This city seems to have a character all its own, largely through mingling the features of many other towns. Here in the wooded Swedish plain an English close, a Dutch canal and an American campus seem somehow or other to have met. The interest of the place centres largely round the university, which has sheltered no small number of scholars that the whole world holds great.
In Upsala one is vaguely conscious of the existence of that intense charm, all-pervading yet undefinable, that in Oxford and Cambridge is so helped by the presence of buildings unrivalled on earth. Here no crumbling, creeper-covered walls surround garden quadrangles, nor do elm-shaded lawns slope to a placid river; here are none of the towers and spires of Isis, nor the deep red Tudor brickwork towers of Cam. The university was only founded in 1477 by the national leader, Sten Sture the Elder, who had been chosen administrator of Sweden at the Diet of Arboga six years before. It possesses no buildings that in themselves would claim attention for half an hour, though many are attractive from the well-treed lawns on which they stand. The oldest is called from the hero king who raised it, the Gustavianum; it is a plain white structure over which rises a tower capped by a swelling dome that displays the influence of the East. The new building, finished in 1886, has a fine central corridor panelled in green marble, and over the door of the Aula is written (from Thorild) in letters of gold:
Great to think free,
But greater to think right.
One feels the same atmosphere of culture and of high ideal, of youthful enthusiasm and of joy that makes the two older universities of England so lovable, though it is produced with so much simpler scenes.
The ungowned, white-capped students,[107] some two thousand of them, delighting in music and serenades, are organised in thirteen "nations." These somewhat recall English colleges, for they have buildings of their own, and somewhat resemble American Greek letter fraternities, but such likenesses soon leave off and wide differences appear. The members of the nations are chosen by the accident of birth, for each includes the students from one or more of the Swedish "läns." Graduating ceremonies take place in the cathedral, for, as in Oxford and Cambridge, the university is connected with the church.
The university library is not in the least architecturally striking, but among its somewhat numerous treasures is the famous Codex Argenteus, written on purple parchment in uncial letters of silver and gold. It was captured at Prague in 1648 and, as it gives us the text of Ulfilas' Gothic Bible, no more appropriate home for it could have been found in the wide world.
In the chief square of Upsala is a statue (by Börjeson) of one of the most renowned of former professors, Eric Gustaf Geiger (1783-1847), the poet who with zeal and zest sought to restore respect for native traditions so long overlaid by fads from France during Gustavian times. This he took up so seriously that thus, during his very engagement, wrote his future wife to a friend. Geiger "has become a Goth; instead of loving me he is in love with Valkyries and shield-bearing maidens, drinks out of Viking horns, and carries out Viking expeditions—to the nearest tavern. He writes poems which must not be read in the dark, they are so full of murders and deeds of slaughter." This is putting it somewhat crudely, the movement on the whole was very good. It is far better that each nation should cultivate and develop the traditions of its own fathers—if any such there be—rather than seek to copy ready-made the conclusions of another folk. And Sweden has no need to learn from France.
Geiger's daughter married the Count Hamilton who was Governor of Upsala during the visit of Du Chaillu (p. 223) and entertained the explorer in the castle. The Swedish branch of this great Scottish house is descended from two brothers who, like many other Britishers, offered their swords to Gustavus Adolphus in 1624. Of the mediæval castle extremely slight ruins are to be seen; the present heavy and unfinished round-towered mansion was erected by Gustaf Vasa. In it took place the picturesque but humiliating ceremony of Christina's abdication of the throne, to shake the earth of Sweden from her feet and to amuse herself idly among peoples and courts further south. The best thing about the castle is the superb view from its windows over the forest town.
The Botanical Gardens were set out by Linnæus himself, rather for serious study than for display of flowers. The founder of modern botany, to whom there is a marble statue by Byström, became a professor at Upsala in 1741 and was laid to rest in one of the chapels of the cathedral during 1778.
Close to the banks of the river is the Erikskälla, marking the spot where Eric fell, national saint of Swedes (p. [187]). He was canonised by the Swedish Church, not known at Rome, for the rival house of Sverker had gotten the ear of the pope. A spring has burst forth from the soil; such a thing very frequently happens where a saint has breathed his last. The story of his life is portrayed by mural paintings in one of the apsidal chapels on the south of the cathedral, the only part of the building where the brick vaulting-ribs are left exposed. He was at service in the Bondkyrka, or peasants' church, of the Trinity,[108] when the Danes made a surprise attack. The devout king refused to leave till the service came to an end, but soon after, fighting bravely at the head of his men, he was cut down by victorious foes.