[1] The skald was Thornbiorn Hornklofi; the lay was quoted by Snorri Sturluson in the Heimskringla; it was Englished by Henry Wheaton, History of the Northmen (1831).

[2] One thing very much to his credit the Heimskringla lets us know: "Whensoever swift rage or anger fell on him, he held himself aback at first and let the wrath run off him, and looked at the matter unwrathfully."

[3] Or Streamsey, the isle of streams, on which Thorshavn stands.

[4] Faereyinga Saga, XXX.-XXXI.

[5] All these details are taken from the CLIII. Chapter of the Saga of Olaf the Holy, being part of the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson (p. 54), done into English out of Icelandic by William Morris and EirÍkr MagnÚsson.

[6] All the places described in this work, except St. Petersburg, are Lutheran, but see p. 195.

[7] Other derivations have been suggested, but the traditional one appears by far the most satisfactory.

[8] Of which the best known is Iona.

[9] Dicuil, the Irish chronicler, was greatly impressed by the long Arctic days of summer.

[10] Libellus Islandorum, VI. 1.

[11] It is printed in full in Origines IslandicÆ, by Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell, an extremely useful work, to which I am greatly beholden.

[12] An excellent account of the constitution of the Republic is given in James Bryce's Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 1901.

[13] Njals Saga, translated by Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L.

[14] The lower house is elected by Icelandic males, aged over twenty-five, paying 8kr. a year in direct taxes, who are their own masters—a rather restricted suffrage—the upper house is partly nominated, partly chosen by the lower.

[15] Landnama-bok, VI. 1.

[16] ib. XIV., 13.

[17] Cristne Saga, VIII. 8.

[18] Liber Islandorum, X., 3.

[19] Egils Saga, 50.

[20] Eyrbyggja Saga, 49.

[21] Thorlaks Saga, Epilogue and XI., 1. He was never recognised as a saint in Rome, but that did not in the least affect the reverence felt for him in Iceland.

[22] Joans Saga, II., 1.

[23] ib. VII., 3.

[24] The saga distinctly says that the pope approved of the consecration; it would be interesting to know whether this can be corroborated. At that time, as is well known, the clergy were in fact very frequently married in Northern Europe, but it was always papal policy to prevent it.

[25] Joans Saga, XI., 3.

[26] Mr. St. John Hope, to whom I have shown a photograph of the alabaster retable, says it is certainly of English origin.

[27] Joans Saga, XIII., 3.

[28] After leaving the Orkneys or Shetlands, the vessel would touch at one or more ports in the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England.

[29] By an old chronicler quoted, but not named, by C. A. Vansittart Conybeare in his Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions, 1877.

[30] It is extremely interesting to find so eminent a French antiquary as C. Enlart seeking to revive the theory that the famous Round Tower at Newport, R.I., was a church erected by the Norse. See Revue de l'Art ChrÉtien, Sept.-Oct., 1910. I cannot help feeling, however, that the balance of probability leans heavily against this view.

[31] I have never seen the Alaska sea-coast; the deep bays and arms of Nova Scotia, lovely as they are, only mildly recall some of the tamest of Norwegian seascapes.

[32] The district of which Nidaros or Trondhjem is the centre.

[33] He was Pope Adrian IV., but the Dictionary of National Biography suggests a doubt as to his name having been Nicolas Breakspear at all.

[34] See p. 31. The title of this diocese is still attached to that of the Isle of Man, but the southern islands are the same as the Isles attached to the Scottish Diocese of Argyll.

[35] A very interesting account of the foundation of this distant bishopric is given in Graenlendinga ThÁttr, a work that gives us a peep of Greenland in the twelfth century after nothing has been heard of the colony for a hundred years. It is printed in Origines IslandicÆ, Vol. II. See p. 38. The first bishop for Greenland was consecrated by Archbishop Auzur, of Lund.

[36] "That was a great minster, and wrought strongly of lime, so that it might scarce be got broken when Archbishop Eystein let take it down" (Heimskringla, Vol. 3, Ch. XXXIX.). All my citations from the Heimskringla are from the translation by Morris and MagnÚsson, except the lay at the beginning of the first chapter.

[37] The corona is very rich. Clustered pillars, with arches divided by shafts and closed by stone screens, sustain the triforium, whose two-light openings have large carved caps and varied tracery, and the clearstorey with tall lancets. The dome-vault, which rises above, is steadied perhaps, but hardly supported, by very thin flying buttresses of rounded unconstructive form. The surrounding aisle has the richest of mural arcading and little chapels open from it to east and north and south.

Into the east end of the quire a large arch opens from the corona itself, and a small one each side from the aisle. The quire is almost all rebuilt, pillars clustered or octagonal deeply fluted, with huge carved caps, sustain triforium, clearstorey and vaulting of character not dissimilar to those of the corona. The general effect is extremely fine, and one is reminded a little of Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh and again of Lincoln Angel Quire. The corona recalls the similar feature at Canterbury, but is very much more beautiful.

The most remarkable feature of the nave is the long and unbuttressed west front, 120 feet in extent. Two tiers of arches, dating from about the year 1300, still remain; there is no division of nave or aisle or tower, but three of the lower arches are pierced by doors, the others are divided by shafts. The upper arches do not correspond with the lower ones, than which they are much smaller; they are trefoil-headed and by corbels converted into niches. The general effect is a little like that of the west front of Wells, but not to any very striking extent.

