VISBY

Thou wonnest, O warrior-wager,
Tribute from folk of Gothland,
And durst not men against thee
With brand to ward their island.
So ran the Isle-syslings' war-host;
I heard that the wolf-kind's hunger
Thawed east-away.

Ottar the Swart, in praise of Olaf the Holy.

There was a time very long ago when a spectral island floated on the Baltic brine. Its mist-wrapped shores appeared at times to perplexed mariners, but when they tried to land there all was sea.

It appears the reason was that certain trolls had made that land their own, and sought to amuse themselves by playing idle tricks on man. But the powers of darkness can never last for aye and eventually it chanced that a sailor from the North, called Thjelvar or the Diligent, more skilful or more fortunate than others, contrived to land on the enchanted isle. Knowing how to destroy the force of evil he at once kindled a fire by which the spell was burned away. The trolls were warned off. The land was added to the realms of man and yellow crops waved where grew dark woods of yore. But it was necessary that the career of the new people should be mainly on the water, and the island became known far and wide as the Eye of the Eastern Sea.

The Goths, who did so much to overturn the Empire of Rome and at the same time to rejuvenate the South of Europe, have left no other account of themselves in literature than the version of Holy Writ that was made in their language by Ulfilas, a missionary great and good, however deplorably incorrect his views about the Trinity may have been (p. 191). But to this beautiful island of limestone in the heart of their oldest homelands the Goths gave at any rate a name; and such is the charm and interest of her ancient capital that one might well suppose the term Gothic Architecture to have been given here in admiration instead of being a term of contempt and reproach bestowed by a generation that could see no beauty save in the horizontal lines of Greek temples.[74]

At an early date the men of Gothland had done in the Baltic what long before the Phoenicians had done in the Mediterranean. Their trading vessels were moored to London Bridge, they were anchored in the lonely gulf where St. Petersburg was eventually to rise. And their commercial activities extended to far remoter bounds. They fetched the furs of Russia and the gems of further east to shelter English men and to decorate English girls. No less than twenty thousand English coins, most of them inscribed with the unhonoured name of Ethelred the Redeless, have been found in their island of recent years. The further extent of Gothland trade is evidenced by the presence of coins not only from Scandinavia and Russia and the realms of the Holy Roman Empire, but also from the far south of Europe and towns on the Arabian sands.

In the Saga of Olaf we read of a merchant employed by that king to purchase robes in Garthrealm, or Russia, and Gothland is visited on the way, as was doubtless the almost universal custom of the time. "There was a man hight Gudleik the Garthrealmer, of Agdir kindred, a mariner, and a mickle chapman; wealthy withal, and one who went on chaffering journeys to sundry lands; he would often go east into Garthrealm, and for that cause was called Gudleik the Garthrealmer. Now this spring Gudleik dighted his ship, being minded to go in the summer east to Garthrealm. King Olaf sent him word that he would see him. So when Gudleik came to him the king told him he wished to be in fellowship with him, and prayed him to buy him dear havings hard to get in the land. Gudleik said it should be as the king would. Then let the king pay him such wealth as it seemed him good, and Gudleik went into the Eastways in the summer.

"They lay awhile off Gothland, and here it befell as oft, that they were not all of them too close of their words, and the islanders got wind of it that on board was a chaffering fellow of Olaf the Thick. Gudleik went into the Eastways in the summer all the way to Holmgarth (p. 227), and bought there the cloths full-choice which he was minded for the king for his robes of state, and therewith furs of great price and a glorious table-service."

Olaf himself on the way back from Russia to attempt to recover his kingdom, "hove with his ships into Gothland where he learnt tidings both from Sweden and Denmark and all the way from Norway." A great centre of trade is ever a centre of news.

Upon the low limestone cliff that is partly enclosed within the walls of the city and is known as the Klint, there was of olden time a Vi, or place of sacrifice. Thus it seems was Visby (or Wisby) named; "by" is a very common Scandinavian ending that forms a part of many an English name. Two tiny islets, very close to the shore, protected the ancient port; most of it is dry land to-day and what remains wet, the inner harbour, is so small that an outer harbour has been formed by a long breakwater. Even this, however, will admit modern steamers only of the very smallest draught. From the cruising yachts landing is only possible in the smoothest weather, and cargo boats usually call at Slite, a better harboured place, connected by a narrow-gauged railway with the capital of the island.

