Chapter III: Part II: Aylmer Writes of Norway and Denmark 175 (2)

The province has many attractions. Smiling valleys, which one can see even under their blanket of snow must be abundantly productive, are frequently crossed by strong rivers rushing to the Baltic. The Dal especially is a splendid stream, while Lake Siljan, a great sheet of water in the very heart of the province, with peaceful shores sloping gently back from its blue waters on every side, adds the last touch to the sylvan scene. I am writing of it as it is in summer, but I am always in doubt whether these Swedish landscapes are more beautiful in white or green.

The quaint costumes of the Dalecarlians, as you can imagine, add immensely to the interest of the country. It is the only province of Sweden, so far as I know, that retains its ancient dress and glories in it. In some parts each parish has its own peculiar costume, and, as is natural and appropriate, the ladies are far brighter in plumage than the men.

As you know, I am not good at describing a lady’s dress. How often have you upbraided me for not being able to tell you what the bride wore? Let me then borrow the description of a connoisseur in these matters: “Bright bits of color were the maidens we met along the road. The skirts of their dresses were of some dark-blue stuff, except in front. Here, from the waist down, for the space that would be covered by an ample apron, the dress was white, black, yellow, red, and green, in transverse bars about two inches wide. Each bar was divided throughout its entire length by a narrow rib or backbone of red, and these gaudy stripes repeated themselves down to the feet. The waist of these dresses was very low, not much more than a broad belt, and above this swelled out their white chemise, covering the bust and arms, and surmounted with a narrow lace collar around the neck. Outside the collar was a gaudy kerchief, caught together on the breast by a round silver brooch with three pendants. On their heads was a black helmet of thick cloth, with a narrow red rib in the seams. The helmet rose to a point on top, and came low down in the neck behind, where depended two black bands ending in red, woolly globes that played about their shoulders. Under the helmet might be seen the edge of a white kerchief bound about their brows, and beneath the kerchief escaped floods of golden ringlets that waved above bright blue eyes and adown brown, ruddy cheeks. In cold weather the maids and the matrons also wear a short jacket of snowy sheepskin with the wool inside.”

But the greatest charm to me about Dalecarlia is not in the lovely pastoral scenery, or even in the bright costumes and brighter faces of its maidens, but in its noble, soul-stirring history, for here is where Sweden’s Independence Day dawned, and to the devout Swede every foot of the province is sacred soil.

To get fully into this tonicky, patriotic atmosphere we must go around the great lake to Mora, on its northwestern shore. Then we will walk a mile out into the country, for you will not mind a little walk through the snow on a beautiful crisp morning like this, until we come to a square, stone building, which is peculiar in having a large door but no windows. The custodian, who lives near by, unlocks the massive door, and we find on entering that what we have come to see is all underground.

Opening a trapdoor in the center of the building, our guide precedes us down half a dozen steps until we stand on the floor of a small cellar, less than ten feet square and perhaps seven feet high. Here was enacted the homely scene which was the turning point in Sweden’s history. The cackling geese that saved Rome, the spider that inspired Bruce to another heroic effort for Scotland’s freedom, were not more necessary to the story of these nations than was Margit, wife of Tomte Matts Larsson, who placed a big tubful of Christmas beer which she had been brewing over this trapdoor so that the bloodthirsty Danes, who were eagerly searching for Gustavus Vasa, never suspected that he was hidden in the cellar beneath.

But in order to understand the full significance of this rude cellar and the importance to the history of Sweden of Margit’s ready wit, we must go back to Stockholm in imagination and transport ourselves by the same ready means of conveyance back nearly four hundred years to the later months of 1520, when Christian II of Denmark, who was a Christian only in name, was crowned king of Sweden in the Church of St. Nikolaus at Stockholm.

Christian had been provoked by the opposition of the leading Swedes to the union of their country with Denmark and with their attempt to set up a king of their own. At last he determined to crush out all opposition, and with a great army he ravaged the country, conquered the provinces one after the other, and, as we have seen, was at last crowned king in Stockholm.

He appeared to be on especially good terms with the nobles of the country that he had conquered, and invited them all, together with the chief men of Stockholm and the most distinguished ecclesiastics of the country, to the great festivities connected with his coronation. Suddenly, and mightily to their amazement, they all found themselves arrested and thrown into various dungeons on the charge of treason to the king. The city was put in a state of siege. The muzzles of big guns threatened the people at every street corner. But the prisoners were not kept long in suspense. Soon the gates of the palace, in whose dungeons they were confined, were flung open and, surrounded by soldiers and assassins, they were marched to a central square.

First Bishop Matthias was brought forth. “As he knelt with hands pressed together and uplifted as in prayer, his own brother and his chancellor sprang forward to take a last farewell. But at that very moment the headsman swung his broadsword. The bishop’s head fell and rolled on the ground toward his friends, while his blood spurted from the headless trunk.”

