMARK.
minated gardens and woods by a tiny lake, really
very pretty. Here we watched the cars rushing like
a whirlwind down one hill and up another, with their
inmates screaming in pleasurable agony ; and saw the
extraordinary feats of ' the Cannon King,' who tossed
a cannon ball, catching it on his hands, his head, his
feet — anywhere, and then stood in front of a cannon
and was shot, receiving in his hands the ball, which
did nothing worse than twist him round by its force.
One day we went out — an hour and a half by rail
— to Roeskilde, where a church was first founded by
William, an Englishman, in the days of King Harold
Blaatand (Blue-tooth), brother of Canute the Great.
It is dedicated to S. Lucius, because tradition tells
that a terrible dragon, who infested the neighbouring
fiord and banqueted on the inhabitants, was destroyed
for ever when the head of the holy Pope S. Lucius
was brought from Rome and presented for his break
fast. The tall spires of the cathedral rise, slender and
grey, from the little town, and beneath, embosomed in
sweeping cornfields, a lovely fiord stretches away into
pale blue distances. Endless kings and queens are
buried at Roeskilde. The earlier sovereigns have
glorious tombs, amongst which the most conspicuous
is that of Queen Margaret — ' the Semiramis of the
North,' who, born in the prison of Syborg, where her

ROESKILDE.

75

unhappy mother Queen Helwig was imprisoned by
Waldemar Atterhag, and allowed to run wild in the
forest in her childhood, lived to become one of the wis
est of Northern sovereigns, and to unite, by the Act
known as ' the Union of Calmar,' the crowns of Den
mark, Sweden, and Norway, which attained unwonted

ROESKILDE.

prosperity under her sway. There are effigies of
Frederic II. and Christian IV., the grandfather and
uncle of our Charles I., which recall his type of coun
tenance and have the same peaked beard. Christian
IV., the great palace-builder, whose birth was believed
to have been prophesied by the mermaid Isbrand,
was born (April 12, 1577) under a hawthorn tree on

76 IN DENMARK.
the road between Frederiksborg and Roeskilde, as
his mother, Sophia of Mecklenbourg, insisted on tak
ing walks with her ladies in waiting far longer than
was prudent. This king, his father, and all the later
members of his royal house lie, not in their tombs,
but in gorgeous coffins embossed with gold and silver
upon the floor ,of the church, which has a very odd
effect. The entrance of one of the private chapels is
a gate with a huge figure, in wrought ironwork, of the
devil with his tail in his hand. In another chapel are
fine works'of Marstrand (i 8 io — 75), the best of the
pupils of Eckersberg, who gave the first stimulus to
the art of painting in Denmark, where it has since
attained to great eminence.
The district around Roeskilde, and indeed the
greater part of Denmark, is devoted to corn, for there
is no country in Europe, except England and Bel
gium, which can compete with this as a corn-grower.
It is curious that though the neighbouring Sweden
and Norway are so covered with pines, no conifer will
grow in Denmark except under most careful cultiva
tion. The principal native tree is the beech, and the
beech woods are nowhere more beautiful than in
the neighbourhood of Copenhagen. The railway to
Elsinore passes through the beautiful beech forests
which are familiar to us through the stories of Hans

FREDERIKSBORG.

77

Christian Andersen. Here, near a little roadside
station, rises the Hampton Court of Denmark, the
great Castle of Frederiksborg, the most magnificent
of the creations of Christian IV., which John of
Friburg erected for that monarch, who looked per
sonally into the minutest details of his expenses, and

THE CASTLE OF FREDERIKSBORG.

so raised this structure, glorious as it is, with ari
economy which greatly astonished his thrifty parlia
ment. In the depths of the beech woods is a great
lake, in the centre of which, on three islands united
by bridges, rises the palace, most beautiful in its time.
honoured hues of red brick and grey stone, with high
roofs, richly sculptured windows, and wondrous
towers and spires. Each view of the castle seems

78 IN DENMARK.
more picturesque than the last. It is a dream of
architectural beauty, to which the great expanse of
transparent waters and the deep verdure of the sur
rounding woods add a mysterious charm. A gigantic
gate tower admits the visitor to the courtyard, where
Christian IV., with his own hand, chopped off the
head of the Master of the Mint, which he had estab
lished here, who had defrauded him. ' He tried to
cheat us, but we have cheated him, for we have
chopped his head off,' said the King. Inside, the
palace has been gorgeously restored since a great
fire by which it was terribly injured in 1859. The
chapel, with the pew of Christian IV. — ' bedekammer,'
prayer chamber, it is called — is most curious. There
is a noble series of the pictures of the native artist
Carl Bloch, recalling the works of Overbeck in their
majesty and depth of feeling, but far more forcible.
A drive of four miles through beech woods leads
to the comfortable later palace of Fredensborg, built
as ' A Castle of Peace ' by Frederick IV. and Louisa
of Mecklenbourg, with a lovely garden, and a view of
the Esrom lake down green glades, in one of which is
a mysterious assembly of stone statues in Norwegian
costumes. We may either take the railway or drive by Gurre
from hence to Elsinore (Helsingor), where the great

ELSINORE.

79

castle of Kronberg rises, with many towers built of
grey stone, at the end of the little town on a low
promontory jutting out into the sea. Stately avenues
surround its bastions, and it is delightful to walk upon
the platform where the first scene of Shakspere's
' Hamlet ' is laid, and to watch the numberless ships in

CASTLE OF ELSINORE.

the narrow Sound which divides Denmark and
Sweden. The castle is in perfect preservation. It
was formerly used as a palace. Anne of Denmark
was married here by proxy to James VI. of Scotland,
and here poor Caroline Matilda sate daily for hours at
her prison window watching vainly for the fleet of
England which she believed was coming to her

80 IN DENMARK.
rescue. Beyond the castle, a sandy plain reminding
us of Scottish links, covered with bent-grass and
drifted by seaweed, extends to Marienlyst, a little
fashionable bathing place embosomed in verdure.
Here a Carmelite convent was founded by the wife
of Eric IX., that Queen Philippa — daughter of Henry
IV. of England — who successfully defended Copen
hagen against the Hanseatic League, but was after
wards beaten by her husband, because her ships were
defeated at Stralsund, an indignity which drove her
to a monastic life. Hamlet's Grave and Ophelia's
Brook are shown at Marienlyst, having been invented
for anxious inquirers by the complaisant inhabitants.
Alas ! both were unknown to Andersen, who lived
here in his childhood, and it is provoking to learn that
Hamlet had really no especial connection with
Elsinore, and was the son of a Jutland pirate in the
insignificant island of Mors. But Denmark is the
very home of picturesque stories, which are kept alive
there by the ballad literature of the land, chiefly of
the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but still known
to rich and poor alike as in no other country. For
hundreds of years these poetical histories have been
the tunes to which, in winter, when no other exercise
can be taken, people dance for hours, holding each
other's hands in two lines, making three steps forwards

THE SOUND. 8 1
and backwards, keeping time, balancing, or remaining
still for a moment, as they sing one of their old ballads
or its refrain.

