Duke Oscar Frederick, as he was known in those early days, found himself heir to the throne after death had unexpectedly removed the two claimants with rights prior to his own. And on the succession of his eldest brother, he became the Crown Prince. It was a delicate position which imposed on him a reserve foreign to his nature. As it contrasted sharply with the unceremonious jollity of his brother, King Charles, he came by degrees to be regarded by those ignorant of his true character with a distrust bordering on dislike. Thus, when the succession fell to him in 1872, he found himself little understood and less loved. It took him years to overcome the prejudice. Perhaps it was his sanction of the impeachment proceedings by the Norwegian Radicals against the retiring Conservative ministry which, in the early '80's, first served to turn the trend of public opinion in his favor, both in Sweden and Norway. That act was one of the many by which he showed his ability to submit his own inclinations to the demands of the people without becoming a mere tool in the hands of any one political party. About the same time he succeeded in bringing about a deeply needed and by himself long-cherished reform of the popular educational system in Sweden. Previously,—it was, in fact, his first important step after his ascension to the throne,—he had on his own initiative proclaimed full freedom of worship for persons not belonging to the established church.

A Scandinavianism of the purely sentimental kind,—the kind that talked without ever dreaming of putting the talk into deeds,—had prevailed until then on the peninsula. Intermixed with it was an equally sentimental sympathy with France. Though himself the grandson of a Frenchman and still keenly devoted to French literature and art, King Oscar had the foresightedness to recognize that the interests of the country were more closely bound up with those of Germany. And one of the most striking features of his reign was the growing cultural intercourse between the nations in the north and their neighbor south of the Baltic. And while the king discouraged the speech-making, empty Scandinavianism against which Ibsen was fond of launching his most vitriolic invectives, he fostered instead a fellow-feeling between Sweden, Norway and Denmark that found its expression in practical co-operation, in the equalization of commercial and industrial regulations, in the breaking down of as many as possible of the unnecessary barriers between them. As the years passed on and the trend of his labors became understood and appreciated, he found a part of his reward in a steadily increasing respect for him throughout the civilized world, a respect that repeatedly found expression in requests that he act as arbiter of international differences. He had always been fond of traveling, and this fondness he continued to indulge up to the last. Unlike those of some other monarchs having a similar taste, his comings and goings on the Continent were always the objects of pleasant and welcoming comment. If gossip had to name King Christian of Denmark "the father-in-law of all Europe," King Oscar was surely "the friend of all the world." Apace with his own fame grew the prosperity of his people. On either side of the Kjoelen his reign marked an era of unprecedented economical, social, and spiritual progress which not even the internal dissensions of the sister nation could interrupt.

King Oscar's motto was Broedrafolkens Vael "The Brother-Peoples Weal!" The Scandinavian peninsula is still populated by brother-peoples, as was indicated at the time of the death of the old king. It was the week for the distribution in Norway of the Nobel prizes, always attended in Christiania with great rejoicing and merry-making. On this occasion all demonstration was prohibited, and the Norwegian capital was almost as much in mourning as was Stockholm. Though entirely devoted to the new order of things, the Norwegians did not forget, nor will they forget, the character of the king who ruled them for a generation. More democratic than the Swedes, they were peculiarly attached personally, if not politically, to one whom they felt to be really of like democratic instincts with themselves, even if he did show himself every inch a king.

Not only as a ruler, but as a father, King Oscar was both wise and fortunate. Four sons came to him through his marriage, and these have proved men of his own type. The Crown Prince Gustave was born just one year after the marriage of his parents, on June 16th, at the Castle of Drottingholm, in the year 1858; Prince Oscar, known as Prince Bernadotte, was born on Nov. 15, 1859, at Stockholm; Prince Carl on Feb. 27, 1861, also at Stockholm; while the youngest, Prince Eugene, like his eldest brother, first saw the light at the Castle of Drottingholm, on Aug. 1, 1865. As has been previously stated, the Crown Prince (now king) was married to the Princess Victoria of Bade, granddaughter of Emperor William I of Germany, and great-granddaughter of the exiled Gustavus IV of Sweden. The third son, Prince Carl, is wedded to his cousin, the Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, which was a source of great satisfaction to King Oscar and Queen Sophie. The youngest son, Prince Eugene, is devoted to art, and spends much time out of the country. Never did King Oscar do more to win the approval of his subjects, and thinking men and women everywhere, than when he permitted the marriage of his second son, Prince Oscar, to a young Swedish noblewoman, Froeken Ebba Munck, of Fulkila, who was also Queen Sophie's maid-of-honor. While the prince had to renounce his right of succession and his position as a royal prince of Sweden, his relations to his father and the other members of the royal family remained the same.

Of this incident in the history of the royal family of Sweden, the following story is told:

The Queen interceded long and persistently with her husband for permission for her second son to be married to the woman he loved. Although the Munck family had played a very important part in the history of the nation, the king was opposed to the mesalliance. "It is Oscar's duty to be true to himself and to his love," she used to say. But the king, who was not wont to refuse any of the wishes of his consort, steadily refused to sanction the union. There were many things against such a marriage, for Prince Oscar was the second son of the king, and the very fact that the reigning House of Norway and Sweden was one of the most youthful of the royal houses of Europe made it all the more necessary that its scions should intermarry with the members of the ancient reigning houses.

About this time the queen was seized with one of her serious attacks of illness, and her state was such that at one time her life was despaired of. Her physicians declared that her only hope of recovery lay in an instant operation, which was both dangerous and extremely painful.

The queen called the king to her bedside, and said, "If I undergo this operation and recover, will you allow Oscar and Ebba to have their way?" The king was unable to resist such an appeal, made at such a time, and gave his promise. A short time afterwards the operation was successfully performed, and when the queen was convalescent, the king redeemed his promise and gave his consent to the marriage of his second son. It was on Christmas Eve, and the king had come to his wife's apartments to see her. He found Ebba Munck and his son Oscar with her. The maid-of-honor was, at the time of his entrance, singing one of his poems to Her Majesty, which, oddly enough, was on the subject of the right to love. After waiting until the song was ended, the king went up to his son, and, leading him to the girl, laid his hand in hers, in this manner signifying that he had withdrawn his opposition to their plans.

The marriage has proved a most happy one. Prince Oscar has found perfect content, and has been able to follow his career as a philanthropist. The wedding took place at Bournemouth, in the presence of the queen of Sweden, on March 15, 1888, and for some time after it the prince and his wife were known as Prince and Princess Bernadotte; but later the uncle of Prince Oscar, the Grand Duke of Luxemburg, gave him the title of the Count of Wisborg for himself and his descendants. When their children were born, Prince Oscar and his wife proclaimed them as the children of Oscar and Ebba Bernadotte, and, during their entire married life, they have lived as quietly and simply as possible, and have found their greatest interest in working for the poor and suffering. They have a son and a daughter, the former, Count Carl Oscar, having been born on May 27, 1890, and the latter, the Countess Marie, on February 28, 1889; and three other children.

And so, as the years went by, a third generation grew up in the palace at Stockholm,—a brood of long-limbed and broad-shouldered sons with wholesome tastes and bright minds and kindly temperaments. And at last, when the king was seventy-eight years old, a great-grandchild was laid in his arms,—the first son of Prince Gustavus Adolphus (now the Crown Prince) and the Princess Margaret of Connaught.

Up to the last King Oscar remained active and interested in all public affairs. Though he had experienced several brief but rather severe illnesses of late years, the end came without warning, after a few days of indisposition, on Dec. 8, 1907. A kindly "thanks" for a small favor rendered him by a member of his family was the last word heard from his lips. Previously he had expressed his wish to the members of his cabinet that no interruption in public or private business be made on account of his death.