One by one the other victims followed—twelve senators, three mayors, and fourteen of the councilors of Stockholm—until, before the sun set on that black Thursday, November 8, 1520, eighty-two of Sweden’s best and noblest men had paid the penalty of their love of freedom and their hatred of tyranny. This was but the beginning. Other outrages followed. The noble ladies of Sweden were carried off to Copenhagen and there thrown into dungeons. This massacre is called in history “Stockholm’s Blood Bath.”

The unchristian Christian by this massacre seems to have merely whetted his appetite for blood, for on his return to Denmark the next month he glutted his insane desire for the lives of his best people by many another murder.

A touching story is told of such a scene in Jönköping. He beheaded Lindorn Rabbing and his two little boys, eight and six years of age. The elder son was first decapitated. “When the younger saw the flowing blood which dyed his brother’s clothes, he said to the headsman, ‘Dear Man, don’t let my shirt get all bloody like brother’s, for mother will whip me if you do.’ The childish prattle touched the heart of even the grim headsman. Flinging away his sword, he cried: ‘Sooner shall my own shirt be stained with blood than I make bloody yours, my boy.’ But the barbarous king beckoned to a more hardened butcher, who first cut off the head of the lad, and then that of the executioner who had shown mercy.”

Do you wonder, Judicia, that the hearts of the Swedes were mad with grief and anger? Yet they seemed utterly cowed, stunned, so terrible were their disasters, and it appeared impossible that help should arise from any quarter.

But Sweden’s darkest day was just before its dawn, and the one who was to accomplish her deliverance from tyrants forever was a young man four and twenty years of age. His father, Erik Johansson, was one of the noblemen whose blood reddened the streets of Stockholm on that awful November day, while his mother and sisters were carried off to languish in the dungeons of Copenhagen. Just as the ax was about to strike its fatal blow, a messenger came in hot haste from the king offering pardon to Erik Johansson, but he would not accept it from such a monster, and he cried out: “My comrades are honorable gentlemen. I will, in God’s name, die the death with them.”

His son, Gustavus, had also been summoned to Stockholm by the king; but he suspected mischief, for he had already been a wanderer for two years in the wilds of Sweden to escape Christian’s wrath, so he did not obey the order. When he heard of the massacre, he at once fled from his hiding-place on the banks of Lake Mälar and sought refuge in Dalecarlia. Here he adopted the costume of the country as a disguise. He put on a homespun suit of clothes. He cut his hair squarely around his ears, and with a round hat, and an ax over his shoulder he started out to arouse the Swedish people to make one more last stand for liberty.

Here in beautiful Dalecarlia he had innumerable adventures. I should have to write a volume if I attempted to tell them all. On one occasion he was let down from a second-story window of a farmhouse by a long towel held by Barbro Stigsdotter, a noble Swedish woman whose husband had taken the side of the king. She deserves a place beside our own Barbara Frietchie, and I wish I were another Whittier to immortalize her. When her dastardly husband returned with twenty Danish soldiers to arrest the young nobleman, Gustavus was nowhere to be found, and we are told that Arendt Persson never forgave his wife this deed.

Another good story is told about Gustavus at Isala not far away. Here the hunted fugitive was warming himself in the little hut of Sven Elfsson, while Sven’s wife was baking bread. Just at this unlucky moment the Danish spies who were searching for him broke into the hut. But with rare presence of mind and noble patriotism, with which Swedish women seem to have been preëminently endowed, she struck him smartly on the shoulder with the long wooden shovel with which she was accustomed to pull her loaves out of the oven, at the same time shouting in a peremptory voice: “What are you standing here and gaping at? Have you never seen folks before? Out with you into the barn!”

The Danish soldiers could not believe that a peasant woman would treat a scion of the nobility like that, and concluded that after all he was not the man they were looking for. Sven himself seems to have been as patriotic as his wife, for when the soldiers had retired for a little he covered Gustavus up deep in a load of straw and drove him out farther into the forest. But the suspicious soldiers could not be so easily put off their scent, and, suspecting that there might be somebody or something of importance under the straw, they stuck their spears into it over and over again. At last, satisfied that there was nothing there, they rode on.

But soon drops of blood began to trickle through the straw upon the white snow, and in order to allay the suspicions of the Danes, who might come up with him at any moment, Sven gashed his horse’s leg, that they might suppose that the blood came from the animal and not from anything concealed in his sledge. At Isala to-day we see the barn of good Sven Elfsson, and just in front of it a monument telling of Gustavus’ hairbreadth escape. Fortunately the wounds received by him under the straw were not serious, and after many days and many adventures he reached Lake Siljan and the little village of Mora, where we first saw him concealed in Larsson’s cellar, over whose door good Margit had put her tub of Christmas beer.

Christmas Day came at last in the sad year of 1520, as it has in many a glad year since for the people of Sweden, and the Dalecarlians flocked to the church at Mora. After the church service, as they streamed along the road to their homes, a young man of noble mien suddenly mounted a heap of snow by the roadside and in burning words, made eloquent and forceful not only by his bitter indignation but by his terrible sufferings as well, he rehearsed the perfidy and cruelty of the Danes, and urged the Swedes to assert their rights as free men and save their country.