TOWER OF HELSINGBORG CHURCH.

It was in a wild evening, with huge blue foam-
crested waves rushing down the Sound, that we
crossed in ten minutes to Helsingborg in Sweden,

82 IN DENMARK.
mounted for the sunset to the one huge remaining
tower of its castle, and sketched as typical of almost
all village towers in Denmark the belfry of the church
where King Eric Menred was married to the Swedish
princess Ingeborga.

SWEDEN

IN SWEDEN.
T T is not beautiful in Sweden, but it is very pretty ;
¦*¦ if everything were not so very much alike, it
would be very pretty indeed. The whole country as
far north as Upsala is like an exaggerated Surrey —
little hills covered with fir-woods and bilberries,
brilliant, glistening little lakes sleeping in sandy
hollows, but all just like one another.
We turned aside in our way from Helsingborg to
the north to visit the old university of Lund, the
Oxford of Sweden, a sleepy city, where the students
lead a separate life in lodgings of their own, only
being united in the public lectures ; for in Sweden, as
in Italy, the taking of a degree only proves that the
graduates have passed a certain number of examina
tions, not, as in England, that they have lived
together for three years at least, forming their char
acter and taste by mutual companionship and
intimacy. The cathedral of Lund is a most noble
Norman building, with giants and dwarfs sculptured

86

IN SWEDEN.

against the pillars of its grand crypt, and a glorious
archbishop's tomb, green and mossy with damp.
An immense railway journey, by day and night
through the endless forests, brought us to Stockholm,
where we arrived in the early morning. Though the
town is little beyond an ugly collection of featureless
modern streets, the situation is quite exquisite, for the

THE JUNCTION OF LAKE MALAR AND THE BALTIC, STOCKHOLM.

city occupies a succession of islets between Lake
Malar and the Baltic, surrounding, on a central isle,
the huge Palace built from stately designs of Count
Tessin in the middle of the last century, and the old
church of Riddarholmen, where Gustavus Adolphus

STOCKHOLM. 87
and many other royal persons repose beneath the
banner-hung arches.
It sounds odd, but, next to the Palace, the most
imposing building in Stockholm is certainly the Grand
Hotel Rydberg, which is most comfortable and
economical, in spite of its palatial aspect. There is
no table d'h6te, and everything is paid for at the time,
in the excellent restaurant on the first floor of the
hotel. Here, a side table is always covered with
dainties peculiarly Swedish, corn and birch brandy,
and different kinds of potted fish, with fresh butter
and olives, and it is the universal custom in Sweden
to attack the side table before sitting down to the
regular dinner. The rooms in the hotel are excellent,
and their front windows overlook all that is most
characteristic in Stockholm — the glorious view down
the fiord of the Baltic : its farther hilly bank covered
with houses and churches ; the bridge at the junction
of the Baltic and Lake Malar, which is the centre of
life in the capital, and the little pleasure garden be
low, where hundreds of people are constantly eating
and drinking under the trees, and whence strains of
music are wafted late into the summer night ; the
mighty palace dominating the principal island, and
the little steam gondolas, filled with people, which
dart and hiss through the waters from one island to

88 IN SWEDEN.
another. In Stockholm, where waters are many and
bridges few, these steam gondolas are the chief means
of communication, and we made great use of them,
the passages costing twelve oere, or one penny. The
great white sea-gulls, poising over the water-streets or
floating upon the waves, are also a striking feature.
The museums of Stockholm have little to call for
any especial notice, except a grand statue of the
sleeping Endymion from the Villa Adriana, and the
curious collection of royal clothes down to the present
date, a gallery of costume like that which once
existed in London at the Tower Royal. The chief
curiosity which the Swedish collection contains is the
hat worn by Charles XII. when he was killed, in
which the upward progress of the bullet can be traced,
proving that the king's death was caused by an
assassin, and not the result of a chance shot from the
walls of Frederikshald. No especial features mark
the interior of the Palace, though the Royal Stable
for a hundred and forty-six horses is worthy of a visit ;
and the churches are uninteresting, except perhaps
S. Nicholas, the coronation church, which contains
the helmet and spurs of S. Olaf, stolen from
Throndtjem. Riddarholmen can scarcely be regarded
as a church ; it is rather a great sepulchral hall hung
with trophies, having a few tombs on the floor of the

STOCKHOLM. 89
building, and vaults opening under the side walls, in
which the different groups of royal persons are buried
together in families. Under a chapel on the left lies
Gustavus Adolphus, the justly popular great-grandson
of Gustavus Wasa, who fell at the battle of Lutzen,
and who, as soldier, general, and king, ever knew true
merit, and laboured for the glory of his country
rather than for his own. In the opposite chapel
repose the present royal family, descendants of
Bernadotte, Prince of Pontecorvo, the only one of
Napoleon's generals whose dynasty still occupies a
throne. He began life as a common soldier, and his
election as Charles XIV. of Sweden was chiefly due
to the kindness with which he treated Swedish
prisoners taken in the Pomeranian wars. But the
Swedes have never had cause to repent of their choice,
and their reigning house is probably the most popular
in Europe. The coffins of those members of the
royal family who have died within the memory of
men are ever laden with fresh flowers.
Close by the Riddarholmen Church is the most
picturesque bit of street architecture in Stockholm,
where a statue of Burger Jarl, the traditional founder
of the town, forms a foreground to the chapel of
Gustavus Adolphus and one of the many bridges.
In saying that Stockholm is not picturesque one

9°

IN SWEDEN.

may seem to have spoken disparagingly, but, never
theless, it is perfectly charming : there is so much life
and movement upon its blue waters, and its many
little public gardens give such a gay aspect to the
buildings. Of these, the chief is the Kongstragarden,

RIDDARHOLMEN, STOCKHOLM.

surrounding a statue of Charles XIII., where the
pleasant Cafe' Blanche is filled all the evening with
an animated crowd, gossiping and eating ices under
the verandah and shrubberies, and listening to the
music. While we were staying in Stockholm a
hundred Upsala students came in their white caps to

