Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Approaching, or rather descending, to Christiania, though the weather continued a little cloudy, my eyes were charmed with the view of an extensive undulated valley, stretching out under the shelter of a noble amphitheatre of pine-covered mountains.  Farm houses scattered about animated, nay, graced a scene which still retained so much of its native wildness, that the art which appeared seemed so necessary, it was scarcely perceived.  Cattle were grazing in the shaven meadows; and the lively green on their swelling sides contrasted with the ripening corn and rye.  The corn that grew on the slopes had not, indeed, the laughing luxuriance of plenty, which I have seen in more genial climes.  A fresh breeze swept across the grain, parting its slender stalks, but the wheat did not wave its head with its wonted careless dignity, as if nature had crowned it the king of plants.

The view, immediately on the left, as we drove down the mountain, was almost spoilt by the depredations committed on the rocks to make alum.  I do not know the process.  I only saw that the rocks looked red after they had been burnt, and regretted that the operation should leave a quantity of rubbish to introduce an image of human industry in the shape of destruction.  The situation of Christiania is certainly uncommonly fine, and I never saw a bay that so forcibly gave me an idea of a place of safety from the storms of the ocean; all the surrounding objects were beautiful and even grand.  But neither the rocky mountains, nor the woods that graced them, could be compared with the sublime prospects I had seen to the westward; and as for the hills, “capped with eternal snow,” Mr. Coxe’s description led me to look for them, but they had flown, for I looked vainly around for this noble background.

A few months ago the people of Christiania rose, exasperated by the scarcity and consequent high price of grain.  The immediate cause was the shipping of some, said to be for Moss, but which they suspected was only a pretext to send it out of the country, and I am not sure that they were wrong in their conjecture.  Such are the tricks of trade.  They threw stones at Mr. Anker, the owner of it, as he rode out of town to escape from their fury; they assembled about his house, and the people demanded afterwards, with so much impetuosity, the liberty of those who were taken up in consequence of the tumult, that the Grand Bailiff thought it prudent to release them without further altercation.

You may think me too severe on commerce, but from the manner it is at present carried on little can be advanced in favour of a pursuit that wears out the most sacred principles of humanity and rectitude.  What is speculation but a species of gambling, I might have said fraud, in which address generally gains the prize?  I was led into these reflections when I heard of some tricks practised by merchants, miscalled reputable, and certainly men of property, during the present war, in which common honesty was violated: damaged goods and provision having been shipped for the express purpose of falling into the hands of the English, who had pledged themselves to reimburse neutral nations for the cargoes they seized; cannon also, sent back as unfit for service, have been shipped as a good speculation, the captain receiving orders to cruise about till he fell in with an English frigate.  Many individuals I believe have suffered by the seizures of their vessels; still I am persuaded that the English Government has been very much imposed upon in the charges made by merchants who contrived to get their ships taken.  This censure is not confined to the Danes.  Adieu, for the present, I must take advantage of a moment of fine weather to walk out and see the town.

At Christiania I met with that polite reception, which rather characterises the progress of manners in the world, than of any particular portion of it.  The first evening of my arrival I supped with some of the most fashionable people of the place, and almost imagined myself in a circle of English ladies, so much did they resemble them in manners, dress, and even in beauty; for the fairest of my countrywomen would not have been sorry to rank with the Grand Bailiff’s lady.  There were several pretty girls present, but she outshone them all, and, what interested me still more, I could not avoid observing that in acquiring the easy politeness which distinguishes people of quality, she had preserved her Norwegian simplicity.  There was, in fact, a graceful timidity in her address, inexpressibly charming.  This surprised me a little, because her husband was quite a Frenchman of the ancien régime, or rather a courtier, the same kind of animal in every country.

Here I saw the cloven foot of despotism.  I boasted to you that they had no viceroy in Norway, but these Grand Bailiffs, particularly the superior one, who resides at Christiania, are political monsters of the same species.  Needy sycophants are provided for by their relations and connections at Copenhagen as at other courts.  And though the Norwegians are not in the abject state of the Irish, yet this second-hand government is still felt by their being deprived of several natural advantages to benefit the domineering state.

The Grand Bailiffs are mostly noblemen from Copenhagen, who act as men of common minds will always act in such situations—aping a degree of courtly parade which clashes with the independent character of a magistrate.  Besides, they have a degree of power over the country judges, which some of them, who exercise a jurisdiction truly patriarchal most painfully feel.  I can scarcely say why, my friend, but in this city thoughtfulness seemed to be sliding into melancholy or rather dulness.  The fire of fancy, which had been kept alive in the country, was almost extinguished by reflections on the ills that harass such a large portion of mankind.  I felt like a bird fluttering on the ground unable to mount, yet unwilling to crawl tranquilly like a reptile, whilst still conscious it had wings.

