Foot-prints of Travel - Maturin Murray Ballou (book suggestions txt) 📗

chiefly of the magnetic kind, yielding when properly smelted the best ore for the manufacture of steel. It is believed that there is sufficient malleable iron in the soil of Sweden to supply the whole world with this necessary article for centuries. Mount Gellivare, which is over eighteen hundred feet in height, is said to be almost wholly formed of an ore containing eighty per cent of iron.

In approaching Christiania, the capital of Norway, by sea from Gottenburg, we ascend the fjord of the same name a distance of seventy miles. The city, which is built upon a gradual slope facing the south, is seen to good advantage from the harbor. No more appropriate spot could have been selected for the national capital by Christian IV., who founded it, and after whom it is named, than the head of this beautiful elongated bay. It is the seat of the Storthing, or Parliament, and the king, whose permanent residence is at Stockholm, is expected to reside here, attended by the court, at least three months of the year. With its immediate suburbs, the population of the city is a hundred and twenty-five thousand. It should be remembered that Norway is practically a free and independent state though it is under the crown of Sweden, and that the people are thoroughly democratic, having abolished all titles of nobility by enactment of the Storthing so early as 1821, at which time a law was also passed forbidding the king to create a new nobility. Nevertheless, the thought occurs to us that these are the descendants of those Northmen of whom one branch, under the name of Normans, conquered the British Isles, and founded the very nobility there which is the present boast and pride of England.

We find some problems solved in Norway which have created political strife elsewhere. Though its Church is identical with the State, unlimited toleration exists. There is a perfect system of political representation, and while justice is open to all, litigation is earnestly discouraged. The meetings of the Storthing are independent of the king, not even requiring a writ of assemblage from him. Thus it will be seen that although nominally under monarchial rule, Norway is in reality self-governed.

The legal code of Norway is worthy of study, both on account of its antiquity and its admirable provisions. The old sea-kings or free-booters, as we have been accustomed to consider them, had a more advanced and civilized code than any of the people whose shores they devastated. Before the year of our Lord 885, the power of the law was established over all persons of every rank, while, in the other countries of Europe, the independent jurisdiction of the feudal lords defied the laws. Before the eleventh century, the law of Scandinavia provided for equal justice to all, established a system of weights and measures, also one for the maintenance of roads and bridges, and for the protection of women and animals from abuse; subjects which few other European legal systems at that time embraced. These laws were collected into one code by Magnus VII., about the year 1260. They were revised by Christian IV. in 1604, and in 1687 the present system was drawn up. So simple and compact is it, that the whole is contained in a pocket volume, a copy of which is in the possession of every Norwegian family. Each law occupies but a single paragraph, and all is simple and intelligible.

The commerce of Christiania is growing rapidly. Over one thousand vessels enter and depart from its harbor annually, which, however, is closed by ice three months in the year, though that of Hammerfest, situated a thousand miles further north on the same coast, is never frozen, owing to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream,--an agent so potent as to modify the temperature of the entire coast of Scandinavia on its western border.

The university founded here by Frederick VI. in 1811, is a plain but massive structure; the front ornamented by Corinthian pillars of polished granite. It accommodates some nine hundred students, the tuition being free to all native applicants suitably prepared. It contains a noble library of over two hundred thousand volumes, which is freely open even to strangers under very simple restrictions. Beneath the same roof is an extensive museum of zooelogy and geology. The city has a naval and military school, a lunatic asylum, an astronomical observatory, and various charitable institutions. Its botanical garden is situated about a mile from the town, and contains among other interesting and finely arranged specimens, a collection of Alpine plants from Spitzbergen and Iceland.

The parliament house is an imposing building of original design, very pleasing in general effect and style, facing the Carl Johannes Square, the largest open area in the city. It was finished in 1866. The market-place is adorned with a marble statue of Christian IV. Another fine square is the Eidsvolds Plads, planted with choice trees and carpeted with intensely bright greensward. The chief street is the Carl Johannes Gade, a broad thoroughfare extending from the railroad station to the king's palace, halfway between which stands the university. In a large wooden building behind the university is kept that unrivalled curiosity, the "Viking Ship," a souvenir of nine hundred years ago. The blue clay of the district, where it was exhumed in 1880, a few miles south of Christiania, has preserved it all these years. The men who built the graceful lines of this now crumbling vessel, "in some remote and dateless day," knew quite as much of true marine architecture as do our modern shipwrights. This interesting relic, doubtless the oldest ship in the world, once served the Vikings, its masters, as a sea-craft. It is eighty feet long by sixteen wide, and is about six feet deep from the gunwale. Seventy shields, as many spears, and other war equipments recovered with the hull, show that it carried that number of fighting-men.