To the person unacquainted with the story of the North, it will be no small surprise to land on this remote island and to see a mediÆval city that is almost unrivalled for interest even in the South of Europe. Here was a chief cradle of the far-told Hansa League, whose name appears to be derived from an ancient Gothic word.[75] The confederation for long centuries controlled the shipping and the commerce of the North, from the Steelyard in London to Novgorod the Great on the Russian plains; from Bergen of rockbound Norway to the remotest river-ports of vineyard-terraced Rhine.

The merchants needed to protect themselves whom no prince would shield. As with the East India Company in later years, an association of traffickers was driven into politics and compelled by circumstances to make war and peace, and to take up all the responsibility of a mighty sovereign state. Had London been further away and the English kings of feebler frame, the career of the Cinque Ports might have been very similar. But the sovereigns of England were deeply interested in all that concerned their Kent and Sussex harbours, and desired to utilise their ships. The Holy Roman Emperor at Aachen was not far off from the teeming Hansa towns; but, German though he was, his eyes were fixed on the splendid cities of Italy and the glittering palaces by the Tiber rather than on the stalwart shipping of the cities of the North. Had the Emperor looked north and not south, had the Empire been German not Roman, the Hansa towns had not played a greater part in history than did the English Cinque Ports. Merchants would not have made treaties nor exercised the prerogatives of princes. But no German Empire was to arise during mediÆval days; the towns went their own way and refused to do anything of mark for the Kaiser, who did almost nothing for them.

Rapidly waxed the fortunes of the old place of sacrifice, and during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the city had grown to be the Baltic's leading port. It had become a chief centre of the trade of Northern Europe and the remotest East, whose riches were such that an old ballad declares:

With twenty pound weights their gold they weigh,
With costliest jewels as toys they play;
Their swine-troughs are silver, their distaffs are gold,
In Gothland luxurious in wealth untold.

Visby was declared a Free City by the Emperor Lothar, the Saxon (1125-37); in 1237, Henry III. granted its merchants free trade all over England. So important was British commerce with those parts that the Easterlings gave to English currency the name by which (slightly clipped as sterling) it is known to-day.

Fair churches still attest Visby's devotion, great walls its military strength. Undefended towns, famed for their wealth, were almost as unsafe in the early middle ages as they would be to-day. Visby unwalled suffered much. In the Saga of Olaf Tryggvison we read how one of the Earls of Ladir (p. 69), driven forth by that king, "took such rede that he gat him a-shipboard and went a-warring to gather wealth for him and his men. First he made for Gothland, and lay off there long in the summer season, waylaying ships of chapmen who sailed toward the land, or of the vikings else; and whiles he went aland and harried there wide about the borders of the sea." But at least our fathers had the advantage over us that in the intervals of all this fighting they did not need to be practising the oldest of the arts. They knew not our crushing burdens. The same hands held the account-book and the sword; the same ships plowed the sea for trading and for war.

Thus from the turbulence of neighbours the most peaceful of cities has left us some of the most impressive examples of military architecture that all Europe has to show. During the thirteenth century the burghers walled their town. The defences are of solid stone and make a bean-shaped circuit of two miles and a half. For 1,950 yards they run along the shore, where to-day is the Students' Walk between the lofty walls and a line of tall trees. The original height of the walls was fifteen to eighteen feet, according to the ground. Wide battlements, each second one pierced by a small embrasure, frowned along the top and just behind them was the customary parapet-path, sustained by a series of arches within—a very common way of economising materials from Roman to latest times. Much stronger were the walls from having two moats towards the land without, and on the north side there were three.

