Through Scandinavia to Moscow

In traveling through Norway, I have been greatly surprised to see so many newly-built farmhouses, barns and farm buildings, new fences and modern gates. Everywhere the old and tumbled-down is being replaced by the substantial and modern. I have seen nothing like this anywhere in Europe; nowhere so general a replacing of the old with the new. Many of the new farmhouses are not merely substantial, but are architecturally attractive. There must be abundant money coming from somewhere to pay the cost of this universal rebuilding. I have asked about it more than once and every time I receive the same reply. “The sons have gone to America, they are in Chicago, in Minnesota, in Dakota. They have grown rich. They are sending back the money. They want the old places made as trim and spick as though they were in America.” “Put everything in good repair,” they say, “never mind the cost.” And then, every few years they return with the American grandchildren to see the beloved old folks. More and more of these American-Norwegians are coming every year to holiday in the fatherland. Many now regularly sojourn throughout the summer. A few, a very few, remain to end their days on the loved home-soil.

I also learn that it is to supply the demand of this increasing travel from America to Norway that the Scandinavian-American line have recently put on the large ocean steamers now sailing direct from New York to Kristiansand, with accommodations equal to anything which has hitherto entered the ports of Germany and England and France.

The other day at Loeken, we were waited on at table by a fine-looking young woman who spoke perfect United States. She had an air about her of comfortable independence. The house, the farm buildings, everything about the place was new and neat. While we were talking with her, she told us that she had a brother and an uncle in the far west, one at Spokane, who was rich. She was living with him when word came that the old father had passed away. She was needed at home to care for the mother and the younger children, so she returned; and the brother sent back the money to have the old place put in perfect repair.

This intimate connection between our thriving west and Norwegian home life, largely explains, I think, that independent American spirit which now so prominently marks Norway, and the growth and assertion of which is driving her by natural momentum away from the hectoring ties of franchise-constricted, aristocratic Sweden, pushing her toward her inevitable destiny – to become a Republic.

The immigration from Norway to the United States has taken from her nearly one-half the population, a much larger percentage than has yet come forth from Sweden. Although even there, so great is now the exodus, that the Swedish Ministry is alarmed; there is also uneasiness in Norway. Recently, laws have been enacted prohibiting the steamship agents from spreading among the people the glowing accounts of America, by means of which so many steerage tickets are sold, but all the same, the propaganda is persistently carried on. At Skogstad, the other day, I fell in with an alert-looking, quiet-mannered man, who, after he learned I was an American, confided to me that he himself was from Minnesota. He had been born in Norway, but went to America when a boy. He was now back in Norway representing large farming interests in the Northwest, and his business was to recruit farm hands for the western wheat fields. He said he had penetrated during the past three years into every nook and cranny of Norway, everywhere finding out what vigorous and sturdy young men would like to go to America, and then arranging with them to pay their passage, and supply sufficient funds to enable them to pass the immigration inspectors, and providing also their railroad transportation to the west. “They are a splendid and hard working lot of men,” he said. “We want all of them we can get. And most of them do well when they reach America; many of them become rich men.” He was traveling in the disguise of an itinerant doctor selling herbs and roots.

Crossing the mountain this side of Boerte, where the road wound up through the fir forest to avoid an immense cliff which jutted into the lake, I stopped and dug up a little seedling fir, surely a real Norway spruce. I took it up with care and have now brought it to Kristiania and to-day am sending it to America by mail wrapped in damp mosses, and trust that it will reach Kanawha with life enough to live and thrive in its West Virginia home. Along the roadside, not far from where I found the seedling, were lying a fine pair of skjis, just as the wearer laid them aside, only to be worn when winter shall return. The Norwegian does not need to lock his door!

Upon the mossy, marshy, moorland summits and divides which we have traversed, I have noticed widespread beds of peat. In some places these are extensively worked, large areas being uncovered and the squares of peat piled up to dry. The existence of this fuel has proved a godsend to Norway, for the forests are often distant and year by year the woodlands diminish. Although there are some inferior coal beds in southern Sweden, there are none in Norway, and for fuel her peat beds and her forests are her sole domestic supply. And yet, despite this lack of fuel, it seems to me that Norway is dowered with enormous stores of power. She possesses water power without stint. King Winter surely cannot freeze up all the streams. Will not the day yet come when the harnessed water powers of Norway may run the turbines which will supply the world?

