ROSKILDE

Between fair fields the fjord
With winding waters, snake-like,
Creeps inward from the salt sea.
Where viking hordes have harried,
Fare peaceful folk to market.
High tower the tall twin spires.
Beneath, in silent splendour
Lie the dead kings of Dane-realm.

This pleasant, quiet country town is named from its springs, referred to in the last part of the word (p. 115). The uncertainty about the first syllable has apparently led to the invention of a founder named Roe, who seems to have so much in common with Port of Portsmouth and King Cole of Colchester—that he never existed except to account for a name.

The atmosphere of a small cathedral city such as Trollope describes is so peculiarly English that no one would expect to find it reproduced in a foreign land. The association of nearly all Continental cathedrals with houses and market-place makes the impression produced wholly different from that of the grey towers and long roofs that appear over the trees of an English Close.

But at least in the fact that the cathedral is almost the only object of great interest, the centre of the whole district, the ancient Danish capital resembles a small English city. The atmosphere of farming and of pleasant country life, the general sense of repose, the way in which the cathedral rises among gardens and flowers a short distance away from the market-place, all do something to recall that most typical cathedral city, the ancient capital of Sussex—while the beautiful fretted fjord, bordered by low, sloping meadows, and the port almost destitute of shipping save for the fishing boats, bear very considerable resemblance to Chichester Harbour and Dell Quay. Knut the Rich is associated with that English district too, his daughter is buried in Bosham Church. He must have been frequently reminded while there of the peaceful country round his Danish capital.

The story of Roskilde takes us pretty near the dawn of strictly Danish history, when the country was closely linked in politics with the British Isles.

At the present time, however, it is not so picturesque a city as Copenhagen; there are but few old houses and only a single mediÆval church, that of St. Mary, has survived, in addition to the great Cathedral of St. Lucius. Even the Raadhus, or Town Hall, in the very ample market place, was rebuilt not long ago.

The founder of the Danish monarchy was Gorm the Old (p. 12); he first united all the land. About 935 he was succeeded by Harald of the Blue Tooth (Blaatand). Him the Holy Roman Emperor was to some extent able to control and insisted on his becoming a Christian. Traditionally at any rate he was the founder of Roskilde Cathedral, erecting a church of staves where before no church had been. Men say, the Heimskringla informs us, that Keisar Otto II. was the gossip of his son, Svein Twibeard. So lightly, however, did Twibeard regard the solemn ceremony of his baptism that, heading the pagan party, he flung his father from the throne and began to reign himself about the year 985. More than once he changed his creed, but it seems that he happened to be trowing in the faith of the White Christ at the time of his unlamented death. He it was who fought against Olaf Tryggvison in the famous Long Worm at Svoldr, but he left when the fighting was of the sharpest and much folk fell. Nevertheless his Norwegian ally, Earl Eric, who had a beaked ship wondrous great, captured the Long Worm itself, when Olaf Tryggvison leapt into the deep sea and was never heard of more.

While at war with Ethelred the Redeless in "England it betid there that King Svein, the son of Harald, died suddenly anight in his bed; and it is the say of Englishmen that Edmund the Holy did slay him after the manner in which the holy Mercury slew Julian the Apostate."[50] He is buried according to tradition under the Castle Hills at Gainsborough on the Trent.

He had won a firm position on English soil, and notwithstanding the victory of Ethelred the Redeless and St. Olaf at London Bridge, his son, Knut the Rich, the Mighty, the Great—for so he is variously called—eventually established his power both in England and Denmark.

Many a man has been improved by adversity, many spoiled by great success. But, as Dr. Hodgkin points out,[51] two great characters in history, CÆsar Augustus and Knut the Rich, vastly improved their behaviour after realising their very highest flights of ambition. Each was in a sense the founder of an empire, one of them the mightiest and in influence the most enduring dominion that the earth has ever known, the other was of the flimsiest and most ephemeral. Indeed it began to crumble before the founder died. English communications were in those early centuries mainly with the Scandinavian lands, by whose people many parts of the British Isles had been settled, and that Knut's dream of a great northern empire was never realised we have some cause for regret. Far more promising schemes, however, would have been destroyed by the two savages by whom he was succeeded. By Northmen speaking French, under the great William, descendant of Rolf Wend-afoot, whom no horse could bear, English foreign relations were suddenly changed in 1066. Hitherto it had seemed likely England might form the focus of a great dominion of the North, henceforth she was closely bound to the central lands of Europe.

Had the empire of Knut the Rich been maintained its capital would probably have been Roskilde from the convenience of its position, or if the wealth and importance of England had made it desirable that the chief city should be there, it would most likely have been drawn to some place much nearer to Denmark than Winchester.