Three older structures—little towers—were built into the walls, and so remain to-day. The Krut Torn, or Powder Tower, clearly named in later days, looks over the sea; the TjÄrhof, or tar-house, and the Mynt Hus, look over the land. The tar-house is clearly known from a use to which it was degradingly put in latter days. There was a mint at Visby in the thirteenth century, and there seems to be no evidence whatever that it was not in this Mynt Hus. Six towers were also built to strengthen the wall, all toward the south; one of them is round, established on a jutting rock. One is known as Kejsar Hus, or CÆsar's Tower, named evidently because connected in some way with the Holy Empire of Rome.[76] For Roman indeed was the Empire still when these proud walls rose. As we have already seen, the sovereign was for ever straining his eyes towards the ancient city of the CÆsars, there to receive the Imperial Crown, in Italy to exercise imperial sway.

A little later in the century, Horace Porter[77] thinks about the middle, more towers were added and, on the east, barbicans to enfilade the moats.

Of the Churches whose names are in brackets there are now no remains. The spotted area represents made ground, the two long spaces whose outlines are dotted are the sites of the two islands by which the original harbour was protected. The railway appears in the lower left-hand corner.

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But all these excellent arrangements for the defence of the capital did not meet with the approval of the dwellers in the country round. It would have been much more remarkable if they had. Those whom they do not protect can seldom see the point of fortifications. There is still extant a strong protest which the villagers of Norfolk made against the circumvallation of Norwich, England, in 1253. In 1288 the Gothland farmers formed a posse to lay low the walls of which they disapproved. This attack was unsuccessful, the peasants were beaten off, and an appeal was made to the king.

The island had long been Swedish, or rather for a regular payment it was protected by the Swedish King. Long, long before, in the ninth century it seems, the burghers had sent one Avajr Strabajn, or Longshanks, on a mission to Upsala to make a treaty with the king. But it is related that the monarch was sitting at meat in the lofty halls when the Gothic messenger arrived and, not being in the least pleased to see him, he kept Longshanks waiting on the threshold. At length the king unbent so far as to ask for news of the island, and was told that a mare had just had three foals. "And what," inquired the sovereign, "does the third one while the other two are sucking?" "Just as I am doing," the ambassador replied, "he stands by and looks on."

Tickled by this neat rebuke to his own execrable manners, the king invited Longshanks to sit with him at table, and eventually a treaty was agreed to. The wealthy islanders supplied money and ships to the king, and the well-armed monarch promised to hold out a sword in protection of the commerce of Gothland.

On this occasion the King of Sweden was entirely of the same opinion as the peasants about the walls, but (looking at the matter rather from his own point of view than from theirs), he decided that the offence would best be expiated, not by their destruction, but by a doubled yearly subsidy, with a slight fine in addition for the presumption of building walls without the permission of the sovereign lord.

It was very probably during the actual fighting that those further additions were being made to the ramparts that cause them to look so impressive to-day. The walls were heightened and made thicker by building on the arch-supported walks, or even enclosing them in new masonry. About forty fresh towers were added, projecting toward the open country; some reach the height of seventy feet. Towers were likewise raised above the gates that were not so protected before.

Between the great bastions, upon the walls were perched in many cases bartizans or saddle towers, projecting on either side, resting on large corbels built in between the huge battlements of older date; their outer walls rest upon arches that spring from corbel to corbel. Within they are open to the city like the great towers themselves. This is a curious feature of the work; the floors were all of timber and to make up for the lost stone walks double timber galleries ran along the walls within, one above and one below. The holes for their joists may still be seen, and ledges in the towers for the floors. All this open woodwork created a huge danger of fire, especially in the great towers, and, compared with other mediÆval defences, particularly in France, the ramparts of Visby give the impression of being the work of amateurs. Nevertheless, from some points of view, the combination of low hills and sparkling sea and lofty towers recalls the mighty walls of the City of Constantine, whose capture by the Turks in 1453 was the beginning of the last act in the long mediÆval drama.

Little, however, did these brave defences effect against the forces of the Danes when in 1361 Visby was attacked and sacked by Waldemar IV., surnamed Atterdag, because, if once foiled, he was sure that his day of success would arrive. Close to the sea one of the city bastions is known as the Maiden Tower (Jungfrutornet).[78] There dwelt Nils the goldsmith, the liar, the loathsome traitor, the hideous thief. Such language his fellow-townsmen did well to use if in very truth on account of a petty slight he suggested the sack of Visby to the robber Danish king. A young girl, it was fabled, gave Waldemar information which enabled him to capture the fair town, and not unfitly she was walled alive into this very tower, from which circumstance it has its name.

