UPSALA

In Upsal's stately minster, before the altar, stands

The Swedish King, brave Eric, with high uplifted hands;

His royal robes are round him, the crown upon his head,

And thus, before his people, right sovranly he said—

"God! whoso trusteth in Thee will never rue his trust:

If God the Lord be with us, our foes shall flee like dust."

He spake: from priest and people rose up the answering cry—

"If God the Lord be with us, all danger we defy!"

Scarce through the aisles is dying their mingled voices' din,

A pallid slave, disordered, comes rushing wildly in.

"Now God us aid!—Skalater, the Dane, has come again,

Fast pouring down the mountains with seven hundred men!"

King Eric's glance grew prouder; he grasped the golden Rood—

He held it high to heaven, as on Skalater strode:

Lo! from each wound, the seven, pour forth a thousand rays,

And down to earth Skalater sinks, dazzled by the blaze.

They're prostrate on their foreheads, the seven hundred Danes,

Praying to God to spare them Who guards the Christian fanes;

But Eric and his people lift up the joyful cry—

"Our God, the Lord, has conquered; all praise to Him on high!"

Swedish Ballad, translated by Lady Wilde.

Of all the relics of primitive man none are so permanent, few so impressive, as large earthworks. Such to most of us at least convey no small part of the pleasure that we derive from the South Downs or so-called Salisbury Plain.

Where the delights of Nature are comparatively few, on a wide, flat plain, distantly walled by low-looking hills, there has stood since the very twilight of Swedish history the town of Upsala—Lofty Halls. Of its early days we learn from Snorri Sturluson in the opening chapters of his great history, called from its first word, the Heimskringla, "That is the Round World, whereas manfolk dwell, much sheared apart by bights so that great seas go from ocean's river far into the land."

Odin, or Woden, he to whom the fourth day of the week is hallowed, had led his people from Asgarth in Asia, and he settled in Sigtown or Sigtuna, on the lake between Upsala and Stockholm. Only a village holds the spot to-day with ruined mediÆval towers. "Odin was a great warrior, and exceeding far-travelled, and had made many realms his own, and so victorious was he that in every battle he gained the day; whence it befell, that his men trowed of him that he should of his own nature ever have the victory in every battle. His wont it was, if he sent his men to the wars or on other journeys, before they went to lay his hands on the heads of them, and to give them blessing, and they trowed that they would fare well thereby."[92] "Odin died in his bed in Sweden; but when he was come nigh to his death, he let mark him with a spear-point, and claimed as his own all men dead by weapon; and he said that he would go his ways to Godhome and welcome his friends there. Now were the Swedes minded that he would be come to that Asgarth of old days, there to live his life for ever; and then began anew the worship of Odin and the vowing of vows to him. Oft thought the Swedes that he showed himself to them in dreams before great battles should be; and to some he gave victory there and then, and to others bidding to come to him; and either lot they deemed good enow." "Now this Sweden they called Manhome, but Sweden the Great called they Godhome; and of Godhome are told many tales and many marvels."[93]

The founder of Upsala was Frey, one of Odin's Diar or temple-priests, and his successor, next but one, as king. He "raised a great temple at Upsala, and there he had his chief abode, and endowed it with all his wealth, both land and chattels. Then began the weal of Upsala, which has endured ever since.... Now Frey fell sick, but when his sickness waxed on him men took counsel and let few folk come in to him; and they built a great howe (or barrow) and made a door therein, and three windows; and so when Frey was dead they bore him privily into the howe, and told the Swedes that he was still alive, and there they guarded him for three winters, and poured all the scat (p. 19) into the mound: gold through the one window, silver through the second, and copper pennies through the third. And this while endured plenteous years and peace.... But when all the Swedes wotted that Frey was dead, and the plenteous years and good peace still endured, then they trowed that so it would be while he still abode in Sweden; neither would they burn him, but called him the God of the World, and sacrificed to him ever after, most of all for plenteous years and peace."[94]

