Northern Antiquities/Chapter 1

by Paul Henri Mallet

CHAPTER I.

Denmark described, and the several countries subject to its crown, viz. Norway, Iceland, Greenland.

THE several countries, which compose the Danish monarchy, have seldom justice done them by the other nations of Europe. The notions entertained of them are not commonly the most favourable or true. This is owing to various causes. The situation of some of the provinces is so remote, that skilful travellers have seldom had occasion to visit them; Those who have pretended to describe them have been generally wanting in fidelity or exactness; Some of their descriptions are grown obsolete, so that what was once true, is no longer so at present; Lastly, such confusion and prejudices have been occasioned by that vague term the North, that we are not to wonder if Denmark has been thought slightly of by the southern nations. To correct these mistakes I shall lay before the Reader a faithful account of the present state of these countries: In which I shall be more or less diffuse in proportion as they are more or less known to foreigners, for whom this work is principally designed. And if the picture I draw, presents nothing very agreeable or striking, I dare at least promise that it shall be very exact and faithful.

Denmark is naturally divided into continent, and islands. Among the islands, the first that merits attention, as well on account of its size as fertility, is Zealand. In this isle is seated Copenhagen, the capital of the whole kingdom; which derives its name from its harbour^[1], one of the finest in the world. This city is built upon the very edge of that channel, so well known by the name of the Sound, and receives into its bosom a small arm of the sea, which divides Zealand from another isle of less extent, but of very agreeable situation, named Amac. Copenhagen, which is at present very strong, wealthy, and populous, hath continually improved in its dimensions and beauty ever since king Chriftopher of Bavaria fixed his residence there in the year 1443 but it owes its greatest splendor to the last reign, and that of the present king Frederic V, in which it hath been adorned with a palace worthy of the monarch who inhabits it, and with many stately buildings, as well public as private.

At some leagues distance towards the north, this channel, which washes the walls of Copenhagen, grows gradually narrower, being confined between the two opposite coasts of Zealand and Schonen, till it forms at length what is properly called the Passage of the Sound; one of the most celebrated and most frequented straits. in the world; and which opens the principal communication between the ocean and the Baltic. Elsenore, which is situated on the brink of the Sound, and defended by the fortress of Cronenberg, enjoys the ever-moving picture of a multitude of ships, which pass and repass, and come to pay their tribute to the king^[2]. About a league distant the opposite shore terminates the prospect in a very agreeable manner; and not far off, between the two banks, rises the little isle of Weme, famous for the observations of Tycho Brahe. Although the other parts of Zealand afford nothing so striking as this; the eye will find enough to entertain it every where else. Here are vast plains covered with a most delightful verdure, which springs earlier and continues longer than the southern nations would imagine. These plains are interspersed with little hills, lakes, and groves; and adorned with several palaces, many gentlemens seats^[3], and a good number of cities and towns. The soil, though light and somewhat sandy, produces a great quantity of grain, particularly of oats and barley: nor is it deficient in woods and pastures. Besides, the sea and lakes furnish this island with fish in such abundance, as might well supply the want of the other fruits of the earth in a country less fertile or less addicted to commerce.

But fertility is in a still more eminent degree the character of Funen, which is the second of the Danish isles in point of size, but the first in goodness of soil. This island rises higher than that of Zealand, and is separated from it by an arm of the sea, which, on account of its breadth, is called the Great Belt, to distinguish it from another smaller channel, that divides it from Jutland, and is called the Lesser Belt. Corn, pasture, and fruits grow plentifully in this island, which presents the most delightful appearance. In the middle of a vast plain stands Odensee, the capital of the province; and seven towns less considerable adorn the sea-coasts at almost equal distances.

The isles of Laland and Falstria yield not much in point of fertility to Funen, being both of them famous for their fine wheat: but the latter of these produces also fruits in such abundance, that one may justly call it the Orchard of Denmark. Amidst the multitude of lesser islands, that are scattered round the principal ones, there are few which do not fupply their inhabitants with necessaries, and even afford them an overplus for traffic. Langland hath plenty of fine corn-fields. Bornholm, Mona, and Samsoe have excellent pastures. Amac is found very proper for pulse, and is become a fruitful garden under the hands of those industrious Flemings, who were brought hither by queen Elizabeth, wife of Christian II. and sister of Charles V.