But the people were tired of fighting and overawed by the savage Christian and his myrmidons, and they begged him to leave them in peace. The poor young nobleman had exhausted his resources; he had fired his last shot, and so in despair of arousing the people to fight for freedom, since in Dalarne of all the provinces he expected to find the spirit of liberty not quite dead, he fastened his long skis on his feet, took a staff in his hand, and disappeared into the forest.

Where Gustavus Adolphus Rests among Hard-Won Battle Flags.]

Day after day he made his solitary way through the woods and over the snow fields, for he knew that the spies of Denmark were on his track. He had almost approached the borders of Norway, where he intended to seek an asylum, when he heard a sound of approaching runners, and then the glad cry, which must have sounded like music in his ears: “Come back, Gustav; we of Dalecarlia have repented. We will fight for Fatherland if you will lead us.” We can imagine how gladly he responded and how eagerly he returned with the two ski-runners to Mora. Here the people elected him “lord and chieftain over Dalarne and the whole realm of Sweden.”

As a snowball grows in size as it rolls down the hill until it becomes an irresistible avalanche, so the peasants of Sweden gathered around Gustavus, sixteen at first, then two hundred. In a month there were four hundred, and he had won his first victory at Kopparberget. There he spoiled the Egyptians and divided the spoil among his followers, which of course did not diminish his popularity. Soon the four hundred grew to fifteen hundred, and the hundreds became thousands.

But the Danes were not to give up without a struggle. Six thousand men were sent out against the patriots, who had now mustered five thousand men to oppose them on the banks of the river Dal, on the edge of the province nearest to Stockholm. The Danes were mightily surprised when told that the Swedes were so determined to win that they would live on water and bread made from the bark of trees. One of their commanders cried out: “A people who eat wood and drink water, the devil himself cannot subdue, much less any other.”

The Danes were utterly defeated, their _morale_ very likely being affected by these terrible stories of the wood-eating Dalecarlians. Some of them were driven into the river and drowned, and the rest flew helter-skelter, broken and defeated, back to their headquarters. Of course the war was not entirely over, but the young hero knew no defeat, and finally, on June 23, 1523, on Midsummer’s Eve, which is a holiday in Sweden second only to Christmas, Gustavus Vasa, who had been unanimously elected king by the Riksdag, rode triumphantly into his nation’s capital.

He showed his religious character by going first to the cathedral, where he kneeled before the high altar and returned thanks to Almighty God; and here in my story I may well leave the man who freed his country from the Danish yoke—the George Washington of Sweden.

You are such a stanch patriot, Judicia, and such a hater of tyrants, dead or alive, that I know I need not apologize for writing somewhat at length of this glorious period in Swedish history.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

FIFTH LETTER

Wherein are described the glories of an Arctic winter; the
comfort of traveling beyond the polar circle (with a brief
philological excursion); the inexpressible beauties of the
“European Lady of the Snows”; the unique railway station of
Polcirkeln, and the regions beyond.

KIRUNA, LAPLAND, January 15.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

I wonder if you remember how I wrote you some years ago about a journey I made toward the arctic circle in midwinter, and how enraptured I was with the still, cold days, the wonderful frosty rime on every bush and fence rail, and the dawn and twilight glories of the low-running Arctic sun.

Well, finding myself in Sweden again in winter, I resolved to push my explorations a little farther toward the North Pole and to enjoy once more, if possible, one of the most delightful experiences of my life. The former journey was made about the middle of February, if I remember rightly, and certain engagements obliged me to turn my face southward before I had nearly reached the “farthest north” which I longed for. This time I resolved that I would not be robbed of a single zero joy, but would, if possible, catch the sun napping; that is, that I would get beyond that degree of latitude where for days at a time he never shows his face above the rim of the horizon, and where the mild-mannered moon almost rivals his power at midday.

In order to do this, and to find the sun hibernating, I had to leave Stockholm early in January, for, though he goes to bed in many parts of Lapland late in November, he rises and shakes out his golden locks before the middle of January, unless you go to the most northern point of Scandinavia, and then you get out of Swedish Lapland into Norway. So you see I had no time to lose, if I would catch the sun in bed, and must leave other charms of Sweden in winter as well as in summer for later letters.

To go far beyond the arctic circle in winter is not much to brag about in Sweden, for you can make the journey quite as comfortably as you can go from New York to Chicago, and the distance, by the way, from Stockholm to Kiruna is about the same.

Do not suppose, however, that we have any “Twentieth Century Limited” in this part of the world. The Lapland flier takes about thirty-eight hours to make the distance, but one need have no fear of dashing into another flier at the rate of fifty miles an hour, for the Lapland express runs only three times a week in either direction.

Though the speed is not hair-raising, the accommodations are all that could be desired. Only second and third-class cars are run on most of the roads of Sweden, though, by a polite fiction, you can buy a first-class ticket if you insist upon it. If you are “a fool, a lord, or an American,” you may possibly do so, in which case you will pay the combined fare of a second and third-class ticket. The guard will put you in a second-class compartment just the same as those of your fellow travelers and paste up on the window the words “First Class.” It is said that at the same time he sticks his tongue in his cheek and winks derisively at the brakeman.

