CHAPTER III
BORNHOLM AND THE BORNHOLMERS
Rönne, Bornholm,
August 6, 191—
My dear Cynthia:
“Bornholm!” I hear you exclaim. “Wherever in all Europe is Bornholm?” Bornholm, I reply, is the “backwoods” of Denmark, the “pearl of the Baltic,” and altogether the loveliest place in the world—next to the choicest bits of my own fair land. Look on your map of Denmark, and you will see in the extreme east, as if it had strayed away from the other Danish islands and become lost, a trapezoid-shaped scrap of territory; that is Bornholm—the birthplace of my mother. When a child, I was very fond of reading “Robinson Crusoe” and “Swiss Family Robinson,” in consequence of which my ideal terrestrial paradise was a desert island near the Equator. And many were the dreams which I wove about the tropical spot, well populated with talking parrots and chattering monkeys. But if I could now, rich with my present experience, dream them over again, I should substitute Bornholm, in the Baltic—at least for summer residence.
I flew over here one evening more than a week ago, in the cabin of Örnen (The Eagle), the triggest little steamship you ever could imagine. We left at about nine o’clock, and Cousin Lars and his sons were at the pier to wave good-by, as planned. Contrary to even her summer habits, the Baltic was again beautifully calm for my sailing, so the crossing was made on schedule time, and we reached here at about six o’clock the next morning.
As you may well imagine, I rose early, and was on deck to see the arrival. When I came out of the cabin I saw a high, dark bank to the east. That was Bornholm. It is higher than the other Danish islands, and more rocky. In fact, geologically, it belongs to Sweden, for it is a continuation of the rock-ribbed Scandinavian peninsula. Soon I could distinguish trees and houses and windmills, and presently we glided past the light-houses at the ends of the breakwater and were in Rönne harbor, where a new cousin was on hand to bid me good-morning.
Rönne, which has a population of about nine thousand, is the capital of Bornholm. So far as I have been able to learn, the little town is noted only for its quaintness; and it is certainly quaint. Practically all of the houses except the public buildings are long and low and box-shaped, with red-tiled or slate roofs and brick or stone walls. Bay windows and other architectural protuberances are conspicuous by their absence; windows of the small “German” variety which swing open like doors are in time-honored vogue instead; and their broad sills are simply crowded with potted plants. But there are no flower-filled “yards” or lawns in front to delight the passer-by. Gardens, the Danes seem to believe, are primarily for the pleasure of the owner, and are to be enjoyed in seclusion and privacy. Consequently, they are behind the houses and are generally surrounded by a high, close fence. My great aunt Karen, to whose home I went upon reaching here, has such a garden in her “back yard,”—with patches of velvety grass, draperies of vines clinging to the fence, hedges of roses, and brilliant beds of blooming annuals. And in the midst of this “garden of delight” is the vine-covered arbor in which we had our meals.
The shops, as well as the dwelling houses, are low and box-shaped; and their show windows are small and crowded. There are no bold sign-boards on the gable ends of the buildings, as in the United States; instead, modest little “shingles” are generally stuck out by the tradesmen.
Dwelling houses, as well as shops, extend to the sidewalks, and many encroach shamelessly upon them, even monopolizing the whole width, and pushing the pedestrian out into the street. In fact, it is very evident that the houses in centuries past were just placed “any which way,” and that later the sidewalks were filled in, along as straight a line as possible. Like the streets, they are of cobble stone, and are marked off from the former only by being a few inches higher. After what I have said, you would hardly expect these streets to be of the avenue or boulevard variety, would you?
On my second day in Rönne I gained much quiet pleasure from wandering about the little town, noting the places of importance, and gazing in the shop windows at the rows of wooden shoes and other practical wares intended primarily for the native; and at the models of Danish castles and churches, and the exquisite displays of pottery and statuary, more calculated to catch the eye of the opulent tourist. Such shops are clustered around Storetorv, the Large Square, to which the country people come in regularly to sell their produce. In the midst of the “torv” is a queer old stone fountain decorated with gigantic bronze snails.
Forming part of Store Gade, Rönne’s main street, are two small stones, one of them bearing the date “1658.” All true Bornholmers are as proud of these stones as New Englanders are of Plymouth Rock, with its “1620;” for on this spot fell the Swedish commander, Printzenskjold—shot, time-honored tradition says, by a silver button, torn from the vest of the shooter and used as a bullet—when the Bornholmers rose in revolt against Swedish domination. By the treaty of Roskilde which followed Charles X’s unwelcome visit over the frozen Great Belt, the Swedish king, you may remember, secured several Danish provinces. Bornholm was one of these. But the Bornholmers had not been consulted regarding the cession; and as they preferred to be Danes, they did not “stay put.” That is how it happens that I am half Danish in descent, rather than wholly Swedish—a distinction largely without a difference. And the distinction hangs upon a silver button.