There can be little doubt that the only real foundation for these foolish tales was the fact that the merchants were somewhat ashamed of the very poor defence they made. Instead of defying the robber behind their strengthened walls, they abjectly permitted a breach to be torn when he refused to enter by a gate.

He had led his army to Gothland and made knights in that land and struck down many men, for the peasants were unarmed and unused to war. And he set his face toward Visby and the citizens came out and surrendered, for they saw that resistance was impossible. This we learn from a Franciscan chronicler of LÜbeck, the chief headquarters of the Hanseatic League.

In the market-place of captured Visby were placed the three largest vats that in the city could be found, and these the Danish king insisted should be filled with glittering gold. The ransom received, the town was treacherously and pitilessly sacked and the Danish ships at length sailed off as encumbered with loot as no doubt the Mayflower was with furniture. But by far the greater portion—almost the whole—it was fated should merely sparkle in the depths of the tossing sea, for the vessels were wrecked in a fearful storm and the king came very near being drowned. Fittingly his body might have lain amidst those ill-gotten spoils till the day of Holy Doom, but he was rescued by his men and continued to rule the Danes.

Not wholly a bad King of Denmark, for he governed with might and power and in some ways really sought to enlarge his country's weal. His insult to the Hansa League was too great even for merchants to endure, and in striking contrast with the unchivalrous action of the king, who smote a peaceful city without excuse, without declaring war, a herald bore to Waldemar a formal notice that the towns would fight. Copenhagen was captured and plundered in the May of 1362, but then the Danes gained a considerable victory and the beaten burgomaster of proud LÜbeck paid for failure with life.

In 1367 the deputies of seventy-seven towns met at KÖln, and in formal manner confirmed the League which even then was centuries old. Waldemar contemptuously likened the citizens to cackling geese, but ill-founded was his foolish mirth. After a few years of war, disastrous to the Danes and very profitable indeed to the traders, he was compelled to sign the humiliating Treaty of Stralsund, by which he virtually ceased to be an independent king. The League took its place as a first-rate power and for generations dominated the North.

Visby was very fully avenged, but could never really recover from the staggering blow. The ancient port now fell on evil days. The city whose maritime code of laws was to Northern Europe very much what that of Rhodes was to the Mediterranean, slipped so low as to be made, helplessly, the headquarters of Baltic pirates and a pest to the shipping of that sea. The great Margaret (p. 120) cleared them out and annexed the island to Denmark,[79] but her worthless successor, Eric of Pomerania, erected at the southern end of the walls the Castle of Visborg,[80] to be a stronghold for himself. The city suffered further from his blighting presence and piracy sprang up again (p. 132). The saddest blow fell in the seventeenth century when the burghers of LÜbeck, former sister city and close ally, plundered and sacked the sinning port and almost ended its being.

Gradually it shrank to the quiet little market town that it remains to-day, nestling amid gardens and roses and the lofty ruins of its past. But even yet there is not the sleep of some little English cathedral towns. The railway runs along the quays by the harbour, where is sometimes a busy scene. Southward the chimneys of a factory pour their smoke into the clear air. The vigorous life of an older day still stirs in the picturesque market-place by the ruined Friars' Church. From it wind about to every part of the city narrow streets between garden walls that tunnel here and there under the whitewashed houses.

Samuel Laing[81] became quite enthusiastic over the Visby churches. "These are the most interesting Gothic edifices in Europe. Wisby is the Rome of the modern architects who will deal in the Gothic." Possibly this is exaggerated (Laing's knowledge of architecture was small), but there is in it an element of truth. The way in which the church-builders of Gothland departed from stereotyped principles and planned as they were moved is refreshingly original. No series of churches in the world is more deserving of the closest study. This tendency to unusual ground plans and the Norwegian stavekirkes are the chief contributions to Gothic architecture that the northern lands made as the middle ages wore. It gives a most vivid idea of the unity of mediÆval Christendom and of the frequency of communication that existed to realise the way in which architecture went through the same general course of evolution in all the lands from Portugal to Norway from the coronation of Charles the Great to the abdication of Charles V.

