Through Scandinavia to Moscow

We stayed the night in a comfortable inn, close by the water side, an ancient ale house where sailors used to congregate in the halcyon days when all passing ships must lay-to at Helsinoere to pay the tolls then levied by the King, hard by where now the fishing boats tie up. There were many of these and one in particular was continually surrounded by an excited crowd. It had just arrived loaded down to the decks with a catch of herring. The fishermen had had the luck to run into one of those rare and extraordinary schools of herring which are sometimes chased into the protecting waters of the Sound by a whale or other voracious enemy outside. The nets had been let quickly down and millions of fish as quickly drawn up. The boat had been filled to sinking, and word flagged to brothers of the craft to hasten up and partake of the abounding catch. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of herring had been caught within a few hours by the fishermen of Helsinoere alone, to say nothing of what were taken by the crews of other fishing boats along the coast. The entire population of the little town is now busy cleaning and salting fish, fish that will feed them well and keep them easy in stomach until the winter shall be past and the spring be come again. Women were selling fish along the streets, boys were peddling fish, how many for a cent I do not know, and men were giving fish, gratis, to whosoever would carry them away. These extraordinary catches do not often happen. No such luck had befallen Helsinoere for many a day. It may be years before it again occurs. The fisherman of these northern waters sails forth upon his cruise each day inflamed with very much the same spirit of adventurous quest as in America are we who, living upon the land, drill wells for oil or dig for gold.

Helsinoere is rich to-night, and the herring is her king.

V

Across the Sund to Sweden and Incidents of Travel to Kristiania

Kristiania, Mission Hotel,Pilestradiet 27 (Alfheim), August 31, 1902.

Hilsen Fra Kristiania!

Our ancient tavern, the Sleibot, in Elsinore, cared for us most comfortably. We were given a large room looking out over the waters of the Sund, with wide small-paned casemented windows, and a great porcelain stove and giant wooden bedstead. For breakfast we had fresh herring, the fish which will now form the chief diet of Helsinoere for many a month, and more of the good Danish coffee. The bill for lodging and breakfast was seven kroner (about $1.90) for us two.

The dear old couple were on hand to see us off, and waved farvel as we boarded the immense ferryboat which takes on, if needful, an entire train, but usually only the baggage cars, for through travel to Swedish and Norwegian points. The boats are long and wide and strong, and smash their way through the floes of drifting ice the winter through, for this outlet of the Baltic is rarely frozen solid for any length of time. The four-miles passage is made in twenty minutes, and after we got under way, it was not long before even massive Kronborg faded upon the view, and we were making fast to the pier at Helsingborg, in Sweden.

In England, owing to the smallness of the tunnels and the present cost of enlarging them, the railway management is compelled to keep to the ancient diminutive style of carriage first introduced sixty years ago. But here, in these northern lands, where railway building is of more recent date, although the gauge is the same as in Britain, the carriages are half as large again, and are many of them almost as long as our American cars, so that the riding in them is much easier than there. And in Norway I have already seen cars which, except for being shorter, were exactly like our own.

We traveled first along the sea, then through a flat country. There were scores of sails upon the Kattegat, a multitude of ships and barques and brigs, schooners and sloops, and small fishing smacks, and larger fishing luggers going far out upon the North Sea. There were also many black hulks in tow of big tugs carrying coal to the Baltic cities, and steamers bound for English and German ports and even for America. The waters were alive with the busy traffic.

We passed wide meadows and much grass land. Cows were feeding upon these fields, red cows mostly, with herders to watch over them. The cows were tethered each to a separate iron pin sunk in the ground, all in a single row; and thus they eat their way across an entire meadow, – an animated mowing machine. Now and then we returned to the shore of the sea, passing some fishing village nestled along the rocks, or we rolled through forests of small birches, pines and spruce.

