Unto great kings he gave good deeds for bad;
He ruled o'er kingdoms where his name no more
Is had in memory, and on many a shore
He left his sweat and blood to win a name
Passing the bounds of earthly creatures' fame.
Ogier the Dane, by William Morris.
Though the capital of an Empire which spreads from the Tropics to the near vicinity of the Northern Pole,[58] and by far the largest of Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen is yet so placed that many of her citizens look from their own windows over foreign soil. The capital is almost at the very eastern point of the wide-flung yet restricted dominions of Denmark.
A flight of but a dozen miles would carry an aeroplane on to Swedish soil; only twice that distance off is the University city of Lund, so famous in the annals of the Northern Church and so long on Danish soil.
Copenhagen is a very pleasant town, and almost all its chief buildings exemplify the architectural ideals of the Renaissance. Street upon street of houses, white stucco or red brick, adorned with pilaster and pediment and cornice, covered with tall pantiled roofs; many bearing the dates of their birth-years two or three centuries ago; these give the capital an old-world, most attractive look, a picturesqueness that is sternly denied to most so modern towns. Steeples of character to match, frequently tower above the roofs, while very constant parks and squares, long avenues of broad-leafed trees and cool-looking fountains, some of them real works of art, do much to make this town a very delightful place.
Canals, somewhat numerous open-air markets and innumerable cafés, whose tables and chairs under trees or awnings encroach on the broad pavements, make the Danish metropolis a rather characteristic Continental town. In some ways, perhaps, it has less individuality than the other capitals of the Northlands. Less romantically situated, much larger, far easier to reach from more southern parts, it has much of the bright boulevard atmosphere of Paris. Tivoli Park and the cafés, with many other like attractions, draw crowds of visitors, not only from every part of the small kingdom, but also from the very prosperous section of Sweden across the Sound, which was Danish till 1658, and has by no means lost its affection for the city that it knew as the capital of old.
Copenhagen is an epitome of Denmark herself, the prosperous metropolis of an extremely industrious and well-ordered community that likes to be amused. There is but little rotten in the state of Denmark to-day. Though fallen from possessing the widest empire of the north to the limits of a mere province, she yet thrills with vigorous life, an object lesson on many points that no land can afford to ignore. Copenhagen is not really very unlike a large German town, though the Danes are not pleased to be told so, and it lacks the numerous uniforms and those minute and detailed regulations for the welfare and good order of the population that so characterise the Fatherland itself. Magnificently equipped with boulevards, palaces and parks, cut through by fine waterways and roadways, the city rather strangely lacks any conspicuous central point. The Danes boast that their large buildings are schools, while those of England are factories and those of Germany barracks, but the headquarters of one of the chief Universities of earth possess little architectural splendour. The view of the city from the deck of an approaching steamer is not particularly impressive; nothing except a few steeples rises above the general line of the houses.
Life is lived in the Danish capital. Some of the numerous bright restaurants do not close their doors till 3 a.m., and there is much of the all-night activity that is the unrestful pride of many of the cities of America. To-morrow blends with to-day; some citizens have not reached their beds while others are starting on the activities of next morning. But happily this unquiet atmosphere does not seem to penetrate individuals. The Copenhagener does not desire to be for ever talking about his hustling town.
While so much that is of the old world still survives in Copenhagen, it is on the whole an intensely modern town, rather dominated by its stretches of asphalt and trolley-trams and ever growing lines of flats. A really magnificent feature, by the chief square next the Tivoli Park, emblematic of the soaring ambition of the place, is the new Raadhus or City Hall. Built in 1894, it is a beautiful specimen of Renaissance architecture in brick, raising a tall spire toward heaven, enclosing a couple of courts, one of them an open garden with a fountain in the centre, the other cloistered and roofed with glass. The adornments are very pleasing, appropriate to the style and use, tile mosaic of fish and bird, tree designs in relief or stencilling over the walls. The upper portions may be gained by a lift that never stops; on one side the cars are always going up and on the other down.
The site of the city, like its name, Copenhagen or merchants' harbour, is not romantic, though extremely convenient for travel and trade. It looks straight over the Sound to Sweden and the entrance to the Baltic; the arm of the sea that divides Zealand from the small island of Amager (p. [143]) also penetrates the town and adds to the water-front available for wharves. It was on a little backwater of this channel that in the twelfth century Bishop Axel (Absalon) raised on Church lands a castle, which was called by his own name, to protect the merchants from the pirates infesting the Sound.[59] Little he suspected that round it would grow up a town to supplant his cathedral city.