Norwegian Life Part 3

CHAPTER VI

THE LITERATURE OF SWEDEN

Swedish literature is sublime and magnificent, like its history and its scenery; it is simple and glad, as well as sad, like the lives of its people. One of the great days in Sweden, or at least in Stockholm, is the celebration, on the 26th of July, of the anniversary of the birth, more than a century and a half ago, of the national poet Bellman.

His songs are as household words throughout the land. To the Stockholm born they speak of their daily life and surroundings, of the green isles and shady banks of the Malar, the flowery woods of Haga, the smiling park of Dijurgarden. Burlesque scenes of the life of the people, street tragedies, drinking bouts, and country junketings; broad humor and Nature's philosophy; lively fancies and exquisite landscape painting--such are the themes of his song, which from one generation to another has held the heart of the people spellbound.

Every man, woman, and child knows his favorite ditties by heart, has sung or hummed them in moments of joy or sorrow. For his song is both joyful and sad. His joy is the joy of the simple hearted, his gladness a Dionysian gladness, the very enjoyment of existence; his sadness that of sympathy with suffering humanity, of anguish at the evanescence of life and happiness. His fancy oscillates between constant extremes and ever-recurring contrasts. It makes of his song, as Tegner has so aptly defined it, "a sorrow decked in roses." Bright, gay, enraptured, full of sunshine and glamour, like the summer day around Stockholm, it is traversed by a strain of melancholy like a smile through tears, the laugh which conceals a sob. There is symbolism and there is parody in his rustic figures, but they are so living, so real, they appeal so strongly to the innermost feelings, that they seem the embodiment of one's thoughts. His pictures are like those of the Dutch painters: every trait in the rustic scene tells the life-story of some humble existence.

It is this characteristic which has made the poet appeal so powerfully to the minds of the people. He seems to see with their eyes and feel with their hearts, and to have experienced all the vicissitudes of their own life. And yet he eminently reflects his own time, the gay, the light-hearted Gustavian era, with its cla.s.sical fancies and rococo tastes. Venus and Bacchus, the Nymphs and the Dryads, Hebe and Amor are mixed up incongruously with the homely scenes of Scandinavian life. His Dutch pictures a.s.sume then a Watteau-like coloring of extraordinary effect, as fancy and contrast enhance the sharp outlines of his figures and give their vitality still greater relief. They are so lifelike and so various that the whole of the every-day life of Sweden, and more especially of Stockholm, of the eighteenth century, is unrolled before our eyes. It is said that if every other book descriptive of the period were to fail, his verses would suffice to inform us how the middle cla.s.ses then lived, thought, and felt.

Around the poet's monument--his bust in bronze on a white marble column--there gather, on the anniversary of his birth, the crowds who love him and love his song. Every heart beats high as the Bellman choirs burst forth in turn into the well-known melodies, composed or adapted by the poet himself to his words, and sung by him to the accompaniment of his lute. And song alternates with enthusiastic orations, addressed to the crowd by improvised orators, teeming with quotations of well-known lines. It is an orgy of Bellman's verse, such as the Stockholmer specially delights in. Bellman's songs generally form a sequence, a continuous chain of lyrical romance. His _Fredman's Epistles_ are a sort of epic cycle of lyrics. This is a form often adopted by Swedish poets. We find it in Tegner's _Frithiof's Saga_, in Runeberg's _Sayings of Sergeant Stal_, and in the works of other poets. It is a question, however, whether even by these Master Singers, in their more elaborate conceptions and genial flights of poetry, Bellman has ever been surpa.s.sed. In lyric power and vivid realism, his popular ditties are unrivaled.

The next to incarnate the genius of the Scandinavian race was Tegner.

His love of brave deeds and reckless adventure and his exaltation of the man of action above the man of thought are typical. His heroes, fair-haired and blue-eyed, stalwart and vigorous, relying on strength and longing for adventure, tender-hearted and contemplative when not aroused to violent action and bent on deeds of valor, personify the national ideal. His whole vision of life is Scandinavian, bright and vivid, with a tinge of melancholy. Tegner was, with Geijer and Ling, the first to adopt national subjects, to use the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore in their poetry, in opposition to the cla.s.sical themes and the h.e.l.lenic mythology, until then exclusively in vogue in the poetical field.