I cannot vouch for this fact, for I have never bought a first-class ticket in Sweden, and I never should, even if I had money “beyond the dreams of avarice,” as the novelist would say. For the second-class compartments are entirely comfortable, upholstered in bright plush, with double windows and ample heat, which each traveler can turn on or off for himself, a little table on which to put your books and writing materials, a carafe of fresh water, which is changed several times a day, and a crystal-clear tumbler. What more can you ask? To be sure your privacy is more likely to be invaded than if you are a “first-class” snob, and you may sometimes have as many as three other people in your compartments, which easily accommodates six. But to see the people and hear them, even if you cannot understand their tongue, is part of the joy of traveling, and the Swedish language is so musical with its sing-song rhythm that it never grates upon the ear, and if one is disposed for a nap it will quite lull him to sleep.

My friend, ex-Minister Thomas, has so admirably described one inevitable and absolutely unique Swedish expression that I think I must quote for you his sprightly account of it. “Should you ever hear two persons talking in a foreign tongue,” he says, “and are in doubt as to what nation they belong, just listen. If one or the other does not say ‘ja så,’ within two minutes, it is proof positive they are not Swedes. There is the ‘ja så’ (pronounced _ya so_) expressing assent to the views you are imparting, ‘just so’; the ‘ja så’ of approval and admiration, with a bow and a smile; the ‘ja så’ of astonishment, wonder, and surprise at the awful tale you are unfolding. Now the Swede’s eyes and mouth become circles of amazement, and he draws out his reply, ‘ja so-o-o-o-o-o-o!’ There is the hesitating ‘ja så’ of doubt; the abrupt ‘ja så, ja så!’ twice repeated, which politely informs you that your friend does not believe a word you are saying; the ‘ja så’ sarcastic, insinuating, and derogatory; the fierce ‘ja så’ of denial; the enraged ‘ja så,’ as satisfactory as swearing; the threatening ‘ja så,’ fully equivalent to ‘I’ll punch your head’; and the pleasant, purring, pussycat ‘ja så,’ chiefly used by the fair—a sort of flute _obligato_ accompaniment to your discourse, which shows that she is listening and pleased, and encourages you to continue. And other ‘ja sås’ there be, too numerous for mention. I am inclined to think there is not an emotion of the human soul that the Swedes cannot express by ‘ja så,’ but the accent and intonation are different in every case. Each feeling has its own peculiar ‘ja så,’ and there be as many, at least, as there are smells in Cologne, which number, the most highly educated nostrils give, if I mistake not, as seventy-three.”

Some other phrases in Swedish are almost equally useful, and if we should hear a fellow traveler say _lagom_ over and over again we would know that somebody or something was “just about right,” though we might not be able to determine from the context whether he was referring to the scenery, to his wife’s disposition, or to the _frokost_ which he enjoyed at the last railway station.

Another very useful Swedish word, which it is a pity we cannot introduce into our English vocabulary, is _syskon_. This is a collective noun, referring to brothers and sisters alike and embracing all of them that belong to one family. As “parents” refers to both father and mother, so _syskon_ means all the brothers and sisters of the family.

However, if I keep on with this rambling philological discussion I shall not get you to Kiruna, my dear Judicia, even within the thirty-eight hours which the Swedish time-table allows. I must tell you though that, since this is a journey of two nights and parts of two days, the “lying down” accommodations are quite as important as those for sitting up. But for five crowns additional, or about $1.30, you can secure a comfortable berth, nicely made up in your compartment, with clean linen.

The black porter with his whisk brush is not at all in evidence, for there is no dust in these trains, at least in winter time, and the white porter who makes up your bed, who is, I suspect, also a brakeman, is never seen except night and morning, when he makes and unmakes it. When you alight you never hear the familiar phrase, “Brush you off, sah?” and you have to search for your bed-maker if you desire to slip a _kroner_ into his hand—a piece of superogatory generosity which quite surprises him.

Something over an hour after leaving Stockholm on our journey north we came to the famous old university city of Upsala, but I could not stop here if I wished to see the Midday Moon, and shall have to go back at some future day in order to tell you about this most interesting historic town in Sweden, the burial place of Gustavus Vasa and the depository of one of the world’s chief philological treasures, the Codex Argenteus.

The Lapland express leaves Stockholm at 6.30 in the evening, which at this time of the year is several hours after dark, and it was not until the next morning, between nine and ten o’clock, that the landscape became visible; yet the first signs of dawn come wonderfully early in these northern latitudes, considering how near we are to the land of perpetual night. By eight o’clock in the morning one has a suspicion that the sun is somewhere far, far below the horizon. By nine o’clock the suspicion deepens into a certainty, and by ten o’clock on your side of the arctic circle, where I found myself early on the morning after leaving Stockholm, the tiniest rim of the sun may be seen peering above the horizon, as though uncertain whether it were worth while to go the rest of the way or not.