Knut's own associations with Roskilde were by no means uniformly happy. Indeed it was there that he was guilty of one of the worst acts in his career. In 1017 "King Knut rode up to Roiswell the day before Michaelmas with a great following. Earl Wolf, his brother-in-law, had arrayed a banquet for him. The earl gave him entertainment full noble, but the king was unjoyous and scowling. The earl wrought many ways to make him gleesome, but the king was short and few-spoken. The earl bade him play at the chess, and that he yeasaid, so they got them a chessboard and played. Earl Wolf was a man quick of word and unyielding in all things; he was the mightiest man in Denmark next after King Knut.... Now when they had been playing a while at the chess Earl Wolf checked the king's knight. The king put his move back and bade him play another. The earl got angry, cast down the table and went away. The king said: 'Runnest thou away now, Wolf the Craven?' The earl turned back in the door and said: 'Further would'st thou have run in the Holy River if thou mightest have brought it about; nor didst thou call me Wolf the Craven when I thrust in to the helping of thee when the Swedes were beating you like hounds.'

"Therewith the earl went out and went to sleep, and a little afterwards the king himself went to sleep.

"The next morning as the king clad himself he said to his foot-swain, 'Go thou to Earl Wolf,' says he, 'and slay him.' The swain went and was away a while and came back. The king said: 'Didst thou slay the earl?' 'I did not slay him, for he had gone to Lucius' church.'

"There was a man hight Ivar the White, a Norwegian of kin. The king said to Ivar: 'Go, and slay the earl.' Ivar went to the church and up into the quire, and thrust a sword through the earl, and forthwith Earl Wolf lost his life. Then went Ivar to the king and had his bloody sword. Said the king: 'Slewest thou the earl?' 'I slew him,' says he. The king said: 'Then thou hast well done.'

"But after the murder of the earl the monks let lock the church; but the king sent men to the monks, bidding them to open the church and to sing the Hours there, and they did even as the king bade. And when the king came to the church he endowed it with great estates, so that they made a wide countryside, and thereafter this stead arose greatly."

The harbour was an almost ideal one in those days, and Knut remained there with a great host of ships all through harvest. He evidently felt that the land given to the Cathedral of St. Lucius had quite atoned for the crime. His life work was in one sense a failure. The fabric he had reared fell down but much remained. As his latest biographer has said: "The great movement that culminated in the subjection of Britain was of vast importance for the North; it opened up new fields for western influences; it brought the North into touch with Christian culture; it rebuilt Scandinavian civilisation."[52]

Knut's nephew, called Svein Wolfson (or Estridsen), the son of the murdered man, was King of Denmark from 1047 till 1076, and he did much for history writing in the north by his conversations with his friend, the famous chronicler, Canon Adam of Bremen.[53] His courtiers had once become very drunk in the palace hall at Roskilde, and without much delicacy they began discussing their master's want of bravery and lack of skill or success in war. Such conversations are always overheard, and in this case there was quite enough truth in the remarks to make them excessively disagreeable to the king. He relieved his mind by causing all the disputants to be killed while at church next day; then he went to service himself. But an English monk named William, whom he had made Bishop of Roskilde, like another Ambrose, sternly barred his way, nor was he allowed to enter and attend the Eucharist till he had humbly appeared in the garb of a penitent and craved the pardon of the Church. A few days later he imitated Knut by granting to the see a vast tract of land. It seems to have included the site of Copenhagen (p. 131).

(1.)Passage to Episcopal Palace. (2.)Transept. (3.)Chapel of S. Lawrence. (4.)Chapel of S. Brita. (5.5.)Porches. (6.)North-west Tower, forming Chapel of S. Siegfrid. (7.)South-west Tower, forming the Bethlehem Chapel.

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During the eleventh century a stone church replaced Bluetooth's building of logs. Knut the Holy, King of Denmark (1080-86), gave what help he could. The fact that this structure was on the same site as the present cathedral may help to account for the extraordinary irregularities in setting out the extremely simple ground plan.

The church is almost wholly of brick, heavily buttressed and rather German in appearance; it must have been still more so originally when each bay of the aisles had a gable of its own. With its tall western spires and little central flÈche, it reminds one of the Cathedral at LÜbeck, but is a very much finer church. All the original parts were erected during the thirteenth century, the builders working east to west, delayed by fires in 1234 and 1284.[54]

A magnificent monument in the quire fitly commemorates the greatest of all the honoured dead that rest within this simple and most impressive church. On an altar-tomb of great beauty and well restored is the canopied effigy of a lovely woman, who died in 1412. No student of history can tread here unmoved. We are in the presence of the most far-seeing of all the sovereigns of the North: the noble Margaret of whom the great Chronicle of LÜbeck says, "When men saw the wisdom and strength that were in this royal lady, wonder and fear filled their hearts." She was a daughter of Waldemar Atterdag (p. 161), and had married the King of Norway. "Great marvel it is to think that a lady, who, when she began to govern for her son found a troubled kingdom, in which she owned not money or credit enough to secure a meal without the aid of friends, had made herself so feared and loved in the short term of three months, that nothing in all the land was any longer withheld from her."

