Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 305 / New Series, Saturday, November 3, 1849

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
VOYAGE TO COPENHAGEN.
Ever since the end of a very pleasant excursion in Rhineland and Switzerland in 1848, I had set apart the summer of the present year for a more extended tour, which should embrace the principal German cities and Italy. When the time came, however, those parts of the continent were in such a volcanic state, that unless I had had a decided taste for walking over hot cinders and lava (' incedere per ignes '), there was no chance of getting along with any degree of comfort. In these circumstances, I turned my thoughts to a part of Europe which is not perhaps possessed of so many attractions, but which at least had the merit of being sufficiently cool for the foot of the English traveller—namely, the group of countries which rank under the general appellative of Scandinavia. In England these countries are generally regarded as only too cool—which is not altogether true either—and they are accordingly little visited. But here, again, lay a reconciling consideration; for, if neglected, they were just so much the more recherchés to the person who should make his way into them. I also reflected on the singular social condition of Norway as a curious study for such a wanderer as myself: it would, I thought, be deeply interesting to try and ascertain if a democratic constitution, and the absence of a law of primogeniture, really did render that country the paradise which it appears to be in the pages of Samuel Laing. Then there were some curious geological and archæological studies to be pursued in Scandinavia. One large lump of it is supposed to be playing a sort of game of see-saw, to the great inconvenience of mariners in the adjacent seas; while another, though now steady, appears to have at some former period been engaged in the same strange procedure. According to some philosophers, there had been a time when a sheet of ice had passed athwart the whole country, rubbing away every asperity from its craggy surface, excepting only the peaks of the highest mountains. Its wild fiords were still as curious for their natural phenomena as for the lonely grandeur of their aspect. And the remains of the early inhabitants of these remote regions, whether in the form of literature, or that of their arms, personal ornaments, and domestic utensils, were, I knew, a treasure of the richest kind to any one taking the least interest in the past history of his species.