Cousin-hunting in Scandinavia

by Mary Wilhelmine Williams

The Scandinavian countries are in the forefront in their adoption of all modern educational devices and agencies; and they lead the world in their system of people’s high schools (folkehöjskoler), which originated in Denmark, but have been introduced into the other Scandinavian lands. Bishop Grundtvig, who founded the first school of the kind in 1844, worked upon the belief that people gain most good from education acquired after the age of eighteen. And the people’s high schools as they now exist are for adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They are particularly for country dwellers. There are five-month winter terms for men and three-month summer terms for women. The living expenses and tuition combined are surprisingly slight—only about ten dollars per month. No entrance examinations exist, and no final examinations. Many subjects of study are offered, and great freedom is permitted the students in their selection. These people’s high schools are undoubtedly tremendously important factors in raising the standard of Scandinavian civilization.

The evening following my visit to the school museum Cousin Lars and I went to the Tivoli, the famous amusement park where high and low in Denmark play; for he said that not to see the Tivoli was not to understand Copenhagen. The admission fee is only fifty öre, or about thirteen cents, for adults and twenty-five for children, hence there are very few whose poverty would shut them out from a chance for relaxation and enjoyment. The place, which was founded by George Carstensen as early as 1843, contains all sorts of arrangements and devices for the amusement, pleasure, and instruction of the people of Copenhagen. Under the trees are tables and benches where refreshments are served, and there are several good restaurants close at hand. A large aquarium and a zoo contribute equally to the pleasure of the children and the grown-ups. The buildings are in oriental style and are fitted with arrangements for thousands of colored electric lights, which are turned on only upon special festive occasions. The night of our visit was just an ordinary occasion, but the park was thronged with great crowds. While the young people were occupied at the merry-go-round, shooting galleries and other more exciting and adventurous places, the parents stood or sat around and watched the pantomime play or listened to the various bands. One of these bands was made up of several dozen men who played the national and popular airs, and played them well. The Scandinavians are a musical people; Scandinavia gave the world Jenny Lind, Christine Nilsson and Edvard Grieg, you know.

Yesterday was Sunday, and it was arranged that I was to go on a tour of Danish country castles in the part of Seeland which is to the north of Copenhagen. As Cousin Lars had been over the same route only a couple of weeks before, he decided not to go. The boys were to accompany me instead. The “boys” are Cousin Lars’s two sons; Waldemar is sufficiently grown up to be grizzled at the temples, and Jens has a daughter who is old enough to have the whooping cough and thus keep her mother at home for the day; nevertheless Cousin Lars calls them “the boys,” and so do I. Yesterday, at least, the two threw dull care away and acted in a very juvenile manner. The boys have homes of their own, but it was decided that we were all to have breakfast together in order to have an early start; however, through a misunderstanding, Jens took breakfast at home, and Waldemar was late in arriving; consequently, we came very near missing the train. As it was, we simply pelted down the three or four blocks to the station, where the train stood with snorting engine ready to move out. Jens had got a late start too, but was already at the station gate. He waved the tickets when he saw us rush panting up, called out, “Come on,” and climbed aboard. We tumbled into the starting car just in time to be taken along.

Through an ideal country landscape we journeyed—a landscape which reminded me strongly of Bornholm—to the little town of Hilleröd. Here we left the train and walked about a mile to Frederiksborg Castle, which is the finest sample of early Danish Renaissance architecture. The castle is situated in a lake on three islands and has wide encircling walls and bridges and moats and towers, just as the castle of one’s dreams should have. The building was erected by Frederick II, in 1562, but various parts of it have been burned since, and the only remains of the original structure are two round towers bearing the date of erection and the King’s motto, “My trust is in God alone,” in German. Those were the days of German influence in Denmark. Christian IV, the great Renaissance builder, erected the fine building of which the present one is largely a restoration; and it was the favorite residence of this king and of his successors for many generations. In 1859 a terrible fire destroyed Christian’s castle but by means of government contributions and private subscriptions it was promptly rebuilt. Captain J. C. Jacobsen, “Ph. D., Brewer,” in particular, whom I have mentioned before in connection with Copenhagen art museums, contributed large sums toward the work of restoration. His money paid for the fine Neptune fountain in the outer court, erected to replace the one which was stolen and carried off by the Swedes in the stirring days of 1658.