In the same compartment with ourselves sat a couple of young Germans. They were much interested in each other. I noticed that the lady’s rings were most of them shining new, and one, a large plain gold ring, was in look particularly recent and refulgent. H came to the same conclusion also at about the very same moment. The two were surely a bridal pair. And they talked German, and looked out across us through the wide windows as though we were never there. So I spoke to my wife in good United States, and we agreed that these two were newly wed. And then the bride’s noble face and fine brown eyes appealed to me, and I declared her to be the loveliest woman I had yet seen this side the sea. The while she and her Mann still conversed in low, soft German. But it now seemed to me that they looked out across us with a kindlier feeling in their eyes and, in a surreptitious way, the German beauty was peeping at the fine large diamond on H’s left hand (the wedding ring she had already succeeded in making look dull and old). At Goteborg (Gothenburg) our train drew up for half an hour’s wait. Here that portion of it going to Stockholm would be cut loose from our own, and another engine would take us to the north. Along with most of the other passengers the young German and I also got out, leaving the two ladies in the car. At the counter of the big lunch room I watched the ever hungry Norsemen stowing away cold fish and cheese, and was in somewhat of a dilemma what to take, when the German husband of the lovely bride came up to me in a most friendly way, and suggested that I would enjoy a certain sort of fish and thin brown cake, which seemed to be one of the popular objects of attack by the voracious multitude. And he spoke to me in perfect English of the educated sort. He had evidently quite understood my flattering comments upon his bride, and was now my fast friend. I did not show surprise, but took his hint, and afterward we strolled up and down the platform, munching our snack, while he told me that he was a “barrister from Cologne.” “Yes, on his wedding trip.” He had “learned English in the German schools,” he said, and had “never been in England or America.” His wife, he admitted, “could not speak English,” but “could read it and understand it when others talked!” He told me of the German courts, and of his long years of study before he was admitted to the bar. When they left us a few miles further on, for their way lay up through the lakes and forests of Sweden, we parted as old friends, and they promised to visit us if ever they should come across the sea; our unsuspecting admiration had won their hearts!

About 4 p. m., we dined at the small station of Ed, our first example of Swedish railway dinner-serving on an elaborate scale. The train was a long one. There were many passengers. The fish and cheese consumed at Gothenburg was long since shaken down. We were genuinely hungry. But when the train came to a stop there was no rush to the restaurant, nor attempt of every man to get ahead of the one in front of him. The passengers took their leisure to get out, and walked deliberately toward the big eating room. The food was set upon a long central table. There were hot soups, hot boiled fowl, hot meats, an abundance of victuals, cold and salt. There were piles of plates, of napkins and of knives and forks. Everyone helped himself, and ate standing or carried his food to a little table and sat at ease. This latter plan we followed. Rule: Eat all you will, drink as much beer as you desire, take your own time, the train will wait, and when you are quite satisfied pay a single kroner (twenty-seven cents). There is no watching to see how much you may consume. You eat your fill, you pay the modest charge, you go your deliberate way. However slow you may be the train will wait!

We now traversed a barren country of marshy flats; with skimp timber, chiefly small birch and spruce. Toward dusk it was raining hard. The long twilight had fairly begun when we crossed the Swedish border and a few miles beyond stopped at Fredrikshald, where is a famous fortress against the Swedes, besieging which, King Charles XII was killed. Here a customs’ officer walked rapidly through the car, asked a few questions and passed us on. Our trunks had been marked “through” from Helsinoere, so we had no care for them until we should arrive in Kristiania. But that there should be still maintained a customs’ line between the sister kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, which are ruled by a common King, may perhaps surprise the stranger unacquainted with the peculiar and somewhat strained relations ever existing between these kindred peoples.

