EIGHTH LETTER
Wherein a jump is made from midwinter to midsummer, and the water journey from Stockholm to Upsala is described, during which the palace of Drottningholm is passed, and the famous ruins of Sigtuna, Skokloster Palace, with its rare art treasures, until we reach Upsala, the university town of Sweden, the “City of Eternal Youth,” with its thirteen “Nations.” Also something about the Codex Argenteus, the noble cathedral with its noted graces, as well as Gamla Upsala with the tumult of Odin, Thor, and Frey.
Upsala, June 15.
My dear Judicia,
It is a long time, is it not, since last I tried to impress you with the charm of Sweden. Do not think for a moment, however, that I have given up the pleasant task. It is, as you know, simply because other duties have interfered with the pleasure of telling you about this part of the great northern peninsula, and in my more brief and fragmentary letters I could not attempt to do justice to this interesting part of the earth’s surface. Now it is approaching midsummer, the glad, high days of all Scandinavia.
But to go back a little in my story. What a glorious season is spring in these northern latitudes! I pity the people who must spend all their lives in the tropics and never know the joy of seeing old mother earth wake up from her long winter’s nap.
Considering its latitude, spring comes wonderfully early in Scandinavia. Even in February you can see the yellowing of the willow trees, and the catkins begin to show their downy faces on many a bush. Very early in March you will see little girls from the country on the streets of Stockholm and Upsala, selling the earliest wild flowers, that look like our hepaticas. Soon the ice in the great lakes in the southern part of Sweden breaks up, and from the Mälar huge cakes, on which you might build a little house and float out to sea, come rushing down through the city to the Baltic.
Perhaps you remember that when in midwinter I went to the far North to see a sunless day my railway journey took me through the university city of Upsala. In this balmy June weather I want you to go with me by boat, for it is by far the most interesting and picturesque way. Starting from the Riddarholmen quay of Stockholm, we are soon out upon the great lake which adds so much beauty to Stockholm’s environments. On all sides of us are Sweden’s vast forests of pine and birch, clothing the gentle hills to their very top and coming down to the shore until their feet are almost washed by Mälar’s ripples. On through a long, narrow arm of the lake we steam, being admitted to new beauties by floating bridges that open their doors for us as we approach. Each turn in the channel reveals something a little more beautiful than the last scene.
Nor is it rural loveliness alone that enchants one with this journey, for we are constantly getting glimpses of charming villas, old chateaux, castles, and occasional ruins, each one of which is alive with historic interest.
The great palace of Drottningholm, with its beautiful gardens, a favorite residence of the kings of Sweden, is one of the first palaces that we see. Soon after the chateau of Lennartsnäs appears, and we remind ourselves that it was once owned by Lennart Torstenson, a hero of the Thirty Years’ War, with whom I fear that neither you nor I are acquainted. And now we come to the old city of Sigtuna, whose inhabitants, like many of the people of Palestine, are indebted to their ancestors for the modest degree of prosperity which they enjoy to-day.
A famous American preacher once published an oft-quoted sermon on the “dignity of human nature as disclosed by its ruins,” if I remember the title correctly. The former dignity of Sigtuna is certainly disclosed by its ruins, for above the few and humble dwellings of the present day rise the ruins of three mighty churches, St. Olaf, St. Per, and St. Lars.
Sigtuna was destroyed by the Esthonians from Russia, when they raided Sweden away back in the year 1181. It is said that they carried off two great silver doors from one of these churches, and if you go to Novgorod, in Russia, perhaps you will see them doing duty in some Greek Orthodox church of the present day.
But the most interesting palace that we see on our way to Upsala is Skokloster. You will see that there is more than a suspicion of a cloister in this name, for the Cistercian nuns once lived in these woods in a forest cloister. But the palace that we see was erected by the great Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Wrangel, and by studying its treasures you can learn more in half a day about the Thirty Years’ War than by reading a small library of books. It is still in the possession of the descendants of the Field Marshal, and I venture to say there is no more interesting collection in the world of the relics of the titanic struggle that freed Europe from her long thralldom.
I did not count them, but I am told that there are over twelve hundred guns and eight hundred swords and daggers, most of them the relics of this war. An immense library, a splendid collection of old manuscripts, rare pictures, and porcelain make the palace far more interesting than most museums. There is one treasure which I have since read about and which I am very sorry I did not see. It is a little gold ring containing a ruby set in diamonds. “This is the ring the great Gustavus Adolphus gave to his first and only true love, the beautiful and gifted Ebba Brahe, on their betrothal. The diamond ring that Ebba gave to Gustavus in return is preserved in the sacristy of the cathedral at Upsala.”