In later chapters we learn that at Upsala was holden the Thing of all the Swedes. The earth platform on which they met may still be seen. The place was the chief town of all the Swede-realm and one of its monarchs built there a great Hall of the Seven Kings. "The Upsala kings were the master kings in Sweden, whereas there were many county-kings therein, from the time that Odin was lord in Sweden."[95]

Again in the Saga of Olaf the Holy we read: "Tenthland (p. 185) is the best and most nobly peopled of Sweden. Thither louteth all the realm. Upsala is there, with the king's-seat, and there is an archbishop's chair, and thereby is named the wealth of Upsala. So call the Swedes the King's-wealth, they call it Upsala-wealth. In each shire is its own Law-Thing, and its own laws in many matters.... But in all matters where the laws sunder, they must all yield to the Upsala-law, and all other lawmen shall be under-men of the lawman who is of Tenthland."[96]

Three great howes, each rising some fifty-eight feet above the earthen floor and spreading more than two hundred feet upon it, are seen from far across the well-tilled fenceless flats, over which the wind blows clouds of dust. Many smaller mounds form a rude crescent stretching across the open plain with the great hills in the centre. They are doubtless the last resting-places of many kings about whose "howing" we read in the sagas. Though of old the capital of all the land, Upsala is but a tiny village now, so unimportant that it is known as Gamla (old) Upsala, for the neighbouring city of Östra-aros (East mouth), whose cathedral spires are the most prominent features of the landscape, has usurped the proper name.

[Face page 180

The KungshÖgar or Hills of Kings, as the three great tumuli have immemorially been called, are distinguished as those of Odin, Thor and Frey, but these detail names date from much more recent years. They were opened, Odin's in 1846, and Thor's in 1874. They proved to be of the first part of the Later Iron Age, that is the period just before Viking days. Each appears to have been piled up over a cairn of stones covering the ashes of a funeral pyre—which is curious in the light of Snorri Sturluson's express statement:[97] "The first age is called the age of Burning, whereas the wont was to burn all dead men, and raise up standing stones to them; but after that Frey was laid in barrow at Upsala, many great men fell to raising barrows to the memory of their kin, no less often than standing stones."

Besides the charred bones of man and horse and dog, there were many objects for ornament or use, made of iron and bronze and glass and gold.[98] There was a small cameo of Roman work, carried to these northern wilds, far beyond the widest limit of imperial power, not in the wake of all-conquering troops, but by gainful commerce with barbarian hordes. Or possibly it was a part of the shameful tribute that the tottering masters of the world had to offer to triumphant Goths.

As to the point of burying so much treasure with the dead we get a useful hint in the Vatzdaela Saga; a father is expostulating with his son about his lack of taste for war. "It was the way of mighty kings or jarls, our peers, that they used to lie out a-warring, winning themselves riches and glory, and the riches they won thus were not reckoned in the inheritance they left, nor could son take it after father, but it was laid in howe with themselves. So though their sons got their lands they could not keep up their estate, though they inherited the honour, unless they threw themselves and their men into jeopardy and warfare; and by this means it was they won riches and renown one after another, each stepping in the footprints of his forefathers."[99]

No spot of earth seems to carry one's mind back so far into the immemorial past as this. From the top of one of the great howes we may peer beyond the history of unnumbered years to the days when history was not. About the early dawn of man's activity on earth we may read in any part of the world, but not in many places may we feel its spell as here. Close by was the most famous temple in all the North; and not far off was Odin's grove, whose trees were the sacredest on earth. And near the temple grew one tree whose sort might no man know whose branches were for ever green. The roadway from the south still approaches the ancient village through an avenue of rowan or mountain ash. These were planted recently indeed, but there is the right atmosphere about the mystic tree whence pagan priests cut sacred wands; whose wood is still a potent charm and a powerful protection against witchcraft. Just east of the three great howes we may stand on the flat-topped Tings-hÖg, where the ancient assemblies of Sweden were held and picture the weaponed warriors not always saying yea to their king. On this spot, too, we may well wonder why we have abandoned our excellent northern words, Scandinavian Thing and Saxon Moot, in favour of a French expression that only means place where men talk, or a Latin one that refers to no more than their coming together. Honey-tasting sparkling mead has here been brewed through the unnumbered centuries, and we may still drink from ancient horns what our fathers enjoyed when the North was first peopled by Aryan man.