ROSEN DAL AND ULRIKSDAL. 9i
sing national melodies in the Catherina Church. We
lived through two hours of fearful heat to hear them,
and most beautiful it was. King Oscar II. was present
— a noble royal figure and handsome face. He is the
ideal sovereign of the age — artist, poet, musician,
student, equally at home in ancient and modern
languages, profoundly versed in all his duties, and
nobly performing them.
We had intended going often, as the natives do, to
dine amongst the trees and flowers at Hasselbacken,
in the Djurgarden, a wooded promontory, to which
little steamers are always plying, but, alas ! during
eight of the ten July days we spent at Stockholm it
rained incessantly. We were so cold that we were
thankful for all the winter clothes we brought with us,
and were filled with pity for the poor Swedes in being
cheated out of their short summer, of which every
day is precious. The streets were always sopping,
but, in the covered gondolas, we managed several ex
cursions to quiet, damp palaces on the banks of lonely
fiords — Rosendal, remarkable for a grand porphyry
vase in a brilliant little flower garden ; and Ulriksdal,
with its clipped avenues and melancholy creek.
Our limited knowledge of Swedish often caused
us to embark in amusing ignorance as to whither we
were going, and led us into many a surprise. One

92 IN SWEDEN.
day we set off, intending to go to Drottningholm, but,
on reaching the quay, found the steamer just gone.
At that moment such a fearful storm of rain came on
that we were obliged to rush for shelter wherever we
could, and the nearest point of refuge was the deck
of the steamer Mary, which instantly started. We
feared we might be bound for the Baltic, and, failing
to make any one understand us, resolved to disembark
at the first landing-place. But then the rain was
worse than ever, and we allowed ourselves to be
carried on down Lake Malar, till our boat turned into
a little creek, and landed us on the pier of a manu
facturing town. We had not reached the end of the
pier, however, before the rain came on again in such
convulsive torrents that we fled back to the Mary,
which again started on its travels, and this time, after
stopping at many little ports, conveyed us back to
Stockholm. When we asked the captain what we
were to pay for our voyage, he said, ' Oh, nothing ; '
and very much amused he and his crew seemed to be
uy our ignorance and adventures.
We had a fine day for our excursion by railway to
Upsala, whence we hired a little carriage to take us on
to Old Upsala, about three miles distant. A drive
across a dull, marshy plain brings one to a delightfully
wild district of downs, covered with hundreds of little

OLD UPSALA.

93

sepulchral mounds like Wiltshire barrows, amid which
three great tumuli, standing close together, are said to
mark the graves of Odin, Thor, and Freya — heroes in
their lifetime, gods in their death. Close beside them
for centuries rose the temple which was the most
sacred shrine of Scandinavian worship. It glittered
all over with gold, and a golden chain, nine hundred
ells in circumference, ran round its roof. In the
temple were three statues, around which hovered all
the principal mythological traditions of the north.
The central figure was that of Odin or Wodan, the
wizard-king, who is said to have come in the dawn of
Swedish history from his domains of Asia, which ex
tended from the Euxine to the Caspian, and whose
capital was Asgard. He landed in Funen, where he
founded Odense, and left his son Skjold as a sovereign.
Thence he passed into Sweden, and established his
government at Sigtuna, not far from Upsala. His
existence is affirmed by the Saxon Chronicle. He
was called ' the Father of Victory,' for if he laid his
hands on the heads of his generals, and predicted
their success when they went out to battle, that
success never failed them. He was also, says Snorro
Sturlesen, ' the Father of all the arts of modern
Europe.' Tradition has endowed him with every
miraculous power. He could change his looks at

94 IN SWEDEN.
pleasure — to his friends most beautiful, but a demon
to his enemies. By his eloquence he captivated all
who heard him, and as he always spoke in verse he
was called ' the Artificer of Song.' His verses were
endowed with such magic power that they could strike
his enemies with blindness or deafness, or could blunt
their weapons. To listen to the sweetness of his
music even the ghosts would come forth and the
mountains would unfold their inmost recesses. He
was the inventor of Runic characters. He could
slaughter thousands at a blow, and he could render
his own followers invulnerable. At his will he could
assume the form of beasts ; at his word the fire would
cease to burn, the wind to blow, or the sea to rage.
If he hurled his spear between two armies, it secured
victory to those on whose side it fell. The dwarfs
(Lapps) had built for him a ship called Skidbladner,
in which he could cross the most dangerous seas
with safety ; but when he did not want to use it, he
could fold it up like a handkerchief. Everything was
known to Odin, for did he not possess the mummified
head of his enemy Mimir, which was all-wise, and
he had only to consult it ? Yet, with all these gifts
and attributes, Odin remained human ; he had no
power over death. When he felt his end approaching
he assembled all his friends and followers, and, giving

THE GRAVES OF THE GODS.

95

himself nine wounds in a circle, allowed himself to
bleed to death. The body of the great chieftain was
burnt, and his ashes were buried under the mound of
Upsala ; but his spirit was believed to have gone back
to the marvellous home in the Valhalla of Asgard, of
which he had so often spoken, and whither he had
always said that he should return. Henceforward it

THE GRAVES OF THE GODS.

was considered that all blessings and mercies were
gifts sent by Odin. The younger Edda tells that all
who die in battle are Odin's adopted children. The
Valkyriae pick them out upon the battle-field and
conduct them to the Valhalla, where they have per
petual life in the halls of Odin. Their days are spent
in hunting or the joys of imaginary combats, and they

96 IN SWEDEN.
return at night to feast upon the inexhaustible flesh of
the boar Sahrimnir, and to drink, out of horn cups, the
mead formed from the milk of a single goat, which is
strong enough nightly to intoxicate all the heroes.
Huge logs constantly burn within the palace of Odin,
for warmth is the northern idea of heaven, while in
their hell it is eternal winter. When a Scandinavian
chieftain died in battle, not only were his war-horse
and all his gold and silver placed upon his funeral-
pyre, but all his followers slew themselves that he
might enter the halls of Odin properly attended.
The more glorious the chieftain the greater the num
ber who must accompany him to Valhalla. .. To rejoin
Odin in Asgard became the height of a warrior's
ambition. It is recorded of Ragnar Lodbrok that
when he was dying no word of lamentation was
heard from him : on the contrary, he was transported
with joy as he thought of the feast preparing for him
in Odin's palace. ' Soon, soon,' he exclaimed, ' I
shall be seated in the pleasant habitation of the gods,
and drinking mead out of carved horns ! A brave
man does not dread death, and I shall utter no word
of fear as I enter the halls of Odin.' But stranger
than all the legends concerning Odin is the fact that
his memory is still so far fresh that ' Go to Odin '
is yet used by the common people where an uncivil