Five of the love letters of Gustavus are still preserved, and no lover ever wrote more ardently or charmingly. But the course of true love is not any more likely to run smoothly with princes than with other people. Indeed I am not sure but the average man has a decided advantage over a prince in that respect. For though Gustavus and Ebba were betrothed, they were never allowed to marry. The old queen would not allow Gustavus to have a Swedish subject for his wife, but made him marry a German princess with few brains and small personal attractions compared with Ebba Brahe, while Ebba married a Swedish Field Marshal. This accounts for the fact that her engagement ring is treasured at Skokloster to-day, for the son-in-law of Field Marshal Wrangel belonged to the Brahe family, in whose possession it has remained ever since.
Does not this little romance seem to bring the great warrior a little nearer to us? As we think of that little ruby ring, he is no longer a demigod, but a disappointed lover, a lovelorn wooer, “sighing like a furnace”; thinking, no doubt, unutterable things about the stern old queen who would not let him have his own way.
It gives us a glimpse, too, of the influence of woman in those old days. Even the most advanced suffragette of the present time cannot make a British Prime Minister bend to her will, while one woman in the olden days was enough to make the greatest warrior of Christendom quail and give up the one on whom he had set his heart’s affection.
But if Skokloster detains us too long, I shall not be able to bring you to Upsala to-day. A few hours after leaving Skokloster, we enter the little Fyris River, which winds through a wide plain and takes us close to the heart of Sweden’s most famous university town.
One can tell that he is in a college town before the boat ties up at the wharf, for students in white caps have come down to the wharf to meet other students in white caps, who are coming back to their college duties. There are two thousand of them here, and nearly one hundred and fifty professors and instructors. A beautiful name has been given to Upsala by someone who calls it the “City of Eternal Youth.” A happy name indeed for any college town, where every six or eight years the student body wholly changes, and with every year new blood and young life is injected into the veins of the old institution.
Some educationalists think that our college course in America is too long, and that young men are consequently obliged to begin their life work too late. What would they say to Upsala, I wonder, where the course is from six to ten years, though the average age of entering is nineteen. Philosophy, law, and theology exact six years of study on the average, before the examinations can be successfully passed, while medicine requires eight or ten. Surely the doctors of Sweden should be well equipped for their life work.
Another unique feature of Upsala University is the institution of the “Nations.” These Nations are something like the Greek-letter societies of American colleges, with the important distinction that every student at Upsala must join one of the Thirteen Nations, and there is none of the snobbishness which is beginning to characterize some of our Greek-letter societies.
These Thirteen Nations all have buildings or rooms of their own, and each one is named after one of the provinces of Sweden, while a distinctive flag waving over the building shows what Nation inhabits it. The chief university building is worthy of any institution on either side of the Atlantic, but there is no great group of buildings or splendid quadrangle, and the first effect of Upsala as a university town is rather meager and disappointing. A homely brick building with a round tower at either end was formerly a royal palace, but is now used by the university.
Gustavus Adolphus, who had a hand in almost everything of importance in ancient Sweden, gave the university a splendid endowment, and sent back to it from his battlefields many of the spoils of war, among others a great library from Wurzburg, Germany. It is said that at the same time he forwarded the Twelve Apostles in silver and the golden Virgin Mary from the Wurzburg cathedral to the Swedish mint to be coined into kroner. He doubtless felt, like his great English prototype, Cromwell, that the apostles should “go about doing good.”
The chief treasure of Upsala is an old, time-worn parchment manuscript, in many respects the most interesting book in the world, for it is the only original Gothic manuscript extant and the only early source of information concerning the Gothic language, the oldest of all Teutonic tongues.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Castle at Upsala.
The manuscript contains a translation of the four Gospels in Gothic by Bishop Ulphilas. The good bishop died in the year 388, and this copy was made undoubtedly within a century of his death. Not only did Ulphilas make this translation, but he invented the Gothic alphabet, some of whose letters show his indebtedness to the Greek. The letters are stamped in silver upon purple parchment, while some of the capitals and more important words are in gold or otherwise illuminated.
It has been said: “The old monk who laboriously stamped this parchment with his single types, a letter at a time, little knew how near he came to inventing printing, yet had he only combined three or four types together and stamped a word at once, the great invention would have been made there and then.”
I am not so sure of this, for our modern printing-press uses letters set one at a time, as the old monk used his hot metal types. But evidently the world was not yet ripe for Gutenburg and his printing-press, and it had to wait another thousand years for the invention that opened the aristocratic halls of learning to the democracy of the world. A saying of Max Müller’s is worth quoting for you here: “To come to Upsala,” he says, “and not see the Codex Argenteus would be like going to the Holy Land without seeing the Holy Grave.”
I am glad that the guardians of the Codex are fully alive to its unique value. Every night, in its silver case, it is locked up in a fire and burglar-proof safe, for the authorities remember that many years ago a watchman stole ten leaves of the Codex. For twenty years they were lost, and only on his death-bed the thief confessed his folly and drew them out from the pillow beneath his head. Such a theft seems to me a good deal like stealing a red-hot stove, or, perhaps the Mona Lisa, for how a thief could expect to dispose of any of these treasures or profit by them without discovery is a mystery.
