The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

Upsala.

If you have a taste for Icelandic literature, so refreshing in the heats of summer, here you can find the oldest and coldest of the Eddas; and alongside of them is a Bible with the marginal notes of Luther and Melancthon. Students in and out of the university have free access to these treasures, and the reading-room is a pleasant resort for those who love to refresh themselves in the midst of a hundred thousand books, in all tongues and every realm of human thought.

About fifty professors and fifteen hundred students compose the faculty and attendance of this famous university. It was founded in 1477, and has but one rival in Sweden, that at Ludd, founded in 1666. The expense of a student’s education, including board, fees, &c., is about three hundred dollars a year.

No one can be admitted to practise in any of three professions,—law, medicine, or divinity,—without taking his degrees at one of the two universities. This ensures a high order of acquirements in professional men, and when we state one fact in addition, that one male person in every 688 in Sweden enjoys an education at the universities, it will be seen that these institutions reach the whole people, and extend their advantages into the midst of the masses. Sweden, and in this respect she is not singular in Europe, has not made the mistake which we in the United States have been making, of multiplying little colleges, and little theological seminaries, one-horse institutions, with the idea that, by bringing a school to the door of every man, or of every church, we should be enlarging the area of education, and multiplying the number of educated men. Thus we have reduced the standard of fitness for professorships. Thus we have diminished the number of students. Lowering the mark to which scholars should aspire, we have cheapened education, suppressed literary ambition, made the professions less attractive, and filled them with an inferior order of men, compared with what they would have been had the standard of great universities, with their high qualifications of professorships and degrees, been maintained. If all the money which has been expended in the maintenance of feeble and famishing colleges and divinity schools had been applied to the education of youth in two, three, or four universities, they would have been far better taught, and the surplus of money over and above the expenses of their education would endow a new university as often as the extension of territory and the increase of population render it necessary.

A student of the university is required to wear a cap of peculiar make, to distinguish him, not in the university town only, but wherever he may travel in Sweden. The cap is white, with a black border, and a rosette of the national colors in front. This requisition is useful in keeping the student upon his good behavior, and also as a peripatetic advertisement of the educational institutions of the country. It is only by slow degrees that our people come into the habit of putting classes into uniform. It is but recently that the police were so clad: now we have letter-carriers, railway officials, &c. The clergy formerly were generally known by a white neckcloth, but that has ceased to be their distinction.

The old cathedral had the appearance of neglect; it was out one side from the busy haunts of men, and this was in its favor, but it seemed to be neglected. Twenty-four whitewashed columns support the roof. In side chapels are the tombs and the remains of the old kings of Sweden. And when I had spelled out some of the Latin inscriptions, and had linked the names of these sleepers with the old-time stories of the land, the venerable cathedral began to take upon itself the form of a great monument of the dead past. And well it might, for the first stones were laid for its foundation in the year 1289, and it was consecrated in 1435. Its dimensions rise into the sublime, for it is 370 feet long, 141 feet wide, and 115 feet high.

The columns within are capped with carvings of grotesque beasts, strangely out of taste in the house of God. Linnæus lies buried here, and a splendid mural tablet and bronze medallion portrait of him adorn the wall. Here lie Gustavus Wasa and two of his wives, and a long series of fresco paintings in seven compartments celebrate the great events in the life of this illustrious man. Here, too, is a tomb of John III., remarkable for this,—that it was made in Italy, was lost at sea on its way here, was fished up sixty years afterwards, and brought to this spot.

The sacristan was very kind in revealing to our not very reverent eyes the precious things here kept for special exhibition to those who would pay for the privilege. With this understanding we were permitted to behold crowns and sceptres, a gold cup two feet high, a dagger that had been stuck into a king, and a statue of the old god-king Thor! This last is not worshipped here, but is cherished as a memorial of the times when paganism was prevalent, and as a trophy of the triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness.

About three miles north of Upsala, the seat of the great university, is Old Upsala, more sacred than any other spot in Sweden: for here are the lofty mounds which tradition has consecrated as graves of the gods,—the gods who aforetime were held in reverent awe and honor by the Scandinavian race, and who, to this day, hold some sort of sway over the rude masses of the North.

We rode out in carriages from the university, and passed in sight of the house which covers the Mora Stone, on which the kings of Sweden were chosen and crowned. It is made of about twelve different stones joined and inscribed with the names of the monarchs who have been elected by the voice of the people. In 1780 the house was built over it by Gustavus III., but that was seven centuries after the first inscription upon it; for here it is written that Sten Kil was chosen in 1060, and seven others, down to Christian I., in 1457. Gustavus Wasa met his subjects here in mass-meeting and addressed them from this stone in 1520. The hoar of ages, with all the memories of the revolutions of these centuries, gathers on this spot. It is now only a shrine for pilgrims with antiquity on the brain, who wander the world over to see what the world has been. I have a large development of that weakness, and it has a great gratification in this part of Europe: more, indeed, than it had in Egypt; less than in Palestine. In the Holy Land the sacred associations with the religion we love makes every acre of it dear to the heart: we take pleasure in every stone, and favor all the dust of Judea. With less awe,—indeed, with no awe,—but with wonder, we now come to Old Upsala, to the graves of the pagan deities.