THE GRAVES OF THE GODS. 97
wish as to the lower regions would find expression
in England. The fourth day of the week still com
memorates Odin or Wodan — in old Norse Odinsdgr,
in Swedish and Danish Onsdag, in English Wednes
day. On the right hand of Odin, in the temple of Up
sala, sate the statue of Freyja, or Freyer, represented
as a hermaphrodite, with the attributes of productive
ness. Freyja was the goddess of love, who rode in
a car drawn by wild cats. She knew beforehand all
that would happen, and divided the souls of the dead
with Odin. She is commemorated in the sixth day
of the week, that Freytag or Freyja's Day which in
Latin is Dies Veneris, or Venus' Day.
On the left of Odin sate Thor, who, says the Edda,
was 'the most valiant of the sons of Odin.' He was
the offspring of Odin and Frigga, ' the mother of the
gods,' and the brother of ' Balder the Beautiful.' As
the defender and avenger of the gods, he was repre
sented as carrying the hammer with which he de
stroyed the giants, and which always returned to his
hand when he threw it. He wore iron gauntlets, and
had a girdle which doubled his strength when he put
it on. The fifth day of the week was sacred to Thor,
in old Norse Th6rsdag, in Swedish and Danish Tors-
dag, in English Thursday; in Latin Dies J ovis, for

98 IN SWEDEN.
Jupiter, the God of Thunder, had the same attributes
as Thor. There were three great festivals at Upsala, when
multitudes flocked to the temple to consult its famous
oracles or to sacrifice. The first was the winter festival
of ' Mother Night ' — saturnalia in honour of Frey, or
the sun, to invoke the blessings of a fruitful year ; the
second feast was in honour of the Earth ; the third
was in honour of Odin, to propitiate the Father of
Battles. Every ninth year, at least, the king and all
persons of distinction were expected to appear before
the great temple, and nine victims were chosen for
human sacrifice — captives in time of war, slaves in
time of peace — ' I send thee to Odin ' being the con
solatory last words spoken to each as he fell. If public
calamities had been caused by any royal mismanage
ment, the people chose their king as a sacrifice ; thus
the first king of the petty province of Vermeland was
burnt to appease Odin during a famine. It is also
recorded that King Aun sacrificed his nine sons to
obtain a prolongation of his own life. The victims
were either hewn down or burnt in the temple itself,
or hung in the grove adjoining — ' Odin's Grove ' — of
which every leaf was sacred. Still, according to the
Voluspa, the famous prophecy of Vela, at the end of
the world even Odin, with all the other pagan deities

OLD UPSALA.

99

will perish in the general chaos, when a new earth of
celestial beauty will arise upon the ruins of the
old. One of the most curious little churches in Chris
tendom now stands upon the site of the ancient tem
ple. The apse is evidently built out of the pagan

THE CHURCH OF OLD UPSALA.

sanctuary. The belfry, Swedish-fashion, is detached,
built of massive timbers and painted bright red.
There are scarcely any human habitations near, only
the mighty barrows, overgrown with wild thyme and
a thousand other flowers, which rise over the graves of
the gods. In the tomb of Odin the Government still

ioo IN SWEDEN.
gives the mead, which was the nectar of Scandinavian
heroes, to pilgrim visitors.
Like most of the Swedish towns, Upsala is disap
pointing, and its mean, ill-paved streets show few signs
of antiquity. At the east end of the cathedral is the
lofty tomb of Gustavus Wasa, the first Protestant
King of Sweden, whose effigy lies between the charm
ing figures of his two pretty little wives. In 15 19 he
was carried off as a hostage by that Christian, King
of Denmark, who forcibly made himself King of
Sweden also, and ruled with savage tyranny. Es
caping to Lubeck, he headed a revolutionary party
against the tyrant, and, after many defeats, succeeded
in taking Stockholm, where he was made king in 1523.
Soon after, Olaf Petri's translation of the New Testa
ment led to the Reformation in Sweden, where Gus
tavus Wasa was another Henry VIII., in taking the
opportunity of seizing two-thirds of the Church
revenues, and depriving all ecclesiastics of their in
comes if they refused to embrace Lutheranism. One
of his daughters-in-law was the famous Polish princess,
Queen Catherine Jagellonica, who tried hard to upset
the new religion, and inculcated Catholicism upon her
son, King Sigismund, who was deposed, on religious
grounds, in favour of his uncle, Charles IX., the father
of Gustavus Adolphus. This Queen Catherine Jagel-

GRIPSHOLM.

101

lonica has a fine tomb in a side chapel of Upsala
Cathedral. On a brilliant July morning we embarked at Stock
holm in the steamer which runs twice a week down
Lake Malar to Gripsholm. Most lovely were the long

GRIPSHOLM.

reaches of still water with their fringe of russet rocks,
every crevice tufted with birch and dwarf mountain
ash, opening here and there to show some red timber
houses or a wooden spire. It was several hours of
soft diorama, with the music of the pines, before the
great castle of Gripsholm, the Windsor of Sweden,

102 IN SWEDEN.
came in sight, with its many red towers and Eastern-
looking domes and cupolas. We were landed at the
little pier of Mariefred, in itself a lovely scene, with
old trees feathering into the water, and a picturesque
church rising in a grove of walnuts on a green hill
behind. Hard by is a little inn where the whole of
the passengers in the steamer dined together, at many
little tables, the great staple of food being fresh trout
and salmon of the lake, the bilberries and cloudberries
of the rocks, and the birch brandy and wild straw
berries from the woods. After dinner every one
trooped along the meadow paths to the castle, and
rambled in friendly companionship over its numerous
rooms, full of interest, and with many curious royal
portraits and pieces of ancient furniture. There are
endless historic recollections connected with Grips-
holm, but they centre for the most part around the
sons of Gustavus Wasa. Of these, John was im
mured here by Eric XIV., with his wife Catherine
Jagellonica, who, during her imprisonment, gave
birth to her son Sigismund (afterwards Sigismund
III. of Polland), in a box-bed which still remains.
Eric intended to have put his brother to death, but
when he entered his cell for the purpose was so
overcome by fraternal feeling that he begged his
pardon instead. That pardon was not granted, for

GRIPSHOLM. 103
when John got the upper hand he imprisoned Eric
in a small chamber at the top of the castle, where
he languished for ten years, during which he wrote
a treatise on military art, and translated the history
of Johannes Magnus, and where — in the end— he
was poisoned.