King Gustavus V, who took the oath of office within a few hours of his father's death, has suffered something resembling his father's fate as Crown Prince. Overshadowed by the more brilliant gifts and more attractive personality of the parent, he was for years spoken of in rather a disparaging manner in Sweden, while in Norway he harvested outright hatred in return for his determined upholding of the union. On frequent occasions during the last decade of his father's reign, he acted as vice-regent while his father was sick or traveling, and in this way he found chances to display qualities that gradually changed the popular regard of him from one of suspicion to one of hearty respect. His near-sightedness, his serious-mindedness, have militated against him, but it seems probable that he will prove the very best ruler Sweden could desire at the present juncture. He is slow to make up his mind, and will not do so until he has searched every phase and detail of the problem before him, but once he has come to a conclusion, he pursues his path without looking to the right or left.

Gustavus is fifty years old, tall, rather dark, quite unassuming, and is essentially democratic, while seeming the opposite, whereas Oscar was aristocratic, although he made much of the people. Like all other Swedish kings, Gustavus adopted a motto when he ascended the throne; it is "With the People for the Fatherland"—not inappropriate in view of his inheritance of a problem clamoring for solution, the extension of the suffrage and a more direct representation of the people in both the upper and lower houses of the Riksdag. The new king, who possesses an uncommon amount of energy, may probably be depended upon to accomplish this reform.

There is neither pride of an objectionable type, nor any tendency to tyranny, nor one strain of arrogance in the new king. He may not be able to draw upon such ripe culture or upon such fine talents as the monarch who preceded him, yet the Swedes have no fear that his love of truth and justice will not outweigh this deficiency and probably make him a more practical ruler. As for the French descent of the Swedish royal house, neither the present nor the late king have ever been ashamed of their ancestry, or forgotten that the first Bernadotte on their throne was one of Napoleon's greatest marshals.

Never will Gustavus V be able to give to words or actions that brilliantly original and kingly tone for which his late father was so admired everywhere. That, to the mind of all beholders, is to be the drawback of his reign, for he is the merest mortal; where his father was the luminous angel. Where Oscar would have been finely eloquent, Gustavus shows himself merely sensible. Oscar's temper was heated, his emotions were forever coming to the surface. Gustave is, if more poised, less interesting. He has always been addicted to manly sports and exercises. He has often been observed to "put up" an excellent game of tennis at the club in Stockholm. But he is without the alert and springy step of the old Oscar, whose muscles remained taut and elastic almost to his dying day. Gustave lacks the literary aptitudes of his late father, likewise, who left a well-filled book of verse which admirers all over Europe did into French, German, Italian, Danish, and even Hungarian. Gustave has not inherited his mother's musical genius, either. She was at one time a devotee of Wagner, a disciple of Kant, and always a pious evangelical of the German cast. From both his parents Gustave received every encouragement to proficiency in music. Music, to the late Oscar, was, both in theory and practice, an essential element in the intellectual life. Gustave is less the artist than the practical king.

He encourages international congresses of every kind to come to Sweden; he helps the universities and the cause of education throughout his kingdom; he feels his father's interest in Hedin's travels through central Asia, but he can give no creative impulse after his father's grand fashion. Oscar was the man of ideas, the vitalizer of projects literary, musical, dramatic and scientific. He made Stockholm the capital of the whole intellectual world. Gustave is very courteous, affable in a dignified way, impressive as he opens the Riksdag in royal ermine. He has commenced his reign in simplicity, rising at eight, breakfasting on coffee and rolls, reading the morning papers until ten, and reviewing the military with a conscientious assiduity. His note is repose both in manner and in speech, in striking contrast with the late Oscar, who was majestic in the very way he had of eating cold meat at supper, and whose height of six feet three towered, almost without the drooping heaviness of age, till his seventy-ninth year. Notwithstanding the adverse comparison with his parent, one has but to see Gustave's face, with its determination and refinement, to feel a certain assurance as to Sweden's future.

It is a curious fact that there has been such a dearth of girls in the Swedish royal family, the only princess of the house being the Crown Princess of Denmark, a daughter of the late King Charles XV. The present queen has only sons: Crown Prince Gustavus Adolphus, wedded to Margaret of Connaught; Prince Wilhelm, who was recently married to the Russian Princess Marie Palvona, and Prince Erik, now about twenty years of age. The present Crown Prince and Princess are seemingly perpetuating the tradition, as their first child is a lusty little son.

Queen Victoria is said to be endowed with an instinct for business of every kind far finer and more efficient than that of her husband, and it is to be regretted that her health is so frail that she is obliged to spend much time outside her husband's realm, and the duties of her royal dignity devolve upon her daughter-in-law, the Crown Princess. It is very satisfying to the Swedish people that by a strange play of circumstances, the claims of the extinct House of Vasa,—the last direct descendant of which passed away a few days after King Oscar, in the person of Carola, Dowager-Queen of Saxony, and daughter of the deposed King Gustavus Adolphus IV of Sweden,—are again restored, and that the reigning House of Bernadotte and the ancient House of Vasa have become joined through the present Crown Prince. It is something to consider, too, that Adolphus V is the first of the Bernadotte dynasty in whose veins, through his mother, Sophie of Nassau, there flows royal blood.[k]



CHAPTER XII

CHARITABLE AND BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS

This is the age of munificent benefactions in aid of science and learning. The Rhodes scholarships, Mr. Carnegie's free libraries and educational endowments, the Duc d'Aumale's gift to the French Academy of his fine chatteau at Chantilly, with its magnificent historical and art collections; many institutions founded in the United States and elsewhere by multi-millionaires for the advancement of knowledge, are a sign of the times. They foreshadow the abolishment of pauperism and its attendant charities to give place to beneficent institutions, and Norway and Sweden are abreast with other countries in this movement. Apart from charitable institutions and endowments for the maintenance of hospitals and asylums, of universities, scholarships and fellowships, which the generosity of former generations has secured, the present generation has seen noble donations made by private men for more special objects, having the general advancement of knowledge in view, such as the encouragement of scientific research and the support of voyages of geographical exploration. Nordenskioeld's Arctic voyages, his and Palander's navigation through the polar northeast passage in the Vega, Nathort's exploration of King Carl's Land, the Swedish expedition to the Antarctic regions under Otto Nordenskioeld, which has lately returned after two years' adventurous exploration in Graham Land and the discovery of King Oscar Land, Sven Hedin's travels in Central Asia, which have had such important results and made his works so widely read—all these were undertaken as the result of such aid. The latest case in point, Alfred Nobel's foundation of annual prizes for the reward of scientific discovery, of literary merit, and humanitarian endeavor, deserves special notice. The annual distribution of these prizes, each of which represents a small fortune ($41,500), has of late years fixed the attention of the learned world on the Swedish literary and scientific bodies, and the Norwegian Parliamentary Committee, who were entrusted by him with the difficult and invidious task of awarding them.

Alfred Nobel, the dynamite king, as he was styled, belonged to a family of inventors and industrial magnates. His father, Emmanuel Nobel, was the inventor of nitroglycerine, and of fixed submarine torpedoes or mines. His two brothers, Robert and Louis Nobel, founded the naptha and petroleum works at Bacou, one of the largest industrial enterprises of Russia. Alfred himself invented dynamite and dynamite gum, and a smokeless powder, ballistite, which he patented in 1867, 1876, and 1889. It is mainly due to the works of the Nobel family that Sweden has attained the reputation of Master Producer of Explosives. Chemical research has always been a specialty among Swedish men of science, and a large number of the known chemical elements were discovered and made known by Swedish scientists.

In 1876, Alfred Nobel had perfected his invention of dynamite gum. He went to Paris with his patented invention, and there formed a company with a capital of ten million francs for the manufacture of dynamite. It proved to be an article of the greatest industrial importance, and one destined to revolutionize mining and engineering. Erelong he had established extensive works in France, Scotland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. He produced over $25,000,000 worth a year. He became, in fact, the world's purveyor of an article which was now exclusively used in mining and engineering works. Thanks to it, engineers were able to pierce tunnels through the Alps, miners to sink their shafts into the bowels of the earth, and harbor constructors to remove sunken rocks out of the way of shipping. But thanks to it, too, the Communards were enabled to blow up the finest monuments of Paris in a few hours. It was at once a powerful instrument of industrial development, and of progress in the conquest of man over inert matter, and a terrible engine of devastation in warfare, and of massacre and vandalism where homicidal and destructive passions were aroused in mankind.