The cathedral is entirely detached, but a short distance to the south, forming barracks and a military museum to-day, are some remains of the L-shaped Palace of the Archbishops, displaying Romanesque and early pointed windows.

[38] Used for Anglican services.

[39] Trondhjem is connected with the interior by some of those superbly made roads for which Norway is so justly famed. They rest upon about four feet of stonework, the pieces diminishing upwards so far as size is concerned. The smaller streams are frequently spanned by arches of hard granite or other rock so neatly cut that no mortar need be used. Sometimes the road itself is cut in the living rock of the hills. The engine sheds are quite a feature of the city, and railways run southward to the new capital by the valleys of Gula and Glommen and past Hamar on its lake, also eastward into Sweden, among the mountains and the lakes. And at a place called Hell the latter line branches northward to Sunnan, near the head of Trondhjem Fjord.

[40] Heimskringla, Story of Harald the Hardredy. Ch. LX.

[41] ib. Ch. CIV.

[42] Heimskringla, Tale of Sigurd Jerusalem-farer. Chs. XXXIV., XXXV.

[43] Unbuttressed massive walls of stone surround a five-bayed nave with aisles, and chancel with north chapel, both round-apsed. The chapel opens to chancel and aisle by doorways rather than arches. The low clearstorey is lighted only on the south, over the east bay of the nave rises a tower that forms a lantern. The nave arcades have thick round pillars with the simplest caps; the chancel is vaulted at a much lower level than the wooden roof of the nave. The inside is very striking.

[44] It is difficult, in reading over the play, to understand by what mental process Nora's preposterous conduct in leaving husband and children on the very vaguest of quests can be justified or even palliated. Ibsen merely professed to point out the hardships endured by women treated as dolls, the remedy for such social evils he did not essay to prescribe. Some of his most charming works, such as Dame Inger of Östraat, deal with Norwegian history.

[45] Ch. XXVII.

[46] Origines IslandicÆ, Vol. I., p. 318.

[47] Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times, by Oscar Montelius.

[48] Close to Vossevangen is a building very similar to this one, but much more interesting, both from its still standing where its builders wished, and from its greater size; it also seems rather earlier in date than the stabbur re-erected at BygdÖ, and was probably built about 1300. It is called the Finneloft, and is locally believed to be the oldest wooden building in Norway that was not a church. The basement is of slate stone, roughly walled, instead of, as at BygdÖ, timber-work resting on big stones. The first floor in both is framed of flattened horizontal beams, dovetailed to fit at the corners; but at the Finneloft there are little passages at the sides occupying the space which at BygdÖ is merely covered by the overhanging of the upper storey. This stage in both cases is walled with thick boards, placed vertically and overlapping each other. The roofs are of flattish pitch and in the pleasant manner of the North simple patterns are carved on doorpost and lintel and beam. The little side passages and the manner in which the horizontal beams are often mortised into the vertical remind one very much of Chinese carpentry, an impression greatly strengthened by the far more obvious resemblance that Norwegian Stavekirkes bear to Chinese temples. (See title-page.)

[49] This remarkable little building, like several others of its class, consists of nave with aisle all round, aisled chancel with apse and an open cloister girdling the structure. The interior is lofty and dark, pillars, walls and roof all of timber. The three roofs, of cloister, aisle, and clearstorey, rising one above another, are increased to six by a turret-like structure that rises in three stages from the middle of the nave roof. The effect produced is singularly like that of a small Chinese temple, especially as queer objects like dragons project diagonally from the corners of the ridges. The cloister part seems far more suited to China than to Norway. In England there is a stavekirke at Greensted, near Ongar, supposed to have been erected in 1013 as a resting-place for the body of St. Edmund. The side walls are built of oak-trunks, but it is as plain as it could possibly be.

[50] Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf the Holy, Ch. XI.

[51] In his first volume to the Political History of England, edited by Hunt and Poole.

[52] L. M. Larson. Canute the Great, and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age. 1913.

[53] It is doubtless largely for this reason that Adam sometimes writes rather from the Danish point of view. The Icelandic Sagas are as free from bias as any history works in the world.

[54] The quire has but a single bay with a round apse, there are transepts, there is a nave of seven bays. At the west end this is flanked by towers and an aisle girdles the structure from one tower and back to the other, running all round the apse—for the transepts, which no longer project, are reduced very largely to sections of the aisles. In the sacristy may be seen remains of the arch between the south transept and the eastern chapel which extended it before it was cut back.

The interior is very striking from the unusual and pleasing combination of white and red. Bricks are exposed where are shafts and at the edges of the arches; white plaster covers walls and vaults. Many of the arches are round, but pointed ones are always used for the plain quadripartite vaulting. The windows are all single, some in groups of three, but they are numerous and wide enough to make the building extremely light. The blindstorey (triforium) is open to the church by arches about the same size as those that communicate with the aisles. Round the apse these two tiers of arches rest on shafts of granite, elsewhere stone is very sparingly used for capitals and a few other details. The blindstorey, itself vaulted above the vaulting of the aisles, forms a passage the whole way round the church, a groined gallery on two pillars carrying it from tower to tower, and wooden balconies across the transepts. (These look like sixteenth century work; can they have been erected when the transepts were cut back, perhaps at the Reformation?) By means of a simple archway over a road the blindstorey also communicates with the old Bishop's Palace to the eastward. The clearstorey has no passage along its windows, but round the apse there is an extra arcade between it and the blindstorey, which greatly improves the effect.