The oldest and most massive of the Visby churches is dedicated to St. Lars, or Lawrence; it was evidently raised in the early years of the twelfth century, nine hundred years after its patron had suffered on the grid. Though with windows unglazed and bare of any fittings the structure is very tolerably perfect and, as one first enters, the effect is exceedingly impressive and also extremely oriental. Greek merchants raised it; they had seen Byzantine churches in the East and desired in the cold North to reproduce their effect.[82]

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Only a narrow court separates this church from another, which a generation later men raised to the honour of St. Drotten or the Triune God. Some idle person once invented an absurd tale (reminding one of that concerning the twin steeples at Ormskirk) that these sister churches were raised by two rich sisters who were such bad friends that they would not even kneel under the same roof to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The actual plan is very similar to that of St. Lars, but it does not seem to have been so successful.[83]

The Church of St. Olaf (Swedish Olof) appears to have been of very similar character; there the Norway merchants used to pray.[84] The scantiest ruins survive in the Botanical Gardens. Thither the citizens resort in summer to eat their meals and listen to a band.

The same plan is reproduced in St. Clemens,[85] whose patron saint has an anchor for his badge and likes his churches to stand by the sea. The south porch evidently formed a vapenhus, or house in which weapons might be left: this was a common feature of the churches of the North, for thus it is written in the ancient Icelandic Law Ecclesiastic. "Men shall not bear weapons in church or oratory that is licensed for service to be held in, and they shall not set them against the church gable or the church walls. And these are reckoned weapons under this head—axe and sword and spear and cutlass and halberd."

Excavations within the walls of this now unroofed shrine, carried on by the learned Dr. Ekhoff, have exposed foundations of three more ancient churches. The earliest of them dates back perhaps to about the year 900 or within a century of the traditional era of the foundation of the town. A story had grown up that to St. Olaf was due the first preaching of Christianity among the merchants of Gothland, but this is evidently a libel on the progressive thought of the ancient fathers of the town. The Saga of Olaf has several visits to Gothland to record, but it says nothing of his preaching the faith there, and has little of him to record that would be likely to make the Gothlanders trow in the same God as he. After the adventure of Stocksound (p. 211) we learn that "King Olaf sailed in autumn for Gothland, and arrayed him for harrying there. But there the Gothlanders had a gathering, and sent men to the king, and bade him tribute for the land. To this the king agreed, and took tribute of the land, and sat there the winter through." It was in reference to this event that the verse at the head of the chapter was composed. It was in Gothland too that Olaf let hew one Jokul, son of Bard, who had fought against him and was allotted to the steering of the Bison, which King Olaf himself had owned.

An old story, whether true or not God knows, tells how in the sixteenth century one digged in this spot for a more evidently tangible reward. A German cobbler, Salts Vedel, heard friars or monks in Italy gossip about the lands from which by the Reformation they were expelled. "There is buried," said one, "behind the altar of St. Clemens' Church in Visby a goose and twenty-four little goslings, and they are all of solid gold." The cobbler was interested, as well he might be, and he hastened to the spot. He found the treasure and it brought no curse. On the contrary he became powerful and rich, and as Burgomaster of Visby he died.

The local peculiarity of sustaining the nave vault on four pillars gained so much favour that it was used both in the upper and lower stage of the very remarkable Hospital Church of the Holy Ghost (Helgeands Kyrkan). Though parts of the quire walling are evidently earlier, this most striking little sanctuary seems to date from the early part of the thirteenth century; the general character is Romanesque, but early pointed arches and mouldings are employed. The nave forms an octagonal tower, which formerly had a gable every side and a low spire rose above. A particularly pleasing double stair, open by shafted arcading in the thickness of the western wall, leads up from the lower to the higher level. The four pillars below are round, the four pillars above are octagonal, and in the space between an octagonal opening pierces through the vault. By two great arches[86] each opens to the common quire and perhaps women sang above and men below, so that the opening in the floor facilitated the blending of voices in the Christian hymn of praise. The quire itself has the peculiarity of being apsidal within and square without, and in the corners of the walls is squeezed a nest of tiny chambers, miniature stairs connecting those above and those below.