Mead is still brewed indeed, but (happily) not in such noble quantity as was the case of old. "There was a great homestead," we read in the sagas, "and therein was there wrought a mighty vat many ells high, which stood on mighty big beams; now this stood down in a certain undercroft, and there was a loft above it, the floor whereof was open, that the liquor might be poured down thereby; but the vat was full of mingled mead, and the drink was wondrous strong." Unfortunately the king, a mighty man whose years were full of plenty and peace, was staying with the owner and went out amidst the night, when, being bewildered with sleep and dead-drunk, he missed his footing, fell into the mead-vat and was lost there.[100]

In the temple festivals were held at Yule and twice besides in every year. One was the thanksgiving for good crops that the New England Puritans unconsciously revived. And greater feasts took place as often as the ninth year came. Mighty sacrifices were offered to the Gods and the victims were human at times. As in Mexico and elsewhere, highest reverence was paid to these unhappy men between dedication and death. The worship on the whole was of the beastliest; the temple and the grove must frequently have resembled blood-reeking shambles and there was nothing to regret when the people began to trow in the faith of the White Christ. The beauty of building and stateliness of ritual that characterised the shrines of Buddhist India or of Egypt or of Greece were but faintly reflected in the rude and untaught North.

In the days of King Domald there fell on the Swedes great hunger and famine. So they offered oxen with no result; next year "they offered men, and the increase of the year was the same, or worse it might be, but the third autumn came the Swedes flockmeal to Upsala whenas the sacrifices should be. Then held the great men counsel together, and were of one accord that this scarcity was because of Domald their king, and withal that they should sacrifice him for the plenty of the year; yea, that they should set on him and slay him, and redden the seats of the Gods with the blood of him; and even so they did."[101] So successful was this service that there was good plenty and peace throughout the days of his son's long reign, "of him is nought more told save that he died in his bed at Upsala."

A later king named Aun gained length of days by offering up his sons, for Odin had made him the promise that he should live on for ever, even so long as he gave Odin one of his sons every tenth year. "So when he had offered up seven sons, then he lived ten winters yet in such case that he might not go afoot, but was borne about on a chair. Then he offered up yet again the eighth son of his, and lived ten winters yet, and then lay bedridden. Then he offered up his ninth son, and lived ten winters yet, and then must needs drink from a horn, even as a swaddling babe. Now had he one son yet left, and him also would he offer up, and give to Odin Upsala withal and the countryside thereabout, and let call it Tenthland (p. 179)[102]; but the Swedes forbade it him, and there was no sacrifice. So King Aun died, and was laid in howe at Upsala."[103]

The zeal of Iceland has indeed clothed these earthen mounds with vigorous life, this spot with vivid story. So much so that they are hardly to be called prehistoric, however the word may spring to our lips from the study of such earth monuments in other lands.

It is tradition—but probably untrue—that there still stand parts of the ancient temple which glittered with gold in every corner, where were figures of Thor, of Odin and of Frey, the God of Thunder, most honoured, in the midst; so Adam of Bremen says. Chains of gold clinked on the temple roof, as chains of baser metal hang on many a Russian church to-day. A square, stone pile, of massive work but rude, stands high above the plain: two gateways toward the north, two toward the south, and two toward the west, only toward the east but one. It seems more likely, notwithstanding, that this gable-roofed structure was always what it is to-day, the central tower of a cruciform church, round-arched in style, opening to transepts and nave by two arches, but to the quire by only one.[104]