In such vessels as this the dauntless Northmen made voyages to every country in Europe a thousand years ago, and, as is confidently believed by many, they crossed the Atlantic, discovering North America centuries before the name of Columbus was known. Ignoring the halo of romance and chivalry which the poets have thrown about the valiant Vikings and their followers, one thing we are compelled to admit--they were superb marine architects. Ten centuries of progressive civilization have served to produce none better. Most of the arts and sciences may, and do, exhibit great progress in excellence, but ship-building is not among them. We build bigger, but not finer, vessels.

The burial of this ship so many centuries ago was simply in accordance with the custom of those days. When any great sea-king perished, he was enclosed in the cabin of his galley, and either sunk in the ocean or buried with his vessel and all of its warlike equipments upon the nearest suitable spot of land. We are told that when a chieftain died in battle, not only were his war-horse, his gold and silver plate, and his portable personal effects buried or burned with his body, but a guard of honor from among his followers slew themselves that he might enter the sacred halls of Odin (the Scandinavian Deity) properly attended. The more elevated in rank the chief might be, the larger the number who must sacrifice themselves as his escort to the land of bliss. So entire was the reliance of these Heathens in the demands of their peculiar faith, that they freely acted up to its extreme requirements while singing songs of joy.

A general aspect of good order, thrift, industry, and prosperity prevails at Christiania. The simplicity of dress and the gentle manners, especially among the female portion of the community, are marked features. No stranger can fail to notice the low, sympathetic tones in which the women always speak; but though decorous and worthy, it must be admitted that the Norwegian ladies, as a rule, are not handsome. One sees here none of the rush and fever of living which so wearies the observer in many parts of Southern Europe. The common people evince more solidity of character with less of the frivolities of life. They may be said to be a trifle slow and phlegmatic, but by no means stupid. The most careless schoolboy, when addressed by a stranger, removes his hat and remains uncovered until he has responded to the inquiry made of him.

Upon visiting a new city in any part of the world, one learns much of the national characteristics of the people, and of other matters worth knowing, by mingling unconventionally with the throng, watching their every-day habits and by observing the stream of busy life pouring through its great thoroughfares. More valuable information is thus acquired than from visiting grand cathedrals, art galleries, or consulting guide-books. Years of travel fatigue us with the latter, but never with Nature in her varying moods, with the peculiarities of races, or with the manners and customs of each new locality and country. The delight in natural objects grows by experience in every cultivated and receptive mind. The rugged architecture of lofty mountains, the aspect of tumbling waterfalls, noble rivers, glowing sunsets, broad land and sea-views--each of these has a special, never-tiring and impressive individuality.

While enjoying a bird's-eye view of Christiania, from the heights of Egeberg, a well-wooded hill in the southern suburb, it is difficult to believe one's self in Icelandic Scandinavia,--the precise latitude of the Shetland Islands. A drowsy hum like the drone of bees seems to float up from the busy city below. The beautiful fjord, with its graceful promontories, its picturesque and leafy isles, might be Lake Maggiore or Como, so placid and calm is its pale blue surface. Turning the eyes inland, one sees clustered in lovely combinations fields of ripening grain, gardens, lawns, cottages, and handsome villas, like a scene upon the sunny shores of the Maritime Alps. An abundance of trees enliven the view,--plane, sycamore, ash, and elm, in luxurious condition. Warmer skies during the summer period are not to be found in Italy, nor elsewhere outside of Egypt. As we stand upon the height of Egeberg on a delicious sunny afternoon, there hangs over and about the Norwegian capital a soft golden haze such as lingers in August above the Venetian lagoons.

The summer is so short here as to give the fruits and flowers barely time to blossom, ripen, and fade, and the husbandman a chance to gather his crops. Vegetation is rapid in its growth, the sunshine being so nearly constant during the ten weeks which intervene between seedtime and harvest. Barley grows two inches, and pease three, in twenty-four hours at certain stages of development. It is an interesting fact that if the barley-seed be brought from a warmer climate, it has to become acclimated, and does not yield a good crop until after two or three years.

The flowers of the torrid and temperate zones, as a rule, close their eyes like human beings, and sleep a third or half of the twenty-four hours, but in Arctic regions, life to those lovely children of Nature is one long sunny period, and sleep comes only with death and decay. It will also be observed that the flowers assume more vivid colors and emit more fragrance during their brief lives than they do in the south. The long, delightful period of twilight during the summer season is seen here in perfection, full of roseate loveliness. There is no dew to be encountered or avoided, no dampness; all is crystal clearness.

In the rural districts women are generally employed in out-of-door work, as they are in Germany and Italy, and there is quite a preponderance of the sex in Norway and Sweden. As many women as men are seen engaged in mowing, reaping,