NORWAY

IN NORWAY.
r I "HE weather changed to a cloudless sunshine,
*- which hatched all the mosquitoes, as we entered
Norway in the second week in July, and the heat was
so intense that, in the long railway journey from
Stockholm, we were very thankful for the little tank
of iced water with which each railway carriage is
provided. We were disappointed in Kristiania, which
is a very dull place. The town was built by Christian
IV. of Denmark, and has a good central church of
his time, but it is utterly unpicturesque. In the
picture gallery are several noble works of Tidemann,
the special painter of expression and pathos. As a
companion for life is the memory of a picture which
represents the administration of the last sacrament
to an old peasant, whose wife's grief is turned to res
ignation, which ceases even to have a wish for his
retention, as she beholds the heaven-born comfort
with which he is looking into an unknown future.
Another of the finest works of the artist represents

108 IN NORWAY.
the reception of the sacrament by a convict, young
and deeply repentant, before his execution.
There is no striking scenery in the environs of
Kristiania, but they are wonderfully pretty. From the
avenues upon the ramparts you look down over the
broad expanse of the fyord, with low blue mountain
distances. Little steamers dart backwards and for
wards, and convey visitors in a few minutes across
the bay to Oscars Halle, a tower and small country
villa of the king on a wooded knoll.
We went by the railway which winds high amongst
the hills to Kongsberg, a mining village in a lofty
situation. Here, in a garden of white roses, there
is a most comfortable small hotel kept by a Dane,
which is a capital starting-point for all expeditions
in Telemarken. There is a pretty waterfall near the
village, and the church should be visited, for the sake
of its curious pulpit hour-glass — indeed, four glasses —
quarter, half-hour, three-quarters, hour — and the top
of a stool let into the wall with an inscription saying
that Mr. Jacobus Stuart, King of Scotland (James I.
of England), sate upon it, Nov. 25, 1859, to hear a
sermon preached by Mr. David Lentz, ' between 1 1
and 12,' on ' The Lord is my Shepherd.'
We engaged a carriage at Kongsberg for the
excursion to Tinoset, whence we arranged to go on

KONGSBERG.

109

to the Ryukan Foss, said to be the highest waterfall
in Europe. We do not advise future travellers with
out unlimited time to follow us in the latter part of
the expedition by the lake, but the carriage excursion
is quite enchanting. What an exquisite drive it is
through the forest — the deep ever-varying woods of
noble pines and firs springing from luxuriant thickets
of junipers, bilberries, and cranberries ! The loveliest
mountain flowers grow in these woods — huge lark
spurs of rank luxuriant foliage and flowers of faint
dead blue ; pinks and blue lungworts and orchids ;
stagmoss wreathing itself round the grey rocks, and
delicate, lovely soldanella drooping in the still recesses.
Our midday halt was at Bolkesjo, where the forest
opens to green lawns, hill-set, with a charming view
down the smooth declivities to a many-bayed lake,
with mountain distances. Here, amid a group of old
brown farm-buildings covered with rude paintings and
sculpture, is a farmhouse, inhabited by the same
family through many generations. It is one of the
' stations ' where it is part of the duty of the farmer or
' bonder ' who is owner of the soil to find horses for
the use of travellers. These horses are supplied at a
very trifling charge, and are brought back by a boy
who sits behind the carriole or carriage upon the port
manteau : but as the horses, when not called for, are

no IN NORWAY.
turned loose or used by the bonder in his own farm
or field work, travellers generally have to wait a long
time while they are caught or sent for. They order
their horses ' strax ' — directly — one of the first words
an Englishman learns to use on entering Norway, yet
they scarcely ever appear before half an hour, so that
Norwegians repeat with amusement the story of an
Englishman who, when he wished to spend an hour
at a station, ordered his horses ' after two strax's.'
These halts are not always congenial to English
impatience, yet they give opportunities of becoming
acquainted with Norwegian life and people which can
be obtained in no other way, and recollection will
oftener go back to the quiet time spent in waiting
for horses amid the grey rocks above some foaming
streamlet, in the green oases surrounded by forest, or
in clean-boarded rooms strewn with fresh fir foliage,
than to the more established sights of Norway. Most
delicious indeed were the two hours which we passed
at Bolkesjo, in the high pastures where the peasants
were mowing the tall grass ablaze with flowers, and
the mountains were throwing long purple shadows
over the forest, and the wind blowing freshly from the
gleaming lake — and then, most delicious was the
well-earned meal of eggs and bacon, strawberries and
cream, and other homely dainties in the farmhouse

BOLKESJO.

in

where the beams and furniture were all painted and
carved with mottoes and texts, and the primitive box-
beds had crimson satin quilts. Portraits sent by well-
pleased royal visitors hung on the walls side by side
with common-coloured scripture prints, like those
which are found in English cottages. The cellar is
under a bed, beneath which it was funny to see the

BOLKESjfl.

old farmeress disappear as she went down to fetch up
for us her home-brewed ale.
With the cordial ' likkelie reise' of our old hostess
in our ears, we left Bolkesjo full of pleasant thoughts.
But what roads, or rather what want of roads, lead to
Tinoset ! — there were banks of glassy rock, up which
our horses scrambled like cats ; there were awful
moments when everything seemed to come to an end,

ii2 IN NORWAY.
and when they gathered up their legs, and seemed to
fling themselves down headlong with the carriage on
the top of them, and yet we reached the bottom of
the abyss buried in dust, to rise gasping and gulping
and wondering we were alive, to begin the same
pantomime over again.
Late in the evening, long after the sunlight had
faded, and when the forests seemed to have gqne to
sleep and all sounds were silent, we reached Tinoset.
The inn is 'a wooden chalet on the banks" of -a lake
with a single great pine-tree close to the door. It was
terribly crowded, and the little wooden cells were the
smallest apology for bedrooms, where all through the
night we heard the winds howling among the moun
tains, and the waves lashing the shore under the
windows. In the morning the lake was covered with
huge blue waves crested with foam, and we were
almost sorry when the steamer came and we felt
obliged to embark, because, as it was not the regular
day for its passage, we had summoned it at some
expense from the other end of the lake. We were
thoroughly wet with the spray before we reached the
little inn at Strand, with a pier where we disembarked,
and occupied the rest of the afternoon in drawing the
purple hills, and the road winding towards them
through the old birch-trees. An excursion to the

HITTERDAL.

i'3

Ryukan Foss occupied the next day ; a dull drive
through the plain, and then an exciting skirting of
horrible precipices, followed by a clamber up a
mountain pathlet to a chalet, where we were thankful
for our well-earned dinner of trout and ale before
proceeding to the Foss, the 560-feet-high fall of a

OLD CHURCH OF HITTERDAL.

mountain torrent into a black rift in the hills — a
boiling, roaring abyss of water, with drifts of spray
which are visible for miles before it can be seen
itself. In returning from Tinoset, we took the way by
Hitterdal, the date-forgotten old wooden church so

ii4 IN NORWAY.
familiar from picture-books. It had been our principal
object in coming to Norway, yet the long drive had
made us so ravenous in search of food that we
could only endure to stay there half an hour. The
church, however, is most intensely picturesque, rising
with an infinity of quaintest domes and spires, all
built of timber, out of a rude cloister painted red, the
whole having the appearance of a very tall Chinese
pagoda, yet only measuring altogether 84 feet by 57.
The belfry, Norwegian-wise, stands alone on the other
side of the churchyard, which is overgrown with pink
willow-herb. When we reached the inn, as famished
as wolves in winter, we were told by our landlady
that she could not give us any dinner. ' Nei, nei,' no
thing would induce her — she had too much work on
her hands already — perhaps, however, the woman at
the house with the flag would give us some. So,
hungry and faint, we walked forth again to a house
which had a flag flying in front of it, where all was
silent and deserted, except for a dog who received us
furiously. Having pacified him, and finding the front
door locked, we made good our entrance at the back,
examined the kitchen, peeped into all the cupboards,
lifted up the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we
had searched every corner for food ineffectually, were
met by the pretty, pleasant-looking young lady of the

HITTERDAL.