The quire and apse with the central space and one bay of the nave are higher in floor-level than the rest of the church, and underneath is a crypt whose vaulting rests on a row of square columns, and whose small windows open to the aisles.

Some of the fittings are extremely beautiful Renaissance work, especially the reredos with folding wings. This, it is said, a Dutch skipper was trying to smuggle through the Sound; on being detected he placed on it a ludicrously low value, hoping that the duty might thus be extremely light. Unfortunately, however, the Danish authorities preferred to purchase the work at the figure that its too clever owner had named. The worrying resourcefulness of customs house officials is no new thing.

[55] The earliest that exists was built in 1384 by Bishop Ulfeld, who hallowed it to St. Laurence; the vaulting springs from little grotesque heads, and there are some beautiful wall paintings. In fact, many such have survived throughout the cathedral. Joining it on the west is another little square chapel, erected 1464, hallowed to St. Brita (p. 195). Here is some really beautiful old woodwork, and one of the wall paintings shows us a green devil writing. Westward it joins the north porch. Touching the south porch on the other side of the nave is the large chapel to the Three Holy Kings, erected 1459-64. A much older granite shaft with details of Byzantine character stands in the centre to support the vault which elsewhere rests on ancient corbels. Foliage and figure paintings cover vault and walls, and there are two sumptuous Classic Renaissance monuments to Christian III. (1533-59) and Frederic II. (1559-88). The former was chiefly responsible for the Danish Reformation, but neither king has so large a place in history as the columned canopies and numerous figures of their marble monuments might seem to imply. On the north side of the church Christian IV. (p. 132) built a fair chapel with star vaulting (whose character is indicated on the plan), resembling that of one bay in the sacristy. It is an interesting specimen of Gothic, dated 1615, the iron grill screen 1620, and the light streams in through two large four-fold windows, whose tracery is formed by the mullions intersecting, a common form in English work of that day, which is found also in a few of the oldest churches of Virginia. These are the only windows in the cathedral that are not single lights except the double ones in the upper stages of the western towers, which are later than the lower parts. The tall taper spires, copper-sheathed and nearly round, were added by the same king; they are a distinct improvement on those of the cathedral at LÜbeck, which they rather resemble, and an ornament to the whole countryside.

The great Chapel of Frederick V. (1746-66) is cross-shaped with a huge dome rising above; there are pilasters against the walls, and two columns (all with Ionic caps) separate it from the wide vestibule which joins the church. It is lighted from high up, and is a very fine thing in itself, though hopelessly out of keeping with the cathedral. (It was built after the death of the king whose name it bears, p. 135.)

[56] Rural Denmark and Its Lessons. 1911.

[57] This is at Lyngby, about seven miles from Copenhagen. Near the museum are the Agricultural College and an experimental farm.

[58] The Danish West Indies are St. Thomas, St. John and Santa Cruz, just east of Porto Rico. No country in the Polar regions extends much further north than Greenland.

[59] What remained of Axelhus was destroyed in 1740, when Christiansborg Palace was erected to gratify a whim of the German Queen, Sophia Magdalena of Kulmbach-Bayreuth. This structure was burned down in 1794 to be replaced by the palace burned in 1884, which was built in 1828 from designs by Hansen. The Rigsdag met there.

The present citadel, protected by water and grass banks, buried in trees which hang over the moats, and dominated by a windmill, is on the Sound at the other end of the Amager channel. Most of the grass-grown rampart walls (near which was Andersen's Warton Almshouse) that surrounded the town and connected with the citadel have been removed, as Copenhagen had spread far beyond them, and they had become entirely out of date.

[60] Fergusson is most unkind in his references to Danish Renaissance buildings, particularly this structure, "of which the inhabitants of Copenhagen pretend to be proud."

[61] Trinity Church, of which this observatory is architecturally at any rate the tower, is a really noteworthy specimen of seventeenth century Gothic. Tall pointed windows pierce the walls along the sides and round the apse; octagonal pillars sustain the high-ribbed vault with painted bosses. There is no clearstorey, and the effect within is as striking as it is simple.

[62] Hans Andersen. Brahe did not accept the Copernican system, though he first noticed the variations in the motions of the moon, and has hardly been excelled as a practical astronomer. He died in the service of the Emperor at Prague, 1601.

[63] Practically forming part of the same design as the Amalienborg, and admirably completing it, is the Frederiks Kirke, which raises a great dome behind a Corinthian portico to the height of over 260 feet. Its construction dragged on from 1749 to 1894. The view from the top passes that from the Round Tower.

[64] But while interest in the past, far more widespread than in most other countries, has done very much to bring objects of interest to the National Museum, England has been incomparably more happy than Denmark in preserving for generations yet to come the buildings of mediÆval and Renaissance days (p. 125).

[65] English education, in some ways excellent, attaches far too little importance to stimulating the imagination. I once met a very intelligent Cornishman who had been through the schools of his native county with credit, and could speak interestingly on many subjects, but he had never even heard of King Arthur. That is anything but an isolated instance.

[66] Nor is it well to forget that the main reason for their great success is that the Danes are sufficiently educated to co-operate, instead of deeming every neighbour a necessary rival. Both town and country benefit alike. The capital is provided with pure milk at about half the London prices by the Copenhagen Milk Supply Company, from which the very poor may have milk for their babies without money and without price.

