Studded with nails were the walls, and upon them were hanging
Helmets and coats-of-mail closely together; also between them
Here and there flashed a sword, like a meteor shooting at evening.
“Brighter than helmet or sword were the sparkling shields ranged round the chamber;
Bright as the face of the sun were they, clear as the moon’s disc of silver.
Oft as the horns needed filling there passed round the table a maiden;
Modestly blushing she cast down her eyes, her beautiful image
Mirrored appeared in the shields, and gladdened the heart of each warrior.”
In one of Lund’s narrow streets, squeezed tightly between other buildings, is the box-shaped house with German windows and tiled roof in which Tegnér lived from 1813 to 1826, while he was professor in the university. Two of the rooms formerly occupied by him and his family are now preserved as a museum in his memory. And these rooms presented a real Tegnér personality to me, for many of the quaint belongings within are things which came under the poet’s actual touch and eye, and which preserve still some fragment of individuality, though crowded together now in museum fashion. In the old family dining room are many busts and portraits of Tegnér; also a screen made by his children; and two show cases, one of which contains many letters and manuscripts left by him, and the other, his spectacles and paper knife, and other objects which he once owned. A large book-case displays the many editions in which his writings have been given to the world. The walls of the other room are pretty well covered with portraits of celebrated contemporaries of the poet: men in plain lay clothes, men in clerical frocks, men with military stars and bars. In the second room are also the desk, study lamp and chairs which Tegnér used; and a queer old “bridal stool” somewhat resembling a sofa—from the receptacle under the seat of which the woman in charge pulled a bridal quilt, covered with embroidered silk.
In Tegnér Place, a square shaded by great, characterful old trees, is also a pleasing memorial of the professor-poet. It is a fine bronze statue which represents him—very appropriately, since in his greatest writings he sings of Scandinavia’s pagan past—as leaning against a large rune stone. The square adjoins the university.