Geijer was a romantic by nature, in politics as well as in literature, but he was above all an ardent Scandinavian, opposed to exotics, and pa.s.sionately devoted to the great traditions of the past, a hero-worshiper, an enthusiast, and a _Goth_. The Goths were members of a society formed to revive the old national manners and customs, the freedom of the age of the Vikings, and the ardor of the heroes of Walhalla. Their organ was the _Idun_, an exclusively literary publication. In a letter written by Geijer from Stockholm to his _fiancee_, then living in the country, dated March 7, 1811, he says: "We have formed a society which meets nearly daily. We talk, smoke, and read together about Gothic Viking deeds. We call each other by Gothic names, and live in the past." And Anna-Lisa, his future wife, writing to a friend, says: "My _fiancee_ 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." Ling, who also belonged to this society, was a fervent admirer of the Eddas and Sagas, of the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore. Tegner, despite his cla.s.sical education and h.e.l.lenic turn of mind, was an ardent Norseman in feeling and instinct. "Go to Greece for beauty of form," he would say, "but to the North for depth of feeling and thought." He scorned alike the metaphysical subtleties of French philosophy and the moonshine heroics of German romanticism. But he was at one with Geijer and Ling in the desire to make Scandinavian heroes and myths the subjects of poetry.

The result of the movement was _Frithiof's Saga_, by Tegner, Geiger's _Viking_, and Ling's heavy epics of Walhalla warriors. But Geijer and Ling alone had followed out the theory in all its consequences. Their heroes were simply _Eddic_, of their time, in spirit and in thought.

Ling's realism went so far that his Northern G.o.ds and warriors, "everlastingly killed but to revive again," were deemed "pork-eating and mead-drinking yokels." They were soon forgotten, and Ling himself is best known as the inventor of gymnastic exercises on scientific principles, an art now practiced all the world over as "Swedish gymnastics." Geijer, whose _Viking_ gave a pure and true picture of Viking life seen in its own light, was himself disappointed. He abandoned poetry and took to history, though Tegner says of him that if he had devoted himself to poetry, he would have surpa.s.sed all his contemporaries. As historian he rose to the highest rank; and he is perhaps the greatest historian Sweden has ever produced.

Tegner had modernized his hero and heroine in _Frithiof's Saga_. He gave them Viking garbs and surroundings, but modern thoughts and sentiments. By the more copious development of the inner life, and by placing woman on an equality with man, love had received a higher meaning, and his poetry unfolded inspirations unknown to the ancient world, such as melancholy and the love of nature. He did no more than Tennyson did later in making of King Arthur the type of an English gentleman. Frithiof and Ingeborg were representatives of the national ideal. The success of his poem was immense. It had a lyrical intensity which set the Scandinavian mind vibrating. Unmindful of the anachronism, youth gloried in the n.o.ble disinterestedness of Frithiof, in his generosity to his rival, his melancholy philosophising and his high-minded love, as well as in his daring and his love of adventure.

Manly b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaved in sympathy with him, and women's tears flowed at the story of Ingeborg's love. As the poet Snolisky has said--

From the highest to the lowest throughout the land The poet had created a bond of union.

In every home, within every school door, His verses were read and conned and loved, And Sweden's youth felt its cheek glow At Frithiof's courage and manly mood.

While Ingeborg's love to the maiden's dream Gave life and thoughts to her weaving and sewing.

In his _Children of the Lord's Supper_, so beautifully translated for us by Longfellow, Tegner conveyed a true image of Sweden's religious life. The scene in the country church, decked out with flowers and evergreens for the solemn ceremony, the rustic boys and girls bowing and curtseying as they make their responses before the a.s.sembled congregation, and the att.i.tude and words of the patriarchal pastor are all true to life. The somewhat declamatory tone of the oration is not less consistent with the character of the rural parson, the trend of Swedish religious thought, and the solemnity a.s.sociated with these occasions.