In 1877 Captain Jacobsen secured permission from King Christian IX to found a museum of national history in the castle. The expenses of the upkeep and development of the museum are met by an endowment fund established by the founder and by a share of the annual income from the Carlsberg breweries.

After wandering about the courts for a while, the boys and I entered the castle to explore. Naturally, the early and obscure ages of Danish history are chiefly strung together with representations of Danish royalty, and the events—to a greater or less degree legendary—associated with their reigns, while the later periods are more and more given over to the work of the Danish people. In the vestibule, which contains the earliest exhibit, are statues of King Gorm the Old, who reunited under one crown all of the Danish lands, and Queen Thyra. This royal couple of the ninth century combined the old and the new, the dying heathen religion and the growing Christianity; Thyra was a Christian, and through her influence Gorm, who still worshiped the gods of his fathers, was induced to permit the preaching of the Christian missionaries. In the vestibule with the statues are casts of the two rune stones which marked the graves of the king and queen.

Not far from these relics of Gorm and Thyra is a very interesting painted frieze depicting the English chapter of Danish history—or the Danish chapter of English—including a representation of King Canute on his throne on the strand, rebuking his flatterers after he has proved to them that in spite of his commands the waves advance. Though only remotely connected with Danish history, there is also a fine copy of the famous Bayeux tapestry representing the Norman conquest of England in 1066. In fact, the museum is somewhat unique in the number of copies and models of famous things and places which it contains. There are models of all of the buildings of any note, I think, in Denmark, not omitting Hammershus Castle and Österlars Church in little old Bornholm; and the Dannevirke with the wall of Thyra Dannebod, built across the lower part of the peninsula of Jutland to keep out the southern enemy, is there too.

We passed through a bewildering succession of rooms containing many reminders of Denmark’s past, over which we were anxious to linger; but there was little time, so we moved on. In the hunters’ hall, as the boys insisted on calling it—it was called the “Knights’ Room” in the guide book—we did linger a little. Around the wall is a stucco frieze with bas-relief figures of deer, foxes, hares and other animals of the chase; and the curious thing about it was that the antlers of the stags are bona fide antlers. Since these are darker in color than the remainder of the deer, the effect is somewhat weird. The old fenders and grates are still in position in the black marble fireplace; but the gallery from which the players of King Christian’s time dispensed music while the king and his courtiers made merry below is no more to be seen.

Frederiksborg Castle is a great national gallery, as well as a museum in the ordinary sense. Naturally, there are many paintings and “graven images” of Danish royalty, from the tolerant heathen, Gorm the Old, whom I have already mentioned, down to the late King Christian IX. There are several pictures of this last king. In one of these he is represented as visiting Iceland in 1874; in another he is portrayed as receiving in audience at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen the delegation from the Norwegian parliament announcing the election of Haakon VII as king of Norway. The Norwegians, you will remember, when they finally were able to set up an independent establishment, had to adopt a king. Haakon of Norway is a son of Christian IX.

But the great Danes who never wore kingly crowns or sat upon the ancient throne of Denmark are not forgotten; and the smaller ones who served their day and country in time of war or peace also have a place—even to “J. C. Jacobsen, Ph. D., Captain, Founder of the Carlsberg Fund.” Saxo Grammaticus, the first Danish historian, who lived in the credulous days of the twelfth century, is there in sculpture; and keeping company with him is a statue of Snorre Sturlason, the Icelandic historian of the same period, to whom we are indebted for the “Younger Edda,” and the “Heimskringla,” the annals of the early kings of Norway. I have no reason to believe, however, that either of these sat for their portraits, any more than did King Gorm and Queen Thyra. In the gallery are also portraits of Hans Christian Andersen, the sage with the child’s heart; Niels Steensen, the great anatomist and geologist; Ludwig Holberg, the founder of Danish literature; Niels Finsen, the great physician and humanitarian; Lieutenant-Colonel Dalgas, founder of the Society for the Cultivation of the Danish Heaths, through whose efforts Denmark has recovered from the heather waste and put under cultivation even more land than was stolen from her by the Germans in 1864. Adam Oehlenschläger, the greatest Danish poet, is represented by both painting and bust. He was to Denmark what Tegnér was to Sweden. Indeed, to some extent Tegnér was a disciple of Oehlenschläger. In the room reserved for this poet is the furniture used by him; also manuscripts, sketch books, spectacles and watches which belonged to him; and drawings in lead pencil of his two children, done by himself. Upon the wall is the wreath with which he was crowned by Tegnér in the cathedral of Lund.