Among other things, I hear from my host of a regulation, in respect to ecclesiastical matters, which is well worth mentioning. In England, as we all know, no provision is made by the law for pensioning off a superannuated clergyman, or for the support of a clergyman’s widow; nay, the very sensible proposal to pension a bishop, the other day, was decried as simony. Not so in Norway. The widow of a beneficed clergyman here has a proportion of the income of the benefice (from twenty to sixty dollars) during her life. Besides this, there is attached to most parishes what is called an Enkesæde (widow farm). Formerly she cultivated this herself; but, by a late regulation, these places have been sold, and she has the profits, which vary, in different cases, in amount.
Besides the beneficed clergy, there are in Norway another class of clergy called Residerende Capellan. He holds a chapel of ease in some large parish, with land and house attached, but is quite independent of the rector. His appointment, like that of the beneficed clergy generally, is vested in the king. On a vacancy, the applications are received by the government, and sent to the king, marked 1, 2, 3, in order of merit. He generally chooses the first, but not always. The number of these chaplains is small—not above ten in all Norway. In some respects, the Residerende Capellan has less work than the Sogne Prest, or rector. Thus the Fattig-wesen, or arrangement for the relief of the poor, is chiefly managed by the Sogne Prest.
The Personal Capellan corresponds to an English curate. Whenever a rector requires a curate, he is bound to take one who is out of employment; and he cannot get rid of him, but must retain his services as long as he is rector. His successor in the living, however, is not similarly bound. It is conceivable that the rector and curate may have differences, and that this perpetuity of connexion may in some instances become irksome to both. Generally, however, it is found to work well—they make the best of it, like a sensible man and wife. And the curate is not exposed, as he sometimes is in England, to the caprices of a rector, or a gynæcocratical rectoress. Nor, again, is the public eye offended in this country with those unpleasant advertisements of curates holding the views of Venn, with strong lungs, or of Anglicans skilful in intoning and church decoration.
“What examinations have you at the University of Christiania?” I asked.
“There are three. First, the Philosophisk, i.e., a mixed classical examination; second, one in mathematics, physics, theology, and other subjects; and, three years later, there is what is called an Embeds examen (faculty examination), which, for the future clergyman, is in divinity; for the lawyer, in law; and so on. After this examination, however, a clergyman is not compelled to be ordained directly—indeed, he can put this off for some years.”
“And are the Norwegian students such ardent spirits as their brethren in Germany?”
“Ardent enough, but blessed, I hope, with more common sense. They are intense lovers of liberty, and their minds are full of the idea of Scandinavian unity—i.e., a junction not only moral, but political, of the three kingdoms, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. It was only the other day that a thousand Norwegian students paid a visit to Upsala and Stockholm, and then went over to Copenhagen. They were received with open arms by the Danes. The shopkeepers would have no money for the articles they disposed of to them, begging them to take what they had asked for as a souvenir of Denmark. They lived in private houses, and partook of the best during their stay, entirely gratuitously; the King himself bore his share of the Leitourgia, lodging and boarding them in the palace. This Scandinavian party is gaining ground. It would be a great thing for Norway if the Bernadotte dynasty could succeed to the throne of the three kingdoms. They are of a much better stock than the descendants of Christian the First. Look at Oscar and his eldest son, the free-hearted, outspoken soldier; and then look at the throne of Denmark—a king who first marries a respectable princess and divorces her for another, and does the same by her for no reason but because he has set eyes on a sempstress at a fire one night in the capital, and is determined to be possessed of her—and there she is, the Countess Danner. But he is blessed with no offspring, and when he dies the Danes get a Russian for their king, or what’s next to it. No wonder, then, that the Scandinavian idea finds favour in Denmark. Even the king favours the idea; his toast, ‘Denmark, Sweden, and Norway—three lands in peace, one in war,’ shows that, selfish as he is, and careless of trampling on the feelings of those he has sworn to love and cherish, he has some little regard for the future of his people, and has not so far forgotten Waldemar and Knut, as to wish Denmark to be a mere appanage of Russia—in short, he has always aimed at being a popular monarch.”
“A grand idea,” said I, “no doubt, this of Scandinavian unity. I hear that Worsaae, and many of the Danish professors, have taken it up. But I don’t think professors, generally, are practical men—at least, not in Germany, judging from what they did in Frankfort in 1848. They were with child for many months, big with an ineffable conception, but they only brought forth wind after all.”
“Ay! but we Norwegians don’t manage in that way. Look at Eideswold, in 1814, and say whether we are not practical men.”
“Don’t you think Norway has anything to fear from the jealousy of Sweden?” I went on, changing the subject.