[67] The church was designed by Hansen, and erected about a century ago. The general appearance of the neighbourhood will be greatly improved by the tall spire in the style of Wren, which Dr. Carl Jacobsen is giving, but the portico will be still further crushed. No one ever yet designed a Greek temple that would look well surmounted by a tall Christian steeple.

[68] All the figures were designed by Thorwaldsen, but some were finished by pupils. There is a reproduction of that representing Christ in the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore.

[69] Lady Wilde, Driftwood from Scandinavia, 1884.

[70] Knut the Holy (p. 118), dedicated to St. Alban his church at Odense.

[71] It is, of course, impossible that a work like the present should even refer to all the collections and interesting buildings in such a city as Copenhagen.

[72] The sound dues which the owners of the castle collected from all the ships that sailed by dated from Hanseatic days. For Sweden they were abrogated by treaty in 1645, for other nations they were commuted for money in 1857.

[73] E. C. OttÉ, Scandinavian History.

[74] It does not seem certain that the term Gothic was applied to architecture in contempt of mediÆval work. Evelyn in 1641 speaks of "one of the fairest churches of the Gotiq design I had seene," at a time when "Gothic" was used much as we employ "Teutonic" to-day. In 1713 Wren (Parentalia, a family biography by his son) says, "This we now call the Gothick manner of architecture so the Italians called what was not after the Roman style." The depreciatory use of the term seems first to occur in Dryden, 1695: "All that has not the ancient gust is called a barbarous or Gothique manner." So that it seems quite possible that Gothic architecture merely signified the style of the North of Europe as opposed to that of the South. Mallet (Northern Antiquities, translated from Introduction À l'Histoire de Dannemarc, 1770) refers to so many mediÆval "edifices wherein we can find nothing to admire but the inexhaustible patience and infinite pains of those who built them!"

[75] Helen Zimmern. The Hansa Towns; Story of the Nations.

[76] Only a few miles from Visby is the ruined monastery known as Roma Kloster.

[77] In a most interesting paper on the Walls of Visby read before the Royal Institute of British Architects, December 16, 1912, which I have found of much value.

[78] Another sea-tower is known as SilfverhÄttan from the material with which it was roofed in the very wealthy days of old.

[79] It finally became Swedish again in 1645.

[80] There are still some slight remains, but the greater part was carried away by Charles XI. for the building of Karlskrona in the seventeenth century.

In the grounds of the Burgomaster's House are some remains of the Kalfskinshuset, which seems to have been built originally in the early fourteenth century, the land being secured by making a calf's skin cover a fair area by cutting it into strings, much as was done with an ox-skin at Carthage. The owner of the ground when making the arrangement imagined he was only parting with about one square yard.

[81] Tour in Sweden, 1838.

[82] The main part is square, and the roughly vaulted roof is supported on four round arches that rest on square columns, placed close to the four corners. To the north and south and also to the west there project very shallow arms the same height as the rest. Over the western one and resting its corners on two of the large columns, rises a great square tower, three two-light windows aside in its upper stage. In the thickness of the walls there are stairs and galleries on three levels, whence varying views of the interior are gained. A comparatively low arch in the eastern wall opens to a small chancel, rib-vaulted and extended by a horseshoe apse. The details throughout are Romanesque of the plainest and the best, but the inspiration is clearly Byzantine. On a small scale the same sort of combination is attempted that La Farge has essayed in the great Cathedral of St. John at New York.

[83] The square nave and four pillars were preserved, but instead of being close to the corners the columns were so spaced that the nine compartments of the vaulting should be practically equal squares. The vaulting ribs or arches, three against each wall, now look into the roofless nave. Not quite in the centre of the middle one on the east a round arch opens into the roofless chancel with horseshoe apse. A two-bay chapel projects on the south, and westward is a huge oblong tower with stairways in the thickness of its north and southern walls.

[84] There is the same kind of oblong tower and the vaulting of the square nave rested on four octagonal pillars, which were placed near the corners of the walls. From a clustered respond in the chancel it is evident that there was a north chapel.

[85] This is a late Romanesque building whose nave vault rested on four fairly equally spaced pillars, and the strong wide tower opened by arches both to nave floor and to the space above the vault. An arch just pointed, resting on clustered responds, opens to the roofless chancel which has a square east end; buildings joined it north and south; that on the latter side was evidently a transeptal chapel.

Another square four-pillared late Romanesque nave was apparently that of St. Hans (Johans = John), but hardly a thing remains except a large and lofty chapel of later date with beautifully moulded corbels, in the north-east corner.

These square churches are extraordinarily interesting to the student of architecture from the fact that they display Byzantine forms exercising an influence on the development of Gothic in the far north of Europe. Unfortunately the new idea does not seem to have spread beyond the island, but it is full of suggestion for small town churches at the present day, especially where the site is awkward and cramped.

[86] The lower one just pointed, the upper round.

[87] There are a few British instances of Romanesque churches, square without and apsidal within. Such are the Oratory of St. Margaret in the Castle at Edinburgh, two chapels in Romsey Abbey, and one in the ruined Abbey at Shaftesbury. A Renaissance instance of the same thing exists in the Chapel of Clare College, Cambridge.