It was in his patriotic war-songs, however, that Tegner roused the greatest enthusiasm. His _Svea_, his dithryambic declamation _King Charles_, and his _Scanean Reserves_, sent a thrill through young and old. When _Svea_ was read at the Swedish Academy, which awarded the poem its gold medal, the friends and opponents of Tegner alike were moved to undisguised admiration. In breadth and intrinsic power, and in the beauty of its rythm, which seems to echo the clash of arms and the marching of ma.s.ses, this poem is unequalled in Swedish literature.

Tegner's name soon became known far beyond the limits of the lands where his language is understood. His works were translated into almost all modern tongues, so that some fifty different translations of the whole or parts of his poems now exist in eleven European languages.

A new feature was introduced into Swedish poetry by Runeberg. Although born of Swedish parents, he was brought up in Finland, his mind being nurtured in the traditions and the mixed racial influences of his new fatherland. Thus he breathed a new spirit, and a new inspiration, drawn from the realities of life, into poetical fiction. He was a realist in the best sense of that much-misused word. He sought his ideals _in_ life, instead of outside of it and above it in imaginary creations. He saw nature such as it is, with all its faults and sublimities, and, loving it with a true poet's devotion, he painted it simply and faithfully, without aiming at enn.o.bling it, but seeking and finding what there is of native dignity in its humblest expressions.

In his lyrical poem, _The Sayings of Sergeant Stal_, he portrayed incidents of the wars of Finland fighting by the side of Sweden in 1809, when the country was conquered by Russia. It was a series of war pictures, a collection of hero types, painted in living colors, and breathing the most ardent patriotism.--Simple tales told by a sergeant of his recollections of the war, they deal with real personages, most of them drawn from the humblest stations in life, described just as they really lived and spoke and acted. Yet throughout the story of their simple acts and thoughts there swept a breeze which kindled the blood, roused the emotions; and fired the patriotic feeling of Runeberg's contemporaries. In poetic depth and beauty of language, as in style and conception, and in their departure from all the prevailing ideas and methods of romanticism, these lyric tales were a revelation. They cla.s.sed their author at once as in the line of true-born poets. The works of Runeberg, although properly belonging to the literature of a country politically no longer one with Sweden, have from the nature of their subjects and the ident.i.ty of languages, always been looked upon in Sweden as common property, and they have certainly exercised a powerful influence on Swedish thought and letters. Some of his songs, set to music, are to this day sung as national anthems.

The last champion of dying romanticism was a sort of universal genius, eccentric, _bizarre_, unequal, a spirit out of harmony with itself, but gifted with the most wonderful imagination and power, K.J.L.

Almquist. His life was as checquered as his writings were various. In turn a clergyman, a schoolmaster, a journalist, and an exile, he has written volumes on almost every conceivable subject, from fiction, poetry, and history, to lexicography, pedagogy, and mathematics. His stories, published in two series, under the common t.i.tle of _The Book of the Hedgerose_, show powers of conception, imagination, and description such as are only to be found in Edgar Allen Poe. His was an essentially revolutionary temperament. He disdained all authority, and cavilled at all moral restraints. He was in constant rebellion against society, its accepted laws and precepts, and vented his moral skepticism in bitter sarcasm and cutting paradoxes. "But two things are white in this world," he would say, "innocence and a.r.s.enic." The coupling of the two, however, nearly proved fatal to him. He was involved in a mysterious affair of poisoning, in which the victim was a dunning creditor. He was suspected of having given him a.r.s.enic by way of ridding himself of the debt which he could not pay. No proof of the fact could be adduced, and the crime was never brought home to him; but public opinion was against him, and fearing or distrusting the justice of his country, he fled from it ere the case was tried. He wandered over Europe and America, trying his hand at everything, and died, a literary wreck, in Germany, longing, and yet not daring, to return to his country. Lately, the Society of Authors in Stockholm, judging that his crime was "not proven," while his literary merits were great beyond all doubt, undertook the rehabilitation of his memory. His remains were brought back from Lubeck, and buried in Stockholm with "literary" honors, among others a remarkable oration delivered at his grave by Verner von Heidenstam, in which he was styled a martyr in the great cause of the emanc.i.p.ation of thought.