It is yet early September; the belated summer of this far northern land, to our strange eyes, is just begun. The meadows are green; the fields of grain are scarcely yellowed; in the markets of Kristiania we see daily exposed for sale fresh-ripened strawberries; in our Virginian latitude it would be the season of the month of May. Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith’s shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter’s need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv.

A year ago, when traveling in Mexico, in southern Michoacan, the tropical precipitancy of the night was sure to take me unawares. I was never quite prepared for the sharp transition from day to night. The hot red sun rested a moment above the towering Cordillera, then it dipped behind, and the cold white stars instantly shone forth. Here in Norway my senses are equally surprised. It is already September and yet “early candle light,” means near ten o’clock. The day dies slowly. The contours of vale and mountain almost imperceptibly fade upon the eye. A violet blueness softens form and hue. Little by little the violet changes into gray, and then the grayness pervades the air as though the shadow of some phantom raven’s wing overspread the world.

At nine o’clock, at half past nine, at ten o’clock, the goats and cattle are awake – we have made long day-drives by reason of the limits to our time – I wonder if they ever sleep. The sparrows and gray-coated crows fly soberly across our way; a magpie softly flutters to the road. I hear no bird-songs, only faint twitters, no chirping crickets, no piping frogs and newts, none of the evening sounds of my Virginian countryside. A hush creeps over dal and fjeld and fjord, even as do the mysterious violet and gray shadows. We ourselves are drowsed. I do not speak to H nor she to me. To the ponies Ole Mon has ceased to talk. The world is stilled. We draw long breaths, inhale the delicious air, lean back against the cushions of our seat, and daydream amidst this hush of man and thing. The old Norse driver of the Roldal cautions H to watch. “This is the hour,” he says, “when the elves and pixies stir abroad. Count the fifth meadow from where you stand and there they are always sure to be.” Thus have we driven through the twilight, the mysterious, lingering twilight of this far and almost Arctic North.

This is the last letter you will receive from Norway and I am sure that you will agree with me, after reading what I have sent you, that nowhere in all the world may one have a more delightful outing.

As to expenses, I figure it up that the total cost for both of us is a little less than five dollars per day, which includes our carriage, our driver, our eating, our sleeping and the liberal fees which, like good Americans, we have everywhere bestowed. Here in Norway the oere (two and one-half cents) is as big as the quarter, and the kroner (twenty-seven cents) as big as the dollar.

How long the oere will loom so large I dare not say, for the American invasion is begun, and I fear the kroner will soon be no bigger than the dime.

XIV

Kristiania to Stockholm – A Wedding Party – Differing Norsk and Swede

Stockholm, Sweden, September 12, 1902.

We came over here night before last from Kristiania, by the night train; by sovevogn (sleep-wagon), the first I have tried in Europe. We traveled first-class and had a compartment to ourselves. About 9 p. m. a porter came in at a way-station, put all our bags out in the corridor, pulled out the round cushions at the back of the seats and put them into the overhead racks; he then pulled out a linen cover with which he overlaid the long seat, and unholed small, wee pillows from a cavity at the end of each seat; the beds were made! Later, another man informed me that we could have sheets at one kroner (twenty-seven cents) each; but these we declined. Fortunately, we had with us our heavy sea rugs. I put H into my long gray overcoat, did her up in the blanket and rug, and tucked her big golf cape over her. Then I put on my blanket smoking jacket, my slippers and cap, rolled up in a blanket and rug, and so we slept comfortably on our narrow seat-beds. There was no heat in the car, and only one toilet room for both sexes! The night was cold and it was with difficulty we managed to keep warm. Such is the modern European method of running a sleeping car.

