“Alas! we have been here a week, and, except one day, it has rained almost incessantly. One pities the poor Swedes in losing their short summer, for there are only about three months without snow, and every day is precious. The streets are sopping, but we have managed several excursions in the covered gondolas to quiet damp old palaces on the banks of lonely fiords. On our one fine day we went to Upsala by rail, and saw the cathedral where Gustavus Wasa lies aloft on a great tomb between his two pretty little wives, and we drove on to Old Upsala, where Odin, Thor, and Freya reigned as human beings and were buried as gods. In the tomb of Thor—a grassy mound—the Government still gives the mead of ancient times to foreign visitors. It is a very delightful place, like a dip in the Sussex downs, the quaint church, of immemorial antiquity, probably once a pagan temple, nestling behind the mounds of the heroes.
“Yesterday we heard a hundred Upsala students, the best singers in the world, sing the best national music in the Caterina Church. The King was there, a noble royal figure. He is the sovereign of the age, artist, poet, equally at home in all modern languages and several ancient ones, profoundly versed in all his duties and nobly performing them. The Crown Prince was with him, a fine young fellow, spoilt in appearance by his mother’s Nassau mouth, and the Prince Imperial, who is here with his cousins on a visit. The Queen is still away. I had many introductions here, but as the Court is at the country palace of Drottningholm, have not thought it worth while to present them; generally, however, Swedes are quite charming, especially in their manner to strangers.
“Cheating or imposition in hotels or elsewhere is utterly unknown; the only fear is lest you should not be charged enough. We asked what we should do with our luggage if we went to Dalecarlia—‘Oh, you can leave it anywhere under a bush, no one would touch a thing,’ and I am sure that it is so.
“The Hollands are delightful companions, full of interest in everything, glad to draw, reading up all the history, learning Swedish, holding historical and retrospective examinations once a week. We do a great deal of ‘lessons’ together. Certainly that one’s travels should ‘leave a good taste’ behind entirely depends upon one’s companions. And we are never even reduced to the state which I find alluded to in a French guide-book—‘Dans une voiture découverte, quand il y a une personne de mauvaise humeur, les autres admirent le paysage.’ Mr. and Mrs. Eric Magnusson are in this hotel, and we see a good deal of them. He is an Icelander, but now a Professor at Cambridge, and sent here by the University to investigate and inspect the Runic inscriptions.”
“July 15.—Yesterday we steamed down Lake Malar to Gripsholm, a very quaint castle with domed red towers, full of ancient pictures, and with the wonderful old room and bed where Queen Catherine Jagellonica (delightful name!), whose tomb we saw at Upsala, gave birth to her son Sigismund, afterwards King of Poland.”
“Throndtjem, July 28.—Surely this old cradle of Northern Christianity is one of the most beautiful places in the world. No one had ever told us about it, and we came here only because it was the Throndtjem of sagas and ballads, and expecting a wonderful and beautiful cathedral; but it is really a dream of loveliness, so exquisite in the soft silvery morning lights on the fiords and purple mountain ranges, and the nearer hills covered with bilberries and breaking into steep cliffs, that one remains in a state of transport, which is at a climax when all is engraven upon an opal sunset sky, and when ships and buildings meet their double in the still transparent water. Each old wide street of curious wooden houses displays a new vista of sea, of rocky promontories, of woods dipping into the water, and at the end of the chief street is the grey massive cathedral of St. Olaf, where Northern art and poetry have exhausted their loveliest and most poetic fancies around the grave of the national hero. Here alone in Scandinavia I have gone back perpetually to the old days of my life, and felt how happy the mother would have been here, so much—almost everything—being within her own walk; and I seem to see our trio spending a quiet month at this homelike hotel (where the landlord and landlady—highly educated people of good family—receive their guests like friends in a country-house), and sallying forth to draw in all the sheltered coves and wooded rocks by the side of fiord or river. The air too is most bracing, an arctic feeling combined with the brightest sunshine.