Whatever may be thought of his moral character, Almquist was a great thinker and a wonderfully versatile writer. The last of the romantics, he has been called a realist, a psychologist, and a symbolist, and he was certainly something of all these, half a century before the terms became battle-cries in literature, and came to designate literary schools. One critic has made him out to have been a sort of forerunner of Ibsen, while another calls him the most modern of cla.s.sics. His genius placed him in advance of his age in most things. He was the first in the list of those Scandinavian revolutionists who have laid out new landmarks in the field of thought, and introduced new methods in fiction and the drama.

Liberalism, which spread like wildfire over Europe after its outbreak in the July Revolution in France, reached Sweden soon after. It was represented in literature by such men as Sturzen-Becker, Wetterbergh, and Strandberg, writing under the names of Orvar Odd, Uncle Adam, and Talis-Qualis; Blanche, who wrote stirring novels in the style of Eugene Sue; Hjerta, and the staff of the then newly founded _Aftonbladet_, who were revolutionizing the press. The press was beginning to enlist the highest literary capacities of the country, gradually becoming what it now is, a purveyor not only of news but of thought, and a leader of opinion in literature and art, in science and philosophy. In poetry, liberalism found its echo in the verses of Malmstrom, Nybom, Schlstedt. In fiction its banner was carried by three women, two of whom--well known in England and America--Frederica Bremer, whose novels portrayed the home life of the middle cla.s.s, Emelie Carlen, who idealized the fishermen and sea-faring folk of the West Coast, and Sophie von Knorring, who gave rather stilted descriptions of life in aristocratic circles. All three were very productive, and their novels count by dozens. Yet they failed to sustain the reputations their first works had won for them.

Verner von Heidenstam is now foremost among the writers of his country. His early works, _Endymion, Hans Alienus_, and others, raised him to this rank, and his last two productions, _The Carolines_ (the companions of Charles XII) and _Saint Brigitt_, have more than confirmed it. _Hans Alienus_ was, like Goethe's _Faust_, a work of deep philosophical research into the problems of existence, the purpose and significance of life, set forth in symbolical images and explained by allegory. In the _Carolines_, a series of short stories connected by the red thread of history which runs through them, he gives a new conception, but a wonderfully graphic and striking one, of Charles XII and his times. It is an epic, and yet so living and so human a picture of the wild, iron-souled, quick-tempered hero, whose "eyes flew around like two searching bees," and whose will was like the steel of his sword; who had the heart of a lion and a "woman's hatred for women," but for whom men shed their blood freely; who "never grieved over a misfortune longer than the darkness lasted,"

and was "best loved by those who tried to hate him." His pictures are drawn by a master hand, and with the intuitive coloring of genius.

_Saint Brigitt_ carries us back to medieval Sweden. Here, too, the picture is lifelike, centered round the struggle of a high-minded woman, who makes everything bend to her stern rule of holiness, her thirst for sanct.i.ty, as Charles XII did to his inexorable policy and thirst for dominion.

The psychological and the historical novel, the latter, in its modern conception, akin to the former, since it is a study of the psychology of historical characters and a historical epoch, is the form of fiction at present most in vogue. It is in this form that such writers as Tor Hedberg, Per Hallstrom, and Axel Lundegard have made their reputations. Tor Hedberg's romances embody profound a.n.a.lysis of the inner workings of the soul, of the secret motives which, more or less consciously, determine a man's acts. In this line he ventures on the most difficult psychological problems. In his _Judas_, a scriptural romance from which he has drawn a drama, he attempts to solve the darkest psychological enigma that has puzzled humanity, viz., to a.n.a.lyze the motives which led Judas to betray his Master and become the typical traitor. The character he draws of him is original and striking, and departs entirely from the accepted tradition. But bold and subtle as the theory is, it is far from convincing. His Judas is a dark, brooding spirit, fierce and inharmonious, divided between extatic love and admiration of his Master and inward irresistible forces of hatred and revolt: a double nature, thirsting for freedom and love, yet predestined to evil, and led by fearful secret impulses to the accomplishment of his destiny and the fulfilment of his mission, necessary to the scheme of salvation. He rushes blindly to his fate while struggling in vain to escape it. But in the very act of betrayal, while obeying the command: "What thou doest, do quickly,"