By the Union of Calmar in 1397, she arranged the eternal federation of the four Scandinavian realms on principles acceptable to all. One King should reign, but each land should maintain its proper laws. The Northlands realised the blessings of her rule, and all that she did was so good that even her wretchedly unworthy successors took a century and a quarter to undo her work.

Womanish, perhaps unworthy, yet by no means unprovoked, her mocking insults to the captured Swedish King, Albert the Elder of Mecklenburg. This carpet-bagger's German hirelings had been scattered by her troops, and she dressed him in the garments of a fool with a tail of nineteen yards in length depending from his cap. Natural but unnecessary return for his offensive gifts of an apron and a long gown and a whetstone to sharpen her needles!

To her memory (in part) are the beautiful miserere stalls on whose canopies are Scripture scenes, set up in 1420 by Bishop Jens Andersen. By her was fitted the Bethlehem Chapel under the south-west tower.

Strong, indeed, in life, but yet more strong in death, the appeal of the great queen! Even now the world is a loser because the Scandinavian realms are torn. Very truly spake a Swedish writer whom OttÉ quotes, but does not name: "Death made an end of Queen Margaret's life, but it could not make an end of her fame, which will endure through all ages. Under her hands the three kingdoms enjoyed a degree of strength and order to which they had long been strangers before her time, and which neither of the three regained till long after her."

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Other royal monuments are many here, but it need not be assumed that the fairest of them mark the livers of the noblest and most useful lives. Many of them are in the numerous chapels which have been added beyond the aisles of this church from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth. They alter the character of the building very much.[55] Combined with the absence of any transept projection they make the plan of the church look very confused.

Those who departed centuries ago are laid away with decency in vaults. But in later days a far less seemly custom has grown up; the coffins are merely ranged in rows upon the chapel floors. They seem to be at rest when they are of marble or stone, and so, too, perhaps when of solid metal, but most are only of oak, covered with black velvet. It is almost impossible to dismiss the idea that the victims of some disaster await the last solemn rites. There is something weirdly gruesome in this vast Valhalla of the unburied dead. Abraham desired decorously to bury his dead out of his sight, but the rulers of Denmark must for ever merely lie in state. In ancient Egypt an empty coffin was sometimes placed upon the table that the feasters might remember death. They who say their prayers in this cathedral in the very presence of the dead must surely learn that lesson with much more force. To kneel on the same floor where coffins lie must be far more impressive than merely to learn from storied urn and animated bust of those who sleep below.

Trondhjem Cathedral, the noblest of Scandinavian churches, is without mediÆval monuments, at Upsala there are few; this church is in very truth the most historical building of the North. Several of the monarchs that here rest bore rule over all the Norse. Saints of all three kingdoms have here some part. To St. Brita is hallowed a chapel on the north, to St. Siegfrid one under the northern tower. St. Olaf (Danish Oluf) and St. Knut are among those whose effigies are painted in the Chapel of Three Kings.

Few fences break up the wide fields that extend round the town to the sea. Cattle are invariably tethered, pasture is valuable, and none of it must be trampled down. Sprinkled about are white farmhouses covered with tiles or with thatch. Many small-holders have purchased their land with money borrowed from the State. Sir Rider Haggard[56] has recently described their condition, and pointed out what England may learn.

Denmark is, or rather has been, so progressively indifferent to the past that but few old buildings still adorn her open fields. When it was considered necessary for a self-respecting Scandinavian nation to establish an open-air museum,[57] the needful old farm buildings had to be brought from parts of old Denmark that are now either Swedish or German. Nothing had escaped rebuilding on strictly Danish soil.

At first sight Danish farming looks rough, thistles may not seldom be seen growing luxuriantly among the oats. Danish landscapes indeed frequently look rather more American than European with something of that ungroomed appearance and absence of hedges that is so characteristic of a new country. In purely dairy farming, none the less, Danes practically lead the world, and that despite their poor soil and the need for sheltering stock from the rigours of a long winter. Though about a hundred and seventy-four of them live on each square mile, they manage to send away food that they do not need to the value of about twenty millions sterling every year.

Age-long the connection between this pleasant land and the British Isles. Roskilde and Winchester were twin capitals of the middle empire of which England formed a part, after the legions of Rome had departed, before the British had built a dominion in the world for themselves. Nor is the impression the Danes left on England by any means worn away. A Danish resident in Middlesbrough, taking a walk with an English friend over the Cleveland Moors, found himself able to understand the dialect of the folk of those wild hills, while their own countryman could not.

Political links with Denmark are to-day centred mainly in the relations of kings and queens. But the great smoky cities of the United Kingdom have their chief source of the necessaries of life in this quiet and green countryside.