That the church which was built by King Sverker I. in 1138[105] has annexed both the site and the materials of the temple of the Three Gods we need not doubt, but the structure is a fairly ordinary Romanesque building exactly suiting the architecture of the age. The small chancel of three bays has a round apse and round-headed windows, and if the plan preserved in the vestry—here reproduced—be founded on fact, there were once apsidal transepts, and an aisled nave that was not in line, but swerved away to the north. Built into the south wall of the apse is a Runic stone—here sketched—put up to the memory of his father by Sigvid, who had fared to England and come safely back.[106] (See page 108.)

Eric IX. (p. 192) is traditionally connected with the building of the church. Perhaps to him are owed the plain ribbed vaults, indicated on the plan by dotted lines. In life he was known as Log-gifware, or Giver of Laws, and every one of his statutes were good; after death he was known as saint. With the first primate of Upsala, St. Henry, a man of English birth, Eric conquered the Finns, and, as this was an attack on one of the last centres of heathenism in Europe, it ranked as a crusade. The Swedish saint mourned to see so many pagans slain without a chance of Heaven, but the English saint was made of sterner stuff and he refused to weep. All heathen were vermin to him.

He met his end in a most un-English way. The mistress of a house had expressly refused to invite him to her board, but all the same he went. In that rude age the conventions of society had not yet been elaborated, and so, instead of welcoming him with their lips and fuming in their hearts, the owners of the house sent the unbidden guest into another world (see p. 213). Nevertheless in Finland he was highly honoured by the sword-established Church; the cathedral at the old capital of Abo bears his name and once enshrined his remains. But in later days (by Count Douglas, p. 238) they were carried in triumph to St. Petersburg.

Three miles of level plain, still fertile, for the soil is unexhausted by the tillage of two thousand years, separates Old Upsala from the town of Östra-aros, which usurped both the name and the archbishopric in 1276. From a distance its buildings seem to rise from the very forests in true Swedish style, but when the streets are gained one is somewhat reminded of Holland. For long rows of trees, largely lime and horse-chestnut, border the little (river) Fyrisa, which flows unhasting to the northern end of MÄlar, and on the banks are a few picturesque gabled houses with seventeenth century dates. Trees line many of the wide streets and partly hide the trolley trams. The great brick cathedral in the distance too has a certain Flemish look. But all idea of Holland is expelled by the massive unbeautiful castle standing high on its wooded cliffs.

This city seems to have a character all its own, largely through mingling the features of many other towns. Here in the wooded Swedish plain an English close, a Dutch canal and an American campus seem somehow or other to have met. The interest of the place centres largely round the university, which has sheltered no small number of scholars that the whole world holds great.

In Upsala one is vaguely conscious of the existence of that intense charm, all-pervading yet undefinable, that in Oxford and Cambridge is so helped by the presence of buildings unrivalled on earth. Here no crumbling, creeper-covered walls surround garden quadrangles, nor do elm-shaded lawns slope to a placid river; here are none of the towers and spires of Isis, nor the deep red Tudor brickwork towers of Cam. The university was only founded in 1477 by the national leader, Sten Sture the Elder, who had been chosen administrator of Sweden at the Diet of Arboga six years before. It possesses no buildings that in themselves would claim attention for half an hour, though many are attractive from the well-treed lawns on which they stand. The oldest is called from the hero king who raised it, the Gustavianum; it is a plain white structure over which rises a tower capped by a swelling dome that displays the influence of the East. The new building, finished in 1886, has a fine central corridor panelled in green marble, and over the door of the Aula is written (from Thorild) in letters of gold:

Great to think free,
But greater to think right.

One feels the same atmosphere of culture and of high ideal, of youthful enthusiasm and of joy that makes the two older universities of England so lovable, though it is produced with so much simpler scenes.