I walked out, for the open air is always my remedy when an aching head proceeds from an oppressed heart.  Chance directed my steps towards the fortress, and the sight of the slaves, working with chains on their legs, only served to embitter me still more against the regulations of society, which treated knaves in such a different manner, especially as there was a degree of energy in some of their countenances which unavoidably excited my attention, and almost created respect.

I wished to have seen, through an iron grate, the face of a man who has been confined six years for having induced the farmers to revolt against some impositions of the Government.  I could not obtain a clear account of the affair, yet, as the complaint was against some farmers of taxes, I am inclined to believe that it was not totally without foundation.  He must have possessed some eloquence, or have had truth on his side; for the farmers rose by hundreds to support him, and were very much exasperated at his imprisonment, which will probably last for life, though he has sent several very spirited remonstrances to the upper court, which makes the judges so averse to giving a sentence which may be cavilled at, that they take advantage of the glorious uncertainty of the law, to protract a decision which is only to be regulated by reasons of state.

The greater number of the slaves I saw here were not confined for life.  Their labour is not hard; and they work in the open air, which prevents their constitutions from suffering by imprisonment.  Still, as they are allowed to associate together, and boast of their dexterity, not only to each other but to the soldiers around them, in the garrison; they commonly, it is natural to conclude, go out more confirmed and more expert knaves than when they entered.

It is not necessary to trace the origin of the association of ideas which led me to think that the stars and gold keys, which surrounded me the evening before, disgraced the wearers as much as the fetters I was viewing—perhaps more.  I even began to investigate the reason, which led me to suspect that the former produced the latter.

The Norwegians are extravagantly fond of courtly distinction, and of titles, though they have no immunities annexed to them, and are easily purchased.  The proprietors of mines have many privileges: they are almost exempt from taxes, and the peasantry born on their estates, as well as those on the counts’, are not born soldiers or sailors.

One distinction, or rather trophy of nobility, which I might have occurred to the Hottentots, amused me; it was a bunch of hog’s bristles placed on the horses’ heads, surmounting that part of the harness to which a round piece of brass often dangles, fatiguing the eye with its idle motion.

From the fortress I returned to my lodging, and quickly was taken out of town to be shown a pretty villa, and English garden.  To a Norwegian both might have been objects of curiosity; and of use, by exciting to the comparison which leads to improvement.  But whilst I gazed, I was employed in restoring the place to nature, or taste, by giving it the character of the surrounding scene.  Serpentine walks, and flowering-shrubs, looked trifling in a grand recess of the rooks, shaded by towering pines.  Groves of smaller trees might have been sheltered under them, which would have melted into the landscape, displaying only the art which ought to point out the vicinity of a human abode, furnished with some elegance.  But few people have sufficient taste to discern, that the art of embellishing consists in interesting, not in astonishing.

Christiania is certainly very pleasantly situated, and the environs I passed through, during this ride, afforded many fine and cultivated prospects; but, excepting the first view approaching to it, rarely present any combination of objects so strikingly new, or picturesque, as to command remembrance.  Adieu!

LETTER XIV

Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of a people—or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside, giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste.  Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than Gothic barbarism.  Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they were erected; but size, without grandeur or elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.

The same thought has struck me, when I have entered the meeting-house of my respected friend, Dr. Price.  I am surprised that the dissenters, who have not laid aside all the pomps and vanities of life, should imagine a noble pillar, or arch, unhallowed.  Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion; else why do the beauties of nature, where all that charm them are spread around with a lavish hand, force even the sorrowing heart to acknowledge that existence is a blessing? and this acknowledgment is the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity.

The argument of convenience is absurd.  Who would labour for wealth, if it were to procure nothing but conveniences.  If we wish to render mankind moral from principle, we must, I am persuaded, give a greater scope to the enjoyments of the senses by blending taste with them.  This has frequently occurred to me since I have been in the north, and observed that there sanguine characters always take refuge in drunkenness after the fire of youth is spent.