Another building here, to which I must not fail to introduce you, is the splendid cathedral, the noblest church in Sweden and the historic center of the kingdom. It has recently been so thoroughly restored that all the old cathedral has been renovated out of it, except its memories and its tombs. Yet from the modern standpoint it is a magnificent building, nearly four hundred feet long, and with three beautiful Gothic spires that soar as many feet into the air.
The tombs have interested me the most, however. Here lies Gustavus Vasa, in a granite sarcophagus between his two wives, who in effigy lie on either side of him, while no thoughts of jealousy or rivalry stir their granite hearts. Here, too, is the charming philosopher and naturalist, Linnæus, whose statue in Stockholm I described, and Swedenborg, the great mystic, who could look into heaven and hell and describe what he saw there, and whose works, which have so strong a hold on a multitude of Americans to-day, are published and re-published in a multitude of languages.
I have been introducing you only to “new” Upsala, and to people and books that are not more than a thousand or fifteen hundred years old; but there is an old Upsala about three miles from the cathedral, which I have greatly enjoyed visiting. It is within easy walking distance on this bright June day, and I set out to find my own way to Gamla Upsala, which was not a difficult task in spite of my slight knowledge of the Swedish language, since the average Swede will take unlimited pains to tell a traveler what he wishes to know.
One of these polite gentlemen upon the street happened to hear me asking the way to Gamla Upsala. He was walking with his wife, and he told me to follow them and they would show me the way. I naturally supposed that they were going in that direction themselves, and trudged on behind them, since our limited knowledge of each other’s tongues did not allow much personal intercourse. They turned from one road into another, walking a good mile and a half, I should judge, until we came in sight of three singular mounds in the distance, a mile or more away. “These,” they said, pointing to them, “mark the site of Gamla Upsala.” Then they bade me a polite good afternoon and turned around to pursue their homeward journey. Apparently they had come all this way to show a solitary American the site of the ancient city and to make sure that he would not get lost on the straight and narrow road that leads to it.
As I approached the King’s Mounds, or Kungs Högar, I found that they were not unlike the Bin Tepe, or the Graves of the Thousand Kings on the Lydian plain, near old Sardis in Asia Minor. To be sure the tumuli of Lydia are for the most part far larger than the mounds of Gamla Upsala. Still these are very considerable tumuli, about sixty feet high and two hundred and twenty-five feet in diameter.
They are called the Mounds of Odin, Thor, and Frey, but you must not suppose, Judicia, that the old viking gods are buried here. By the way, where do you suppose such mythical personages are buried? But someone, not knowing who the ancient occupants of these graves might be, gave them these names, which certainly add to the interest of Gamla Upsala. I almost felt, as I scrambled to the top of Odin’s Hill, which is the largest of the three, that I was standing on the grave of one of the ancient gods.
Of course inquisitive moderns have not allowed the ancient bones in these tombs to rest in peace, but all that they found when they opened them were the half-burnt remains of some old kings whose names and dates nobody is wise enough to know, together with some pieces of gold and copper ornaments, some glass dishes, and bones of the kings’ horses and dogs, all of which were burnt apparently in the same great holocaust which consumed his mortal remains. Whether his wives had to share the fate of his horses and dogs, deponent saith not.
There is another interesting mound not far from Odin’s tumulus. It is twenty feet lower than his grave and has a large level space on the top. This is the hill where the ancient, open-air parliament was held and where, as late as the days of Gustavus Vasa, the kings were accustomed to address the people.
Gamla Upsala is now a very small hamlet with a little stone church, whose high and narrow windows and massive tower make it look more like a fort than a sanctuary. Upon this spot, we are told, once stood a splendid temple to the stalwart old gods who have given their names to the tumuli—Odin, Thor, and Frey. It is only a little more than a hundred years since this temple was destroyed and since priests still offered sacrifices, perhaps of human victims.
Let me close my story of Gamla Upsala with a sentence from the story of Adam of Bremen, who wrote his Chronicle in the very last days of heathendom, about the year 1070. “In this sacred house,” he says, “which everywhere is adorned with gold, the people worship the images of three gods, and this so that Thor, who is the mightiest of them, occupies the seat of honor in the middle, while Odin and Frey have their places on each side of him. When pest or famine is at hand, they offer to Thor’s image; when it is war, to Odin’s; at wedding celebrations, to Frey.”[3] Adam also relates that near the temple stood a grove in which the bodies of victims, human beings as well as beasts, were hung up, “and this grove is sacred in the eyes of the heathen.” He says that “every tree in it is held to be divine on account of the death or blood of those offered there.” What a tremendous gap in the history of the world is indicated by the little distance between Odin’s Mound and that homely Christian church! What a tremendous advance from the big Gamla Upsala of the eleventh century to the little Gamla Upsala of the twentieth!
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.