Bornholm still celebrates the anniversary of her victory over the Swedes; and within the last few years, at Hasle, where the revolt had its origin, a large monumental stone was erected, bearing the Danish coat-of-arms and the names of the men who headed the revolt. Of these, Jens Pedersen Kofoed, a Bornholmer who was a member of the Danish army, and Paul Anker, the pastor of the church of Hasle, are the most important.
At some distance from the “liberty stones” is Bornholm’s Museum,—the special pride of all Bornholmers; and well it might be, for the collection there, in view of the smallness of the island, is an unusually large and fine one. The curator, a woman and a true Bornholmer, proudly informed me that Copenhagen would be most happy to possess the African collection. To me the objects of most interest, however, were those throwing light upon Bornholm’s own history. These range from rude stone utensils out of the shadowy past of the island to an exhibit of graceful royal Copenhagen porcelain;—for Bornholm it is that supplies the clay from which the beautiful ware is made. The cost of manufacture seems to be too great to admit of the use of the porcelain for distinctly practical purposes; consequently, its functions are largely ornamental, and it appears chiefly in the form of vases, plaques, and statuettes. The last-named class I gazed at most lingeringly, for the subjects were varied and especially alluring. There were wonderfully-glazed robin-red-breasts sunning themselves; perky foxes with noses pointing skyward; sleepy, yawning tigers; cats crouching to spring upon unconscious nibbling mice; kerchiefed Bornholm old ladies carrying market baskets, and busily knitting as they walked; and a fond pair of children, one of whom was hugging the very life out of a tousled fat puppy. So skilful had been the artist that I caught myself actually pitying the porcelain pup.
Bornholm’s Museum and St. Morten’s Street, Rönne
Bridge Crossing the Old Moat at Hammershuus Castle
In one room was an unusually large collection of “grandfather” clocks, with elaborately and quaintly decorated faces, and with crude, clumsy weights. Bornholm at one time was famous for the manufacture of this style of time-piece. And in another room were glass-cases filled with dummy Bornholm men and women and helpless-looking dummy babies, clad in the fashions of various past ages. The garb of these dummies convinced me that fashions are not actually growing worse; for surely clothes cannot be uglier or more uncomfortable in appearance than the ancient elegance behind the glass doors within the museum.
One souvenir of unusual historical importance, the key to old Hammershuus Castle, is also on display among the exhibits. The castle, Bornholm’s chief stronghold for centuries, was occupied by the Swedish garrison for some months previous to the revolt in 1658. But Hammershuus has now long been in ruins, and its key is resting from its labors among the other antique relics in Bornholm’s Museum.
In the art collection are several paintings by famous Danes; and a whole room is set aside for the works of Lars Hansen Tobiasen, the portrait artist who was Bornholm’s own son. As yet, only a few of his pictures have been placed in the room—including portraits of himself and his parents, and of Oelenschläger, Denmark’s greatest poet. One painting by Tobiasen seemed to me quite unique; it is the arm of a young woman. That sounds cadaverous, doesn’t it?—like an anatomical chart, or an illustration in a medical journal. But the portrait suggested anything but that;—for a portrait it was—of the arm of a Danish damsel instead of her face—expressive of individual character as well as of beauty of color and line. Tobiasen spent twenty years of his life in Sweden, where he painted the royal family, and some of his pictures are there. Others are in Rönne, still in the possession of relatives; but with the passing of this generation, the curator told me, these last are by the artist’s will to go to the museum.
In a shed near the main building are the skeletons of moose and reindeer which roamed through the forests of prehistoric Bornholm. And outside in the yard are many runestones, graven by the hands of pagan Bornholmers. The island seems to have specialized upon these stones in times past, as well as upon grandfather clocks; for even to-day they stand here and there by the wayside and are, in many cases, still clearly marked with ancient runic characters.
After a short visit with my great aunt in Rönne, I spent a few happy days with my Uncle Johannes and Aunt Ingeborg in the interior of the island. My uncle and aunt drove to town to fetch me, and while Uncle let the fat horses jog along on their homeward way at a pace to suit themselves, I had a good opportunity to see the objects of interest which Tante (the Danish for aunt), pointed out on the beautiful landscape. That place with the black smoke stacks was the great pottery factory; there, where the white walls shone between the trees, one of my cousins used to live; the large, four-armed windmill on the right did not pump water, as I had ignorantly supposed, but ground grist; the handsome, cream-colored villa on the left was the summer home of a wealthy Copenhagen merchant; and so on, until the journey ended.