[88] It is a fine late Romanesque building, quite moderate in scale. For five bays extend nave and aisles, and the square chancel is flanked by small towers which become octagonal above the roof. (These are a characteristic German feature, and recall Trier or Mainz, but this Visby church has no resemblance to any existing building in LÜbeck.) Pillars of some variety with figure-and leaf-carved caps sustain the triple vault, nor is the centre carried higher than the aisles. The great south door, six times recessed with shafts both round and square, is a magnificent example of what in England is called Norman work. There are many such fine doorways in the town, but no other is as good as this. Rather later than the rest a great west tower was built, and on the northern side it has a gallery open by a rich arcade.

Extensive alterations and additions to the church were undertaken when men first began to build large traceried windows; they probably went on for long, but it may safely be assumed they were in progress about the year 1300. Most beautiful windows with foliated circles in their heads, not all alike, were pierced through the elder walls. A fair chapel was added west of south, adorned with pinnacles and gargoyles and statues and recessed carved door; clustered shafts hold up its vault. The climate doubtless caused it to open by a doorway, not arches, to the church. A tall addition was raised over the church with blindstorey arches and trefoil lancets in the clearstorey walls. It is a tempting hypothesis that it was intended to break through the central vault and to double the height of the nave, but C. Enlart is almost certainly right in saying: "These lofty halls above Scandinavian churches are sometimes habitable. The one which still rises over the nave of the church of St. Mary, now the cathedral, at Visby, had a chimney. It was the seat of the consulate of the LÜbeck merchants, to whom the church belonged" (Revue de l'Art ChrÉtien, Sept.-Oct., 1910). In the middle ages churches served for the most miscellaneous purposes, and meetings of all kinds were held in them. In much the same style two stages were added to each of the eastern towers. In later days Renaissance spires were added to all the three towers, the largest having a balcony all round. A canopied pulpit was set up in the church, which is dated 1684.

[89] At first sight the remains of Romanesque work are by no means clear, but the spacing of the pillars through the seven bays is exceedingly irregular, and on the south by the ruined cloister is an older chapel, the vault below quadripartite, above a tunnel. This church was finally consecrated, it seems, only in 1412, and it is apparently the only important mediÆval building which is subsequent in date to the raid of 1361. The tower stood at the west end till 1885, and then it had to be removed or it would have tumbled down.

[90] Square pillars, thirty feet in height, sustain the vaulting arches and fragments of the rough rubble vault. One of them has a shield inscribed "Iacob Chabba A." At the east end two pillars are octagonal for a change; at the west old Romanesque responds are used. On the north remains a newel stair that led, it seems, to pulpit, rood and roof. Along the same side are still the remains of the vaulted cloister of the friars.

[91] St. GÖran is of late twelfth century date, and the low chancel still retains its vault, rising from corbels to a sort of dome at the top. From the keystone of the chancel arch started the vault-supporting arches that ran down the centre of the nave and rested on two pillars, round and square. Tall round-arched windows pierce the walls; there are twin west doors and three high gables mark the sky.

[92] Heimskringla; Story of the Ynglings, Ch. II.

[93] Story of the Ynglings, Chs. X. & IX.

[94] Story of the Ynglings, Chs. XII. & XIII.

[95] ib., Ch. XL.

[96] Story of the Ynglings, Ch. LXXVI.

[97] Preface to the Heimskringla. Presumably there was a transition period.

[98] The Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times, by Oscar Montelius. Englished by Rev. F. H. Woods, 1888.

[99] There is a ghost story about the dead men in an Icelandic howe in the Tale of Thorstan Oxfoot. Printed in Origines IslandicÆ. Vol. II., p. 585.

[100] Story of the Ynglings, Ch. XIV.

[101] Story of the Ynglings, Ch. XVIII.

[102] This is certainly not the real derivation of the term. Morris and MagnÚsson suggest that it may be "land of ten hundreds." Snorri was wrong in his belief that it meant "Tithe-land."

[103] Story of the Ynglings, Ch. XXIX.

[104] However, Horace Marryat, One Year in Sweden, 1862, tells us that when in 1803 Hultersta Church was destroyed there were discovered "two pagan altars of sacrifice, fitted with chimney-pipes, still containing ashes and bones of animals, bricked up when the building was adapted to Christian worship."

[105] Monumenta Hist. Vet. UpsaliÆ, 1709, by E. Benzelius.

[106] Within there are interesting fittings both of mediÆval and Renaissance date; including a carved reredos of the thirteenth century. There are the graves of Fornelius, chaplain to Gustavus Adolphus and of another pastor, named Celsius, who died in 1679. His grandson, of thermometer fame, is commemorated by a tablet.

[107] There are women students as well as men.

[108] The present building is a little later than his time, an interesting early pointed structure, partly of brick and partly of granite. Saddle roof tower, nave and aisles of five bays with transepts small and low. Brick arches and piers are partly cut into mouldings and clustered shafts, while angel paintings over the rib-vaulted roof have been restored with care.