I wish I had counted the number of minutes he required to fairly get above the horizon after showing his first segment. I remember that once in Iceland I timed the setting sun, and it took him just seven minutes to sink below the horizon. You remember how in the tropics he plumps down and up, as we have seen him in South America and in India. For a shrewd Yankee guess I would say that it takes Phœbus from fifteen to twenty minutes to really rise and shake out his golden locks in Lapland, in wintertime.

The day was a short one, at least the daylight day—not more than six hours in length; but what a glorious day it was! The fairies were at work while I slept and trimmed every twig and pine needle and every spray on every bush with thick, white rime. Once in a lifetime one sees such a sight in America, and then not in its perfection. In Sweden it is an everyday occurrence, but it is always inexpressibly lovely. So lavish are these frosty decorations that no humblest stump or fence rail is omitted. It is no little layer of frost either that you have to examine with the microscope in order to see its beauties, but a thick and heavy fringe, often fully two inches deep. Neither is it an evanescent creation, for, as the low-running sun is not very powerful, it does not melt until well along toward high noon, and there is no wind to dissipate it.

Even when this glory of the morning frost is gone, the snow still remains on all the larger branches of the trees, and one misses only the fine tracery of the frost, which brings out in marvelous black and white the wonders of this rarely beautiful scene.

The views on this journey are seldom imposing and grand. There are no Alps, and even our own White Mountains eclipse in majesty anything that I have seen in northern Sweden. For the most part the landscape is a peaceful, pastoral one. Little farmhouses with their cluster of outbuildings abound, the stables for the cattle and the hardy horses being built as warm as for the hardy men and women. The smoke curls up straight toward the zenith and hangs like a cloudy pillar over every chimney. The people who come to the railway stations are healthy and ruddy. Most of them come on skis, and others with kick-sleds, which they shove before them, standing upon one runner; often they make marvelously good time, even with a heavy load on the sled.

These farmhouses look so attractive with their dull red walls and green roofs that I often wished the train would stop and let me visit them. But I have seen enough of them to know how they look inside. They are usually one story high. In the middle is a large living room with two or three smaller rooms opening out of it. This living room is parlor and dining room, and sometimes kitchen as well, and not infrequently, if you look carefully, you will see two little alcoves, one on either side, covered with a curtain during the day. These, you must know, are the bedrooms, or bed alcoves. The hole in the wall is just big enough to contain a single bed, while the baby’s cradle is hung near the mother’s bed, from a rafter in the ceiling, and a touch of the hand will set it swinging. The walls are hung with rude but interesting tapestries, made by the housewife herself and representing Bible scenes, or sometimes more familiar landscapes. Do you remember how we saw just such a room in Cavalla, the old Neapolis of St. Paul, and the famous Mahomet Ali’s cradle hanging from the roof in just that way?

In Skansen, a beautiful park near Stockholm, where are preserved things characteristically Swedish from all parts of the kingdom, one may see houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, built on exactly the same plan, only that the modern farmhouse is ampler and cleaner and has many conveniences which the Goth of olden times would have doubtless considered effeminate luxury. I wonder what he would have said if he had heard the tinkle of a telephone bell, as he might to-day in many a Swedish farmhouse, and had been told that way up beyond the Arctic circle he could speak into a little tube against the wall and be heard distinctly in Stockholm or Christiania, or Berlin or Paris, for that matter.

But I am getting ahead of my story, and this railway ride is so delightful that I cannot bear to have you, any more than myself, lose a mile of it. Though the scenery for the most part is not majestic, at times it grows bold and striking. Some hills of considerable size appear upon the horizon. Charming valleys open up between them, where the frequency of farmhouses shows that the soil is peculiarly fertile. Wide, brawling rivers rush to the sea so impetuously that even arctic cold cannot fetter them. There are hours of such scenery, which satisfy the desire of the most romantic imagination; yet for the most part there is a mild and subdued loveliness about the view from our car windows which has its own peculiar charm and which needs no precipitous cliffs or bleak mountainsides or cavernous gorges to enhance its beauty.

At last we came to one of the most interesting stations in the world. It is not very grand, to be sure, and it is half buried in snow, and you see scarcely a house in the vicinity. But it is exactly on the arctic circle, and rejoices in the appropriate name of Polcirkeln. I almost hugged myself as a polar explorer until I looked around at my comfortable surroundings—luxurious plush seats, a temperature of exactly 68° according to the thermometer in my compartment, the soft glow of the electric lamp overhead when the early twilight appears.

Someone who has written of these winter days in the far north says: “It is not the cold and snow that make the northern winter dreary; cold and snow are invigorating and exhilarating. It is the short days and leaden skies; the long darkness and the gloom; the perpetual sense of being pursued by the dark as by a nightmare; the perpetual hurry by day to accomplish something before the darkness overtakes you; and the ever-present, unformed, unreasoning, lurking fear, strongest in December, lest the life-giving sun leave you forever.”

But I must say that I have never felt this depression of spirits in the far north. For the most part the skies are not leaden, but the long dawn and the longer twilight paint them with all imaginable colors with which the rainbow can scarcely vie. Why should one be in a perpetual hurry in such a land? There are twenty-four hours in the day here as in the tropics. Most things you can do by electric light as well as by daylight, and there is plenty of the former, not only on the trains but in every considerable town. As for the fear that the sun will never rise again, even if you do not see him for a month he gives you abundant evidence that he is just below the horizon and that you will soon see his cheerful face again.