As we drove into the court at Uncle’s, my cousins, a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed flock, came running out to greet us. These children were so well-trained, and so natural and wholesome that they were a real pleasure to me. But do not conclude from this statement that I am implying a comparison invidious to the American child, or that I hold up Danish children as models of deportment; for I have met some enfants terrible during the last week or two, even among my own kith and kin. I attribute the superiority of these particular cousins to their quiet country rearing.
And that reminds me to speak of the great interest and curiosity with which they regarded me upon my first arrival. While I talked with Uncle, my cousins sat silently by, completely absorbed in watching me; and when he noticed them their father laughed and said, “Yes, my children; this is a genuine, native-born American.” Then he explained that I was the first native American that the children had ever seen. Few aliens except bona fide tourists reach the center of the island—and they merely pass through. It would take an Eskimo or a Patagonian to rouse a similar degree of interest in a country child of the cosmopolitan Far West.
The manner in which I mutilated the king’s Danish was also a source of much interest to them; for I suppose that they had never before heard broken Danish. They were too polite to show amusement; even at my most grotesque blunders not a smile crossed their faces; they were simply alert and fascinated—and silent. But when it occurred to them to try upon me the English which they had learned in the grades, we were promptly upon a very sociable footing; they took turns practicing their English vocabularies on me, and were delighted to find that the formulae had worked—that their school-learned language was comprehensible to me.
To the children of the neighbors I was also a whole menagerie of interest. They referred to me as “de fremmede dame” (the foreign lady), and whenever I opened my mouth to speak they waited around with bated breath to see what liberties I should take with their native tongue.
Old-fashioned Danish farms are quite different from anything which we have in America; therefore, you might like to know about Barquist, my uncle’s place. On the afternoon of my arrival I went all over it with Uncle as a cicerone, and with Astrid, the smaller of the twins, clinging to my hand and practising her English whenever the opportunity offered. Such a farm as Barquist is called a “gaard” (or court), because of the fact that all of the buildings are arranged in rectangular fashion about the stone-paved interior. The long dwelling house forms one side of the quadrangle; the sides are made up of machine shops and wagon sheds and store houses for hay and grain; and at the other end are the stables in which the live stock are kept. Roofed-over driveways separate the house from the other buildings. When the gates to the court are shut, the quadrangle forms a complete inclosure, and, consequently, furnishes much protection from stormy weather. The back doors of the dwelling house open into the court, in the middle of which stands the pump; and the front ones open into a large flower garden, which, you see, is outside of the quadrangle.
Brick and plaster form the building material for the walls, and all of the roofs are covered with thatch of rye straw, which must, of course, be quite frequently renewed. As you may imagine, the thatched roofs lend a very picturesque air to the quadrangle, especially when there is a stork’s nest in one corner. But straw roofs are going out of use because of the danger of fire from lightning; tiles are being substituted, and slate, and plain, prosaic shingles.
Surrounding the buildings on every side were fields of barley and rye, golden unto the harvest. Dotted with silky red poppies and deep blue cornflowers as they were, these grainfields presented a charming picture. Uncle admitted the beauty of nature’s color scheme, but added, “To us farmers, the poppies and cornflowers are weeds; they choke out the grain.”
The interior of the house was a comfort, for it did not have the “cluttered up,” junk-shop appearance produced in some American homes by over-furnishing. There was plenty of room to walk around without stumbling over, or knocking off, anything. The guest room, in which I slept, was so large that I felt out of doors in it. And the furniture was of corresponding proportions; the clothes-press could tuck away the whole wardrobe of an ordinary family; and the bed was even nearer kin to that in which Hans Christian Andersen’s true princess slept than the one in my hotel room in Copenhagen. Cross my heart, Cynthia, there were nearly a dozen feather ticks of various sizes on that bed. Taught by my Copenhagen experience, I promptly dumped most of them on the floor, where they remained until morning, when I replaced them and gave them a poke or two, to produce a slept-on appearance, lest my aunt by any chance be led to suspect that I was not partial to Danish beds.
In the brick-paved kitchen is a built-in oven, also of brick, such as was used in New England in colonial days. Most of the baking for the family is done here, but uncle also exchanges grain with the baker for immense loaves of rye bread. And the baker, I suppose, transfers the grain to the miller, in return for flour, in the placid, old-fashioned way.