If we pass over to the provinces on the continent, we shall find new reasons to convince us, that Denmark plentifully supports its inhabitants, and is able to enrich even a numerous people. Jutland, the largest of these provinces, forms the head of that long peninsula, which is bounded by the ocean to the west, by the gulph of Categade and the Baltic to the east, and which opens a communication into Germany towards the south. From this province they carry into Norway a great part of the corn used in that kingdom; and hence are exported those thousands of head of cattle, which are every year brought into Holland and other countries. Here are also bred those Danish horses, whose beauty makes them so much sought after in all parts of Europe. If the inland parts are barren in some places, the coasts extremely abound with fish. This affords a resource so much the greater, as they increase and breed in the long bays, which run up into the country, in such a manner that almost all the inhabitants enjoy the benefit of the fishery. The gulph of Limfiorde in particular reaches almost from one sea to the other; and the fishing therein is so rich, that, after it has supplied the wants of the province, it constantly produces large quantities for exportation^[4].

Nature hath been no less indulgent to the southern part of this peninsula, which forms the dutchy of Sleswic. Although the inland parts of this country have large tracts of heath and barren fields, yet the fertility of its coasts, its advantageous situation between the ocean and the Baltic, the number and convenience of its harbours, and the large traffic which it carries on, have enriched many of its cities, and rendered it an agreeable and flourishing province^[5].

What I have said of the dutchy of Sleswic is pretty nearly applicable to the dutchy of Holstein. This province is in general rich, fertile, and populous^[6]. Fat and plentiful pastures; large and trading cities situate near together; coasts abounding in fish, and a large river^[7] which terminates the province towards the south, form its principal advantages^[8].

On the other side of the Elb, after crossing the country of Bremen, we find two small provinces, which have been long united to the crown of Denmark. These are the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, which are comprized within

the circle of Westphalia, and have received their names from their two principal cities.

The temperature of the air is nearly the same in the greatest part of these provinces, and, except in the north of Jutland, is much milder than their situation would incline one to believe, being rarely subject to very long or rigorous cold. To comprehend this, it will be sufficient to remind the reader, of this general observation, that countries surrounded with the sea, have their atmosphere loaded with vapours continually exhaling from it, which break and blunt the nitrous particles of the air, and soften its rigours. When the straits and gulphs, which surround the Danish islands, become frozen in very sharp winters, it is less owing to the prevalence of the frost there, than to the large flakes of ice, which are driven by the winds out of the northern seas, and are there assembled and united. The summer season commonly begins with the month of May, and continues till October: and during its continuance, the beauty of the country, the freshness and shortness of the nights, and the convenience of navigation in a country surrounded and crossed by the sea, easily repair and make the inhabitants forget the languors and interruptions, which winter causes in their business and amusements.

If travellers for the most part have not been very favourable in their accounts of Denmark, they have been still less tender of Norway. They have often confounded it with Lapland, and have given descriptions of its inhabitants, and their manners, which are hardly applicable to the savages of that country. The notion that is generally entertained of the extreme coldness of the climate here is no less unjust. It is true, that in a kingdom which extends thirteen degrees from north to south, the temperature of the air cannot every where be the same: accordingly the most northern parts of Norway, those which face the east, and which are not sheltered by the mountains from the fury of the north winds, are undoubtedly exposed to rigorous winters. But almost all that length of coast, which is washed by the sea towards the west, and which forms so considerable a part of Norway, commonly enjoys an air tolerably temperate, even in the middle of winter. Here are none of those “desolate regions, where Winter hath established his eternal empire, and where he reigns among horrid heaps of ice and snow,” as ignorance hath often led travellers, and a fondness for the marvellous induced poets to speak of Norway. It is seldom that a very sharp frost lasts there a fortnight or three weeks together; it rains frequently at Bergen in the midst of winter^[9], and the ports of Hamburg, Lubeck, and Amsterdam, are locked up with frost ten times for once that this city is so exposed. In short, this is an accident that doth not happen more than two or three times in an age. The vapours, which rise from the ocean, continually soften the sharpness of the cold; and it is only in the coasts of Iceland, Finmark, and Greenland, that are found those immense and eternal banks of ice, of which voyagers make such a noise, and which, when they are severed, may sometimes float along the coasts of Norway.

The greatest inconvenience to which this vast country is exposed, arises without dispute, from the inequality of the ground, from it’s being almost entirely covered with rocks and stones, and crost every way by high and large mountains, which render a great part of it wild and desert. There grow, notwithstanding, several sorts of grain in many of the provinces, as in the Uplands, the Ryfolke, Jederen^[10]; the rest which have not this advantage may easily be supplied from Jutland or the Danish islands, by means of the navigation. Various products, with which this country abounds, sufficiently compensate for that disadvantage.