[109] There is a nave of seven bays and a quire of four, each with aisles and outer chapels, the western towers being the full width of both; each transept is of two bays and aisleless, the apse is three-sided with ambulatory and five radiating chapels, themselves apsidal. The corresponding chapels of Notre Dame, no less than thirteen in number, are not apsidal except the central one (though they usually are in other great French Gothic churches), but they were not built at the time Upsala was erected. In the case of Notre Dame the nave has two more bays and the quire one more, while the chapels, which were additions, are beyond the outer aisles. The length of Notre Dame is 430 feet, that of Upsala 360 feet, while across the transepts the French cathedral measures 165 feet, the Swedish 135 feet. The building of Upsala Cathedral was not finished till the fifteenth century, and the traceried windows in aisles and clearstorey are rather poor. The arches of the nave chapels are without caps, those of the quire in the same position are rather elaborate, and there is some good carved work over doors and round the ambulatory, though hardly in the same class with that at Notre Dame. The church was largely rebuilt in 1885-93, when the tall metal spires replaced rather ugly eighteenth century turrets and the central flÈche was built. Both inside and outside look very new. The former is largely covered with modern paintings, and nearly all the fittings are recent except the beautiful Renaissance canopied pulpit by Tessin (p. 203).

(I am unable to agree with Fergusson in thinking this "an extremely uninteresting church." T. Francis Bumpus, in his beautiful work, The Cathedrals and Churches of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, 1908, comes to the conclusion that French influence in the design was small, and that it is to be attributed to a Swedish architect under very strong North German influence, but his reasons do not seem very conclusive.)

[110] Hale Lectures, 1910; The National Church of Sweden, by John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury. They were delivered in St. James' Church, Chicago, and grew out of the proposals for the union of the Swedish Church with the Anglican Communion. When in 1593 the Swedish Church in council at Upsala accepted the Augsburg confession of faith, the succession of Bishops and the ancient order were zealously guarded. Nevertheless, clergy ordained by the superintendents or Bishops of the other Scandinavian Churches (who have no succession from the mediÆval Church) are admitted to Swedish altars.

[111] Among other monuments, which are not very remarkable, is one with a marble effigy to John III. (d. 1592), which was executed in Italy.

[112] Rambles in Sweden and Gothland, by "Sylvanus," published 1854.

[113] The names of the nine islands are these: Stadsholmen (on which was the original settlement), Kungsholmen, Riddarsholmen, Helgeandsholmen, Skeppsholmen, Kastellholmen, Stromsborg, Djurgarden, Beckholmen. They are of extremely unequal size. The greater part of the city is on the mainland north and south, and the suburbs spread on to an indefinite number of other islands.

[114] Many fine structures all over Sweden were erected by the same architect. Most of them were country seats for the nobility, who desired to house worthily the magnificent collections of art that had been the spoils of the Thirty Years' War, the only lasting monument for Sweden of the victories of her armies of old.

[115] Tour in Sweden in 1838.

[116] Within the effect is very splendid with many halls, a fine chapel and bewilderingly numerous suites of apartments. The great marble stair on the east with double columns in the three orders on the three levels is a magnificent feature. The inlaid floors and carved panelling, the really well-planned decorations, largely in white and gold, with ceiling paintings by Jacques Fouquet and others, all give the impression that the mansion has for generations been the home of people of culture and taste. The traditional absence of formality in the Swedish court is displayed by the way in which the public are admitted to the comfortable private rooms, where copies of the English Graphic lie about and unbound Tauchnitz editions provide an admirable selection of English literature. A forest of horns and other trophies of sport in the billiard room, in fact to a great extent the whole atmosphere, suggest a large English country house.

[117] Miss M. E. Coleridge wrote a novel about him called The King with Two Faces.

[118] In his excellent work, Sweden and the Swedes (one of them his wife), 1893. He was U.S. Minister to Sweden and Norway.

[119] The National Museum, among many other things including a gallery of pictures old and new, possesses a collection of prehistoric antiquities rivalled only by that of Copenhagen. In the Humlegard (Botanic Garden) is a bronze statue of LinnÆus in the centre of flower patterns; it also contains the Riks-Bibliotek, or National Library, among whose treasures are the Latin Codex Aureus, and the Gigas Librorum, one of whose illuminations is a huge coloured figure of the devil—spoils of the Thirty Years' War.

[120] According to one legend the women of WÄrend gained their ancient privilege of inheriting on equal terms with men by similar service against the Danes. The privilege is now extended all over the country.

[121] He was crusading in Finland when his son Valdemar, first of the Folkungar Line, was chosen king by the Council on the collapse of the House of Sverker.

[122] Quoted by OttÉ.

[123] A nobler English saint (who with St. Peter shares the dedication of the Anglican Church in Stockholm), was one of the earliest and best Apostles of the Faith in the Swede-realm. Coming once to the borders of a lake, St. Siegfrid (or Sigurd) saw a bright vision of glistening angels, and vowed to raise a church where the cathedral of Vexio now stands.

[124] Rhyming Chronicle, quoted by OttÉ.

[125] There is a statue to him just east of the church.

[126] It is often called the cathedral, but incorrectly. Stockholm is extra-diocesan, forming a sort of "enclave" administered by the Pastor Primarius and his consistory; necessary episcopal functions are performed by the Archbishop of Upsala. The church, originally about the same age as the Riddarsholmskyrka, was largely reconstructed about 1736, the chancel being removed, and the outer aisles apparently built. The square clock-tower has pilasters, the church has Classic buttresses, cornices, etc., but there are some mongrel-decorated windows. The interior is still largely mediÆval, and most impressive from the wide dimensions—eight bays and five aisles all vaulted at the same level. The brick pillars are mostly clustered, the central vault has most ornate brick ribs, and the aisle roofs have remains of old paintings. There are really splendid Renaissance fittings, including a lovely Augsburg carved wooden reredos, stone font with Runic patterns dated 1514, two canopied thrones, carved pulpit and organ case, some fine tombs and tablets with several effigies and one canopy, besides a knight on horseback larger than life slaying a dragon.