In the dining room was a very old grandfather’s clock which ticked stolidly away, keeping more or less accurate time—mostly less. As a time-keeper it was not much, but you, as a fancier of the antique, would have loved the venerable case and the crotchety works. I wish, too, that you might have seen the lovely potted plants on the broad sill of the sunny dining-room windows. I never before saw such begonias as Aunt Ingeborg can grow.
One morning shortly after my arrival, Uncle announced that we were to go for an all-day picnic. I was quite willing, I assure you. My aunt, who is of the plump, comfortable, bustling type, soon had two great baskets packed with luncheon. These were stowed away under the broad rear seat of the carriage. By eight o’clock we were off,—but the sun was well on his way by that hour. There were objects of interest all along the road, so Carle, my oldest cousin, and I studied my tourist map, which names every highway, large farm, church, and windmill on the island. Uncle laughed and called us “aegte turists”—genuine tourists—but he was really as much interested in the harmless gossip supplied by the map as any of the rest of us.
Bornholm is a great place for cycling; once or twice we passed veritable flocks of cyclists. But I did not see a trace of an automobile. When I remarked upon their absence Uncle said that it was a mere accident that we had met none, for there were automobiles on Bornholm. But they had not been there long. Originally, a few of the Copenhageners who spent their summers on the island brought their machines with them,—but only for a short period, for the automobiles frightened the unsophisticated Bornholm horses quite out of their wits. After the machines had paid their first mad, chugging, snorting, honking visit to the island, and had left numerous splintered and smashed vehicles and irate farmers in their wake, a local law was passed prohibiting the desecration of placid little Bornholm by the mechanical monsters. Recently, however, the ban had been removed (Even the “pearl of the Baltic” follows in the wake of the procession), and at present, Uncle triumphantly announced—Uncle is a progressive in spite of his thatched roof—not only are tourist autos admitted, but the island even harbors two or three naturalized immigrant machines.
At about ten o’clock we stopped for luncheon in a beautiful grove where there were tables and benches under the trees. While Tante went to a near-by inn for a pot of hot coffee, and the girls unpacked a basket and set a table, Uncle cut huge slices of rye bread and fed them to the horses. But please do not generalize from this last and conclude that Danish horses regularly live on rye bread; it was merely an extra, like an apple or a carrot in America, because we were picnicking.
And wasn’t it pleasant to picnic out under those grand old beeches? And wasn’t I ravenously hungry, notwithstanding a seven-o’clock breakfast? And didn’t Tante Ingeborg have the most delicious things to eat?—pickled herring, for instance, and smoked salmon sandwiches, and “rödgröd”—probably the most typical Danish dish—made by cooking sago in fruit juice, in which have been dropped raisins, currants, spices, and other tasty morsels, until the whole is of the consistency of custard. But then I am always hungry in Denmark, and the food is always delicious. Were I to stay here very long I should degenerate into an absolute epicure.
As we neared Hammershuus Castle—our first goal—the road ran along the northeast coast through Allinge, a pretty little summer resort. Here we noticed a number of sun-browned women, wearing gay-colored bandanas on their heads in Topsy fashion, and carrying alpenstocks in their hands. They had been climbing over the cliffs. After passing Allinge, to our left was The Hammer, an imposing promontory of granite, which is being rapidly quarried away; and just ahead were the castle ruins. At the inn near at hand the horses were unhitched and stabled, the lunch baskets were removed and carried to a group of trees where there was a table just the right size, and here we had another meal; and all were again hungry.
Then we explored the ruins. Hammershuus was first built in the thirteenth century and for much of the time since it has played an important part in Denmark’s history. For a long time it, with the remainder of Bornholm, was an object of dispute between the archbishops of Lund and the Danish kings. During much of the sixteenth century the German city of Lübeck controlled the castle; in the seventeenth, as I have told you, Sweden for a short period held dominion over it and the island. For some time after Denmark resumed control, Hammershuus remained the stronghold of Bornholm; but presently the islet near at hand, Christiansö, was fortified, and the old castle was permitted to fall into ruins. Its destruction was hastened by the fact that stone was taken from it for public buildings in Rönne; and subsequently it became a sort of public quarry. Until within a century ago, the domestic vandalism continued. Nevertheless, the Hammershuus ruins are the finest in Denmark to-day.