Of course I had three square meals during this arctic day, and even beyond Polcirkeln in this wilderness of ice and snow the railway restaurants flow with metaphorical milk and honey. But I have already described a Swedish railway eating-house, and I will only tell you now that when I came to pay my modest bill at a restaurant well into Lapland the pretty cashier, when she saw that I spoke “American,” beamed all over with delight and exclaimed in rapturous joy: “When did you come over, and how are all the folks?” In the remaining minutes before the train started I learned that she had lived for several years in America, where she had many relatives, and that she had only just returned to her arctic home. I was glad to inform her that all the folks in America were well, so far as my knowledge extended. This artless little piece of Americanism amid the snows of Sweden brightened the journey for many an hour.

And here, dear Judicia, I think I must end the story of one of the most delightful of travel days. To-morrow I will tell you something of what I have seen in Kiruna and its wonderful mountain of solid iron.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

SIXTH LETTER

In this chapter Phillips describes a day without a sunrise;
his anxiety lest the sun should appear; the wonderful beauties
of sunrise and sunset where the sun never appears; the fitful
glories of the aurora borealis; the daily bombardment of
Kiruna; the great iron mountain from which the bombardment
comes; Luleå, the metropolis of the north, and a Lapp
encampment in winter.

KIRUNA, January 14.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

I wonder if, when you were a girl, you were as much fascinated by Bayard Taylor’s travel books as I was. Did you read _Views Afoot_, and especially did you gloat over his _Northern Travels_? If you did, you remember how when he got up toward the borders of the arctic circle, though he did not get nearly as far north as Kiruna, he went out of his hotel door one morning and found that the thermometer had sunk to forty degrees below zero. Do you remember with what a sort of rapture he recorded this fact, as though he had now actually reached the land of the aurora borealis, and how he seemed to revel in every degree that the mercury sank? I will not be sure of the exact degree of cold that so rejoiced his soul, for I have not read my Bayard Taylor for many a year, but I was conscious of an experience something like his when I went out on the crisp, frosty streets of Kiruna this morning and watched for the sun which I devoutly hoped would not rise.

By nine o’clock the sky had begun to glow faintly. I wandered about the streets, keeping my eye on the eastern horizon as earnestly as a good Mohammedan faces toward Mecca. Moment by moment the glow, which was at first barely discernible, deepened, and the fleecy clouds grew rosy. Evidently something was doing just below the horizon; but very, very gradually the dawn came on. By ten o’clock the sky was blushing like a modest damsel in the presence of her lover, but still the Lord of Day did not appear. Ten minutes after ten, twenty minutes after, half-past ten! It seemed as though the sun must break above the horizon line at any moment, but still he delayed his coming, while all along the east, and far up toward the zenith, the sky was flushed with such a light, it seemed to me, as never was on sea or shore.

Twenty minutes of eleven, and still he did not appear; ten minutes of eleven, and I could see that the sunrise glories were a trifle dimmed, and a little to the north the beginning of the glorious pageant that attends the setting sun. Eleven o’clock came, and I was sure of it. The sun was setting and not rising. Though the skies were all aflame, and sunset mingled with the dawn, it was very evident that old Sol would not show his face in Kiruna to-day. Hurrah! I have got beyond the sunrise. I am in the land of the Midday Moon!

And why is it not as notable a thing to see a day without a sunrise as to see a day without a sunset? Why do not people travel to northern Sweden or Norway to see the Midday Moon, as well as the Midnight Sun? I venture to say that the phenomena of midwinter are even more glorious than those of midsummer. I cannot imagine that one would see any such wonderful sky tints in summer as in winter. For hours the sun’s beams played upon the feathery clouds of pale blue sky and constantly changed them from glory to glory.

At one time the brilliant tints predominated and the splashes of golden color lighting up the white snow put even Turner’s pictures to the blush. After many minutes these fiery colors changed to exquisite green and blue, and broken, opalescent hues adorned the clouds. Then a red gleam showed under one dark blue cloud. The sun seemed to summon all its strength for one last burst of glory, and the western sky, which I thought had passed its acme, glowed once more with a deep red, as though some vast furnace were throwing its hidden light upon the clouds. For more than four hours this wonderful display lasted, as sunrise faded into sunset, and it was not until nearly three o’clock this afternoon that the last beam of day had entirely faded.

But the beauty of the scene did not consist altogether in the glorious colors of the sunset. All the accessories have made it forever memorable. As I walked to the top of a little eminence near Kiruna, the stillness could almost be felt. A dog barking half a mile away was distinctly audible. The axes of the workmen whom I left building a log-house as I tramped on through the snow and climbed the hillside made a melodious tapping, which could be heard as far as the dog’s bark.

