Cousin-Hunting in Scandinavia
Mary Wilhelmine Williams
9781465548092
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Here I am at last, all safe and sound, in the land of the Viking—the land of my ancestors. In fact, several days have passed since my wandering feet first touched Danish soil; but I have been so absorbed with my initial explorations of this snug little country, which is still “home” to my mother, that I have been neglecting my own home and friends in the dear Far Western World. Last Friday morning I left Kiel for Korsör, which is upon Seeland, the largest island of Denmark. A glorious, cloudless sky was overhead; and the Baltic about us was a vast, shimmering, rippling liquid plain of changing blues and greens over which our boat, the Prince Sigismund, smoothly and rapidly passed. About two hours after leaving Germany I secured my first glimpse of Danish territory; Langeland (Long Land), with low, white cliffs—modest imitations of Shakespeare’s “pale and white-faced shore”—loomed up on the left. Our boat kept close enough to the island to give us a good view of the rolling coast, marked off in patches of light fields and dark forests, with here and there glimpses of quaint farm houses and windmills of the “Dutch” variety. To the right, faint and far away, was a misty suggestion of the cliffs of Laaland (Low Land), a larger island of the Danish archipelago; but so like Langeland did its vague outline appear as to seem the very ghost or double of it. While we were still passing between these two southern outposts of Denmark, luncheon was announced. Some of the passengers promptly went below to the dining salon, but many had their refreshments served on little tables on the open deck. I was among the latter. Most of the people about me were evidently Germans going to Denmark or Danes or other Scandinavians returning home after visits of business or pleasure in Germany. To them it was a voyage frequently made, and they preferred the deck to the dining salon merely because it was pleasanter. But to me, an American of Scandinavian parentage, it was such a very important occasion that I was determined to see as much as possible, during this first view, of the land in which, for centuries—for thousands of years—my forefathers and foremothers had lived and died. The part of the Baltic which separates the island of Fünen from the island of Seeland, upon which Copenhagen is situated, is called by the Danes “Store Baelt”—the Great Belt. As I have told you, for my crossing, the waters of the Great Belt rippled charmingly under the gentle stroke of the summer breeze; and the islands beckoned invitingly to the front and the left and the right. This seascape and landscape was as different as possible from the mental picture which the name Great Belt had long summoned to my mind. Since studying Scandinavian history I had most frequently thought of the strait as heavily bridged with ice, and of the Danish islands as paralyzed under the dominion of the Frost King. For this was the state of affairs one February day two hundred and fifty odd years ago. And the bridge of ice was so strong and so thick as to tempt Charles title="the tenth" of Sweden—who had been recently moved to make a belligerent call upon his nearest neighbor to the south—to march several thousand horse and foot soldiers over the bridge, via the smaller islands to the right hand, and to threaten the Danish capital. In consequence of the Swedish king’s pressing attentions, FrederickIII of Denmark, who had been to a considerable extent to blame for the quarrel, decided to buy peace by means of the treaty of Roskilde. This gave to the Swedes a half dozen Danish provinces, including some in the southern part of the present Sweden, which had long been Danish soil.