The train we traveled in was crowded. In our car every compartment was filled. There were two groups of travelers who interested us. The first was a party of Americans, a petite elderly woman, keen, lively, very much mistress of herself, evidently accustomed to command, and with her two pretty black-eyed American girls, “pert,” “sassy,” and used to receiving the homage of man! In their company were half a dozen tall, blond-bearded, blue-eyed Viking youths, entirely willing to be commanded and to render homage. They were all in uniform, a dark blue cloth with red facings and a very little gold braid. The blue eyes shot tender glances, we thought, the black ones defending against Cupid’s darts with great vivacity. Each young man presented an enormous bouquet to the elderly woman, and one gave her a basket of fruit – the girls got nothing, only the blue-eye-flashes. And how eagerly the young men promised to call on the elderly woman, if ever they should be so fortunate as to visit New York! And all the while the two American belles laughed and smiled and smote yet deeper through the dark blue uniforms. The departing train almost carried away with us one fair-haired giant. All the military caps came off with sweeping bows, while two handkerchiefs fluttered from the windows.

The other group took us by storm and also captured the train. Before we knew it, there was a surging crowd outside the car and the roar of many Viking throats. And then into the compartment next to ours rushed a pack of ladies, one of them all in white, with a sweet face half hid in a pink satin bonnet. A little man with waxed moustache, curly black hair, wearing a stovepipe hat, and clad in evening dress, followed close behind. The women admitted him, as though by right, but no other man was let inside. It was a wedding party. A wedding in high life. He was a Professor at Upsala. She was one of Kristiania’s fairest daughters. They had been married in the Fru Kirke in the afternoon. She had had a big reception at her home. The friends and guests were now come down to the train to see them off. She was large and fair and rosy, yet in her early twenties. He was small and weazen, shriveled and swarthy. They called him “Herr Doctor,” evidently recognizing his eminent standing. Flowers and rice and a white satin slipper were thrown into the window. There was tremendous hugging and kissing of the bride by all the women, – I could not see that here the men had any show, – and pandemonium still prevailed upon the station platform when the train pulled out. Later in the night I was awakened by shouts and then most glorious singing. I sat up with a start, the melody pulsing through my brain. The Student Corps from the University of Upsala had come down to the junction where the newly-wedded pair would change cars, to welcome their Professor and his bride. They were singing a mighty welcome. And it was such full-toned, full-voiced, perfect and practiced singing by the hundreds of young men who seemed to be on hand! I fell asleep as our train went on, the splendid harmony of the well-trained voices filling me with dreams of realms not far away from Paradise.

Next morning I was about dressed, and H was adjusting her skirt, when the doors, which I thought securely locked, flew open and a burly red-faced uniformed official thrust himself in. He came to take away the pillow cases! He did not seem to think he in any way intruded; privacy is not much respected this side the sea.

Our toilets were scarcely made when the train came to a stop in the station at Stockholm. Indeed H was not yet quite ready, when another official in uniform again burst open the door and began grabbing our effects. To his astonishment he was forthwith ejected and the door shut in his face. When we were finally dressed I went out and found him waiting for us on the station platform. He was a licensed porter.

We were first obliged to fetch all our belongings to the Custom House, where important-looking officials, in gray uniforms trimmed with red, asked perfunctory questions and hurriedly passed us through – an exercise of Swedish authority which seemed quite unnecessary since we came direct from Norway under the same King. This done, our porter then gathered up our bags and rugs, put them into a little two-wheeled push cart and started out across the square. Here again I came near meeting the fate of the tenderfoot. We did not know the location of the Hotel Continental; I stepped up to a cabby and told him we wanted to be taken to that hotel. A man in uniform gave me a brass check with “No. 5” marked on it, pointing to a cab standing in a long row which also bore a No. 5. I handed the brass check to No. 5 cabby, and was putting in my bag when our porter pointed to the farther side of the square. There was our hostelry, not three hundred feet away! I took out my bag from the carriage, in spite of protest, and walked to the hotel. The driver claimed a fare of half a kroner and raised a mighty clamor, but I vowed I would not give him an oere. Thus you must have your eyes about you when you come to a city you do not know.