his better nature triumphs for one instant and he falls on the neck of his Master and embraces Him. It is the Judas kiss which betrays his Lord. The last look of Jesus, however, showed him that he had been understood and forgiven. The detestation of humanity to the end of the world will be his expiation, but that look of Jesus has freed him.

Woman, represented by writers like Ellen Key, Selma Lagerlof, Sophie Elkau, Alfhild Agress, Hilma Stanberg, and others, holds a high position in Swedish letters. Ellen Key is an essayist of virile power and argumentative breadth, of superior intellect and unfailing erudition. She is a fearless and unfailing champion of free thought, individualism, and woman's emanc.i.p.ation. As was said of Madame de Stael, her writings are "the most masculine productions of the faculties of woman." Selma Lagerlof occupies as a novelist a position of her own. Her style and her manner in fiction are unique. Symbolism and allegory are blended in it with the most realistic pictures of everyday life. She thinks in parables, and describes realities, and the realities convey the moral teachings of parables. With something of the peculiar power of George Eliot in the delineation of character, she makes each humble life preach some great moral truth. Her latest book, _Jerusalem_, is one of extraordinary fascination, created quite a sensation in Sweden, and places Selma Lagerlof quite among the foremost writers of the day.

It may in general be said of Swedish writers that they have a high idea of their calling. Few, if any, have accepted as their sole function the idealization of form. They hold mostly that the highest aim of art should be to teach and elevate, to destroy prejudice and conventionality, and indicate, in so far as it is possible, the solution of moral problems through the creative faculty of inspired productiveness. The wish to inculcate action, the energy that is born of enthusiasm, the chivalry that is inspired by high ideals and unselfish motives. Raised thus from the region of mere chronicles of human pa.s.sions, of woman's frailty and man's baseness, and exercising themselves with the political, social, and religious problems of the day, these works of imagination have become, alongside the Press, a powerful factor in the development of modern thought.[f]

CHAPTER VII

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN

Only for the past three years has Norway had an independent political life, and so few changes in local government have so far been made under the new king that it will be profitable, in this chapter, to take up the government and political life as it existed under the united Const.i.tutional Monarchy of Norway and Sweden. In fact, it is no different than at that time, except that each has its separate king.

In internal rule, the two countries were always separate, except in matters that pertained to the common weal of both. Thus, the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs had charge of the United Kingdoms, and, as previously stated, this was the rock on which the Union finally split.

The const.i.tution of Norway, like that of the United States, invests all power in the people, who are represented by their legislature and their judiciary, with the king as an executive to administer the laws pa.s.sed by the one, and enforce the decrees of the other. When the two houses of Parliament disagree upon a measure, they sit in joint session, when it requires a vote of two-thirds to enact it, and the approval of the king is necessary. He is also required to promulgate all the acts of the legislature. Many Norwegian statesmen a.s.sert that the king has no veto power, but merely temporary authority to suspend a law pending the action of the people. If three successive parliaments, after three successive elections, pa.s.s a bill in exactly the same terms, it does not require the sanction of the king when it is pa.s.sed the fourth time. Thus the people may exercise their sovereignty.

All edicts of the executive, all decisions of the court, and all resolutions of the legislature are proclaimed in the king's name, but the ministry is responsible to the legislature for the acts of the king, and if they are not approved, as in England, the ministry must resign and a new one be organized in sympathy with a majority of the parliament. The king may choose his own ministers, but they must represent the will of the people. They are called counsellors of state, are eight in number. Before the disunion, two of these eight counsellors were without portfolios, and resided alternately at Stockholm, while the other members presided over six executive departments in Christiania.