[127] Canon Wieselgren, of GÖteborg (Gotenburg), was the main leader in the triumphant temperance movement, aided by the great chymist, Berzelius, who has a statue in the little Stockholm park that bears his name. Gustavus III. in 1775 had made distilling and selling spirits a Government monopoly, yielding a chief item of revenue. When this was abolished and distilling became absolutely free to all the state of Sweden became much worse than before.

Eventually drinking was reduced to its present very moderate dimensions by confining the manufacture and sale of spirits to companies which may make what profit they can on everything else, but are only allowed five per cent. on drinks, any surplus being handed over to the local authority for providing such things as lectures, sports, excursions and libraries. As in America, districts may vote to be entirely "dry" if they prefer. This arrangement, generally called the Gotenburg system, with local variations, is in force over most of Norway and Sweden. GÖteborg adopted it in 1865, and Stockholm followed in 1877. Beer is outside the arrangement.

[128] Judging from the Lapp huts outside museums and the ordinary Zulu kraal of Natal, the African natives are the cleaner of the two races.

[129] Not far from Skansen is the Hasselbacken Restaurant, whose cooking is unsurpassed in France.

[130] Both thistle and globe artichokes are extensively cultivated for the markets of Stockholm. Tobacco is another crop very often to be seen; its growth is no new industry, it is mentioned by Laing in 1838, and he says it is used largely for snuff. Mere frames of poles on wheels serve for the ingathering of harvest.

[131] The Land of the Midnight Sun, by Paul Du Chaillu, 1881. The author was French by birth.

[132] The form Russia was not known till the end of the seventeenth century. In Great Blakenham Church, Suffolk, there is a monument of 1645 to a London merchant, named Swift

"Honoured abroad for wise and just,
Aske the Russe and Sweden theis."

[133] The original authority for Ruric and his viking followers settling at Novgorod in 862 is the Chronicle of Nestor, a monk of Kiev, who died about 1114. There is a very good account of early Russian history in W. R. Morrill's Russia in the Story of the Nations.

[134] Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf Tryggvison, Ch. VII.

[135] ib., Ch. XXI.

[136] Saga of Olaf the Holy, Ch. CXCI.

[137] ib., Ch. CXCVIII.

[138] Heimskringla, Saga of Harald the Hardredy, Ch. XVI.

[139] My friend, A. Rothay Reynolds, author of My Russian Year, has very kindly elicited for me the information that these relics no longer exist. Although the sagas give no hint of any difference of religious views between Russians and Norse (p. 233), the bones of St. Henry were evidently insulted at St. Petersburg, where they might with more appropriateness have been shrined.

[140] The present building was erected about 1733 from designs by Tressini, an Italian architect. It is a rather commonplace Classic church whose details are extremely poor, though the interior has a certain impressiveness from the tall pillars supporting the roof, for the usual galleries are not there. Over the windows are cherubs. Over the eastern octagon rises a little onion dome. The tower that surmounts the western front is crowned by the gilded needle spire which soars, out of all proportion to the church, no less than 364 feet into the air, sometimes most impressively catching the light of the setting sun while all is in shadow around.

[141] This house contains the very distorting panes of glass that were the earliest to be made in Russia. The only large buildings in the city that Peter ever saw are part of the University and an adjacent palace of MenshikÓf, now a school of cadets. Both are stucco and uninteresting; one bears the date 1710.

[142] So that it is rather curious that this building should be on the whole the most perfect reproduction of an Italian church in St. Petersburg. There is nothing Russian about it; just an ordinary cruciform domed Renaissance building, 255 feet long.

The other large monastery in St. Petersburg, Smolni, by the bend in the river, has buildings surrounding two huge courts which are made very pleasant by trees. The first, which is much the larger, has a covered cloister all round and a high dome in each corner. The centre of the western side is left open to expose to the street the chief faÇade of the church, which, like the Chantry at Winchester, stands detached in the centre of the court. It is a simple and impressive Italian Renaissance building, 245 feet long, with pilasters on two levels and in the centre a lofty tower, open to the top within. The interior is all white, some marble shafts giving relief to the eternal plaster. Designed by Rastrelli in 1734, the structure follows the type of his native country, except that five great onion domes mark as Russian the top of the tower. The faults of the building are glaring enough, but Fergusson seems rather severe in his remark: "It would be difficult to find in Europe anything so really bad as this."

[143] Its dimensions are 731 by 584 feet. There are three stories with pilasters on two levels, but the architrave bends over each of the upper windows, and the consequent loss of the horizontal line that is of the very essence of Classic architecture, is absolutely fatal to the effect. Several halls and other chambers within are extremely magnificent, but the most glorious columns of marble support gilded capitals of plaster, and there is a good deal to justify Fergusson's observation about a man of taste recoiling in horror from such a piece of barbaric magnificence. The chapel is frankly Russian with the customary onion dome. The figures of the eikonastasis stand out detached, though the Eastern Church as a rule holds anything more than very slight relief as a breach of the Second Commandment. This little building contains some priceless relics, hands of the Baptist and of the Virgin, a fragment of the body of St. George, a piece of the true cross, a picture painted by St. Luke! There are relics nearer our own day in the chamber where the second Alexander died in 1881, after being wounded by the bomb (p. 253). His empty study chair, the books as he left them on the table, the few coins in his pocket when he went out for the last time, his unfinished cigarette, his coat thrown over the back of a chair, the couch on which he passed away.