"5

house, who informed us in excellent English, and
with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had
been committing a raid upon her private residence.
Afterwards we discovered a lonely farmhouse, where
there had once been a flag, and where they gave us a
very good dinner, ending in a great bowl of cloud
berries — in which we were joined by two pleasant

. — -^-s^.S^

THRONDTJEM FYORD.

young ladies and their father, an old gentleman
smoking an enormous long pipe, who turned out to
be the Bishop of Christiansand. The house of the
landamann of Hitterdal contains a relic connected
with a picturesque story quaintly illustrative of an
cient Scandinavian life. It is an axe, with a handle
projecting beyond the blade, and curved, so that
it can be used as a walking-stick. Formerly it

n6 IN NORWAY. <•
belonged to an ancient descendant of the Kongen, or
chieftains of the district, who insisted upon carrying
it to church with him in accordance with an old privi
lege. The priest forbade the bearing of the warlike
weapon into church, which so much affected the old
man that he died. His son, who thought it necessary
to avenge his father's death, went to the priest with
the axe in his hands, and demanded the most precious
thing he possessed — when the priest brought his Bible
and gave it to him opened upon a passage exhorting to
forgiveness of injuries.
On July 25 we left Kristiania for Throndtjem —
the whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles
being very comfortable, and only costing 30 francs.
The route has no great beauty, but endless pleasant
variety — rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and straw
berries in pretty birch-bark baskets for sale at all the
railway stations ; a vibrating steamer for several hours
on the long, dull Miosen lake ; railway again, with
some of the carriages open at the sides ; then an
obligatory night at Koppang, a large station, where
accommodation is provided for every one, but where, if
there are many passengers, several people, strangers
to each other, are expected to share the same room.
On the second day the scenery improves, the railway
sometimes running along and sometimes over the river

THROND TJEM.

H7

Glommen, on a wooden causeway, till the gorge of
mountains opens beyond Storen, into a rich country
with turfy mounds constantly reminding us of the
graves of the hero-gods of Upsala. Towards sunset,
beyond the deep cleft in which the river Nid runs
between lines of old painted wooden warehouses, rises

THRONDTJEM CATHEDRAL.
the burial-place of S. Olaf, the shrine of Scandina
vian Christianity, the stumpy-towered cathedral of
Throndtjem. The most northern railway station and
the most northern cathedral in Europe !
Surely the cradle of Scandinavian Christianity is
one of the most beautiful places in the world ! No
one had ever told us about it, and we went there only
because it is the old Throndtjem of sagas and ballads,

118 IN NORWAY.
and expecting a wonderful and beautiful cathedral.
But the whole place is a dream of loveliness, so ex
quisite in the soft silvery morning light on the fyord
and delicate mountain ranges, the rich nearer hills
covered with bilberries and breaking into steep cliffs
— that one remains in a state of transport, which is
at a climax while all is engraven upon an opal sun
set sky, when an amethystine glow spreads over the
mountains, and when ships and buildings meet their
double in the still, transparent water. Each wide
street of curious low wooden houses displays a new
vista of sea, of rocky promontories, of woods dipping
into the water ; and at the end of the principal street
is the gray massive cathedral where S. Olaf is buried,
and where northern art and poetry have exhausted
their loveliest and most pathetic fancies around the
grave of the national hero.
The ' Cathedral Garden,' for so the graveyard is
called, is most touching. Acres upon acres of graves
are all kept — not by officials, but by the families they
belong to — like gardens. The tombs are embowered
in roses and honeysuckle, and each little green mound
has its own vase for cut flowers daily replenished, and
a seat for the survivors, which is daily occupied, so
that the link between the dead and the living is never
broken.

THROND TJEM. 1 1 9
Christianity was first established in Norway at
the end of the tenth century by King Olaf Trygveson,
son of Trygve and of the lady Astrida, whose ro
mantic adventures, when sold as a slave after her
husband's death, are the subject of a thousand stories.
When Olaf succeeded to the throne of Norway after
the death of Hako, son of Sigurd, in 996, he
proclaimed Christianity throughout his dominions,
heard matins daily himself, and sent out missionaries
through his dominions. But the duty of the so-
called missionaries had little to do with teaching, they
were only required to baptize. All who refused bap
tism were tortured and put to death. When, at one
time, the estates of the province of Throndtjem tried
to force Olaf back to the old religion, he outwardly
assented, but made the condition that the offended
pagan deities should in that case be appeased by
human sacrifice — the sacrifice of the twelve nobles
who were most urgent in compelling him ; and upon
this the ardour of the chieftains for paganism was
cooled, and they allowed Olaf unhindered to demolish
the great statue of Thor, covered with gold and
jewels, in the centre of the province of Throndtjem,
where he founded the city then called Nidaros, upon
the river Nid.
No end of stories are narrated of the cruelties of

120 IN NORWAY.
Olaf Trygveson. When Egwind, a northern chief
tain, refused to abandon his idols, he first attempted
to bribe him, but, when gentler means failed, a chafing-
dish of hot coals was placed upon his belly till he
died. Raude the magician had a more horrible fate :
an adder was forced down a horn into his stomach,
and left to eat its way out again !
The first Christian king of Norway was an habit
ual drunkard, and, by twofold adultery, he, the
husband of Godruna, married Thyra of Denmark,
the wife of Duke Borislaf of Pomerania. This led
to a war with Denmark and Sweden, whose united
fleets surrounded him near Stralsund. As much
mystery enshrouds the story of his death as is con
nected with that of Arthur, Barbarossa, or Harold :
as his royal vessel, the Long Serpent, was boarded by
the enemy, he plunged into the sea and was no more
seen, though some chroniclers say that he swam to
the shore in safety and died afterwards at Rome,
whither he went on pilgrimage.
Olaf Trygveson had a godson Olaf, son of Harald
Grenske and Asta, who had the nominal title of king
given to all sea captains of royal descent. From his
twelfth year, Olaf Haraldsen was a pirate, and he
headed the band of Danes who destroyed Canterbury
and murdered S. Elphege — a strange feature in the/