The trees everywhere were loaded with their beautiful burden of snow. The pines and birches seemed in the dim light of the setting sun to have blossomed out like cherry trees in May. The mercury registered only a little below zero, or perhaps some forty degrees of frost, according to Celsius, by whose thermometers the Swedes swear, for I have found no such cold weather as that in which Bayard Taylor revelled. But the zero air was so dry and still that the ordinary clothes which I found necessary and none too much for Boston east winds were entirely sufficient.

As I came down the hill, the workmen were still busy on their log house in the deepening twilight. A Yankee in a white slouch hat must be a rarity in these altitudes in winter, but they did not pause in their work or exhibit any curiosity at the sight of an outlander. Perhaps their natures partake of the largeness and solitude of their great forests and snow fields, and they are not moved by the curiosity which affects other mortals. After watching them for a few moments, I left them fitting their logs together without nails or spikes, sawing and cutting with bare hands in this zero weather as though it were balmy June.

But even when the last ray of the setting sun (which had never risen) had faded away, the glories of the Arctic night did not disappear. Indeed they had but just begun, for the aurora borealis began to shoot out its wavy lines of fire in the northern sky. Higher and higher the waves mounted toward the zenith, until they arched overhead. Palpitating like a living thing, the white would change to green, and the green to a reddish glow, and all the time the streamers that seemed to be shooting up as from a mighty volcano on either side of the North Pole waved and wavered like banners in the wind; now being folded in upon themselves, then flaunted out to their full width, as though Erebus himself were blowing upon them.

But the interests of Kiruna are not altogether centered in the far horizon. At half-past eight in the morning, and again at half-past four in the afternoon, I was startled by a series of tremendous explosions. They could not be thunderclaps, for there were few clouds in the sky and not the slightest indication of a storm.

Over and over again the thundering volleys rolled, and as I looked toward the west I could see a vivid flash in the darkness preceding the thunderclap by some seconds. And yet the flash and the thunder did not seem to come from the sky, but from a massive hill, which bulked dimly against the horizon, across an intervening valley. You have already guessed what the bombardment was. It came from the mighty iron mountain of Kiruna and was the explosion of the dynamite charges which every morning and every afternoon are set off to loosen the ore. More like a rapid-fire Gatling gun perhaps than like thunderclaps the explosions became, after the first few shots, and from various parts of the mountain, high up and low down, and to the right and the left, one could see the dull flashes and hear the reverberating roar, scores of shots every minute, until perhaps two hundred had been fired.

This iron mountain accounts for a lot of things in this part of the world. This was the magnet which drew the railway, the most northerly railway on the face of the earth, up so far through the dreary Lapland wilds. Do not suppose for a moment that the Swedes were so philanthropic as to build the road for the sake of a few Americans who wanted to see the Midday Moon or the Midnight Sun (for you must know that you can see his Majesty from the top of Kiruna’s iron mountain all day long if you happen to be there any day during the latter part of June). No, it was this great loadstone mountain that compelled the thrifty Swedes to build a railway through the snow a thousand miles north of Stockholm. Their enterprise was well repaid, for this mountain is from fifty to sixty per cent solid iron, and the best iron in the world.

From Kiruna it is transported nearly one hundred miles farther north to Narvik, across the Norwegian border, where there is an ice-free port all the year round, and where great ships are constantly waiting within its quiet fjord to transport sections of Kiruna’s iron mountain to New York and Philadelphia and London and Hamburg and Boston. There is another iron hill some five or six miles from Kiruna, from which the ore is shipped by overhead electric skids to Kiruna and thence transported by rail to Narvik. Indeed it is said by geologists that all the hills about this little Arctic metropolis are full of iron, and they are not likely to be exhausted for a thousand years to come.

Kiruna reminds me of a hustling American town more than any other that I have seen in this part of the world. It is only fourteen years old, and yet it has ten thousand inhabitants; hundreds of well-built houses; a good electric tramway, which carries the miners back and forth from the works on the mountain to their homes in the little city; four fine schoolhouses, and a big church with a huge bell tower, situated at some little distance from the sanctuary.

Let us not plume ourselves on the thought that we have all the enterprise in the world, or lay the flattering unction to our souls that no one else can build a city in a decade, for here is one with all the conveniences and comforts and many of the luxuries of life; and if we go another hundred miles farther north we shall find a still larger town, less than twelve years old, with good blocks of stores, large residences, and splendid wharves, to which the commerce of the world pays tribute; for Narvik, where the sun does not rise for a month or six weeks in wintertime, is even younger than Kiruna. To-morrow I intend to go to Luleå (pronounce it _Luleo_, for the little circle over the _a_ gives it the _o_ sound), and I will finish this arctic letter there.

LULEÅ ON THE BALTIC.

A funny, if chilly, experience awaited me when I arrived here last night. It was well on toward midnight, and, though a crowd of fellow passengers disembarked from the third-class cars, there was no hotel porter or _trager_ or _dienstman_ to tell me where I should go. My somewhat aged Baedeker had not informed me of the name of a single hotel.