But I have flown from Norway.  To go back to the wooden houses; farms constructed with logs, and even little villages, here erected in the same simple manner, have appeared to me very picturesque.  In the more remote parts I had been particularly pleased with many cottages situated close to a brook, or bordering on a lake, with the whole farm contiguous.  As the family increases, a little more land is cultivated; thus the country is obviously enriched by population.  Formerly the farmers might more justly have been termed woodcutters.  But now they find it necessary to spare the woods a little, and this change will be universally beneficial; for whilst they lived entirely by selling the trees they felled, they did not pay sufficient attention to husbandry; consequently, advanced very slowly in agricultural knowledge.  Necessity will in future more and more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be cultivated, or the farm loses its value; there is no waiting for food till another generation of pines be grown to maturity.

The people of property are very careful of their timber; and, rambling through a forest near Tonsberg, belonging to the Count, I have stopped to admire the appearance of some of the cottages inhabited by a woodman’s family—a man employed to cut down the wood necessary for the household and the estate.  A little lawn was cleared, on which several lofty trees were left which nature had grouped, whilst the encircling firs sported with wild grace.  The dwelling was sheltered by the forest, noble pines spreading their branches over the roof; and before the door a cow, goat, nag, and children, seemed equally content with their lot; and if contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best secured by ignorance.

As I have been most delighted with the country parts of Norway, I was sorry to leave Christiania without going farther to the north, though the advancing season admonished me to depart, as well as the calls of business and affection.

June and July are the months to make a tour through Norway; for then the evenings and nights are the finest I have ever seen; but towards the middle or latter end of August the clouds begin to gather, and summer disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of autumn—even, as it were, slips from your embraces, whilst the satisfied senses seem to rest in enjoyment.

You will ask, perhaps, why I wished to go farther northward.  Why? not only because the country, from all I can gather, is most romantic, abounding in forests and lakes, and the air pure, but I have heard much of the intelligence of the inhabitants, substantial farmers, who have none of that cunning to contaminate their simplicity, which displeased me so much in the conduct of the people on the sea coast.  A man who has been detected in any dishonest act can no longer live among them.  He is universally shunned, and shame becomes the severest punishment.

Such a contempt have they, in fact, for every species of fraud, that they will not allow the people on the western coast to be their countrymen; so much do they despise the arts for which those traders who live on the rocks are notorious.

The description I received of them carried me back to the fables of the golden age: independence and virtue; affluence without vice; cultivation of mind, without depravity of heart; with “ever smiling Liberty;” the nymph of the mountain.  I want faith!

My imagination hurries me forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the disappointments I am threatened with; but reason drags me back, whispering that the world is still the world, and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration and contempt.  But this description, though it seems to have been sketched by a fairy pencil, was given me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy seldom appears to run away with him.

A law in Norway, termed the odels right, has lately been modified, and probably will be abolished as an impediment to commerce.  The heir of an estate had the power of re-purchasing it at the original purchase money, making allowance for such improvements as were absolutely necessary, during the space of twenty years.  At present ten is the term allowed for afterthought; and when the regulation was made, all the men of abilities were invited to give their opinion whether it were better to abrogate or modify it.  It is certainly a convenient and safe way of mortgaging land; yet the most rational men whom I conversed with on the subject seemed convinced that the right was more injurious than beneficial to society; still if it contribute to keep the farms in the farmers’ own hands, I should be sorry to hear that it were abolished.

The aristocracy in Norway, if we keep clear of Christiania, is far from being formidable; and it will require a long the to enable the merchants to attain a sufficient moneyed interest to induce them to reinforce the upper class at the expense of the yeomanry, with whom they are usually connected.

England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undermine the feudal system.  But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.

Farewell!  I must prepare for my departure.

LETTER XV

I left Christiania yesterday.  The weather was not very fine, and having been a little delayed on the road, I found that it was too late to go round, a couple of miles, to see the cascade near Fredericstadt, which I had determined to visit.  Besides, as Fredericstadt is a fortress, it was necessary to arrive there before they shut the gate.

The road along the river is very romantic, though the views are not grand; and the riches of Norway, its timber, floats silently down the stream, often impeded in its course by islands and little cataracts, the offspring, as it were, of the great one I had frequently heard described.

I found an excellent inn at Fredericstadt, and was gratified by the kind attention of the hostess, who, perceiving that my clothes were wet, took great pains procure me, as a stranger, every comfort for the night.

It had rained very hard, and we passed the ferry in the dark without getting out of our carriage, which I think wrong, as the horses are sometimes unruly.  Fatigue and melancholy, however, had made me regardless whether I went down or across the stream, and I did not know that I was wet before the hostess marked it.  My imagination has never yet severed me from my griefs, and my mind has seldom been so free as to allow my body to be delicate.

How I am altered by disappointment!  When going to Lisbon, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness, and my imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in glowing colours.  Now—but let me talk of something else—will you go with me to the cascade?