It was perhaps this thought, that in benefiting industry he had also made war more destructive, which led Alfred Nobel, who was a most pacific and humane man, endowed with the kindliness and sympathy of a great mind, to make the provisions he did in his will. He devoted all his fortune to the encouragement of scientific discovery and the reward of endeavors to diminish standing armies and the chances of war, to promote fraternity among nations, and the settlement of international disputes by peace congresses. His will, in its very conciseness and unsophisticated simplicity, is characteristic of the man. It is dated Nov. 27, 1895, and he died a year afterwards, on Dec. 10, 1896, leaving a fortune of $10,000,000. After instituting several small legacies, the will proceeds:

"With the residue of my convertible estate I hereby direct my executors to proceed as follows: They shall convert my said residue of property into money, which they shall then invest in safe securities; the capital thus secured shall constitute a fund, the interest accruing from which shall be annually awarded in prizes to those persons who shall have contributed most materially to benefit mankind during the year immediately preceding. The said interest shall be divided into five equal amounts, to be apportioned as follows: one share to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention in the domain of physics; one share to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one share to the person who shall have made the most important discovery in the domain of physiology or medicine; one share to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic tendency; and, finally, one share to the person who shall have most or best promoted the fraternity of nations and the abolition or diminution of standing armies and the formation or increase of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Science in Stockholm, the one for physiology or medicine by the Caroline Medical Institute in Stockholm; the prize for literature by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, and that for peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storthing. I declare it to be my express desire that, in awarding these prizes, no consideration whatever be paid to the nationality of the candidates, that is to say, the most deserving be awarded the prize, whether of Scandinavian origin or not."

It was Nobel's object to reward and help the pure man of science, too much absorbed in his researches to think of drawing any industrial or pecuniary advantages from his scientific discoveries. "I would not leave anything to a man of action or industrial enterprise," he said to a friend with whom he was discussing the project of his will; "the sudden acquisition of a fortune would probably only damp the energy and weaken the spirit of enterprise of such a man. I want to aid the dreamer, the scientific enthusiast, who forgets everything in the pursuit of his ideas."

It seems like dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous to follow so ideal a benefaction with a report of so mundane a thing as a soup kitchen, but soup is as necessary to humanity at the present period of life as some of the exalted things of the intellect, and, as pauperism in Norway and Sweden is so almost unobservable, it is difficult to search out with the keenest vision any charity that is doing more than are the "steam kitchens" of Norway and Sweden. And the keenest vision would hardly observe that these "steam kitchens" are charitable institutions. They are called "steam kitchens" because they are the first institutions in the peninsula where steam was used for the cooking of food. The one at Stockholm, instituted by Prince Carl, is very similar in detail and operation to the one in Christiania, but the latter was established first and is more perfect in its arrangement and methods, so we will take it for illustration.

This kitchen at Christiania was established in 1858 by benevolent people to provide wholesome food for the poor at low prices. The charter granted to the company limited its profits to six per cent of the capital invested, with a provision that the balance, if any, should be paid into the poor fund of the city. There was a hard struggle at first to make both ends meet, and an annual deficit for many years, which was made up by the stockholders, but at last the "kitchen" became so popular that it began to pay dividends, and the stock has since been watered four times, until it now pays what is equivalent to twenty-four per cent annually upon the original investment, with a surplus larger than the capital on which it was started. It is one of the most profitable enterprises in Europe for the amount of money involved, but that fact does not diminish the benefits conferred upon the public, and the generosity of the company to the poor, particularly in times of labor troubles and financial depression, can not be questioned. Hundreds of bachelors and single women take their meals there regularly, and hundreds of families obtain their entire supply of food, wholesome and well cooked, at nominal cost.

There is a long official title to the company, but nobody ever mentions it. It occupies a two-story building covering nearly half an ordinary block. The location is convenient to the business portion of the city, the docks and the market-place. There are two large halls, one above the other, containing five long tables, seating thirty persons each, thus accommodating three hundred customers at a sitting. In the upstairs room it costs eleven cents in our money for a good dinner; in the lower room it costs nine cents. There are no tablecloths and no napkins, but the tops of the tables have been scoured until they shine and everything is spotless. The whole institution is a model of neatness. It seems remarkable how it can be kept so clean with so many unwashed customers and so much business. The windows are large and let in plenty of light. The walls are covered with bright tints, and the waitresses wear white caps, aprons, and oversleeves. At each place is a knife, fork, spoon, drinking glass, cup and saucer, and a piece of bread about three inches square. Dinner is served from ten in the morning until six in the afternoon to an average of 2,500 people daily. Some of them come twice. They take a cup of coffee and eat a piece of cheese and bread at their homes early in the morning. Then at ten or eleven, and again at four or five o'clock, they go to the "kitchen" for a square meal. Thus it costs them not more than twenty-five cents a day, all told, for their food. In the last ten years they have never served less than 1,500 people in a day.

The bill of fare varies from day to day, but we will take one day, Tuesday, for example. A large dish of barley soup is served, wholesome and nourishing, a ball of hashed meat, with potatoes and rice, or boiled salmon, potatoes and turnips.

The nine-cent dinner is pretty much the same, with the exception of the soup; boiled potatoes and rice, or boiled salmon, potatoes and turnips. A plate of soup alone, which in itself would be more than a meal for most people, being filled with meat and vegetables, is served for three cents.

The same dinners are furnished to the public to be eaten at their homes for nine and seven cents respectively, and usually contain enough food for two or three women, although Norwegians have stalwart appetites. The outdoor service is conducted in another part of the building, upon another street. The patrons procure tickets at an office and then form in line—men, women and children, each with a bucket or a basket, or both, in hand. Many tickets are given gratuitously, but it is impossible to distinguish the paying from the charity customers. Benevolent people throughout the city purchase bunches of tickets, which they give to the poor, and sometimes in lieu of wages. If you hire a man to clean up the yard, you can give him so much cash and so many meal tickets, or if a person appeals to you for relief, it is always better to give a ticket to the "Steam Kitchen" rather than money. Many customers buy two portions which they take home and warm up at meal time for the whole family.

In the center of a large room are rows of immense caldrons with coils of steam pipe embracing them. The air is filled with pungent odors from the bubbling soup, and clouds of steam rise from the other cook-pots. On a long table are pyramids of bread, cut into cubes three or four inches square, usually rye or black bread, such as the natives of Norway prefer. Along the walls are deep cupboards containing the linens, the culinary supplies and utensils. In an adjoining but detached building is a furnace and boiler-room which furnishes the steam, and beside it a laundry and dish-washing establishment. It requires a good many dishes to serve three thousand people even in a simple way. In an annex the finer qualities of beef, mutton, and other meats are cut off and sold to the public, thus utilizing all the supplies which are bought in large quantities, the beef by the carcass and the vegetables by the carload. The sausage of the "Steam Kitchen" is said to be the best to be found in Christiania. All kinds of prepared meats are also sold in this annex butcher shop. During the fruit season the company runs a canning department upstairs, preserving all kinds of fruits, jellies, pickles, and that sort of thing. At the baking department bread is sold to the general public at wholesale or retail, and small retail establishments are supplied with all kinds of groceries as well as meats and other edibles. Thus the restaurant is only part of this large business from which the company derives its profits. There is naturally a good deal of jealousy among the competing small dealers against the "Steam Kitchen," but it serves a benevolent purpose, and there is no disposition among its customers to question its business methods or reduce its profits. It has succeeded in abolishing the cheap restaurants such as are found in all large cities, at which wretched food, generally the scrapings from high-class hotels and eating-houses, is worked over and sold to the poor.

It is an interesting sight, this bucket brigade, that stands in line and passes slowly by the serving windows, which are attended by half a dozen brawny Norwegian women with bare arms and broad, good-natured-looking faces. They wear neat white aprons and caps, and handle the food with a dexterity that shows long experience. They seem to know most of the customers and carry on a familiar conversation with them while falling their orders. When a bucket and a ticket passes up, blue for a nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke or a few pleasant words.

