These were my—our—heroes, then. Every lad of Northern blood, whose heart is in the right place, loves them. And he need make no excuses for any of them. Nor has he need of bartering them for the great of his new home; they go very well together. It is partly for his sake I have set their stories down here. All too quickly he lets go his grip on them, on the new shore. Let him keep them and cherish them with the memories of the motherland. The immigrant America wants and needs is he who brings the best of the old home to the new, not he who threw it overboard on the voyage. In the great melting-pot it will tell its story for the good of us all.
To those who wonder that I have left the Saga era of the North untouched, I would say that I have preferred to deal here only with downright historic figures. For valuable aid rendered in insuring accuracy I am indebted to the services of Dr. P.A. Rydberg, Dr. J. Emile Blomén, Gustaf V. Lindner, and Professor Joakim Reinhard. My thanks are due likewise to many friends, Danes by birth like myself, who have helped me with the illustrations.
J. A. R.
Richmond Hill,
June, 1910.
CONTENTS
| A Knight Errant of the Sea | [1] |
| Hans Egede, the Apostle to Greenland | [31] |
| Gustav Vasa, the Father of Sweden | [61] |
| Absalon, Warrior Bishop of the North | [87] |
| King Valdemar, and the Story of the Dannebrog | [125] |
| How the Ghost of the Heath was laid | [153] |
| King Christian IV | [179] |
| Gustav Adolf, the Snow-King | [205] |
| King and Sailor, Heroes of Copenhagen | [239] |
| The Trooper who won a War alone | [263] |
| Carl Linné, King of the Flowers | [277] |
| Niels Finsen, the Wolf-Slayer | [305] |
A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA
The Eighteenth Century broke upon a noisy family quarrel in the north of Europe. Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the royal hotspur of all history, and Frederik of Denmark had fallen out. Like their people, they were first cousins, and therefore all the more bent on settling the old question which was the better man. After the fashion of the lion and the unicorn, they fought “all about the town,” and, indeed, about every town that came in their way, now this and now that side having the best of it. On the sea, which was the more important because neither Swedes nor Danes could reach their fighting ground or keep up their armaments without command of the waterways, the victory rested finally with the Danes. And this was due almost wholly to one extraordinary figure, the like of which is scarce to be found in the annals of warfare, Peder Tordenskjold. Rising in ten brief years from the humblest place before the mast, a half-grown lad, to the rank of admiral, ennobled by his King and the idol of two nations, only to be assassinated on the “field of honor” at thirty, he seems the very incarnation of the stormy times of the Eleven Years’ War, with which his sun rose and set; for the year in which peace was made also saw his death.
Peder Jansen Wessel was born on October 28, 1690, in the city of Trondhjem, Norway, which country in those days was united with Denmark under one king. His father was an alderman with eighteen children. Peder was the tenth of twelve wild boys. It is related that the father in sheer desperation once let make for him a pair of leathern breeches which he would not be able to tear. But the lad, not to be beaten so easily, sat on a grind-stone and had one of his school-fellows turn it till the seat was worn thin, a piece of bravado that probably cost him dear, for doubtless the exasperated father’s stick found the attenuated spot.
Since he would have none of the school, his father had him apprenticed out to a tailor with the injunction not to spare the rod. But sitting cross-legged on a tailor’s stool did not suit the lad, and he took it out of his master by snowballing him thoroughly one winter’s day. Next a barber undertook to teach him his trade; but Peder ran away and was drifting about the streets when the King came to Norway. The boy saw the splendid uniforms and heard the story of the beautiful capital by the Öresund, with its palaces and great fighting ships. When the King departed, he was missing, and for a while there was peace in Trondhjem.