The other nations of Europe cannot be ignorant that great part of the pitch and tar, of the masts, planks, and different sorts of timber, which are every where used, come from Norway. These articles alone would be sufficient to procure an easy competence for the inhabitants of the inland and eastern parts of this country. The western coast hath a resource not less rich or less certain, in the prodigious abundance of its fish. Cod, salmon and herrings are no where found in greater quantities. The Norwegians supply part of Europe with these; and this fruitful branch of commerce becomes every day more extensive by the care of a wife administration. The very mountains of this country, which at first sight, appear so barren, often conceal great riches in their bosoms. Some of them are intire quarries of fine marble, which the luxury of all the cities of Europe could never exhaust. In others are found jasper, crystal and some precious stones; several mines of gold, though hitherto not very rich; two mines of silver by no means scanty; much copper; but above all so great a quantity of iron, that this single article brings almost as much money into the kingdom, as what arises from the sale of its timber.

At the northern extremity of this kingdom and of Europe, dwells a people, which, from the earliest ages, have differed from the other inhabitants of Scandinavia, in figure, manners, and language. This nation, known by the name of Finns, or Laplanders, not only possess the northern parts of Norway, but also vast countries in Muscovy and Sweden. They are a coarse and savage race of men, yet by no means barbarous, if we understand by this word mischievous and cruel. Such of them as live upon the sea-coasts support themselves by fishing, and by a traffic they carry on with a sort of little barks, which they make and sell to the Norwegians. The rest wander up and down in the mountains without any fixed habitation, and gain a scanty subsistence by hunting, by their pelteries, and their rain-deer. Such of them as are neighbours to the Norwegians have embraced christianity, and are somewhat civilized by their commerce with that people. The rest live still in ignorance, not knowing so much as the names of the other nations of the world; preserved by their poverty and their climate from the evils which disturb the enjoyments of more opulent countries. Their whole religion consists in some confused notions of an invisible and tremendous being: and a few superstitious ceremonies compose their worship. They have no laws, and scarce any magistrates: yet have they great humanity, a natural softness of disposition, and a very hospitable temper.

They were nearly the same in the time of Tacitus. “The Finns^[11],” he says, live in extreme savageness, in squallid poverty: have neither arms, nor steeds, nor houses. Herbs are their food, skins their cloathing, the earth their bed. All their resource is their arrows, which they point with fish-bones, for want of iron. Their women live by hunting, as well as the men^[12]. For they every where accompany them, and gain their fhare of the prey. A rude hovel shelters their infants from the inclemencies of the weather, and the beasts of prey. Such is the home to which their young men return; the asylum to which the old retire. This kind of life they think more happy, than the painful toils of agriculture, than the various labours of domestic management, than that circle of hopes and fears, in which men are involved by their attention to the fortune of themselves and others. Equally secure both as to gods and men, the Finns have attained that rare privilege, not to form a single wish.”

I ought not to separate Iceland from Norway. This island, the largest in Europe next to Great Britain, is surrounded by that part of the northern sea, which geographers have been pleased to call the Deucalidonian ocean. Its length from east to west is about 112 Danish miles (12 to a degree) and its mean breadth may be 50 of those miles^[13]. Nature itself hath marked out the division of this country^[14]. Two long chains of mountains run from the middle of the eastern and western coasts, rising by degrees till they meet in the center of the island: from whence two other chains of smaller hills gradually descend till they reach the coasts that lie north and south; thus making a primary division of the country into four quarters (fierdingers) which are distinguished by the four points of the compass towards which they lie.

The whole island can only be considered as one vast mountain, interspersed with long and deep vallies, concealing in its bosom heaps of minerals, of vitrified and bituminous substances, and rising on all sides out of the ocean in the form of a short blunted cone^[15].

Earthquakes and volcanoes have thro’ all ages laid waste this unhappy island. Hecla, the only one of these volcanoes, which is known by name to the rest of Europe, seems at present extinct; but the principles of fire, which lie concealed all over the island, often break out in other places. There have been already within this century many eruptions, as dreadful, as they were unexpected. From the bosom of these enormous heaps of ice we have lately seen ascend torrents of smoke, of flame, and melted or calcined substances, which spread fire and inundation wide over the neighbouring fields, whilst they filled the air with thick clouds, and hideous roarings caused by the melting of such immense quantities of snow and ice. One meets almost every where in travelling through this country with marks of the same confusion and disorder. One sees enormous piles of sharp and broken rocks, which are sometimes porous and half calcined, and often frightful on account of their blackness, and the traces of fire, which they still retain. The clefts and hollows of the rocks are only filled with those hideous and barren ruins; but in the valleys, which are formed between the mountains, and which are scattered here and there all over the island very often at a considerable diftance from each other, are found very extensive and delightful plains, where nature, who always mingles some allay with the rigour of her severities, affords a tolerable asylum for men who know no better, and a most plentiful and delicate nourishment for cattle.

