Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia
9781465548726
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Copenhagen.—First Stroll in a Strange City.—Danish Children.—Antiquity of Copenhagen.—English Arrogance.—The Baltic Sea.—Danish Possessions.—Descendants of the Vikings.—Covetous Germany.—The Denmark of To-day.—Thorwaldsen’s Remarkable Museum.—The Ethnological Museum.—Educational Matters.—Eminent Natives.—Charitable Institutions.—Antique Churches.—Royal Palaces.—Historical Memories.—City Architecture.—Zoölogical Gardens. Having resolved upon a journey due north, twenty days of travel over familiar routes carried the author across the Atlantic and, by the way of Liverpool, London, Paris, and Hamburg, landed him in Copenhagen, the pleasant and thrifty capital of Denmark. As the following pages will be devoted to Scandinavia, Russia, and Russian Poland, this metropolis seems to be a proper locality at which to begin the northern journey with the reader. It was already nearly midnight when the Hôtel D'Angleterre, fronting upon the Kongens Nytorv, was reached. So long a period of uninterrupted travel, night and day, rendered a few hours of quiet sleep something to be gratefully appreciated. Early the next morning the consciousness of being in a strange city, always so stimulating to the observant traveller, sent us forth with curious eyes upon the thoroughfares of the Danish capital before the average citizen was awake. The importunities of couriers and local guides, who are always on the watch for visitors, were at first sedulously ignored; for it would be foolish to rob one’s self of the great pleasure of a preliminary stroll alone amid scenes and localities of which one is blissfully ignorant. A cicerone will come into the programme later on, and is a prime necessity at the proper time; but at the outset there is a keen gratification and novelty in verifying or contradicting preconceived ideas, by threading unattended a labyrinth of mysterious streets and blind alleys, leading one knows not where, and suddenly coming out upon some broad square or boulevard full of unexpected palaces and grand public monuments. It was thus that we wandered into the old Market Square where Dietrick Slagheck, Archbishop of Lund and minister of Christian II., was burned alive. A slight stretch of the imagination made the place still to smell of roasted bishop. Is this also the land of wooden shoes? we asked ourself, as the rapid clatter of human feet upon the pavements recalled the familiar street-echoes of Antwerp. How eagerly the eye receives and retains each new impression under such circumstances! How sharp it is to search out peculiarities of dress, manners, architecture, modes of conveyance, the attractive display of merchandise in shop-windows, and even the expression upon the faces of men, women, and children! Children! if any one says the Danish children are not pretty, you may with safety contradict him. Their delicately rounded, fresh young faces are lit up by such bright, turquoise-colored, forget-me-not blue eyes as appeal to the heart at once. What a wholesome appetite followed upon this pioneer excursion, when we entered at breakfast on a new series of observations while satisfying the vigorous calls of hunger, each course proving a novelty, and every dish a fresh voyage of gastronomic discovery