The old pile had quite enough of the characteristics of the orthodox mediæval castle to satisfy the most romantic student of feudalism and chivalry. It stood on a high promontory with sheer cliffs on three sides. On the fourth was a moat through which flowed an arm of the sea, spanned by a draw-bridge. It is very easy to trace the whole ground plan of the castle, for many of the great walls of unhewn stone still stand, picturesquely overgrown with shrubs and trees. I was especially interested in the dungeon, as I had never seen one before; but after we had half climbed and half slid down into it, I found that it differed very little from a deep, dark, windowless cellar. In this dungeon, says tradition, the unhappy Eleonore Christine, daughter of Christian IV, and her husband, Corfitz Ulfeldt, were confined while prisoners at Hammershuus. Ulfeldt had committed treason against his country; Eleonore Christine was merely guilty of loyalty to her husband. They were imprisoned at the castle just two years after the Swedish garrison sent over to hold the island was forced to surrender to the doughty Bornholmers. Those were stirring times for little old Denmark.
Having explored the dungeon and identified the various parts of the castle by means of the map in my guide book, we wandered around the outer walls. What was once a moat is now a pretty, deep, little dell, crossed by a gracefully-arched bridge of red brick. Below, and seaward, near the base of the cliffs, are several queer, wave-sculptured rocks. One of them, the Lions’ Heads, is especially well named. Beyond these, far to the north, we detected the outlines of the coast of Sweden. Bornholm, you see, is much nearer to Sweden than it is to any Danish territory.
After leaving Hammershuus, we drove along the southeast coast to Rö, to see Helligdommen Klippen (Holy Cathedral Cliffs). As it was about five o’clock when we arrived at Rö, we first had supper under the trees, with coffee, piping hot, obtained just across the way. Then, by means of a winding stairway, we reached the base of the cliffs. Here was a little gasoline launch which took us up and down the coast to see the fantastic wave-worn rock, now and then puffing into the deep caves dug out by the breakers. In some places the cliffs look as if Mother Nature when in an angry mood had seized a mighty knife and slashed right and left, working havoc with the solid granite; here were long slices of rock; there were slender columns and spires standing alone in the water; and occasionally there appeared a distinct variation of pattern, bearing resemblance to natural objects. Our guide in the launch made the most of these. “Look at the profile of the Bornholm damsel, formed by that mass of rocks,” said he; and “There is St. Peter; can’t you see his cross and keys?”—and so on.
On every ledge of the cliffs where soil could find place were velvety mosses, delicate, plumy ferns, and flowers brightly blooming; gaily colored fish darted about in the water; and—most beautiful of all—a glorious sunset crowned and scene and the day with a blaze of orange and crimson and gold and rose which covered half of the sky and was reflected on the surface of the placid Baltic.
Perhaps, as compared with the wild, majestic sweep of our Western scenery, all of this seems very miniature and very tame. But it is not fair to compare it with anything so different. Helligdommen, when I saw it, had a charm all its own—like an English landscape. I shall never forget its beauty.
It would have been very pleasant to spend the whole summer at Uncle Johannes’, but duty called, and the time for my other visits was short; so I soon returned to Rönne, bound for the northeastern part of the island. The railroad journey from Rönne to Nexö was one of the drollest experiences which I have had in Europe. Generally speaking, there is not anything funny about a ride by train;—but there are railroads and railroads; and of her own particular variety little old Bornholm certainly has a very exclusive monopoly. The cars are very small, as if they were the half-grown children of American ones; and the trains are almost incredibly leisurely. Positively, I believe that my train spent two-thirds of the time backing and switching and waiting at stations. During the remaining third it ambled and sauntered between stopping points; and upon finally reaching one, the locomotive gave a ridiculous, hysterical shriek, as if overcome by the prodigiousness of the feat which it had performed. But this toy train suits Bornholmers very well, for they have plenty of time; and it suited me, for it gave ample opportunity for studying the landscape. An American express would never do at all on that twenty-three-mile long island; it would be a giant in dwarf’s quarters. The Rönne-to-Nexö line, which is the main railroad line in Bornholm, is not sufficiently long to enable a train of the American express variety to assume normal speed with safety.
From Nexö to Svaneke, whither I was bound, I had to go by post wagon. A post chaise is just a sort of rudimentary stage coach, and as I am an old stager—as you know—I immediately bethought me of a seat on top with the driver, and lost no time before asking for it. Some one else had got ahead of me, however, and I had to ride inside with two women and two children; hence, I had only an occasional and fragmentary view out of the dusty window in the rear.
Svaneke, which is picturesquely situated upon the northeast coast of Bornholm, is a fishing town of about thirteen hundred inhabitants. It is, if possible, quainter than Rönne. Its streets are crooked beyond belief; they dip and turn, zig-zag, and run in circles;—at least, that is the impression which I gained from wandering helplessly around in them; for I never went out alone without becoming lost and having to undergo the humiliation of inquiring the way to my destination. Another baffling characteristic of the place is that the houses are more completely duplicates of one another than are those at Rönne.