The ungowned, white-capped students,[107] some two thousand of them, delighting in music and serenades, are organised in thirteen "nations." These somewhat recall English colleges, for they have buildings of their own, and somewhat resemble American Greek letter fraternities, but such likenesses soon leave off and wide differences appear. The members of the nations are chosen by the accident of birth, for each includes the students from one or more of the Swedish "lÄns." Graduating ceremonies take place in the cathedral, for, as in Oxford and Cambridge, the university is connected with the church.

The university library is not in the least architecturally striking, but among its somewhat numerous treasures is the famous Codex Argenteus, written on purple parchment in uncial letters of silver and gold. It was captured at Prague in 1648 and, as it gives us the text of Ulfilas' Gothic Bible, no more appropriate home for it could have been found in the wide world.

In the chief square of Upsala is a statue (by BÖrjeson) of one of the most renowned of former professors, Eric Gustaf Geiger (1783-1847), the poet who with zeal and zest sought to restore respect for native traditions so long overlaid by fads from France during Gustavian times. This he took up so seriously that thus, during his very engagement, wrote his future wife to a friend. Geiger "has become a Goth; instead of loving me he is in love with Valkyries and shield-bearing maidens, drinks out of Viking horns, and carries out Viking expeditions—to the nearest tavern. He writes poems which must not be read in the dark, they are so full of murders and deeds of slaughter." This is putting it somewhat crudely, the movement on the whole was very good. It is far better that each nation should cultivate and develop the traditions of its own fathers—if any such there be—rather than seek to copy ready-made the conclusions of another folk. And Sweden has no need to learn from France.

Geiger's daughter married the Count Hamilton who was Governor of Upsala during the visit of Du Chaillu (p. 223) and entertained the explorer in the castle. The Swedish branch of this great Scottish house is descended from two brothers who, like many other Britishers, offered their swords to Gustavus Adolphus in 1624. Of the mediÆval castle extremely slight ruins are to be seen; the present heavy and unfinished round-towered mansion was erected by Gustaf Vasa. In it took place the picturesque but humiliating ceremony of Christina's abdication of the throne, to shake the earth of Sweden from her feet and to amuse herself idly among peoples and courts further south. The best thing about the castle is the superb view from its windows over the forest town.

The Botanical Gardens were set out by LinnÆus himself, rather for serious study than for display of flowers. The founder of modern botany, to whom there is a marble statue by BystrÖm, became a professor at Upsala in 1741 and was laid to rest in one of the chapels of the cathedral during 1778.

Close to the banks of the river is the ErikskÄlla, marking the spot where Eric fell, national saint of Swedes (p. 187). He was canonised by the Swedish Church, not known at Rome, for the rival house of Sverker had gotten the ear of the pope. A spring has burst forth from the soil; such a thing very frequently happens where a saint has breathed his last. The story of his life is portrayed by mural paintings in one of the apsidal chapels on the south of the cathedral, the only part of the building where the brick vaulting-ribs are left exposed. He was at service in the Bondkyrka, or peasants' church, of the Trinity,[108] when the Danes made a surprise attack. The devout king refused to leave till the service came to an end, but soon after, fighting bravely at the head of his men, he was cut down by victorious foes.

His silver-gilt shrine is still the chief treasure of the noble cathedral that rose between Trinity Church and St. Eric's Spring when the archbishopric was moved from the old Upsala to the new. This great church would dominate a much larger town, for its twin spires rise but little short of four hundred feet. It was designed by one of the builders of Notre Dame, Etienne de Bonneuil, who by a document written in Paris on September 8, 1287, was appointed master builder of Sweden's new metropolitan church. By students from Scandinavia at the French capital the cathedral rising by the Seine was so much admired that they got it arranged that a "tailleur de pierre" from its works should reproduce its glories among the forests of the North. It is thus no surprise to find the plan of Upsala Cathedral reproducing that of Notre Dame, though much simplified and on a scale considerably reduced.[109] The superficial resemblance is by no means close, for the materials available were only brick with stone for necessary detail work, which had to be sparingly used.