[144] This structure is more Greek in design, the architect was Baron Leo von Klenze, of Munich, and it was erected about the middle of the nineteenth century. There are two large courts, but one of them is divided by the great staircase which rises between two rows of magnificent grey marble columns that support the plaster ceiling; other portions have a very rich effect from the profusion of coloured marbles and the beautiful inlaid wood flowers which almost give the impression of mosaic. The lower storey forms a very complete museum, beginning with ancient Egypt and including many interesting things from different parts of the Russian Empire. The upper storey, which is higher and much better lighted, houses the famous collection of pictures.

[145] The reason was that he wanted his people to look more European, but the Russians held a good deal of the oriental view of the sacredness of beards, and some preserved their cut-off hairs to be buried with them and enjoyed in the next world.

[146] This characteristic seems even more apparent among Russians in the Far East than in their own capital.

[147] The original Patriarchates were those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. That of Moscow dated from the sixteenth century.

[148] Each portico has eight huge monolithic columns of red Finland granite, 56 feet high (bases and Corinthian caps of bronze), to support the sculptured tympanum, whose figures are in high relief, and is approached by a stately flight of steps. Except on the east there are splendid portals with grape patterns in stone and beautiful relief bronze doors. The side porticoes are deeper than the others and flanked by turrets for bells. The plan of the church is a simple oblong, 305 by 166 feet. Only four great windows admit light to the interior (except for a single one behind the altar opening into the eastern portico and those of the lantern dome), one on each side of the lateral porticoes. These naturally dwarf the design very much. A rather poorly planned circular colonnade and iron dome rise through the roof, resting on four huge piers in the church. The arrangement of the vaulting is made to suggest the ordinary cruciform plan, with a dome in each corner. The general effect is extremely rich from the magnificent shafts of malachite and lapis lazuli, and the lavish decorations of inlaid marble and mosaic, but nothing can redeem the poverty and commonplace character of the design. Fergusson calls the building a cold and unsatisfactory failure, and says there is not a week's thought in the whole design from pavement to dome cross. This it is not easy to deny, but there is much to redeem the failure, particularly in the splendour of the material.

The other Renaissance buildings of the city are very numerous, and in many cases very large, but for variety they cannot be said to be remarkable. Of the foreign architects successively employed, not one was really good, and decidedly the best buildings on the whole are those designed by Russians who had mastered the principles of the foreign style. One of the most successful, by Varonikin, was erected at the worst possible period—the early nineteenth century. It is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, an Italian building, 257 feet long. Inviting colonnades extend from the north transept to the street, forming a vast semi-circle and suggesting the piazza of St. Peter's. The portico of the transept appears in the centre with the dome rising above, and, material apart, this is one of the most successful things of its kind ever built. Nave and south transept also have porticoes. The columns throughout the building are in pairs, and within the effect is most striking from the granite columns that uphold the great entablature, the lofty flat roofs of the aisles, and the way in which the lantern rises from arches which terminate the tunnel vaults of the four arms. Much of the eikonastasis is of silver, and the floor is marble inlaid.

[149] The centre of gravity of the rearing horse is successfully preserved in the right place by making the metal almost solid at the back and quite thin in front. In November, 1770, Rev. J. C. King wrote to Lord Macartney: "I mean the great stone on which Falconet's statue is to be placed.... It is ... arrived at St. Petersburg: the Empress had earrings made of it for herself."

[150] In some parts of the city the soil is of a stiff blue clay.

[151] The bomb-splintered brougham in which he took his last drive is preserved unrepaired among the Imperial carriages.

[152] Surmounting the central octagon and its four corner turrets, the west tower, and the three eastern apses. Some are covered with extraordinary raised glazed tiles, the central one greatly resembling a turban. The interior is both simpler and better than the outside; four columns with round arches sustain the central lantern, and round arches open to apses and tower. The floor is of marble inlaid; walls, piers and vaults are covered with the most beautiful mosaics in prevailing colours of blue and gold, saints in four tiers varied by landscapes and lilies. The old church furniture displayed in the Museum of Alexander III. seems to show Byzantine forms getting more and more modified by increasing Tatar influences. In the same place are some very interesting paintings by Russian artists. Verestchagin has the place of honour, and is represented by some excellent pictures of battle scenes, some displaying the French at Moscow. The picture of Abram and Isaac done by Reutern with his left hand has faces that could hardly be better.

[153] The Honourable Russia Company is still patron of four of the English churches in Russia. "A faint legal trace of the ancient privileges of the Muscovy Company survives in the extra-territorial character belonging for marriage purposes to the churches and chapels formerly attached to their factories in Russia."—Sir Courtenay Ilbert.

[154] Quoted by Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, 1884.

[155] One room has pictures of several hundred Russian maids dwelling in different parts of the Empire, another has living plants trained up the walls as part of its permanent decoration, ornate chandeliers hang from ceilings, pictures and tapestry cover the walls, and, as at Solomon's Court, everything is splashed with gold.

[156] Several such may be seen among the Imperial carriages in St. Petersburg.