“Morgen-stund giv Guld i Mund,” said the fair Dane to me, quoting a national proverb, as I pointed out to her the distant coast of Zealand, which a few minutes before was indistinctly visible in the grey dawn, now gilded with the sun.
She was quite in ecstasies at the thoughts of setting foot on her dear Zealand, and seeing its level plains of yellow corn and beechen groves, after the granite and gneiss deserts of Lapland and Finmark. Sooth to say, the Danish ladies are not infected with that deadly liveliness which characterizes many of the Norwegians; while, on the other hand, they are devoid of that bland facility and Frenchified superficiality which mark many of the Swedes. How is it that there is such a wide distinction between the Swede and the Norskman? Contrast the frank bluffness of the one; strong, sterling, and earnest, without artifice and grace: and the supple and insinuating manner of the other. The very peasant-girl of Sweden steps like a duchess, and curtsies as if she had been an habitué of Almack’s. Pass over the Borders, as I have done, from Trondjem Fjord through Jemte-land, and at the first Swedish change-house almost, you are among quite a different population, profuse of compliments and civilities which they evidently look upon as all in the day’s work, and very much disposed withal to have a deal with you—to sell you, for instance, one of their grey dog-skin cloaks for one hundred rix dollars. One is reminded, on the one hand, of the sturdy, blundering Halbert Glendinning; and on the other, of the lithesome, adroit Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shaftón. And yet, if we are to believe the antiquarians and ethnologists, both people are of pretty much the same stock: coming from the countries about the Black Sea, two centuries after Christ, when these were overrun by the Romans, and supervening upon the old Gothic or second migration. It may be said that the Norsk character caught some parts of its colouring from the stern, rugged nurse in the embrace of whose mountains their lot has been cast; with the great backbone of primæval rock (Kiölen) splitting Norway in two, and rendering intercourse difficult. So that now you will hear a Norskman talk of Nordenfjelds (north of the mountains), and Söndenfjelds (south of the mountains), as if they were two distinct countries. But then, if the Swedes did live on a flatter country, and one apparently more adapted for the production of the necessaries of life, and so more favourable to the growth of civilization; yet it, too, presented obstacles almost equally insurmountable to the spread of refining arts and tastes.
They also used to talk, not like the Norwegians, of their north of the mountain and south of the mountain, but of their north of the forest (nordenskovs) and south of the forest (söndenskovs), in allusion to the impenetrable forests of Kolmorden and Tiveden, which divided the district about the Mälar Lake from the south and south-west of Sweden. And is it much better now? True, you have the canal that has pierced the country and opened it out to culture and civilization; but even at the present day the climate of Sweden is less mild than that of Norway, and four-sevenths of the whole surface of the country are still covered by forests. In travelling from the Trondjem Fjord to the Gulf of Bothnia, I found myself driving for four consecutive days through one dense forest, with now and then a clearing of some extent; and as for the marshes, they are very extensive and treacherous. One day I saw two cranes not far from the road along which I was driving, and immediately stepped, gun in hand, off the causeway, to try and stalk them. But I was nigh becoming the victim; for at the first step on what looked like a grassy meadow, I plunged deep into a floating morass. A Swede who was my companion luckily seized me before I had played out the part of Curtius without any corresponding results.
The nation which has to fight with a cold climate and such physical geography as this, is not much better situated than the one which in a milder climate has to wring a subsistence from rocks, and which, to advance a mile direct, has to go up and down twain. Like those heroes and pioneers of civilization in the backwoods, they both of them have to clench the teeth, and knit the brow, and stiffen the sinews, if they want to hold their own in the stern fight with nature. And this sort of permanent, self-reliant obduracy which by degrees gets into the blood, is by no means prone to foster those softer graces that bud forth under the warmth of a southern sky and in the lap of a richer soil, where none of the asperities generated by compulsion are requisite, but Dame Nature, with the least coaxing possible, listens to and rewards her suitors.
Why is it, then, that the manners of these two people are so different? People tell me it did not use to be so. The first and great reason, then, appears to be the different governments of the two countries; the absence of liberty and the excessive powers and number of the nobility in the one, and the abundance of liberty and absence of nobles in the other. The influence of rule upon the inhabitants of a country is, in the long run, as mighty as that of breed and blood.
Improbable as it may appear to some, I am inclined to lay great stress on the influence of a French Court. Bernadotte, it is true, was the son of a plebeian, a notary of Pau; but he was a Frenchman, and every Frenchman is versatile, and gifted with external polish, at all events; and his Court was French, and Court influence did its work, penetrating to the very roots of society; so that by degrees the graces of the capital became engrafted on the obsequious spirit already engendered by long servitude among the Swedish population. At Christiania, on the contrary, there is no Court; the nobility are not, and the country is all but a republic. This is, I believe, a part solution of the problem—a “guess at truth.” While on this subject, I may as well refer to the difference between the pronunciation of Danish and Norwegian, though they are at present the same language. The vapid sweetness which your Dane affects in his articulation, is most distasteful after the rough and strenuous tongue of Norway. It is a case of lollipop to wholesome gritty rye-bread. The Dane, especially the Copenhagener, rolls out his words in a most lackadaisical manner, as if he were talking to a child. Mammas and papas will talk thus, we know, to their babies, the language of endearment not being according to the rules of the Queen’s English. At times I thought great big men were going to blubber, and were commiserating their own fate or that of the person addressed, when perhaps they were only asking what time the train started to Copenhagen, or whether the potato sickness had reappeared.
Going to the fore part of the steamer to get some English money turned into Danish, I find two of those Swiss of the North, Dalecarlian girls, on board. They are from Mora, and one is very pretty. The most noticeable feature in their costume is their short petticoats and red stockings. That most sprightly girl, Miss Diana Redshank, will at once perceive whence it is that we borrow the fashion now prevailing in England. As a matter of course, they were artists in hair, and they immediately produced their stock-in-trade—viz., specimens of bracelets, necklaces, and watch-chains, very well worked and very cheap. They have been from home all the summer, and are now working their way back. In winter they weave cloth and attend to the household duties. I bought a hair bracelet for three shillings.
As an instance of Norwegian slowness, I may mention that although the railway is opened from Korsör to Copenhagen, distant three hours, the Norwegian steamer still continues to stop at Nyeborg, on the further side of the Belt, thereby necessitating this trip across, and much additional delay, trouble, and expense.
The novels of Ingemann have made all these places classic ground. The Danes look on him as the Walter Scott of their country. He is now past seventy, and living in repose at the Academy of Sorö. Denmark sets a good example in the reward of literary merit.