I ought to bestow a word or two upon another northern country dependent on the kingdom of Norway, as well as Iceland, but much more extensive, more unknown, and more savage: I mean Greenland, a vast country, which one knows not whether to call an island or continent. It extends from the 60th to the 80th degree of latitude; farther than that men have not penetrated. All that we can know for certain of it is, that this country, little known to geographers, stretches away from its southern point, named Cape Farewel, continually widening both towards the east and weft. The eastern coast in some places is not distant more than 40 miles from Iceland, but the ice, which surrounds it, or other unknown causes, make it now pass for inaccessable. Yet it was chiefly on this coast, that the Norwegians formerly established a colony, as we shall show hereafter: a colony which at this time is either destroyed, or perhaps only neglected, and cut off from all communication with the rest of the world. With regard to the western coast, which alone is frequented by the Danes at present; it is known no farther than the 70th degree. It is very probable that on this side, Greenland joins to the continent of America. Yet no one hath hitherto reached the bottom of the Bay, or Straits of Davies. The Savages whom the Danes have found on this coast, are not unlike the Laplanders in figure, yet speak a language quite different from theirs. They are short of stature, and thick-set, their visage is broad and tawny, their lips are thick, and their hair black and coarse. They are robust, phlegmatic, incurious, and even stupid when their own interest is not immediately concerned. Yet their children have been found capable of the same instructions, as those of Europeans. They live without laws, and without superiors, yet with great union and tranquility. They are neither quarrelsome, nor mischievous, nor warlike; being greatly afraid of those that are: and they keep fair with the Europeans from this motive. Theft, blows and murder are almost unknown to them. They are chaste before marriage, and love their children tenderly. Their nastiness is so great, that it renders their hospitality almost useless to Europeans; and their simplicity hath not been able to preserve them from having priests, who pass among them for enchanters, and are in truth very great and dexterous cheats. As to their religion it consists in the belief of certain good and evil Genii, and of a Land of Souls, to which, however, they pay little or no regard in their actions.

1. It's name in the Danish language is Kiobenhaffn; which literally is a “Haven for merchandize or traffic;” from Kiobe, Mercari, and Haffn, Portus. This city has been reckoned by travellers to be about the size of Bristol. T.
2. A certain toll paid by the merchant-ships for passing the Sound. T.
3. In French, Châteaux.
4. The principal cities of Jutland are Alburg, Nycopping, Wyburg, Aarhusen, Randers, Horsens, Warde, Ribe, Fredericia, Colding, &c.” First Edit.
5. “Sleswic, an ancient and considerable city, is the capital of the dutchy. Flensburg hath an extensive commerce. Frederickstadt, Tonderen, and Tonningen, are cities of tolerable size.” First Edit.
6. I Lord Molesworth observes, that this country very much resembles England. Another traveller has remarked, that the inhabitants are in their persons very like the English. See “Howell’s Letters,” vol. i. sect. 6. lett. 4. It seems this writer was at Rendsburg (or as he calls it Rainsburg) when the king of Denmark held an assembly of the states there in 1632. “Among other things, he says, I put myself to mark the carriage of the Holstein gentlemen, as they were going in and out at the parliament-house: and observing well their physiognomies, their complections, and gait; I thought verily I was in England; for they resemble the English more than either Welsh or Scot (though cohabiting upon the same island) or any other people that ever I saw yet; which makes me verily believe, that the English nation came first from this lower circle of Saxony; and there is one thing that strengtheneth me in this belief; that there is an ancient town hard by, called Lunden, and an island called Angles; whence it may well be that our country came from Britannia to be Anglia.” This remark is confirmed by the most diligent inquirers into this subject, who place the country of our Saxon ancestors in the Cimbric Chersonese, in the tracts of land since known by the names of Jutland, Angelen, and Holstein. T.
7. The Elb.
8. “The king of Denmark possesses here Rendsburg, a very strong place, Altona, a town of great trade, and Gluckerstadt, a good fortification.” First Edit.
9. See Pontoppidan’s natural history of Norway, vol. i.
10. Holberg’s Danm. og. Norg. Beskrivelse. [i. e. Description of Denmark and Norway.] p. 36. & seqq.
11. Fenni. Tacit. De morib. Germ. ad fin.
12. This seems to contradict the passage above, that herbs are their food: I suppose herbs were their ordinary food; flesh gained by hunting their regale.
13. About 560 English miles long, and 250 broad. T.
14. Egerh. Olai Enarrat. Histor. de Island. p. 18. § 6.
15. Vid. Horrebow’s Natural History of Iceland, passim.