Many of the customers are well dressed, according to the Norway standard, but no people in the world seem to care so little for their personal appearance, except on Sundays, when you can scarcely recognize men and women you have been familiar with during the week. On the day I ate at the restaurant, my cicerone pointed out at the dining table two professors of the University faculty, a lawyer in good standing, a photographer, and a sub-editor of one of the daily papers, who were his personal acquaintances. The remainder of the customers appeared to be professional men, clerks, bookkeepers, and a good many laborers, many of them coming for their dinner without having removed the traces of toil from their faces and hands. At one of the tables was a group of students inclined to be boisterous and evidently enjoying themselves. The "Steam Kitchen" is the favorite eating-place for the undergraduates, from four to five hundred being served every day.

Such an institution as the "Steam Kitchen" is especially suitable to a Norwegian city, where a portion of the population work for very small wages, the average income of the wage-earner being less than $100 a year—so small that, measured by the American standard, it would seem a difficult problem to find food, clothing, and shelter for a family.

Few Norwegians suffer from poverty or privation, even through the cold and gloomy winters that are eight months long. Our own people might die, or at least suffer seriously under the same circumstances, but the Norwegians are a hardy race. They have inherited the power of endurance and the ability to survive hunger and thirst and discomforts better than most races.

There are comparatively few poor in Sweden, probably fewer than in any other European country except Norway and Switzerland, because of the low cost of living, the sparse population, and the ability of all men and women to find work if they are willing to earn their own subsistence. Able-bodied paupers are compelled to work upon poor farms, but the aged, decrepit and invalids who are dependent upon public charity are kindly taken care of by what is called outdoor and indoor relief. In the cities are asylums and almshouses similar to those in the United States, but in the parishes, as a rule, the care of the poor is assigned to individual farmers and others who are willing to take care of them under contract, subject to the supervision of a board of guardians, of which the pastor is the chairman and the elders of the church are members. This has long been a practice in Sweden, but is not universal.

There are at present 5,277 relief establishments of all kinds in the kingdom, and the total contributions for the benefit of the poor amount to $3,000,000 annually, or on an average of 58 cents per capita of the entire population, an average of 44 cents in the country and $1.18 in the cities. This includes all poorhouses, asylums, hospitals, and other institutions for adults and children who can not take care of themselves.

A large part of the relief work in the cities is looked after by the Salvation Army under contract with the municipal authorities, but there are many institutions, hospitals, asylums, homes for the friendless and aged and for orphan children, supported by private charity. The free hospital for children in Stockholm is famous as one of the best equipped and managed institutions in the world.

The private charities in Stockholm are united for cooperation in an organization similar to those found in American cities, and all charitable institutions are subject to government supervision.[l]



CHAPTER XIII

MATERIAL CONDITIONS

The chief occupation of the Scandinavian peninsula is agriculture, employing more men and yielding larger monetary returns than any other industry in either Norway or Sweden. This may seem strange when it is recalled that sixty per cent of the surface of Norway is occupied by bare mountains, twenty-one per cent by woodlands, eight per cent by grazing lands, four per cent by lakes, and two per cent by ice fields, leaving only seven-tenths of one per cent for meadows and cultivated fields. And yet, the products of the farm equal the combined returns from shipping, lumber, and fisheries.

In Sweden the proportion of land under cultivation is considerably larger, the arable lands consisting of about twelve per cent of the total area, and in Sweden as in Norway, the agricultural products are more than those from shipping, lumber, and fisheries combined.

Nine-tenths of the farms of Norway and Sweden are owned by small proprietors; and although the right to dispose of landed property is relatively free, the laws of the country favor the retention of the farms in the families possessing them. An old allodial right makes it possible to redeem at an appraised value a farm that has been sold. This right is acquired after the property has belonged to the family for twenty years, but it is lost after the farm has been in the possession of strangers for three years. There are some farms that have been worked for a thousand years by the descendants of the same family. The best farms are about the banks of the lakes and in the narrow river valleys, and there are many fertile meadows which have never been plowed or put under cultivation, so that there are great future possibilities for tillage. And yet these meadows furnish fine hay-crops, and every blade of grass represents money in Scandinavia.

In a country extending through thirteen degrees of latitude, one might naturally expect a wide range of agricultural products. In the southeastern part of the peninsula most of the plants and orchard fruits of central Europe are found; whereas in the northern sections it is impossible to grow even the most hardy plants. Oats, barley, and rye are the chief cereals, but their production scarcely meets the needs of the country. Potatoes are the only root crops extensively cultivated. While the summers are short, vegetables and small fruit do excellently during the long, sun-lit hours. Scandinavians, however, do not seem habituated to a vegetable diet, and the cultivation of root plants seems very generally neglected. Pears, cherries, apples, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants may be grown under favorable conditions; but they play a minor role in Scandinavian horticulture.

The cow is a staple of wealth to the people of Scandinavia. They are diminutive in size, dun-colored, docile in habits, and excellent milk producers. It is said when they are well-fed they average from six to nine hundred gallons of milk a year. The mountain saeters, or dairies as we would call them, are the centers of the butter and cheese industry during the summer months.

The peninsula is also supplied with an excellent breed of small but hardy horses. The cream-colored fjord horses of Norway are only sixty inches high. They are active, hardy, and gentle; and in the mountainous parts of the country they are vastly more serviceable than mules would be. The Gudbrandsdalen breed, found chiefly in the mountain valleys, are larger than the fjord horses, and they are generally brown or black in color. Good horses bring surprisingly high prices. Working horses cost from $200 to $350 and the best stallions bring as much as $2,500.

The agricultural interests of Norway have suffered unmistakably by the enormous emigration to the United States. Two-thirds of the Norwegians of the world live in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Nearly every Norwegian farmstead has kinsmen in our country; and the strong and vigorous always emigrate, thus leaving the farms at home in the hands of the old and infirm. America has been greatly benefited by this almost incessant exodus; for the Norse peasants have, without an exception, made splendid citizens, the best, in fact, that have come to us from Europe.

Commenting on the enormous emigration from the Norwegian farms, William Eleroy Curtis remarks:

"Notwithstanding the large emigration of young people, for whom the Norwegian farms are too small, it is apparent that the development of Norway is continually progressing along the highest lines, and that the tendency of the people, is upward socially and industrially, in culture and in wealth. The population of the kingdom not only holds its own, but shows a slight increase which seems remarkable because of the continual drain of young, able-bodied men and women who have removed to our western states. In all public movements, in all social, commercial, and industrial activities, in art, science, and literature, in wealth and prosperity, Norway stands abreast of the most advanced nations of Europe; but its progress is not won without greater effort than any other people put forth, and the application of thrift and industry elsewhere unknown, but which is required in a climate so bleak and inhospitable, and by a soil so wild and rocky. None but a race like the Norsemen could have kept a foothold here."

Norwegian economists recognize the loss to the country through emigration, and in recent years the national parliament has attempted to improve the condition of agricultural laborers. A fund of $135,000 has been set aside by the government for the purchase of land. Loans are granted to municipalities (1) for the purpose of buying large estates to be assigned to people without means at the purchase price, in plots of not more than twelve acres of tillable soil, and (2) for the purpose of being granted as loans on the security of parcels of the same size, which people without means may acquire as freehold property. The interest on these loans is from three to four per cent, and the time of payment is up to twenty-five years.

There is also a cultivation fund of $270,000, from which loans are granted for the purpose of cultivating and draining the soil. The interest is two and one-half per cent, and the time of repayment is up to twenty years, including five years in which no instalments are required. Such loans are granted (1) on the security of mortgages and (2) on the guaranty of the municipality.

Agricultural societies—national and county—receive government grants for the purpose of holding meetings and issuing documents that might be of service to farmers. There is also a staff of surveyors paid by the state to assist in the public allotment of land and otherwise to render assistance to needy lot-owners.

Considerable attention is also being given to the matter of agricultural education. Connected with the state agricultural college is an experimental farm, where not only farmers but also dairymen, gardeners, and foresters receive practical instruction.