For many hundreds of years (since 1380) Norway had been a province of Denmark. Her language and that of the Dane had grown to be almost the same, the same when written and printed, and differing only when pronounced. But in 1814, the selfish powers of the Holy Alliance handed over Norway to the Swedish crown as punishment to Denmark for being Napoleon’s friend, and threatened to enforce their arbitrary act by war. So Norway yielded to brute force, and accepted the sovereignty of Napoleon’s treacherous Marshal Bernadotte, the Swedish King, but she yielded nothing more, and to this day has preserved and yet jealously maintains her own independent Parliament, her own postal system, her own separate currency and her Custom Houses along the Swedish line. And you never hear a Norwegian speak of any other than of the “King of Sweden.” “He is not our King,” they say, “we have none.” “We are ruled by the King of Sweden, but Norway has no[Pg 45][Pg 46] King.” Cunning Russia, it is said, cleverly spends many rubles in order that this independent spirit shall be kept awake, and the war force of Sweden thereby be so much weakened. Russia might even to this day be able to nourish into war this ancient feud between the kindred breeds, if it were not that in her greed of power she has shown the cloven foot. The horror of her monstrous tyranny in Finland already finds echo among the Norwegian mountains. “We are getting together,” a Norwegian said to me. “We have got to get together, however jealous we may be of one another. We must, or else the Russian bear will hug us to our death, even as now he is cracking the ribs of helpless Finland.” And when I suggested that little Denmark should be taken within the pale, and a common Scandinavian Republic be revived in more than ancient force to face the world, he declared that already a movement toward this end was set afoot, and only needed a favorable opportunity to become a living fact.

At 11 p. m. we arrived at Kristiania in a pouring rain, and at General C’s recommendation, came to this curious and comfortable hotel. Like many other hotels in Norway, it is kept by women, and seems to be much patronized by substantial Norwegians of the nicer sort. It is on the top floor of a tall building, and you pass up and down in a rapid modern elevator. It is kept as clean as a pin, and the beds we sleep in are the softest, freshest in mattress and linen we have seen this side the sea. We have also passed beyond the latitude of blankets and are come to the zone of eider down. Coverlets, light, buoyant, and delightfully warm now keep us from the cold, and in our narrow bedsteads we sleep the slumber of contented innocence. We have a large well-furnished chamber, all for two kroner per day (fifty-four cents). When we entered the long, light breakfast hall this morning, we saw a single table running the length of the room, a white cloth upon it, and ranged up and down, a multitude of cheeses big and little, cow cheese and goat cheese, and many sorts of cold meat, beef and pork and mutton, and cold fish and salt fish. And there were piles of cold sliced bread and English “biscuits” (crackers). The coffee, or milk if you wish it, is brought in, and in our case so are fresh soft-boiled eggs. A group of evidently English folk near us had a special pot of Dundee marmalade. The Norwegians take simply their coffee or milk, with cheese and cold fish and the cold bread. Our breakfast cost us twenty cents apiece.

To-day the city is washed delightfully clean, the heavy rain of the night having cleared streets and atmosphere of every particle of dust and grime. We have driven all about in an open victoria. It is a splendid town, containing some two hundred thousand inhabitants. It lies chiefly upon a sloping hillside with a deep harbor at its feet. Like Copenhagen, it is the capital of its country, and the seat of the Norwegian Government, of the Supreme Law Courts, and of the Storthing or National Congress or Parliament. At the end of the wide Karl Johans Gade stands the “Palace of the Swedish King,” a sombre edifice, now rarely occupied. Kristiania is also the literary and art center of the Norse people. Here Ibsen lives, here Bjoernstjoerne Bjoernsen would live, if Swedish intolerance did not drive him into France. The types of men and women we see upon the streets are the finest we have met since coming over sea. Tall and well-built, light-haired and blue-eyed, the men carry themselves with great dignity. The women are, many of them, tall, their backs straight, not the curved English spine and stooping shoulders. All have good chins, alert and initiative. The Norwegians are the pick of the Scandinavian peoples. They are the sons and daughters of the old Viking breeds which led the race. They are to-day giving our northwestern states a population able, fearless and progressive, no finer immigration coming to our shores. Senators and Governors of their stock are already making distinguished mark in American affairs.

It was not long before we perceived that in Kristiania, as in Copenhagen, we were also very close to the great Republic; except that, perhaps, here we discovered a keener sympathy with American feeling, a closer touch with the American spirit.

Those Norwegians whom we have met speak good United States, not modern English. You hear none of the English sing-song flutter of the voice, none of its suppression of the full-sounded consonant, but the even, clear, precise accent and intonation of the well-taught American mouth. And our friends tell us that it is much easier for them to learn to speak the American tongue than to master the often extraordinary inflexion of spoken English as pronounced in Britain. I am gaining a great respect for these Scandinavian and Norwegian peoples. They are among the finest of the races of the European world.