The great rose windows, west and north, the clustered piers and moulded arches, the plainly ribbed vaulting and indeed the general effect of the interior remind one of the fairest contemporary churches of France, but the blind storey (or triforium), pierced only by meaningless little circles, does nothing to recall the beautiful arcades that open to the galleries of Notre Dame, while the plain pinnacles and flying buttresses without are destitute of any substitutes for the world-famed devils that look down on the Paris streets.

The oldest monument is a brass memorial to Birger Persson, who was president of the Royal Commission which codified the laws of Upland in 1296. One of the children figured afterwards became the illustrious St. Birgitta, or Brita, who, after the death of her husband Ulf, visited Jerusalem, received revelations, founded an order for monks and nuns, and took a prominent part in Church affairs at Rome, trying to get the pope back from Avignon. Her revelations, or some of them, have been printed, but, if one may judge by the samples read by Bishop Wordsworth,[110] they are somewhat sorry stuff, not superior to the sermons of an average curate and not to be compared with the revelations of St. Julian of Norwich.

The rules of her order were revealed to her (so she firmly believed) by Christ, and approved by the pope. There was a house in England (the priory of Syon), while the principal convent of the Order of the Holy Saviour, as it was called, stood on Lake Vettern at Vadstena; its buildings to-day form a refuge for the mad. In the church the relics of the foundress are still reverently preserved, for Charles XII. refused to sell them to the pope. "First and foremost," he remarked, "no one can say for certain if they be her bones or not; secondly, in no wise would I be a party to the encouragement of idle superstition; and thirdly I am not a dealer in old bones."

In 1590 papal envoys had purchased the relics of another Swedish saint named David, who hung his gloves on sunbeams, and the church at Munketorp was built with the price they paid; but the priest who effected the sale boasted at a synod that he had only given up the first skeleton that he found in the vaults of the church.

St. Brita has taken a strong hold on popular imagination in Sweden and figures largely in the folklore of the land. Her peculiar sanctity it is said enabled her to see the devil, until one day she failed to control her laughter when in church she saw him bump his head against a pillar. He was trying to stretch a goat's skin with his teeth, for as it was the vellum was far too small to hold the names of those that he noticed nodding as the sermon wore. The local colour of this tale seems distinctly later than the fourteenth century, when St. Brita was alive.

In the Lady Chapel of the cathedral is a fine monument to Gustaf Vasa with effigies in English alabaster of the king and two wives. The walls are painted with some of the events of his adventurous life.[111]

Restored to his birth-land in 1908 and deposited in this cathedral after original burial in England during 1772, are the bones of one of the strangest characters that Sweden ever produced, Emanuel Swedenborg. Son of a distinguished bishop, he early made a name as a scientist and his achievements were of no mean kind. He anticipated modern knowledge as to the planets of the solar system flying off from the mass of the sun and developing their own orbits and rotations. In England he knew Newton, Halley and Flamsteed, and on the Continent also he met the chief men of science of his day. Great practical assistance in the engineering line he was able to afford to Charles XII., including help in the construction of docks at Karlskrona (p. 164), and the transport of ships overland in the war against Norway in 1718. During the latter part of his life Swedenborg had visions and founded in London the Society of the New Church signified by the New Jerusalem, his ideas being much influenced by Gnosticism. How far he was qualified as a religious teacher is of course a matter of opinion. Emerson says that he is "disagreeably wise, and with all his accumulated gifts paralyses and repels."

Few spots of Europe surpass in interest these simple and unornamented monuments of all the ages of the northern world: earth mounds told of in saga story, cathedral carrying the loveliest style of central Europe to the far North, castle where kings dwelt of old, university that has influenced the thought of all mankind. Though the capital is moved to the outlet of the lake, where there rises a yet fairer town, this plain is the true centre of Swedish story from earliest to latest days.

As TegnÉr's Drapa, Englished by Longfellow expresses it:

So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.