Connected with the larger farms of Norway and Sweden are cotters' places—farm laborers who have leased a small part of the farm for a definite period (often during their natural lives). In some cases the cotter leases only a building with a garden attached; in other cases several acres of ground. The cotter is usually required to work on the farm of the owner at certain times of the year for a small wage regulated by contract. These cotters correspond to our truck farmers, and their plots of ground number about 35,000 on the outskirts of the cities and villages. They raise potatoes and other vegetables, and hay enough to feed a horse and several cows. In most cases the women and children do the work, while the men are engaged in other occupations.

It is no longer permitted to establish entails which can not be sold or mortgaged, and the national government in recent years has sought to further the partition and allotment of the common ownership of land. Pastures and grazing lands are still often held by the community, and similarly mountain pastures. But the community farms, when the consent of all the part owners and tenants has been secured, may now be partitioned by surveyors appointed by the public authorities.

In the great timber districts of the mountain ranges, the trees are felled in winter and the logs are dragged to the tops of the steep mountain sides, where they are slid down to the river, or they are carted on sledges to the river's edge. During the early summer, after the ice has gone, and while the rivers are yet full of water, they are floated down the streams to the sawmills. But, as the logs are constantly being driven into corners or lodging against piers, floaters are employed to keep the logs in the current. Log-floating is both the most dangerous and the most unhealthful occupation in Norway. Men often fall into the streams; they are forced to sleep on the cold ground in uninhabited parts of the country; they frequently fall from the rolling logs into the whirling currents and are tossed against sharp rocks; and the marvel is not that the death-rate among floaters is so high, but that any of them survive the perilous occupation.

The value of the exports of forest products and timber industries reaches about eighteen million dollars a year, and the combined forest industries furnish employment to a large number of laborers. The state forests occupy about 3,500 square miles, more than half being located in the northern provinces of Tromsoe and Finmark. The state also has nurseries at Vossevangen and Hamar, and three forestry schools, by means of which widespread interest in tree-planting has been aroused. Destructive forest fires and the slaughter of the trees by the remarkable development of the wood-pulp industries have emphasized in recent times the need of larger forest reserves and closer government supervision. Under the most favorable conditions, the pine requires from seventy-five to one hundred years to yield timber twenty-five feet in length and ten inches in diameter at the top. Spruce will reach the same size in seventy-five to eighty years. In the higher altitudes of the central part of the country the pine requires one hundred and fifty years, and rarely exceeds one hundred feet in height, and it decreases toward the coast and northwards.

The fisheries of Norway are among the most important in the world, yielding the nation more than seven million dollars a year, and furnishing employment to eighty thousand men. The sea-fisheries play the chief part in this branch of industry. The long coast line and the great ocean depth near the coast combine to give the fisheries of Norway unusual advantages. The abundance of fish is also due to the presence of masses of glutinous matter, apparently living protoplasm, which furnishes nutriment for millions of animalcules which again become food for the herring and other fish. The fish are mainly of the round sort found in deep waters, the cod, herring, and mackerel being the most important.

The cod yields the largest monetary returns. This fish migrates to the coast of Norway to spawn and in search of food. The best cod fisheries are in Romsdal, Nordland, and Tromsoe counties, the Lofoten islands in Tromsoe alone furnishing employment to more than four thousand men. The cod weighs from eight to twenty pounds and measures from five to six feet in length. Some are merely dried after having been cleaned. This is done by hanging them by the tail on wooden frames. The others are sent to the salting stations where they are salted and dried on flat rocks. A fish weighing ten pounds will yield two pounds of salted cod, the loss being due to the removal of the head and entrails and the drying out of the water.

There are numerous secondary products from the cod, the most valuable being the cod liver oil. The livers of the fish are exposed to a jet of superheated steam which destroys the liver cells and causes the small drops of oil to run together. The roe are salted and sent to France to be used for bait in the sardine fisheries.

In the matter of the handicraft industries carried on in the homes, Norway has long taken high rank. As early as the ninth century her artisans were skilled in the manufacture of arms, farming implements, and boats, and her women in cloth weaving and embroidery. During recent times the ease and cheapness with which foreign products could be obtained caused a marked decline in home industries; but at the present moment an effort is being made to rehabilitate them through a national domestic industry association, organized in 1891, which has taken up the manufacture of hand-carved articles, sheath-knives, skis, sledges, and woven and embroidered woolen and linen goods after the old Norwegian patterns.

The manufacture of lumber and wooden ware is one of the leading industrial pursuits. With the exception of the two most northern counties, practically every section of the country is represented by sawmills and planing mills. Ship-building in recent times has attained considerable importance, and the manufacture of paper of the chemical wood-pulp variety has become one of the leading industries. There are a few cloth, rope, and jersey mills at Bergen and Christiania, but the textile industries of Norway are relatively unimportant. On the other hand, leather, India rubber, glass, metal, and chemical industries have become important of late years.

Norway is not rich in mineral products. The combined mining industries do not yield more than two million dollars a year, and they furnish employment to less than four thousand men. The Kongsberg silver mines have been operated for more than three hundred years, but the recent fall in the price of silver has reduced the output. The copper mines at Roroes have been operated for two hundred and fifty years, and there are less important copper mines in Nordland, Telemarken, and the Hardanger. There are iron mines at Arendal and elsewhere, but the rise in the cost of charcoal, due to the scarcity of wood, has greatly crippled the iron industry. There are important soapstone quarries in the Gudbransdal and the Trondhjem basin; green colored slate in the Valders and at Vossevangen; and granite, syenite, and porphyry in many parts of the country.

Measured by population and national wealth, the commerce of Norway is relatively important, due in a large measure to her enormous merchant marine and the efficiency of her hardy seamen. Relatively to the population of the country, Norway has the largest merchant fleet in the world, and in the matter of steamships and sailing vessels she is surpassed only by three countries—Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Not only is her fleet large, but her service is efficient. Norwegian seamen the world over are esteemed for ability and honesty, inspiring all commercial nations with confidence that goods carried in Norse bottoms will be carefully and conscientiously treated; and her seamen are everywhere sought to man foreign vessels.

In industries, the Swedes excel in the manufacture of iron. To fully appreciate the value of this industry, one should visit Gefle, the most important shipping point on the eastern coast of Sweden. Here there is a fine harbor, with docks and warehouses owned by the government. From this port the ore from the mines of central Sweden is shipped to all parts of the world and handled by Brown hoisting machinery, which is made in Cleveland, Ohio—the same that you see on the ore docks at South Chicago and at Cleveland, Buffalo, Ashtabula, and other points on the Great Lakes where iron ore and coal are handled.

At Gefle, too, an annual industrial exposition is held, where you may see on exhibit all the utensils manufactured or used by the people—all kinds of machinery, tools, and implements, recent novelties in patents, weaving, wood-carving, and a large part of the exposition building is given up to beautiful articles in iron, in the manufacture of which we have said the Swedes excel.

A little west of Gefle is the town of Fahlun, which is the headquarters of the Kopparberg Mining Company, the, oldest industrial corporation in the world. The buildings date back to the seventeenth century and the mines are even more ancient. A mortgage bond was filed upon them in the year 1288 by a German company, and the records show that in 1347 the privilege of working them was sold by the king of Sweden to a syndicate of Lubeck miners. But these documents which are on file in the archives of the town are comparatively modern, because the copper deposits at Fahlun were known and worked in prehistoric times, and from them the Vikings obtained the sheathings for their ships and the material from which their copper armor, implements, and utensils were made. An immense amount of copper was used and worked with great skill in Scandinavia even before the Christian era, and the most of it came from the great deposits at Fahlun.

The iron industry is old in Sweden. Isaac Breant, a tradesman in Stockholm, founded a company and received a charter from Charles XI in 1685. He built the first blast furnace in Sweden, and died in 1702, leaving the property to his son, who died in 1720. The heirs sold out in 1722 to a man named Grill, in whose family the property remained until 1800, when it was purchased by the ancestors of the present owners.