THRONDTJEM. 121
life of one who has been himself regarded as a saint
since his death. By one of the strange freaks of
fortune common in those times, this Olaf Haraldsen
gained a great victory over the chieftain Sweyn, who
then ruled at Nidaros, and, chiefly through the in
fluence of Sigurd Syr, a great northern landowner
who had become the second husband of his mother,
he became seated in 1016 upon the throne of Norway.
His first care was for the restoration of Christianity,
which had fallen into decadence in the sixteen years
which had elapsed since the defeat of Olaf Trygveson.
The second Olaf imitated the violence and cruelty
of his predecessor. Whenever the new religion was
rejected, he beheaded or hung the delinquents. In
his most merciful moments he mutilated and blinded
them : ' he did not spare one who refused to serve
God.' After fourteen years of unparalleled cruelties in
the name of religion, he fell in battle with Canute the
Great at Sticklestadt. He had abducted and married
Astrida, daughter of the King of Sweden, but by her
he had no children. By his concubine Alfhilda he
left an only son, who lived to become Magnus the
Good, King of Norway. There is a very fine story of
the way in which Magnus obtained his name. Olaf
had said, ' I very seldom sleep, and if I ever do it will
be the worse for any one who awakens me.' Whilst

122 IN NORWAY.
he was asleep Alfhilda's child was born. Then the
King's scald or poet and Siegfried the mass priest
debated together as to whether they should awaken
him. At first they thought they would ; then the poet
said, ' No ; I know him better than that : he must not
be awakened.' ' That is all very well,' said the priest,
' but the child must be baptised at once. What shall
we call him ? ' ' Oh,' said the scald, ' I know that the
King said that the child should be named after the
greatest monarch that ever lived, and his name was
Magnus,' for he only remembered one part of the
name. So they called him Magnus.
When the King woke up he was furious. ' Who
can have dared to do this thing — to christen the child
without consulting me, and to give him this out
landish name, which is no name at all — who can have
dared to do it ? '
Then the mass priest was terrified and shrank into
his shoes, but the scald answered boldly, ' I did it,
and I did it because it was better to send two souls
to God than one soul to the devil ; for if the child
had died unbaptised it would have been lost, but if
you kill Siegfried and me we shall go straight to
heaven.' And then King Olaf thought he would say no
more about it.

THRONDTJEM. 123
However terrible the cruelties of Olaf Haraldsen
were in his lifetime, they were soon dazzled out of
sight amid the halo of miracles with which his
memory was encircled by the Roman Catholic
Church. It was only recollected that when, accord
ing to the legend, he raced for the kingdom with his
half-brother Harald, in his good ship the Ox,
Saint Olaf, who on God relied,
Three days the first his house descried ;
after which Harald so fierce with anger burned
He to a lothely dragon turned ;
but because A pious zeal Saint Olaf bore,
He long the crown of Norway wore.
His admirers narrated that when he was ab
sently cutting chips from a stick with his knife on
a Sunday, a servant passed him with the reproof,
' Sir, it is Monday to-morrow,' when he placed the
sinful chips in his hand, and, setting them on fire,
bore the pain till they were all consumed. It was
remembered that as he walked to the church which
Olaf Trygveson had founded at Nidaros, he ' wore a
glory in his yellow hair.' And gradually he became
the most popular saint of Scandinavia. His shirt was
an object of pilgrimage in the Church of S. Victor

124 IN NORWAY.
at Paris, and many churches were dedicated to him
in England, and especially in London, where Tooley
Street still records his familiar appellation of S.
Tooley. It was when the devotion to S. Olaf was just
beginning that Earl Godwin and his sons were
banished from England for a time. Two of these,
Harold and Tosti, became vikings, and, in a great
battle, they vowed that, if they were victorious, they
would give half the spoil to the shrine of S. Olaf ;
and a huge silver statue, which they actually gave,
existed at Throndtjem till 1 500, and if it existed
still would be one of the most important relics in
archaeology. The old Kings of Norway used to dig
up the saint from time to time and cut his nails.
When Harold Hardrada was going to England, he
declared that he must see S. Olaf once again. ' I
must see my brother once more,' he said, and he also
cut the saint's nails. But he also thought that from
that time it would be better that no one should see
his brother any more — it would not be for the good
of the Church — so he took the keys of the shrine
and threw them into the fyord ; at the same time,
however, he said it would be good for men in after-
ages to know what a great king was like, so he
caused S. Olaf's measure to be engraved upon the

THROND TJEM.

125

wall in the church at Throndtjem — his measure of
seven feet — and there it is still.
Around the shrine of Olaf in Throndtjem, in
which, in spite of Harold Hardrada, his ' incorrupt

S. OLAFTS WELL.

body ' was seen more than five hundred years after
his death, has arisen the most beautiful of northern
cathedrals, originating in a small chapel built over
his grave within ten years after his death. The

116 IN NORWAY.
belonged to an ancient descendant of the Kongen, or
chieftains of the district, who insisted upon carrying
it to church with him in accordance with an old privi
lege. The priest forbade the bearing of the warlike
weapon into church, which so much affected the old
man that he died. His son, who thought it necessary
to avenge his father's death, went to the priest with
the axe in his hands, and demanded the most precious
thirig he possessed — when the priest brought his Bible
and gave it to him opened upon a passage exhorting to
forgiveness of injuries.
On July 25 we left Kristiania for Throndtjem —
the whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles
being very comfortable, and only costing 30 francs.
The route has no great beauty, but endless pleasant
variety — rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and straw
berries in pretty birch-bark baskets for sale at all the
railway stations ; a vibrating steamer for several hours
on the long, dull Miosen lake ; railway again, with
some of the carriages open at the sides ; then an
obligatory night at Koppang, a large station, where
accommodation is provided for every one, but where, if
there are many passengers, several people, strangers
to each other, are expected to share the same room.
On the second day the scenery improves, the railway
sometimes running along and sometimes over the river

THROND TJEM.