A record is kept of the meetings of the ministry by a permanent secretary, and the const.i.tution requires that each minister shall express his opinion upon all questions brought up for consideration.

He who remains silent is counted in the affirmative. No matter of business can be determined by the king without the advice of the ministry, unless an emergency demands a prompt decision, when he must take the responsibility of securing a ratification of his act. In the same manner the king may issue edicts of a provisional character in matters of commerce, finance, industrial activity, customs dues, police and military affairs during a recess of the parliament, subject to its approval within a limited time after rea.s.sembling.

The minister may act in the king's name in cases of emergency or during his absence from the country, subject to his approval.

These conditions were adopted in earlier times, when the Norwegian legislature sat only once in three years and some such power was necessary, but now that there are annual and often semi-annual sessions, and they have a king of their own residing always in Norway, it is very seldom necessary for the executive power to exercise such responsibility.

The king appoints all the officials of the executive part of the government, all the officers of the army and navy, and all the clergymen in the established church, but exercises this power through his ministers. Dissenting congregations are not subject to government control, and may choose their own clergymen, although the latter are required to register an oath of allegiance and a pledge to obey the laws of the nation and fulfill their duties with fidelity and conscientiousness.

The king is the head of the established church, which is the Lutheran.

He is also commander-in-chief of the army and navy, but can not increase or decrease the military establishment without the approval of the parliament. He has the right to declare war and conclude peace, but can not expend money for military purposes, not even for the national defense, without the consent of the legislature. The Norwegian const.i.tution is silent concerning his authority to conclude treaties with foreign powers, and the question has never been raised.

He conducts negotiations through his ministers and submits the result of their labors for the approval of parliament. He has the power to suspend the collection of customs duties temporarily until the parliament can meet to consider the matter, but it has very rarely been exercised.

The parliament is called the storthing, and is composed of one hundred and fourteen representatives, thirty-eight from the towns and seventy-six from the rural districts. It divides itself into two sections, known as the odelsthing and the lagthing. The members are elected for three years by an indirect and complicated system which is nearly the reverse of our own. The voters of each parish, which forms an election district, a.s.semble at a given place and time and select delegates to a convention which chooses their representatives in the storthing, and, when the storthing meets, its one hundred and fourteen members select one-fourth of their own members, generally the most experienced and distinguished men, to const.i.tute a senate, or upper chamber, called the lagthing, which exercises a sort of supervisory power over legislation.

The storthing sits for about six months every year. The members are paid $3 a day during the session and their traveling expenses. The presiding officer is chosen every four weeks, and can not succeed himself without an interval. The committees are appointed by a "selection committee" elected by ballot, and each committee chooses his own chairman. There is a rather novel rule requiring bills referred to committees to be a.s.signed for consideration to the several members in rotation. Any member may introduce a bill modifying the const.i.tution, but all other cla.s.ses or measures must proceed from the government and the members of the lower house. Members of the upper house, or lagthing, are not permitted to propose ordinary legislation, on the theory that they should remain unprejudiced so as to exercise a judicial revision. Thus, bills must originate in the odelsthing, which, having pa.s.sed them, sends them to the lagthing for its approval.

The financial officers of the government and the directors of the national bank are elected by the storthing, which appoints a committee every six months to revise and audit the accounts of officials who have to do with the disburs.e.m.e.nt or collection of money. When an irregularity or improper expenditure is discovered, the legislature is asked to decide whether the minister in charge of the department shall repay the sum from his own pocket and repair the damage that has been caused by one of his subordinates.

In the same manner the storthing regulates all loans, on the theory that the money belongs to the people. The members of the ministry may be impeached by the odelsthing for a violation of the const.i.tution and tried before the lagthing and the supreme court.

The following eight executive departments are in charge of ministers:

1. For ecclesiastical matters and public instruction, which also has charge of charities, insurance companies, and matters relating to the relief of the people.

2. The department of justice.

3. The department of the interior, which has jurisdiction over everything that is not under the other departments.

4. The department of agriculture.

5. The department of public works.