The famous Dannemora mines, which produce the best Bessemer ore in the world, have been worked continuously since 1481. It is one of the most valuable and extensive iron deposits in the world, and resembles those of Lake Superior. The area of ore already located covers 12,500 square meters.[m]



CHAPTER XIV

HIGHWAYS, RAILWAYS, AND WATERWAYS

Since the sixteenth century Norway has had an excellent public posting system which enables the traveler to go to the most remote parts of the country at moderate and fixed rates. Fast and slow posting stations are established by the government along all the national highways. At the former, horses must be kept in readiness; whereas, at the latter, the horses may be in distant fields at work, and a couple of hours may elapse before the traveler can proceed upon his journey. The rates, which are determined by the government, are, from fast stations, about seven cents a mile for a horse and two-wheeled conveyance or sledge; but from slow stations they are scarcely more than half that price. When the road is over very steep mountains, an extra fare is charged, usually double; but this is a government regulation and is always understood. The posting stations are, for the most part, isolated and solitary farms. The farmers undertake to provide rooms and meals, as well as drivers, horses, and conveyances. Stations are usually from seven to fifteen miles apart, and farmers are required to convey the traveler only as far as the next station.

Two kinds of wagons are used, the carriole and the stolkjaerre. The carriole resembles an American sulky, except that it is springless, and nearly the entire weight is forward of the axle. It is a two-wheeled gig with the body shaped like the bowl of a spoon. The seat, in front of the axletree, is fastened by cross-pieces to the long, slender shafts that project behind and provide a place for light luggage and a seat for the driver. The carriole is for one passenger. It is falling into disuse, and its place is being taken by the stolkjaerre, a two-wheeled cart that will carry two passengers. It also has long shafts which extend under the axletree to make a support for the luggage and a seat for the driver. The passenger's seat is in front, perched on two wooden bars stretched obliquely upwards and backwards from the front of the vehicle. The drivers, usually men although sometimes girls, vary in age from six to sixty years.

The Norwegian horses are stout, stubby, and spirited little beasts. They are cream-colored, high crested, and have black manes and tails; the manes are cropped, except the forelocks, which are left to protect the eyes from the sun, and the tails are very full. Horses are valued in Norway by the size and fullness of their tails. These little animals are so trustworthy and intelligent that tourists, as well as peasants, soon get to look upon them as companions. In every "skyds-station," as the posting stations are called, in a conspicuous place is posted this inscription: Vaer god mod hesten. This means "be good to the horse." At every station there is also a book, called the skydsbog, in which travelers are requested to write their names and any complaints they may have to make regarding their treatment. At intervals these books are examined by government officials.

Swedish horses are much larger than those of Norway, tall, heavy, with long legs and barrel-shaped bodies, very much like Canadian stock. They drive well, make good speed, and will eat anything. At the livery stables one can hire outfits by the day or hour—the legal price being 63 cents an hour or 56 cents to any point within the city limits, and there is an excellent cab system, with what is known as the "taxameter" register. Every cab is equipped with an arrangement similar to a gas meter, which shows on a dial the money due, whether you are using it by the hour or by the distance. The hackman sets his clock at zero at the time of starting, according to the number of passengers or whether he is hired by time or distance, and it ticks away while you ride or while he waits. The fare for one or two persons is sixty-two cents per hour; for three persons, eighty-seven cents an hour; for four persons, $1.24 and a tip to the driver anywhere from one cent to fifteen cents, according to the time he has been with you. The public posting system outside of the cities is similar to that of Norway.

The national government builds the main highways, while the cross roads are built by the parishes. The management is in the hands of a bureau in the national department of public works, and the maintenance falls upon the people who live in the neighborhood, under the supervision of a local inspector. Every farmer has a piece of road to take care of, according to the amount of land he owns, and at intervals slabs of cast iron are erected bearing his name and the section of the road he is to keep in order. Thus every man's reputation is at stake in the neighborhood, and if there is a muddy place or a rut, everybody knows who is to blame for it, and it can not be laid to the county commissioner, as is the case in America. On the outside of each road is a line of large blocks of stone set upright, which serves as a barrier to prevent wagons from going off into the ditch. There are 6,500 miles of main highway, and 11,000 miles of cross-road, or a total of 17,500 miles of roads in Norway, and the total expenditure upon them by national and local authorities will average a million and a half dollars every year.

The first cost of a road is usually about $3,000 a mile. They first dig an excavation about three feet deep, as if they were going to make a canal. On the bottom are thrown heavy blocks of stone through which the water can filter, and occasionally there is a little drain to carry it off. Upon this is a layer of smaller stones, and then still smaller, until the surfacing is reached, which is macadam of pounded slate, mixed with gravel and stone.

During the winter the farmers have to keep their several sections free from snow, but to do this it is necessary for them to co-operate, for it would be impossible for one family to handle the heavy plows that are necessary. Six, eight, and ten horses are often hitched to them—all the horses in the neighborhood—and it is often the work of weeks instead of days to get the roads opened up for travel, but when it is once done, it is as clear and smooth for sleighs as a city boulevard.

Norway has only one mile of railway for every one hundred square miles of land; but the mountainous character of the country, the heavy snowfall during the long winters, and the thin, scattered population make railway construction almost prohibitive. Nevertheless, the new kingdom has made a commendable beginning, and the state has plans for enormous extensions during the next twenty-five years. There are now nine railway lines in the country, with a total mileage of one thousand five hundred and eighty-four, but half of which is broad gauge. The state railways have been constructed partly by subscriptions taken in the districts interested in the construction of new lines, and partly at the expense of the national government.

The leading railway lines radiate from Christiania to Stockholm, Goteborg, Trondhjem, Gudbransdal, Telemarken, and the Valders. The longest line—three hundred and fifty miles—is from Christiania to Trondhjem through Hamar. There is also a relatively long line—one hundred and ninety miles—from Christiania up the Gudbrandsdal by Lake Mjosen and through Lillehammer to Otta. In 1906, the Valders railway, connecting Christiania with Fagernaes—a distance of one hundred and thirty-one miles—was opened. This connects with the most important of the new roads being built, the one from Christiania to Bergen. This road will reach entirely across the country, from Christiania on the Swedish frontier to Bergen on the Atlantic coast, thus making connection between the two largest cities of Norway, journeys between which are now only possible by steamships and carriages, consuming from three to six days.

The new road goes through the mountains and presents many engineering difficulties. Two-thirds of the way the roadbed must be cut out of the mountain side, and there is a tunnel three miles long at a height of two thousand eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea level. The snow in the winter is so heavy that it will be necessary to cover the tracks with sheds for a distance of nearly sixty miles. The construction is not only difficult, but expensive, and although the distance is but three hundred and ten miles, it will be one of the most costly railroads ever built. Sixty-seven miles of the line between Bergen and Vose, on the western coast, is already in operation, and it is a favorite journey of tourists, for the scenery is superb, although the traveler is in a tunnel one-tenth of the entire distance. There are forty-eight tunnels in all. A shelf has been hewn and blasted along the side of the mountains that encloses the celebrated Sorfjord.

The Norwegians call a railway a jernbane, literally "an iron path." Their cars are made on the conventional European pattern, and are light and comfortable. They are furnished with toilet rooms, and run smoothly and noiselessly. Most of the trains are equipped with Westinghouse brakes, steam heat, and electric lights. The trains run very slowly. Economy is studied in this respect, as in every other. There is a certain speed—say, fifteen or eighteen miles an hour—which can be maintained at a minimum consumption of fuel, and the Scandinavian railway managers have figured it down to a dot. They can haul a longer train a greater distance with a ton of coal than any other engineers, and the most scrupulous attention is applied to every feature of management, the tracks, the rolling stock, the station, the crossings. The crossing-keepers are usually women. A large number of that sex are employed by the railways.