On a particularly crooked street, near the edge of the town, are three of the typical Bornholm houses; all are low and box-shaped, with red-tiled roofs, and with small German windows, the wide sills of which are crowded with potted plants, beautifully growing and blooming. In these three houses live three aunts of mine, all of them sisters and all of them widows. To these aunts, my visit was an epoch-making event; I came as a delegate from my mother whom they had not seen for forty years. At a family congress held shortly after my arrival the time which I had to spare for Svaneke was carefully divided up, in order that each aunt might have a fair chance at her American niece; and in consequence of this treaty, the niece vibrated somewhat like an erratic pendulum between the three dear, quaint old homes. Breakfast at Tante Hulda’s, luncheon at Tante Anna’s, dinner at Tante Laura’s, with one or more of the appertaining cousins present,—thus ran the schedule, with an occasional reversal or combination. Only the place where I was to have afternoon coffee was left unprovided for; I had that wherever I happened to be at coffee time.
My nights, however, were spent with my oldest aunt, Anna, who lives in the middle of the row. All of her children have homes of their own, except the youngest, who has followed the call of the Viking and is away at sea. Her home is a perfect museum of souvenirs of him and his voyages; there are Japanese curios, tapa cloth from the South Seas, armadillo baskets, nautilus shells, South American parakeets, and I do not know what else. Imagine squawking parakeets in little old Bornholm! In its air of “foreignness,” the interior of Tante Anna’s house contrasted interestingly with the homes of my other two aunts, which are typical of Bornholm. But everything was interesting and charming and everything was wonderfully quiet and restful. I recommend Svaneke for all victims of nervous prostration.
One day, like Charles Lamb, I went cousin-hunting out in the country,—but in the company of a cousin instead of a sister. We cycled, Dagmar and I; and started early and had a long, lovely day. The landscape in this part of the island is the most beautiful that I have seen since my arrival here. The poppy-and-cornflower-strewn grain was ripe, and here and there the harvesting had begun. Occasionally the whirr of a reaping machine was heard, but very frequently I noticed folk reaping and binding by hand in primitive fashion. The men led, cutting the grain with their sickles; behind them came the women who bound it into sheaves, which they piled ready for the hauling. The colored dresses of the women contrasted brightly with the background of fields and gave the touch of perfection to the picture.
But the passing landscape was made up of much more than harvest fields and reapers. There was a rare variety. Patches of rosy clover and of alfalfa, with blossoms shading from pale amethyst to deep, dark purple—patronized by thousands of golden yellow butterflies—alternated with the fields of wheat and barley, oats and rye already mentioned. Some of the fields were unfenced; others were inclosed by thick, green hedges, or by walls of unhewn stone, with at times a waste corner given over to purple heather. Here and there over the patches of pasture please imagine a few sleek dairy cows, and a few more plump sheep. Add trees to the panoramic picture—some casting broad, cool shadows across the finely-paved road, along which you cycle in imagination with me, others grouped here and there between us and the horizon—majestic oaks and beeches, and white-limbed birches, with dainty, fern-like leaves.
And now put in the houses. Just coming into view on one side is a mossy, thatched-roofed gaard, with dazzling white walls partly concealed by clumps of trees; on the other side, a little nearer at hand, note a red brick building peeping forth from the clustering foliage; and yonder is a white one with red tiles substituted for thatch. As you cycle past, there will be a constant shifting and changing of styles and colors, according to whether the farms are new or old, small or large. Tuck into the panorama a few large windmills here and there, with long arms slowly and lazily grinding out Danish grist; and finally finish off your picture by adding an occasional church, at first just peeping its spire or tower over the rolling surface of the ground, but as you approach looming large, in Lutheran dignity conscious of State support.
We rode all day in the midst of this beautiful landscape, now and then making a cousinly call. And always, for the sake of the cousinship, these cousins welcomed their clanswoman from the Land of the Setting Sun; and everywhere they insisted that we partake of coffee, regardless of the amount of which we had already drunk; and always they accompanied us to the main road when we departed, remembered the “Hils hjemme” (Greet those at home for us) when the good-byes were said, and were waving a final farewell when we took a last look at the turn of the road. Verily, cousin-hunting in a foreign land may be a wondrous pleasant pastime—if the foreign land be an ancestral homeland.
Near the end of our ride we came to Östermarie Church, of the parish in which my mother lived as a child. And there in the church-yard were many old grave-stones with family names; names that were familiar, but strange—when found there. The ancient church is in ruins, but twenty years ago a new one was built, after an old pattern, with a square tower topped off with a gable. A memorial tablet to Jens Kofoed, who helped save Bornholm for Denmark, has been carefully transferred from the old building to the new.
