Copenhagen was made the capital in 1443 by Christopher, the Bavarian, just after he had been recognised as King in Sweden and Norway as well as in Denmark itself. He was not a popular monarch. The Swedes called him the stumpy little German, and he thought them a free-spoken folk. When men complained that pirates were ravaging the coasts and were probably supported by Eric, the king who had been deposed, Christopher answered that, having been deprived of three kingdoms, a man could hardly be blamed for stealing a dinner now and then. Perhaps if the dinners had been stolen from the palace and not from their own houses the people would more readily have seen the joke.
Thus, Copenhagen is a mediæval town, but it has no buildings earlier than the creations of that most accomplished sovereign, Christian IV., who could sail a ship and navigate the fjords and swim and leap and fence and fight and ride and drive and speak many languages and explain the course of the stars and drink enough wine and beer to astonish the court of his brother-in-law, James I. of England. If he really designed the buildings that he raised, as it seems he truly did, he was also an architect of no mean power.
The Bourse, which he erected about 1624, presents a long low façade to one of the quays and its high roof is relieved by large gabled dormer windows. From the top of the tower in the centre four dragons look down and coil their tails heavenward together to form a spire about a hundred and fifty feet high.[60] Another of his works is the Round Tower,[61] originally used as the observatory. It is entirely filled by a brick slope up which one may walk with ease to the top, corkscrewing round a pillar. Over the metal parapet that bears the date 1643, there is a splendid view across wide miles of steep roofs covered with curving tiles, relieved by many a tree and the tall masts of many a ship. And the other spires and towers and domes of the city make a really splendid array, especially the quaint steeple of Vor Frelsers Kirke, round whose outside an open stairway winds to the gold ball at the top. Across the Sound loom up low Swedish hills, but the city is too vast to allow a view of Danish country of any decipherable sort. Over thirteen miles of choppy sea appears the small isle of Hveen, now famous for its hares, where in 1580 Tycho Brahe built his observatory and "wielded the sword, not to smite flesh and blood, but to strike out a clearer path up to the stars of heaven. For Holger Danske (p. [146]) can come in many forms; so that through all the world one sees the might of Denmark."[62]
In this teeming womb of royal kings one expects to see palaces, and very numerous they are, now in many cases put to every kind of useful purpose, from the framing of laws to the display of things curious and rare. But the sneer of Samuel Laing in 1839 that Copenhagen has more palaces in her streets and squares than ships in her harbour has long ceased to be true. The haven of merchants again has a busy trade; canals and shipping and docks are met with on every hand.
Two palaces, Rosenborg and Fredericksborg, were erected (or begun) by the same fourth Christian king, and fine specimens of Danish Renaissance they are, far better in general effect than in detail. Walls mostly of brick, carved work of stone, tall metal-covered roofs and lofty open windowed spires. The palace of Rosenborg contains a beautiful array of furniture and weapons and china and jewels, the collection of several kings.
HOJBROPLADS, COPENHAGEN
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Other of the palaces are fine examples of the severer Classic work of the eighteenth century erected when Europe had learned to call barbaric all that the Christian centuries had raised, so ceased merely to apply Classical details to Gothic designs, and could admire nothing but plain copies of the work of Greece and Rome. The Amalienborg (Winter Palace, etc.) surrounds a fine octagonal court with Ionic pilasters, balustrades and urns, over which rise high tiled roofs. In the centre of the court is a metal statue to King Frederick V., famed as the patron of science and art. It was erected by the Asiatic Trading Company which once made Denmark an Indian power, for the king's interest in the East was great, and he dispatched Niebuhr to Arabia in 1761.[63]