The only individual who took any interest in me was a small boy, and from his voluble Swedish and more comprehensible gestures I felt that he wished to lead me to a hotel. Having nothing better to do, I followed my diminutive guide. It was very cold, at least twenty degrees below zero, the severest weather I have seen at all in this northland. The streets were dark, for most of the electric lights had been put out, but I followed the small boy trustingly. When I seemed to waver in my allegiance, he would run back and urge me on. At last we came to a house which had few signs of being a hostelry. I suspect it was his mother’s humble residence. I followed him in at the door, and he discoursed fluently to the lady of the house, apparently telling her of my needs. She looked quite as blank as I did, but at last she opened a door into a somewhat shabby parlor and gave me to understand that I could sleep on the lounge if I wished to.

I declined the invitation, for I remembered having passed in the dark a house that looked more like a hotel. Going back through the frosty air, I soon found it, and over the door made out the legend _Privat Hotellet_. Here, much to my joy, I found a large room, nicely heated, with two beds, a huge, white monument of a stove, and a whole picture gallery, though not all by the old masters, on the wall, and all this for seventy-five cents a day. To be sure I could get neither bite nor sup in this _Privat Hotellet_, but what did that matter when almost at the next door I found, in the morning, a restaurant on whose generous tables were piled mounds of butter, stacks of oat cakes at least two feet high, a peck of small potatoes, unlimited milk and coffee, pickled fish, fried fish, cold meat, everything on the most lavish scale, and all for sixty _öre_, or fifteen cents?

But you should have seen my fellow boarders eat! They were all hardy tars, who had sailed the Baltic for many a year, when the ice does not interfere with their trade, and the way they made those viands disappear was a caution to a dyspeptic. Even Aylmer, who has just joined me here on his way south from northern Norway (did I forget to give you this interesting piece of information, Judicia?), could not keep up with them. He said that they could give the boys in the college commons a good handicap and then beat them in the race through the breakfast, hands down—but then they had the advantage of being able to use both knife and fork with equal dexterity.

Luleå, as you have already gathered, is on the banks of the Baltic; in fact, it is on its extreme northern shore, and the sea here is so charged with fresh water from the more than two hundred rivers that flow into it from the Swedish and the Finnish shores that it is like a great fresh-water lake, and freezes in its northern end as solidly as Moosehead or Winnepesaukee. As we wandered down to the shore the next morning after our hotel adventure, we could see nothing but a vast expanse of snow-covered ice. Only a few large schooners and small steamers, frozen solidly into the ice, convinced us that this was indeed the Baltic Sea.

Luleå is a very presentable town, quite the metropolis of this part of the world. Many of the blocks are of brick and stone. A splendid church of cathedral dimensions stands in the center of the town, broad streets lined with well-built houses radiate from it on every side, and an enormous hotel overlooking the Baltic makes an attractive bid for summer visitors, though at this time of year it is closed as tight as a bank vault.

I must not forget to tell you about the glorious snow and frost of Luleå. We have seen it everywhere throughout northern Sweden, as I have before told you, but never in such absolute perfection as in this favored town. This is, indeed, the Spell of Sweden. The slight fogs which often envelop this region for a little time and then disappear leave their beautiful frescoing upon every tree and bush and telegraph wire and fence post. Rather, perhaps, I should say they do the work of a sculptor and transform everything into pure white marble. Every smallest twig is covered thick with rime, never less than two inches deep. Strike the tree a sharp blow with your cane and a perfect shower of snow will descend, powdering you from head to foot, unless you quickly stand from under. But the next morning the tree will be covered once more by this invisible sculptor with powdery marble, and again it stands statuesque and lovely in its immaculate white against the sky.

When the rime is not so thick, magical nature transforms the trees and shrubs into white coral, and the little arctic bushes, which can never grow to any great height, stand up above the snow in such a way that you can scarcely believe that some ancient sea has not receded and left a forest of coral exposed to view.

The only spot of color in this white wilderness is made by the mountain-ash tree which the Luleåns have induced to grow in one of their parks. These trees are covered thickly with bright red berries, which the English sparrows—unfortunately even the Arctic cold and snows cannot drive them away—rejoice in. They pick out the kernels of the berries and cover the snow beneath with the blood-red husks.

One most delightful excursion we must take you upon. It can be made from almost any point in Lapland, but Luleå is as good a starting point as any. It is a visit to the nomadic Lapps who abound in this region. We often see these little fellows, with their yellow faces, about the color of snuff, of which I understand they are inordinately fond, and their slanting Mongolian eyes, as they come into the towns with their reindeer hitched to long sledges. These patient animals furnish them with almost all that they need—meat and tents and clothing and milk; thread made from their sinews and needles from their bones. When the Lapps want a little money for tobacco or coffee they drive a deer into the neighboring town and sell him for whatever his carcass will bring.

Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.]

But you must see them in their native habitat to really know the Lapps. So we hired a sledge whose low runners raise one but a few inches from the crisp snow, stuck our feet into the abundant straw, tucked around us the warm reindeer robes, pulled our caps over our ears, and told our driver to do his best to find a Lapp camp. This is not always easy, for the Lapps are genuine gypsies in their liking for a nomadic life, and they are here to-day, there to-morrow, and somewhere else the next day.