117

Glommen, on a wooden causeway, till the gorge of
mountains opens beyond Storen, into a rich country
with turfy mounds constantly reminding us of the
graves of the hero-gods of Upsala. Towards sunset,
beyond the deep cleft in which the river Nid runs
between lines of old painted wooden warehouses, rises
J

THRONDTJEM CATHEDRAL.

the burial-place of S. Olaf, the shrine of Scandina
vian Christianity, the stumpy-towered cathedral of
Throndtjem. The most northern railway station and
the most northern cathedral in Europe !
Surely the cradle of Scandinavian Christianity is
one of the most beautiful places in the world ! No
one had ever told us about it, and we went there only
because it is the old Throndtjem of sagas and ballads,

128 IN NORWAY.
as its driver, for the return journey. It was difficult
to obtain definite information about anything, English
books being almost useless from their incorrectness,
and we set off with a sort of sense of exploring an
unknown country. At every ' station ' we changed
horses, which were sent back by the boy, who perched
upon the luggage behind, and we marked our dis
tances by calling our horses after the Kings of
England. Thus, setting off from Storen with William
the Conqueror, we drove into the Ramsdal with
Edward VI. After a drive with Lady Jane Grey, we
set off again with Mary. But the Kings of England
failed us long before our driving days were over, and
we used up all the Kings of Rome also. As we were
coming down a steep hill into Lillehammer with
Tarquinius Superbus, something gave way and he
quietly walked out of the harness, leaving us to run
briskly down-hill and subside into the hedge. We
captured Tarquinius, but how to put him in again
was a mystery, as we had never harnessed a horse
before. However, by trying every strap in turn we
got him in somehow, and escaped the fate of Red
Riding Hood amid the lonely hills.
For a great distance after leaving Storen there is
little especially striking in the scenery, except one
gorge of old weird pine-trees in a rift of purple

THE DOVRE FYELD. 129
mountains. After you emerge upon the high Dovre-
Fyeld, the huge ranges of Sneehatten rise snowy,
gleaming, and glorious, above the wide yellow-grey
expanse, hoary with reindeer moss, though, as the
Dovre-Fyeld is itself three thousand feet high, and
Sneehatten only seven thousand three hundred, it
does not look so high as it really is. Next to
Throndtjem itself, the old ballads and songs of
Norway gather most thickly around the Dovre-
Fyeld. It is here that the witches are supposed to
hold their secret meetings at their Blokulla, or black
hill. Across these yellow hills of the Jerkin-Fyeld
the prose Edda describes Thor striding to his conflict
with the dragon Jormangandur ' by Sneehatten's peak
of snow,' where ' the tall pines cracked like a field of
stubble under his feet ; ' and here, according to the
ancient fragment called the ballad of ' The Twelve
Wizards,' as given in Prior's 'Ancient Danish
Ballads ' — At Dovrefeld, over on Norway's reef,
Were heroes who never knew pain or grief.
There dwelt there many a warrior keen,
The twelve bold brothers of Ingeborg queen.
The first with his hand the storm could hush
The second could stop the torrent's rush.

ISO IN NORWAY.
The third could dive in the sea as a fish ;
The fourth never wanted meat on dish.
The fifth he would strike the golden lyre,
And young and old to the dancing fire.
The sixth on the horn would blow a blast,
Who heard it would shudder and stand aghast.
The seventh go under the earth could he ;
The eighth he could dance on the rolling sea.
The ninth tamed all that in greenwood crept ;
The tenth not a nap had ever slept.
The eleventh the grisly lindworm bound,
And will what he would, the means he found.
The twelfth he could all things understand,
Though done in a nook of the farthest land.
Their equals were never seen there in the North,
Nor anywhere else on the face of the earth.
In spite of great fatigue from the distances to be
accomplished, each day's journey in carriage or car
riole has its peculiar charms, the going on and on
into an unknown land, meeting no one, sleeping in
odd, primitive, but always clean rooms, setting off
again at half-past five or six, and halting at comfort
able stations, with their ever-moderate prices and
their cheery farm-servants, who kissed our hands all

NORWEGIAN STATIONS. 131
round on receiving the very smallest gratuity — a
coin meaning twopence-halfpenny being a source of
ecstatic bliss.
The ' bonders,' who keep the stations, generally
themselves represent the gentry of the country, the
real gentry filling the position of the English aristo
cracy. The bonders are generally very well off,
having small tithes, good houses, boundless fuel, a
great variety of food, and continual change of labour
on their own small properties. Their wives, who
never walk, have a sledge for winter, and a carriole
and horse to take them to church in summer. In
the many months of snow, when the cows and horses
are all stabled in the ' laave,' and when out-of-door
occupations fail, they occupy the time with household
pursuits — carpentering, tailoring, or brewing. When
a bonder dies, his wife succeeds to his property until
her second marriage ; then it is divided amongst his
children. The ' stations ' or farmhouses are almost entirely
built of wood, but those of a superior class have a
single room of stone, used only in bridals or births, a
custom handed down from old times when a place of
special safety was required at those seasons.
Nine-tenths of the country are covered with pine-
forests, but the trees are always cut down before they

132 IN NORWAY.
grow old. We did not see a single old tree in
Norway. The pines are of two kinds only — the
Furu, our pine, Pinus silvestris ; and the Gran, our
fir, Pinus abies.
Wolves seldom appear except in winter, when
those who travel in sledges are often pursued by them.
Then hunger makes them so bold that they will often
snatch a dog from between the knees of a driver.
From the station of Dombaas (where there is a
telegraph station and a shop of old silver) we turned
aside down the Romsdal, which soon became beautiful,
as the road wound above the chrysoprase river Rauma,
broken by many rocky islets and swirling into many
waterfalls, but always equally radiant, equally trans
parent, till its colour is washed out by the melting
snow in a ghastly narrow valley, which we called the
Valley of Death.
The little inn at Aak, in Romsdal, with a large
garden stretching along the hillside, disappointed us
at first, as the clouds hid the mountain tops, but
morning revealed how glorious they are — purple
pinnacles of rock or pathless fields of snow embossed
upon a sky which is delicately blue above but melts
into the clearest opal. Grander, we thought, than
any single peak in Switzerland is the tremendous
peak of the Romsdalhorn, and the walks in all

ROMSDAL.

133

directions are most exquisite — into deep glades filled
with columbines and the giant larkspurs, which are
such a feature of Norway : into tremendous mountain
gorges : or to Waeblungsnaes, along the banks of the
lovely fyord, with its marvellously quaint forms of
mountain distance. Aak is a place where a month

IN THE ROMSDAL, NORWAY.

may be spent most delightfully, as well as most com
fortably and economically.
We had heard a great deal before we went to
Norway about the difficulty of getting proper food,
but our own experience is that we were never fed
more luxuriously. Perhaps very late in the season

134 IN NORWAY.
the provisions at the country ' stations ' may be some
what used up, but when we were there in July only
those who could not live without a great deal of meat
could have any cause for complaint, and once a week
we generally had reindeer for a treat. When we
arrived in the evenings, we always found an excellent
meal prepared — the most delicious coffee, tea, and
cream ; baskets of bread, rusks, cakes and biscuits of
various descriptions ; fresh salmon and trout ; cloud
berries, bilberries, raspberries, mountain strawberries
and cream ; and for all this about a franc and a half
is the payment required.
My companions lingered at Kristiania whilst I
paid a visit, which is one of the most delightful rec
ollections of my tour, to a native family near Moss,
at the mouth of the fyord ; then we came back to
Denmark, travelling in the same train with the beloved
Prince Imperial, who was then in the height of health
and happiness, and received at every station with the
enthusiastic ' Hochs ! ' which in Scandinavia supply
the place of the English hurrah.