Harvest Time in Bornholm
Österlars Church, Bornholm
Östermarie represents one of two characteristic types of Bornholm church architecture. The other type which I have in mind is the rotunda. These rotunda churches are among the rare sights of Denmark, and date from well back into the Middle Ages. Österlars, the finest sample, is Östermarie’s near neighbor at the northwest. The main part of the building is a huge cylinder, capped with a cone-shaped roof. Attached to the outer walls, like barnacles, with little regard to symmetry or uniformity, are a number of buttresses. The whole structure has a grotesque appearance, and is like nothing else I have ever seen,—except, perhaps, as regards form, the grass huts of the South Sea Islanders. But it is much more substantial than these; the walls are thick and heavy; for in the old fighting days the rotundas served as fortresses as well as houses of worship.
The northeastern part of the island possesses various reminders of earlier days than those in which Österlars was built. Among these are the sites of several burial mounds. During my mother’s girlhood some of the mounds were leveled by bold farmers, unfearful of the hauntings of outraged ghosts; and their contents—weapons, utensils, ornaments, etc.—which the heathen Danes had buried with their dead, were brought to light. Some of the objects reached the museum at Copenhagen in safety; others, especially the ornaments of gold and silver, were melted down by the thrifty but short-sighted country people. The most famous mound of all was, however, carefully excavated by Danish archæologists. This was on the large farm called Store Bakkegaard, not far from my mother’s old home.
Most of the country people realized that the mounds were prehistoric graves; and some of the farmers, for superstitious reasons, refrained from leveling them. As you may imagine, many ghost stories grew up around these—stories of mysterious lights which appeared and disappeared in the trees on top of one of them; of a monstrous three-legged cat which yowled from another; of a surpassingly beautiful maiden with incredibly long golden locks who haunted a third. They were “spooky” landmarks, my mother said—places past which the school children hurried with bated breath in the early twilight of the short winter days.
In my mother’s childhood also many believed in witches and wizards, who were able to work destruction to their enemies, and against whom one must be on one’s guard; and of “wise men” and “wise women,” beneficent variations of the witch and wizard class, to whom one went with one’s troubles, of whatever nature. Was a Bornholmer afflicted with boils or ringworm, warts or “fits,” which failed to yield to home remedies, if he was superstitious—as he often was—he would ignore medical advice and consult a “wise” person, frequently with satisfactory results. A lost sheep or a lost child, a guilty conscience or suspected disloyalty on the part of a lass or a lover—all of these were cases which called for the services of the “wise.” With the spread of scientific knowledge, however, knowing ones, good and evil, tended to lose prestige, and now, so far as I have been able to learn, they are no more numerous in Bornholm than elsewhere; the “backwoods” in the Baltic is becoming as hard-headed and skeptical as the remainder of the world.
On my return from Svaneke to Nexö I rode on the high seat with the driver; and as the day was fine and the driver was affable it seemed almost as if my old staging days had returned. One has such a top-of-the-world feeling when on the driver’s seat of a stage coach—even if the coach be only a post wagon. To the right hand was a Bornholm landscape such as I have tried to describe; to the left was the Baltic, edged by rocky cliffs, and dotted here and there with the white or brown sail of a fishing boat.
A few miles beyond Nexö I stopped off to visit my cousin Thorwald, who lives on a large gaard with quadrangular buildings of brick, arranged on the same principle as Barquist, only on a larger and more elaborate scale. While here, for the first time—I hope it was the first time—I disgraced my clan. This is how it happened. When I arrived, Christine, my cousin’s wife, was up to her eyebrows in preparations for a birthday party for their little girl; and promptly after my arrival the cook fell ill. It was evident that a crisis was at hand, which I determined to relieve. The intricacies of Danish cookery are quite beyond me, so I knew enough to leave that to Christine; and I cast about me for other means of helpfulness. As luck would have it, I saw a row of milk pails near the kitchen door. Now, as you know, I was not reared on the Far Western frontier for nothing; the mysteries of bridge whist and the tango to me are mysteries indeed, but I can milk a cow.
As the inspiration seized me, as promptly I seized a pail and went forth to relieve the birthday party crisis. The cows were gentle; I milked two, and returned in triumph with the brimming pail. I acknowledge that I had had some misgivings with reference to just how my particular form of aid would be regarded; but I was not prepared for the sensation which my performance created. As I approached the house, I met one of the maids who was starting out to milk. Upon seeing me, she rushed into the house exclaiming, “De fremmede dame har malkede köerene! De fremmede dame har malkede köerene!” And the awful tidings spread.