The Continental is a fine hotel. The rooms are supplied with electric lights and with telephones (good ones, not the imperfect London system). We have a large front room, facing the Vasa Gatan, with dressing room and ante-room, handsomely furnished, and as clean as anything can be. We are fain to be content with the fourth story, although we asked for the tenth, and a new modern elevator takes us up and also down; all this costs only six kroner a day ($1.62) for the two of us. Our breakfasts are served in our room, two eggs each, a pot of coffee, boiled milk and cream, a basket of rolls, fresh radishes, cold tongue, cold veal, smoked goose breast, anchovies, cold smoked salmon, cheese, each in a neat little dish by itself, and a big round flat slab of slightly salted butter; all for one and a half kroner each, three kroner for us two (eighty-one cents). You receive much for your money here in Scandinavia.

The spirit of Stockholm, although intensely Scandinavian, is yet widely different from that of either Copenhagen or Kristiania. It is a difference, not so much to the eye, as to the feeling.

The city presents the same substantial and solid types of buildings, there are the same high walls of stone and dark red brick, and sharp-gabled roofs covered with heavy tiles, the same square towers, the same spindly leanness to the steepled churches, and in the older sections the narrow streets are paved from wall to wall with the same big squares of granite. The people are mostly blue-eyed and fair-haired like their kindred Danes and Norsks. But here the likeness ends and you feel it the instant you pass out upon the street. I missed at once that certain self-containment, based upon unostentatious self-respect, which marks the Norsk, where no man knows a lord but God, and manhood suffrage everywhere prevails. I missed that composure of manner and self-assurance to the step, which lets men look you calmly in the eye without offense, that spirit, which takes for granted the perfect equality of man and man. I instantly felt myself among men of another temper. The alert, frank, self-respecting manner of the Norsk is lacking in the Swede. I found myself again among a “lower class,” who have no votes, and treat you with sullen servility, and also among men with the swashbuckling manners of military caste. Stockholm is full of young officers in natty uniforms, who strut along the streets aping the braggart insolence one meets among the soldier-bestridden Germans. The peasant and townsman must also here step aside to let these Yunker soldiery pass on. Militarism hangs heavy over Stockholm, where the scions of an impecunious aristocracy think to find in dashing uniform and truculent German manner a restoration of the noble military traditions of the past.

The Norwegian looks out upon the Twentieth Century and finds his inspiration in the example of free America and the universal equality of man. The Swede looks ever backward to the glorious days of Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, and sighs for a return of the good old times when the half of Europe trembled before Sweden’s military might. The lofty mountains and profound valleys, the savage mystery of fathomless fjords, the wondrous immensity of the unknown and illimitable sea, which fired the brain and pricked the energy of the Norseman, and made him poet, pirate, explorer and conqueror through a dozen successive centuries, were all unknown to the practical-minded Swede. His monotonous forests, his sandy levels and shallow gulfs, his pond-like and insignificant Baltic Sea, stirred no fibre of his imagination; nor when he crossed those narrow waters and set foot upon the flat and barren shores of Germanic and Slavic Europe, was there anything in their sombre forests and limitless plains and desolate marshes to arouse within him the fire of his soul. War with the flaxen-haired savages, who swarmed upon these lands like myriad wolves, was his only exercise. He sailed up the Gulf of Bothnia till he entered the Arctic wastes where dwelt the Laps; he followed the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and explored the river Neva and Lake Ladoga and connecting streams, and even crossed to the waters of the mighty Volga, and entered Asia by the Caspian Sea; he ascended the lesser Russian rivers, and pitched fortified camps along their banks, founding Revel and Riga and Novogorod, whence the Swedish Ruriks gave to the Muskovites their earliest Czars. He ruled Finland and Esthonia and Livonia and Courland, and even begat Sigismund, the Polish King. For centuries he warred with and ruled these Slavic tribes until at last, driven back to his narrow peninsula, the mainland knew him only as defeated and expelled. A practical, unimaginative fighting man was the Swede. He loved war for war’s own sake, and when he had no longer reason to war for conquest or defense, he clung to pike and sword as permanent substitute for plow and seine, and hired himself to bickering Slav and German and grew famous as a “Mercenary,” who spilled his blood for pay and the plunder of his master’s foes. Thus have the cousin peoples swung wide apart. The one, free and open-minded; the other still dazed by the faded glories of a long dead past, turns ever a wistful eye toward the military tyrannies of Czar and Kaiser, and finds in the inequalities of landed noble and landless yokel, in official and military caste and enthralled peasantry, the realization of his Fifteenth Century ideal.