We have driven not merely through the beautiful city and its parks, and beheld the wide view to be had from the tower at its highest point, but we have also visited the ancient Viking ship, many years ago discovered and dug out of the sands along the sea, a measured model of which was so boldly sailed across the Atlantic, and floated on Lake Michigan, at Chicago, in 1892.

At this time, however, we are but birds of passage in Kristiania. We may not linger to become more intimately acquainted with the noble town; we are arranging for a ten days’ journey by boat and carriage through the fjords and mountain valleys, and region of the mighty snow-fields and glaciers of western Norway. We must now go on, and postpone any intimate knowledge of the city until another day.

H is quite ready for this trip. She wears a corduroy shirt waist of deep purple shade, and has brought with her one of those short, simply-cut walking-skirts, of heavy cloth. A natty toque sets off her head. She is fitly clad. And my eyes are not the only ones that note this fact, as I observed to-day when, to avoid[Pg 49][Pg 50] a shower, we sought shelter under the pillared portico of the Storthing’s fine edifice in the central square. As we stood there, waiting for the rain to cease, I noticed a small, fair-haired, quietly-dressed woman intently staring at the skirt. Each hem and tuck and fold and crease and gore she studied with the steadfast eye of the connoisseur. And so absorbed did she become that she grew quite oblivious of our knowledge of her interest. Around and around she circled, until at last we left her still taking mental notes. Some other woman in Kristiania, we are quite sure, will soon be wearing a duplicate of this well made costume from New York.

VI

A Day Upon the Rand Fjord and Along the Etna Elv – To Frydenlund – Ole Mon Our Driver

Frydenlund, Norge, September 1, 1902.

We left Kristiania about seven o’clock this morning and drove six kilometers to Grefsen, a suburb where the new railway comes in, which will ultimately connect the capital with Bergen on the west coast. Grefsen is up on the hills back of the city. The cars of the train we traveled in were long like our own and also set on trucks, the compartments being commodious, like the one we rode in from Helsingborg.

We traversed a country of spruce forests, rapid streams, small lakes and green valleys; with red-roofed farmsteads, cattle, sheep and horses in the meadows, and yellowing fields of oats and rye, just now being reaped; where men were driving the machines and women raking the fallen grain, all a beautiful, fertile, well-populated land with big men, big women, rosy and well set up, usually yellow-haired and blue-eyed.

About ten o’clock we arrived at Roikenvik, on the Rand Fjord, a sheet of dark blue water about two miles wide and thirty or forty long, with high, fir-clad mountains on either hand; with green slopes dotted with farm buildings, and occasional hamlets where stopped our tiny steamboat, the Oscar II. This fjord is more beautiful than a Scottish loch, for here the mountains are heavily timbered with fir to their very summits, while the hills of Scotland are bare and bleak.

We sat contentedly upon the upper deck inhaling the keen, fresh air, watching the picturesque panorama and noting the passengers crowded upon the forward deck below. They were chiefly farmers getting on and off, intelligent, self-respecting, well-appearing men, and full of good humor. One old gentleman with snowy whiskers, who resembled an ancient mariner, which I verily believe he was, seemed to hold the center of attention and many and loud were the shouts which his quaint jests brought forth. He evidently delivered a lecture upon my big American valise, pointing to it and explaining its excellent make, and his remarks were apparently to the credit of the owner, and of America whence it came.

Just before the bell summoned us to dinner in the after cabin, I noticed a skiff rowing toward us, one of the three men in it waving his hat eagerly to our Captain, who immediately stopped the boat until they drew beside us, when two of them, clean-cut, rosy-faced, young six-footers, came up, hand over hand, on a rope which was lowered to them. They were born sailors, like all Norwegians. I snapped my kodak as their skiff drew near us, and the first news the Captain gave them was to apprise them of that fact. They appeared to be greatly flattered by the attention. They laughed and bowed and looked at me as much as to say, “How much we should like a copy of the photograph, if we knew enough English to ask for it,” but they were too diffident to make the suggestion through their Captain friend.