Since Thorwald is not only a wealthy farmer but—what is vastly more important—is also an officer in the Danish army, Christine has a tremendous amount of dignity to maintain. When she learned what I had done, she stood for a moment in petrified astonishment, and then burst forth, “You have milked the cows! What will my friends say! What will my friends say!” And then she left the room, utterly humiliated by the conduct of her husband’s low-bred cousin. I am certain that she swore the maids to secrecy, lest my exploit get abroad and she lose caste.
A scrap of consolation was offered to me, however, by Christine’s cousin, who was also a visitor at the house. She, not being related to me, could afford to be amused as well as scandalized. After I had stoutly aired my views, this cousin told of a Danish high-school teacher—a woman of phenomenal strength of mind—who had not only shocked the whole community by milking a cow, but subsequently had shamelessly announced that were she the queen she would milk cows if she felt like doing so! Unfortunately, with all of her charm, little old Bornholm is in some ways very conservative and very aristocratic; there is much talk of “fine folk”; and her aristocracy is still determined to a considerable degree by the mediæval qualifications of position and wealth, rather than by intellect and character. She is not so different from my own land, however; for there are plenty of Americans who would sympathize with Cousin Christine’s indignation over my plebeian performance.
Lest you be left with the impression, however, that the “pearl of the Baltic” is far more back-woodsy and conservative than is a fact, I wish to assure you before leaving it that Bornholm is, in many ways, exceedingly progressive. It must be, since it is a part of Denmark, which is in the front rank of the progressives of Europe. The farmers’ telephone system, for instance, is well established on the island, and is well patronized; rural mail delivery also exists, the postmen generally cycling over the smooth roads. Bornholm’s educational system is excellent; you would be astonished at the subjects, besides English, which are included even in the grammar school course. And I must acknowledge—though as an American school teacher I am somewhat ashamed to—that the teaching is more thorough than in our land; the Danish children seem to retain and make practical use of what they learn, as few American children do. The Bornholmers are intelligent too, though isolated; they read and they think; all seem to make at least one trip to Copenhagen during a lifetime, and many visit the capital quite frequently. Also, Socialism gives evidence of being fairly well rooted in the island, where it bids fair in future to play havoc with time-honored aristocratic ideals.
Bornholm conservatism is in a sense a modified local patriotism; for the Bornholmers are intensely attached to their mid-Baltic home,—a fact, I presume, largely due to their isolation and to the consequent necessity, to a considerable degree, for their fighting their own battles in times past. Their love for the beautiful island naturally makes them loath to change the old for the new, unless they see a good reason for so doing. A cousin who is a fiercely loyal Bornholmer is a good illustration of this. One day I asked her the Danish word for “birch” and she replied, “The Copenhagen Danish is birk; the Bornholm Danish is burck. I pronounce it burck, for I am a Bornholmer.” The Danish spoken in Copenhagen is generally considered the best, and is charming to the ear; in my opinion, it has a dignity which French lacks, and a beauty of sound foreign to German. The Bornholm dialect, on the other hand, is a broad drawl which is unqualifiedly ugly.
It must be recognized, too, that Bornholm possesses virtues which many centrally-located places lack. Among the population of more than forty thousand serious crimes are almost unknown. The people are friendly and honest; they practice the Golden Rule pretty faithfully. I was impressed with this fact while in Svaneke. We were going away to spend the evening, and I, being the last out, proceeded to lock the door. “Never mind to lock the door,” said Tante Anna; “just close it. There are no thieves on Bornholm.” Later, fearful lest she had exaggerated the honesty of the island, she discussed the matter with Tante Hulda; and finally they remembered that some years before a man in Rönne had been convicted of stealing a few kroners’ worth of something—I have forgotten what.
I am writing these final lines aboard Örnen, sitting on a stool in the cabin with my writing pad on my knee; for I am outward bound from Bornholm. All of my Rönne relatives came to the boat and saw me off with “Hils hjemmes” and repeatedly waved good-byes. I was just on deck to take a last look. Ah, when I forget thee, Bornholm!—My nearest cabin mate is a girl from the Faroes, who is taking a great armful of purple heather home with her. The Faroes, you know, are a part of Denmark. An old Norse dialect is the vernacular, but Danish is taught in the schools, and my cabin mate, like most natives, speaks it. Hence, we do not have to resort to a deaf-mute show in order to make ourselves understood. The girl is stirring in her berth. I fear that the light disturbs her, so I must put it out. As the Bornholmers say, “Farvel saa laenge”—Good-bye for the present.