Apsidal within and square-ended without was likewise the little church of St. Gertrude the Abbess. There her countrymen, the merchants from the Lowlands of Europe, used to make their vows.[87]

Very shallow apses which do not appear without are to be seen at the ends of the aisles of the great church of St. Mary, formerly the seat of the LÜbeck merchants and now the cathedral. There was no such church of old. Though devout men and great builders of churches, mediÆval merchants were not admirers of bishops, or for that matter of any other kind of lords. In the Low Countries they contrived to have only four prelates, in the German commercial cities extremely few and in Gothland none. Only as the result of considerable pressure would the islanders recognise the oversight of the Bishop of LinkÖping (Sweden), and he must come with not more than ten attendants, nor must even so restricted a train expect to be entertained for more than three meals.

During the ages of faith there were preserved in this church, sometimes known as Sancta Maria Teutonicorum,[88] the relics of a hero giantess of earliest days. They were removed soon after 1741, when the great LinnÆus unfeelingly records in his diary: "The Jatta bones preserved in the church I find, on inspection, to be those of a whale."

The two largest of the Visby churches belonged to Friars, and they alone are normal in ground plan. Both consist of nave and aisles all of the same height, with a short quire ending in a buttressed triple apse projecting from the east; both were Romanesque altered to the so-called Decorated style.

These plans, made by Sir H. Dryden, Bart., are reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in whose Transactions they appeared during 1886. It will be noticed that all except S. Nicolaus are eccentric in plan.

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St. Katarina (Franciscan) stands a roofless ruin beside the busy market-place; tall octagonal pillars with moulded caps and bases still sustain arches running east and west and north and south across the nave and aisles, dividing the space into rectangles from which the vaulting has fallen, and wild roses, growing on the tops of the arches, shower their petals over the grass-grown floor.[89]

The Dominican church of St. Nicolaus still retains its massive Romanesque walls in the four west bays, later openings here and there pierced through. The rest is of Decorated character, strikingly beautiful.[90] The great glory of this church was that in days gone by twin carbuncles glittered in the centres of the brick rose windows in the western wall. As was fitting in a church dedicated to the mariners' patron saint, far out at sea the sailors saw them even when there were no stars; they lit the night as the sun lights up the day, nor were their equals to be found in all the surface of the world. They were not seen within the church, for the roses do not pierce the wall. These jewels formed part of the booty of the robber king.

Without the walls a short distance to the north stands the roofless church of St. George. This was not the English chapel, but belonged to an institution for lepers.[91] Still further toward the pole the Klint is washed into steep cliffs by the eternal sea. On this elevated calvary three stone pillars stand, having formed the gallows of old. It was a very public place, commanding wide views over sea and land, too fair a spot for such a gruesome use.

Not every building of interest in Visby dates from the time of the city's power, nor even from mediÆval days. The Burmeister House, erected as late as 1662, displays in its interior paintings covering walls and ceiling, illustrating Bible stories and depicting other scenes. It was a rich merchant's house, and the counter where his customers were served can still be seen. An interesting witness to the prosperity the town enjoyed in commerce even at so late a date; while the present mildness of the climate is made clear by the great luxuriance of the creepers that swaddle the whole of the southern end. In no English cathedral city is any ancient dwelling more completely buried by vegetation; the windows look out through fully two feet of insect-sheltering leaves.

Superlatives are always dangerous. There are much finer buildings and there is far finer scenery in Europe than anything that Visby has to show. But the real feature of the place is very much its own. One meets the influences of many lands. One beholds an epitome of half the history of the North. One gets a hint of the architectural features of remote places of Christendom. Of no town of equal importance perhaps may the ruins be so pleasantly surveyed. Midst all the charms of low limestone hills and peaceful fields by the sea, midst all the delights of wide gardens fragrant with the scent of roses, midst all the picturesqueness of a delightful little country town, may be studied in crumbling ruin, yet lovingly preserved, the uniquely interesting churches and stoutly buttressed walls of a city that once dominated the Mediterranean of the North.