Gerda in Sweden

by Etta Blaisdell McDonald

But Birger was at the other end of the boat. "Come here, Gerda," he called. "We can see Waxholm now."

Then, as the boat slipped past the great fortress and began to thread its way in and out among the islands in the fjord, the twins stood at the rail, pointing out to each other a beautiful wooded island, a windmill, a rocky ledge, a pretty summer cottage nestling among the trees, a fisherman's hut with fishing nets hung up on poles to dry, an eagle soaring across the blue sky, or a flock of terns flying up from the rocks with their harsh, rattling cry.

There was a new and interesting sight every moment, and the sailors in their blue uniforms nodded to each other with pleasure as Gerda flitted across the deck.

"She is like a little bluebird," they said; and like a bird she chirped and twittered, singing snatches of song, and asking a hundred questions.

"I like those old fancies that the Vikings had about the sea and the sky and the winds," she said at last, stretching her arms wide and dancing from end to end of the deck. "They called the sea the 'necklace of the earth,' and the sky the 'wind-weaver.'"

"I wish I had the magic boat that Loki gave to Frey," answered Birger lazily, lying flat on his back and looking up into the "wind-weaver." "If I had it, I would sail over the whole long 'necklace of the earth,' from clasp to clasp."

But Gerda was already out of hearing. She had gone to sit beside her father and watch the course of the boat through the thousands of rocky islands that stud the coast.

"The captain says that the frost giants threw all these rocks out here when they were having a battle with old Njord, the god of the sea," she said. Then, as she caught sight of a lighthouse on a low outer ledge,—"Why, Father!" she cried, "I thought we were going to stop at every lighthouse on the coast."

"So we are, after we leave the Skärgård," replied Lieutenant Ekman. "I came down as far as this several weeks ago when the ice went out of the fjord. There are two or three months when all this water is frozen over and there can be no shipping; but as soon as the ice breaks up, the lamps are lighted in the lighthouses and I come down to see them. Now it is so light all night that for two months the lamps are not lighted at all unless there is a storm."

Gerda ran to the rail to wave her handkerchief to a little girl on the deck of a lumber vessel which they were passing.