Cousin-hunting in Scandinavia

by Mary Wilhelmine Williams

In the brick-paved kitchen is a built-in oven, also of brick, such as was used in New England in colonial days. Most of the baking for the family is done here, but uncle also exchanges grain with the baker for immense loaves of rye bread. And the baker, I suppose, transfers the grain to the miller, in return for flour, in the placid, old-fashioned way.

In the dining room was a very old grandfather’s clock which ticked stolidly away, keeping more or less accurate time—mostly less. As a time-keeper it was not much, but you, as a fancier of the antique, would have loved the venerable case and the crotchety works. I wish, too, that you might have seen the lovely potted plants on the broad sill of the sunny dining-room windows. I never before saw such begonias as Aunt Ingeborg can grow.

One morning shortly after my arrival, Uncle announced that we were to go for an all-day picnic. I was quite willing, I assure you. My aunt, who is of the plump, comfortable, bustling type, soon had two great baskets packed with luncheon. These were stowed away under the broad rear seat of the carriage. By eight o’clock we were off,—but the sun was well on his way by that hour. There were objects of interest all along the road, so Carle, my oldest cousin, and I studied my tourist map, which names every highway, large farm, church, and windmill on the island. Uncle laughed and called us “aegte turists”—genuine tourists—but he was really as much interested in the harmless gossip supplied by the map as any of the rest of us.

Bornholm is a great place for cycling; once or twice we passed veritable flocks of cyclists. But I did not see a trace of an automobile. When I remarked upon their absence Uncle said that it was a mere accident that we had met none, for there were automobiles on Bornholm. But they had not been there long. Originally, a few of the Copenhageners who spent their summers on the island brought their machines with them,—but only for a short period, for the automobiles frightened the unsophisticated Bornholm horses quite out of their wits. After the machines had paid their first mad, chugging, snorting, honking visit to the island, and had left numerous splintered and smashed vehicles and irate farmers in their wake, a local law was passed prohibiting the desecration of placid little Bornholm by the mechanical monsters. Recently, however, the ban had been removed (Even the “pearl of the Baltic” follows in the wake of the procession), and at present, Uncle triumphantly announced—Uncle is a progressive in spite of his thatched roof—not only are tourist autos admitted, but the island even harbors two or three naturalized immigrant machines.

At about ten o’clock we stopped for luncheon in a beautiful grove where there were tables and benches under the trees. While Tante went to a near-by inn for a pot of hot coffee, and the girls unpacked a basket and set a table, Uncle cut huge slices of rye bread and fed them to the horses. But please do not generalize from this last and conclude that Danish horses regularly live on rye bread; it was merely an extra, like an apple or a carrot in America, because we were picnicking.

And wasn’t it pleasant to picnic out under those grand old beeches? And wasn’t I ravenously hungry, notwithstanding a seven-o’clock breakfast? And didn’t Tante Ingeborg have the most delicious things to eat?—pickled herring, for instance, and smoked salmon sandwiches, and “rödgröd”—probably the most typical Danish dish—made by cooking sago in fruit juice, in which have been dropped raisins, currants, spices, and other tasty morsels, until the whole is of the consistency of custard. But then I am always hungry in Denmark, and the food is always delicious. Were I to stay here very long I should degenerate into an absolute epicure.

As we neared Hammershuus Castle—our first goal—the road ran along the northeast coast through Allinge, a pretty little summer resort. Here we noticed a number of sun-browned women, wearing gay-colored bandanas on their heads in Topsy fashion, and carrying alpenstocks in their hands. They had been climbing over the cliffs. After passing Allinge, to our left was The Hammer, an imposing promontory of granite, which is being rapidly quarried away; and just ahead were the castle ruins. At the inn near at hand the horses were unhitched and stabled, the lunch baskets were removed and carried to a group of trees where there was a table just the right size, and here we had another meal; and all were again hungry.

Then we explored the ruins. Hammershuus was first built in the thirteenth century and for much of the time since it has played an important part in Denmark’s history. For a long time it, with the remainder of Bornholm, was an object of dispute between the archbishops of Lund and the Danish kings. During much of the sixteenth century the German city of Lübeck controlled the castle; in the seventeenth, as I have told you, Sweden for a short period held dominion over it and the island. For some time after Denmark resumed control, Hammershuus remained the stronghold of Bornholm; but presently the islet near at hand, Christiansö, was fortified, and the old castle was permitted to fall into ruins. Its destruction was hastened by the fact that stone was taken from it for public buildings in Rönne; and subsequently it became a sort of public quarry. Until within a century ago, the domestic vandalism continued. Nevertheless, the Hammershuus ruins are the finest in Denmark to-day.

The old pile had quite enough of the characteristics of the orthodox mediæval castle to satisfy the most romantic student of feudalism and chivalry. It stood on a high promontory with sheer cliffs on three sides. On the fourth was a moat through which flowed an arm of the sea, spanned by a draw-bridge. It is very easy to trace the whole ground plan of the castle, for many of the great walls of unhewn stone still stand, picturesquely overgrown with shrubs and trees. I was especially interested in the dungeon, as I had never seen one before; but after we had half climbed and half slid down into it, I found that it differed very little from a deep, dark, windowless cellar. In this dungeon, says tradition, the unhappy Eleonore Christine, daughter of Christian IV, and her husband, Corfitz Ulfeldt, were confined while prisoners at Hammershuus. Ulfeldt had committed treason against his country; Eleonore Christine was merely guilty of loyalty to her husband. They were imprisoned at the castle just two years after the Swedish garrison sent over to hold the island was forced to surrender to the doughty Bornholmers. Those were stirring times for little old Denmark.

Having explored the dungeon and identified the various parts of the castle by means of the map in my guide book, we wandered around the outer walls. What was once a moat is now a pretty, deep, little dell, crossed by a gracefully-arched bridge of red brick. Below, and seaward, near the base of the cliffs, are several queer, wave-sculptured rocks. One of them, the Lions’ Heads, is especially well named. Beyond these, far to the north, we detected the outlines of the coast of Sweden. Bornholm, you see, is much nearer to Sweden than it is to any Danish territory.