Thus, as I have wended my way along the Vasa and Freds Gatans and neighboring streets, toward the fine Gustaf Adolf Torg, the chief public square, mixing among the jostling crowds, have I felt keenly the variant atmospheres of these Norse and Swedish lands, differences which finding their roots in the historical development of the kindred peoples make their present union beneath a single flag and King both artificial and constrained.

While on the surface and to the feeling there is apparently wide divergence in political sentiment between the Norwegian and Swedish peoples, yet there is in reality a closer and closer approachment between them. The democratic notions prevailing in Norway already stir the pulse of the Swedish peasantry and working classes – the classes which in Sweden have no votes. Already has the demand for universal suffrage been raised in Sweden, and sentiment inimical to aristocracy, yunkerdom and privilege, grows continually more aggressive. An intelligent and aristocratic Swede with whom I have discussed this question to-day, admits this rising tide of democracy, and admits, also, though ruefully, that not until universal suffrage shall become established in Sweden will it be possible to come to that understanding with the Norwegian people on which may be founded a lasting and united Scandinavian State. Thus in Sweden itself, I hear uttered sentiments very nearly akin to those which caught my ear when in Copenhagen: the possibility, nay, probability, of a common Scandinavian Union, when the peoples of Denmark and Norway and Sweden shall federate, and the obsolete system of kingship and privilege shall be set aside.

XV

Stockholm the Venice of the North – Life and Color of the Swedish Capital – Manners of the People and their King

Stockholm, September 13, 1902.

While wandering about the city I have not taken a guide. A guide or a courier is to me always a very last resort, but I have followed the movement of the crowd, and enjoyed the being lost in it, immersed in it, becoming one with it, while yet so separate. I could not read the signs, nor understand the speech. I could only see. My vision became my one guiding sense. My eyes became abnormally alert. Color and form and action, – I caught them all. And what I saw, my mind held fast. Thus I wandered on through many quaint and ancient Gatans (streets) past Plats and Torgs (open squares), and over Bros (bridges), and yet I felt secure and well assured that, returning, I should find my way safely back. I knew each corner of a street, each square, each unusual sign, each building of strange design, even as at home I have often wandered alone among the wild mountains and forests with nothing for a guide but my eyes, the sun, and my knowledge of moss and tree. Thus has my early training always served me well in foreign lands and cities, where speech was strange, and I myself unknowing and unknown.

My first quest was a bookstore, a map, and an English or French or German-worded guide book, which would tell me of what I saw. By great good luck, I happened immediately upon the object of my search. I saw a window holding maps. I entered a small shop, and found it the “Bureau” of the “National Tourists’ Union,” with German spoken perfectly. This bureau is maintained by the enterprising citizens of Stockholm, and for most moderate cost gives information to tourists, and publishes a series of fine maps, showing every road and lake and mountain and town and inn in Sweden. I bought a set of the maps and one in particular of the city. Thus fortified I was now perfectly equipped.

Our few days’ sojourn in Stockholm has taught me to like the Swede, although he is quite lacking in the hearty frankness of the Norsk. Stockholm has always been a spot where men have congregated, and has been a city known as such these last eight centuries, ever since Birger Jarl made it the seat of his pirate power. It holds the passage between the lakes Maelaren, which stretch far inland and now form the eastern section of the great Gotta system of canals reaching across Sweden to the Kattegat and Atlantic Ocean, and the deeply indented waters of the Baltic Sea, thus being a natural place of rendezvous and commerce; it was a place easy of access before men had roads and mostly traveled by boats. Here the Kings of Sweden have always set their capital, and the history of Stockholm is the history of the Swede himself.