With the Captain himself, I became well acquainted; an alert man of affairs, who had knocked about the world on Norwegian ships and visited the greater ports of the United States. He gave me an interesting account of Norse feeling at the time of the outbreak of the Spanish war, saying to me, “I am from Bergen. I am a sailor like the rest of our people, and with about a thousand more of my fellow countrymen I went over at that time to New York. I was boatswain on the warship – and I served through the Spanish war. When we heard that there was likely to be trouble and got a hint that you wanted seamen, I gathered the men together and we went over and enlisted and others followed. Yes, there were several thousands of us, altogether, on your American warships, ready to give up our lives for the great Republic. Next to Norway, your great, free country, where already live half of the Norwegian race, lies closest to our hearts. We were ready to give up our lives for the stars and stripes. When the war was over most of us came back again. In the summer time I am captain of this boat, in the winter seasons I go out upon the sea. If America ever needs us again we are ready to help her. We Norwegians will fight for America whenever she calls.”

Then he spoke of Norway and the growing irritation of the Norwegian people against the assumptions of Sweden. “It is true that the Swedes are our kin, but we have never liked them. The Norwegians are democrats. We have manhood suffrage, and each man is equal before the law. In Sweden, there is a nobility who are privileged, and while the Swedish people submit to the aristocrats running the Government over there, we Norwegians will never permit them to run us. If it were not for fear of Russia, we would fall apart, but the Russian bear is hungry. If he dared he would eat us up. If it were not for England he would devour Sweden now, and then there would be no hope for Norway. The Russian Czar wants our harbors, our great fjords, as havens for his fleets, and he would like to fill his ships with Norwegian seamen. So we fret and growl at Sweden, but we can’t afford really to have trouble with her any more than she can afford to fall out with us. We must stand together if we are to maintain our national independence, but nevertheless, we are full of fear for the future. I am apprehensive that the bear will some day satisfy his hunger. France will hold down Germany, who just now claims to be our friend also. England will be bought off by Russian promises in some other quarter of the world, and then, we shall be at the mercy of the Czar. God help us when that day comes! Those of us who can will fly to America, all except those who die upon these mountains. The Russians may finally take Norway, but it will then be a devastated and depeopled land. America is our foster mother. Our young men go to her. We are always ready to fight for her!”

As I looked into his strong blue eyes, which gazed straight at me, I felt that the man meant everything he said, and was expressing not alone his personal sentiment, but also the feeling of the sturdy, seafaring people of whom he was so fit a type, and I wondered what the Spaniard would have thought if he had known when he sent his fleets across the sea – fleets deserted by the Scotch engineers who, in times of peace, had kept their engines clean – that the United States could call at need, not merely upon its own immense population, but might equally rely upon the greatest seafaring folk of all the world to fill her fighting ships.

After three and a half hours’ sail – about thirty miles – we came to the end of the fjord at Odnaes, where was awaiting us a true Norwegian carriage, a sort of landau or trille with two bob-maned Norwegian ponies, in curious harness with collar and hames thrusting high above the neck. We had dined on the boat; we had only a valise, a hand-bag and our sea-rugs. We were soon in the carriage and began our first day’s drive, a journey of fifty-four kilometers (thirty-two miles), before night.

Our driver was presented to us as “Ole Mon;” and the English-speaking owner of the carriage informed us that Ole (“Olie”) Mon spoke fluently our tongue. He was a sturdily built, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed man some forty years of age with a gray moustache and smooth, weather-beaten face. He drove these tourists’ carriages in summer, he said; in the winter he took to the sea. We soon discovered his English to be limited to a few simple phrases, while when he ran to the end of his vocabulary he never hesitated to put in a fit Norwegian word. He was proud of his acquaintance with the foreign tongue, and delighted to exercise his knowledge of it. His chief concern in life was to take care of the ponies. He continually talked to them as though they were his boys, and at any excuse for a stop, always had nosebags filled with oat meal ready to slip on and give them a lunch. The ponies are not over eight or ten hands high, but are powerfully muscled, and they are as sleek and tame as kittens. We believe that we have a treasure in Ole Mon, and I expect to learn much from him about the country we traverse, for he is glib to talk.