The stops at the stations seem unnecessarily long to impatient Americans, but the time is utilized by the leisurely passengers in drinking big goblets of beer, and by the conductor in parading up and down the platform so that the patrons of the road can have an opportunity to admire his radiant uniform and fine shape. In Scandinavian countries the best-looking men seem to have been selected for railway conductors and policemen, and their deportment is decidedly different from what we are used to in America. If you ask a question of a Norwegian policeman, he will bring his heels together, give a military salute, and stand in the attitude of attention like a soldier while he answers. He usually understands English, too, and those who can not are remarkably accurate guessers, and all take a friendly interest in your inquiries instead of giving you a short answer and a cold shoulder like the policemen in our cities. They will walk to the corner to point out the house in the middle of the next block if that is where you want to go, and when you thank them for their attention, you get another salute that makes you feel as big as a major general, or as if you had been mistaken for a member of the royal family. Railway conductors are equally polite, and seem to understand that it is a part of their business to protect tender-footed travelers, as angels always look after good little boys.

In southern Sweden there is scarcely a parish without a railway, and in the northern part of the kingdom, where the railway facilities are limited, posting stations are maintained by the government similar to those in Norway. There is a railway running as far north as the 67th parallel of latitude, about fifty miles beyond the polar circle into Lapland, to the famous mines of Malmberget, with a branch to Trondhjem, Norway. The line follows the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia very closely, through a country well covered with small pine timber, which was being rapidly stripped until the government interfered by passing rigid regulations and appointing foresters to enforce them.

You can see the midnight sun from several places on this railway, anywhere above 66 degrees and 33 minutes of latitude, from the 9th of June to the 3d of July, and farther north for a longer period. At Gellivare the midnight sun can be seen regularly from June 5 to July 11, and it is a much more convenient and quicker journey than to the North Cape and other polar resorts in Norway. During that period a traveler is reasonably certain of seeing the sun at all hours of the day as long as he cares to stay, while over in Norway that privilege is rare and uncertain, owing to the fogs and clouds that obscure the horizon sometimes for days at a time. But there is nothing else to call the tourist to this part of Sweden, for the scenery is monotonous and uninteresting and the facilities for travel are primitive and the tourists are few.

Everybody who has taken the trouble to make the journey, of course, advises other people to do the same, and insists that it is worth the time, money, and fatigue it costs, on the same principle as the fox that lost his tail in a trap wanted all the other foxes to cut off their tails. There is one train each way daily, but it runs very slowly,—about fifteen or eighteen miles an hour,—and stops a long time at the stations. The cars are comfortable. The road belongs to the government, and was built in the '90's for the transportation of ore from the iron mines, which was previously hauled by cart in summer and reindeer sledges in winter, to the ports of Lulea and Allapen, a distance of about one hundred and forty miles.

When it is recalled that two-thirds of the inhabitants of Norway live upon the coasts and fjords, the large part which water traffic plays in the economy of the country will be easily understood. The coast being well protected by a chain of islands, the skjaergaard, both travel and commerce are carried on by means of small open boats. The fjord rowboats, as a rule, are light and pointed, with upright and high prow, and they carry a square sail. They are light to row, and they go capitally before the wind. There is an extensive government posting system on the coasts, fjords, and inland lakes, similar to that along the public highways already described. The tariff from fast stations for a four-oared boat and sail with two rowers is about twelve cents a mile; eighteen cents for three rowers and a six-oared boat, and twenty-four cents a mile for a boat with eight oars and four rowers. The tariff is decided by the size of the boat and not by the number of passengers. The rowers are not infrequently girls and women.

The large fjords and lakes have ample steamboat facilities, the coast service between Bergen and Trondhjem being especially good. The navigable channels of the fjords represent a coast line of twelve thousand miles, and they are so entirely separated from the sea by islands and reefs and obstructed at their entrances by old moraines, that the fresh water from the melting snows and rivers lies four or five feet deep on the surface. Small steamers ply on all the larger fjords on which the rates are moderate and the accommodations fair. On most of these boats a passenger pays full fare for himself and half fare for the other members of his family, including his wife. Persons who want to see the fjords of Norway thoroughly should take the regular mail steamers, which call at all small ports and take a month instead of a week for the voyage. The boats are small, but clean and comfortable, and only occasionally have bad weather—very seldom in summer. They wind in and out of the narrow passages, and because of their size can navigate where the larger tourist steamers are not able to go, and therefore the passengers on the latter miss some of the finest scenery.

Voyages to the North Cape by the tourist steamers are limited to a few weeks during the midsummer, when the sun is supposed to be visible at midnight in the arctic regions, but steamers run regularly all the year way around the Cape to Archangel, Vadsoe, and Horningsvaag, the arctic ports of Russia. The fjords never freeze, so that navigation is always open, and there is more or less travel in midwinter between the civilized portions of the arctic regions.

If you will take your map and examine the north coast of Europe within the arctic circle, you will find several towns east of the North Cape on the White Sea which are wide open 365 days in the year, and do more business in the winter than during the summer months. They do not see the sun from December to February. At some places it is invisible for a longer period, but at Hammerfest the streets, houses, and business places are lighted with electric lights, and similar plants are being introduced into other cities of the polar section. It is stated, also, that the aurora borealis is so brilliant night after night as to make it easy to read ordinary newspaper print without artificial light, and by long experience people are prepared for the peculiar conditions that exist there. The passengers on the steamers in these waters in winter are mostly commercial travelers and men interested in the fisheries, which are more active from October to March than at any other time of the year.

There are also two canals in Norway that are used for passenger traffic—the Fredrikshald canal, connecting the Femsjoeen and Skullerud lakes, and the Skien-Nordsjoe-Bandak canal, connecting the Nordsjoe lake with the Hitterdal and Bandak lakes. Between the Hitterdal and the Nordsjoe lake there is a rise of fifty feet, which is overcome by two locks at Skien and four at Loveid; and between the Nordsjoe and the Bandak lakes there is a rise of one hundred and eighty-seven feet, which is overcome by fourteen locks, five of which are around a waterfall, the Vrangfos, where the average rise for each lock is about thirteen feet. The postal, telegraph, and telephone systems, all under government control, are both cheaper and more efficient than in the United States, where the two latter are private monopolies. With the exception of Switzerland, Norway is more abundantly supplied with postoffices, in proportion to her size, than any other country in the international postal union. The length of her telegraph lines, in relation to the population of the country is greater than in any other country. There is no place in the world where telephones are so cheap or so numerous as in Stockholm. There are more telephones in Stockholm than in Berlin or London, and it is contended that there are more than in Paris, but that is doubtful. The total number of instruments in use is nearly 50,000 to a population of 300,000. You can find a telephone in every shop and in almost every house, and in the parks and on the street corners on lamp posts are little booths similar to those used for police boxes in the cities of the United States. They work automatically. You drop a little coin worth three cents into the slot, and then ring the bell. For several years every room in the principal hotels has had its own telephone, on the same system that has recently been introduced into the United States, and upon some of the steamers sailing from Stockholm there is a telephone in every stateroom. The long distance 'phones and all the lines outside of two or three of the principal cities belong to the government and are operated by the Postoffice Department. The rents vary from $10 to $28 a year.

The telegraph system is owned by the government, which charges a uniform rate of fifteen cents for ten words to any part of the country.



CHAPTER XV

THE PEOPLE: THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

Because of its geographic isolation, the Scandinavian peninsula is the home of the purest Teutonic ethnic stock. The Norwegians, Icelanders, Swedes, and Danes are racially closely related, and they belong to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Germans, Flemish, English, and Anglo-Americans. Physically, these people are powerfully built and tall, of the pure Scandinavian type, with fair hair and blue eyes, and their healthy, intelligent look strikes the traveler. In addition to the physical characteristics held in common by these Scandinavian peoples, the Norwegians are to be specially noted for their long narrow heads, particularly is this so among the people in the interior of the country. Here, too, the stature is the greatest. During the Civil War in the United States, it was found that among the enlisted troops the Norwegians, after the Americans, had the greatest stature, and that in breadth of chest they were excelled by none. It is probably true, however, that the Norwegians who emigrate represent the finest physical types, and that they possess a higher average stature than one finds in Norway to-day, if the most northerly provinces are excepted.

The Norwegians are a very plain people—neither pretty nor handsome. The women are strong and square-built, and what beauty they have is of the solid and substantial sort. Of the two sexes, the men are the better proportioned, both in the matter of figures and features. They have light complexions,—barring the bronzing of the skin due to constant exposure,—light hair, blue eyes, and reasonably well-formed noses. Both men and women have frank and open countenances.

