My dear Judicia,
Please refer to the map once more, and you will see in the blue water, nearly halfway between the Swedish coast and the Baltic province of Russia, a long, scraggly island, with many capes and indentations. You will see that it is called Gotland, and on its western shore you will see that there is a city called Visby. I do not know that I can give such a traveler and geographer as yourself any real information about Gotland, but I will at least venture to refresh your memory concerning this most interesting island, for a very considerable part of the world’s history for a good many scores of years centered in this piece of sea-washed land, which contains barely twelve hundred square miles of surface.
At one time Visby, which has now dwindled to a somewhat obscure tourist resort, was the London of northern Europe. The East and the West paid their tribute to it. Russia sent her timber and her furs, and England and Germany and Flanders their precious stuffs, which were here exchanged for other precious stuffs and then went their several ways to all parts of Europe.
One of their old ballads tells us:
“The Gotlanders weigh their gold with twenty pound weights,
And play with choicest jewels,
The pigs eat out of silver troughs,
And the women spin with golden distaffs.”
That the old ballad had some foundation in fact is shown us by the splendid ruins that tell us of Visby’s former greatness.
Throughout Gotland there are no less than ninety great Gothic churches, most of them in ruins, while in Visby alone were sixteen of these churches, some of them among the largest in Europe. So much has the city dwindled that in only one of these churches is heard the voice of prayer and praise to-day. The walls of ten others can still be seen, but they are merely magnificent ruins.