The cross road to it was rugged and dreary; and though a considerable extent of land was cultivated on all sides, yet the rocks were entirely bare, which surprised me, as they were more on a level with the surface than any I had yet seen.  On inquiry, however, I learnt that some years since a forest had been burnt.  This appearance of desolation was beyond measure gloomy, inspiring emotions that sterility had never produced.  Fires of this kind are occasioned by the wind suddenly rising when the farmers are burning roots of trees, stalks of beans, &c, with which they manure the ground.  The devastation must, indeed, be terrible, when this, literally speaking, wildfire, runs along the forest, flying from top to top, and crackling amongst the branches.  The soil, as well as the trees, is swept away by the destructive torrent; and the country, despoiled of beauty and riches, is left to mourn for ages.

Admiring, as I do, these noble forests, which seem to bid defiance to time, I looked with pain on the ridge of rocks that stretched far beyond my eye, formerly crowned with the most beautiful verdure.

I have often mentioned the grandeur, but I feel myself unequal to the task of conveying an idea of the beauty and elegance of the scene when the spiry tops of the pines are loaded with ripening seed, and the sun gives a glow to their light-green tinge, which is changing into purple, one tree more or less advanced contrasted with another.  The profusion with which Nature has decked them with pendant honours, prevents all surprise at seeing in every crevice some sapling struggling for existence.  Vast masses of stone are thus encircled, and roots torn up by the storms become a shelter for a young generation.  The pine and fir woods, left entirely to Nature, display an endless variety; and the paths in the woods are not entangled with fallen leaves, which are only interesting whilst they are fluttering between life and death.  The grey cobweb-like appearance of the aged pines is a much finer image of decay; the fibres whitening as they lose their moisture, imprisoned life seems to be stealing away.  I cannot tell why, but death, under every form, appears to me like something getting free to expand in I know not what element—nay, I feel that this conscious being must be as unfettered, have the wings of thought, before it can be happy.

Reaching the cascade, or rather cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections.  The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye produced an equal activity in my mind.  My thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery.  Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose with renewed dignity above its cares.  Grasping at immortality—it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me; I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.

We turned with regret from the cascade.  On a little hill, which commands the best view of it, several obelisks are erected to commemorate the visits of different kings.  The appearance of the river above and below the falls is very picturesque, the ruggedness of the scenery disappearing as the torrent subsides into a peaceful stream.  But I did not like to see a number of saw-mills crowded together close to the cataracts; they destroyed the harmony of the prospect.

The sight of a bridge erected across a deep valley, at a little distance, inspired very dissimilar sensations.  It was most ingeniously supported by mast-like trunks, just stripped of their branches; and logs, placed one across the other, produced an appearance equally light and firm, seeming almost to be built in the air when we were below it, the height taking from the magnitude of the supporting trees give them a slender graceful look.

There are two noble estates in this neighbourhood, the proprietors of which seem to have caught more than their portion of the enterprising spirit that is gone abroad.  Many agricultural experiments have been made, and the country appears better enclosed and cultivated, yet the cottages had not the comfortable aspect of those I had observed near Moss and to the westward.  Man is always debased by servitude of any description, and here the peasantry are not entirely free.  Adieu!

I almost forgot to tell you that I did not leave Norway without making some inquiries after the monsters said to have been seen in the northern sea; but though I conversed with several captains, I could not meet with one who had ever heard any traditional description of them, much less had any ocular demonstration of their existence.  Till the fact is better ascertained, I should think the account of them ought to be torn out of our geographical grammars.

LETTER XVI

I set out from Fredericstadt about three o’clock in the afternoon, and expected to reach Stromstad before the night closed in; but the wind dying away, the weather became so calm that we scarcely made any perceptible advances towards the opposite coast, though the men were fatigued with rowing.

Getting amongst the rocks and islands as the moon rose, and the stars darted forward out of the clear expanse, I forgot that the night stole on whilst indulging affectionate reveries, the poetical fictions of sensibility; I was not, therefore, aware of the length of time we had been toiling to reach Stromstad.  And when I began to look around, I did not perceive anything to indicate that we were in its neighbourhood.  So far from it, that when I inquired of the pilot, who spoke a little English, I found that he was only accustomed to coast along the Norwegian shore; and had been only once across to Stromstad.  But he had brought with him a fellow better acquainted, he assured me, with the rocks by which they were to steer our course, for we had not a compass on board; yet, as he was half a fool, I had little confidence in his skill.  There was then great reason to fear that we had lost our way, and were straying amidst a labyrinth of rocks without a clue.