The most marked mental characteristics are clear insight, unconquerable pertinacity, dogged obstinacy, absolute honesty, and a sturdy sense of independence. Bjoernson has well remarked concerning his people: "Opinions are slowly formed and tenaciously held, and much independence is developed by the rigorous isolation of farm from farm each on its own freehold ground, unannoyed and uncontradicted by any one. The way the people work together in the fields, in the forests, and in their large rooms has given them a characteristic stamp of confidence in each other." It is perhaps this isolation that has perpetuated so many of the old customs and superstitions for which the Norwegians are noted.

William Eleroy Curtis tells of seeing the funeral of one of these Norway farmers:

"His house was trimmed with green boughs and festooned with ropes of flowers and ground pine. The word farvel, "farewell," was worked in green over the front door. The coffin, which was carried on a bier by the neighbors to the little cemetery not far away, was covered with flowers, and following it were a number of women clad in somber black with little white shawls tied under their chins, each carrying a wreath in her hands. The minister led the procession. He was dressed in a long black gown reaching to his heels, like the cassock of a Catholic priest; his hat was of felt, with a low crown and a broad brim, similar to those worn by the curates of the Church of England, while around his neck was a linen ruff that looked as if it might have been worn in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

"A grave had been dug in the churchyard. The neighbors who had borne the body, lowered it tenderly to the bottom, and when they had lifted the cover of the coffin in place, each man, the oldest first, threw in a shovelful of earth. All the women did not use the shovel, some of them took up handsful of soil and let it gently filter through their fingers into the open vault; and finally three children, somewhere about ten or eleven years of age, followed the example of their elders and added their little share to the brown coverlid of the dead. The pastor removed his hat, extended his arms and pronounced a benediction. Then the women laid their wreaths on the newly covered grave and sorrowfully turned homeward."

Independence and frankness characterize all classes of society. Norway has no hereditary aristocracy. In 1821 it was provided that those holding titles might be allowed to retain them during their lives, but they could not transmit them to their children. The Norse character has never been marred by the yoke of slavery. The feudal system, with its serfdom, never got a footing in the north. The people have always been small landholders, which has developed among them an independence of character not found in countries where the mass of the inhabitants have no direct property interests. There is no class in Norway corresponding to the country gentleman of England or to the grand seigneurs and provincial noblemen of the Continent. The wealthiest landlord is only a peasant.

Honesty is one of the valuable assets of the Norwegian people. Attempts at extortion are so rare that tourists, accustomed to the proverbial dishonesty of the Latin races, find travel in Norway and Sweden a joy. An English traveler relates this typical incident: He had lost his purse shortly after leaving Vossevangen for Stalheim. Altogether unconscious of his loss, he walked on placidly. Suddenly hearing hurried footsteps following him, he turned about and faced a lad who thrust the pocketbook into the owner's hand and disappeared before the Englishman could get a coin from his pocket to reward the boy for his honesty. The Norwegian boy very properly did not expect a reward for doing the only thing open to his mind upon finding the purse.

Kindness to animals is another virtue of the Norwegian people. Illustrating this trait we again quote William Eleroy Curtis:

"There seems to be a close relation between the human kind and their animals. The men and women talk to the horses and cattle as if they were understood. We had a skydsgut, or driver, one day, who held continuous conversation with his horses. Every time he would come to a hill he would walk beside them and talk to them all the way up in a gentle, caressing sort of way, like a child talking to a doll, and once when he stopped for water and the near horse wanted to drink more than the driver thought was good for him, he scolded like an old woman. The horse shook his head and rattled his harness impatiently, as much as to say, 'You get back onto your box and attend to your business and I'll attend to mine.'"

That intellectuality is one of the traits of the Swedes and Norwegians alike is evidenced in the long list of names that have become famous in the world's literature. In spite of the high intellectual attainments of these people, they are fond of the quiet, simple life, with friends and kinsfolk and home employments and home enjoyments. And they are very superstitious, too, and, in spite of their Lutheran faith, they have never discarded the customs that grew from belief in gods many, and fairies, trolls, gnomes and norns without number. The forests, the mountains and gorges, are inhabited by these people still. Nissen is the good fairy of the farmers. He looks after the cattle particularly, and if he is well treated they are healthy, and the cows give lots of milk. To propitiate him it is necessary to put a dish of porridge on the threshold of the cow stable on Christmas morning. Whenever the family move, this invisible being goes along with them and sits on the top of the loads. In haying time he always rides on the load of hay, and the bedstemoder, best mother or grandmother, in every farmhouse can tell the children dozens of interesting stories about the mischief or the kindness of Nissen.

He is invariably represented in pictures of farm life; he appears on the illustrated advertisements of farm machinery; his figure carved in wood is sold at all the curiosity stores, and he appears as a prominent character in most of the fairy stories that deal with farm life. He is represented as a short, fat, bow-legged man, with big whiskers and long white hair, wearing a red hat like those worn by clowns in circuses. He usually appears in his shirt sleeves, with an open collar, a blue vest, and knickerbockers upon his legs, which are as slim as those of a brownie. His circumference is greater than his height, and his head is almost as large as his body.

Noek is the fairy of the waterfalls and is a sort of merman. You never see more than half his body. He is very, very old, his hair and beard are long and white, and his face is always pale and pensive. He carries a harp and plays to amuse the spirits in the waterfall. A statue of Ole Bull has recently been erected in his native city of Bergen. He stands upon a pedestal which rises from a fountain, and the water flows over the head and shoulders of a Noek at the base.

Norway offers a fine field for reformers to study the effects of regulation upon the vice of drunkenness. Within the limits of the kingdom are all grades of restriction, from prohibition to liberal license. There are no pretensions about the Norwegians; there is no affectation about their morals and no leniency in the administration of their laws. The police and the magistrates are merciless and inexorable, and crime is punished more severely perhaps than in any other country. At the same time the people distinguish an important difference between temperance and total abstinence. They give their children beer in unlimited quantities, but absolutely prohibit the sale of whisky, and send drunken men to prison with burglars and assassins. Norwegian reformers hold that beer is the great promoter of temperance, and encourage its use as a beverage, although every saloon in the kingdom is closed on Sundays, on all holidays, and Saturday afternoon, which is the regular pay day for the working classes. These are practical regulations, devised for the purpose of restraining those who are not capable of controlling their own appetites and encouraging thrift and economy. While the saloons are closed on pay day, the savings banks are open until midnight.

It is difficult to become accustomed to the long twilights in Norway. One can read and write at a window as late as ten o'clock without difficulty, and during the months of June, July, and August few artificial lights are used, either in the streets or in the shops or in the residences. A candle is usually kept handy for an emergency, but it is light enough to dress and undress at any hour of the night, and it seems childish to go to bed before dark. The hours for meals are awkward to those accustomed to American ways. Breakfast is usually served from seven till nine o'clock. Four o'clock is the fashionable dinner hour, without luncheon. After dinner men return to their business and keep open their shops and offices until a nine or ten o'clock supper during the long days.

No one will ever starve to death in Norway. American palates may not always crave the food, but they can not complain of its abundance. The table is usually loaded with all sorts of fish and cold meats, both fresh and preserved, that foreigners are usually afraid of. The Norwegians are fond of things with a pronounced flavor, the more pronounced the better, and cheese is one of the chief articles of diet. A Norwegian housewife would not consider a meal complete without five or six different kinds of cheese of all degrees of pungency in taste and odor upon the table. At breakfast you are served sardines, anchovies, smoked salmon, dried herring and five or six other kinds of fish and an equal variety of cheese before they think of offering you coffee and meat and potatoes. You get seven or eight kinds of bread also, but it is all cold. The national bread, which is made of flour, water and a little salt, with a sprinkling of caraway seed, rolled very thin and punctured with holes like a cracker, is baked only once or twice a year, and then in large quantities, as New England women bake mince pies and put them on the top shelf to season. It is called grovboroed, and tastes like a water cracker.