Cousin-Hunting in Scandinavia

Cousin-Hunting in Scandinavia

Mary Wilhelmine Williams recounts a journey through Denmark, Sweden, and Norway as an American traveler of Scandinavian descent seeking both landscapes and relatives. Arriving in Copenhagen, she crosses the Great Belt from Kiel, reflects on Danish history, and explores the capital independently before visiting her Copenhagen cousin Lars. She admires the city’s intimacy, its language, architecture, museums, churches, parks, royal collections, and evidence of Danish civic life. At the National Museum, she traces Scandinavian prehistory from shell-mound dwellers through the New Stone, Bronze, Iron, and Viking Ages. She takes special interest in ancient tools, burial customs, runestones, Thor’s hammers, and the continuity she imagines between archaeological remains and modern Scandinavian identity. She visits Runde Taarn, Rosenborg Castle, Thorwaldsen’s Museum, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, churches, royal squares, Langelinie, and the city’s public institutions. Her cousin Lars introduces her to Copenhagen’s small leased gardens, where working families cultivate flowers and vegetables and spend their leisure outdoors. She sails to Bornholm, her mother’s birthplace, where relatives receive her warmly. In Rönne she notes narrow cobbled streets, low houses, enclosed gardens, pottery, local museums, and the island’s pride in its revolt against Sweden. She visits farms and relatives across Bornholm, learning about the quadrangular Danish gaard, thatched roofs, family meals, rural schools, gardens, and customs. She tours Hammershuus Castle and the cliffs of Helligdommen, observes traditional harvesting, old churches, burial mounds, folk beliefs, and the islanders’ mixture of conservatism and progress. Her attempt to help at a cousin’s household by milking cows causes comic social alarm, revealing local ideas of rank and propriety. In Sweden, she first visits Malmö, Lund, Helsingborg, and Gothenburg. At Lund she sees Tegnér’s home, the university, and the cathedral crypt with its legend of the giant Finn. Helsingborg offers Kärnan tower and a view across the Sound toward Helsingör. In Gothenburg she observes Dutch-like canals, parks, fortifications, commerce, and an automatic restaurant. Traveling onward, she becomes increasingly impressed by Sweden’s forests, lakes, farms, red-painted houses, and waterways. On the train to Stockholm she befriends Fröken Nordstern, a businesswoman and reformer devoted to vegetarianism, peace, and woman suffrage. Their discussions lead the traveler to affirm her own suffragism and admire Scandinavian progress in women’s rights. In Stockholm she praises the city’s islands, canals, parks, bridges, public buildings, temperance efforts, museums, and open-air life. She visits Riddarholms Kyrkan, Skansen, Storkyrkan, the National Museum, the royal palace, and the Museum of the North, linking Swedish history with Gustav Vasa, Gustav Adolf, Queen Margaret, the Union of Calmar, and the country’s artistic revival. At Uppsala she visits the cathedral, university, and Carolina Rediviva, where she sees the Silver Bible of Ulfilas and manuscripts associated with Swedish leaders and writers. She visits Gamla Uppsala, with burial mounds associated with Frey, Thor, and Odin, and an ancient church containing medieval objects. Further north, she visits relatives in Gefle and Söderhamn, observes the lumber country, hears of educational work among northern children and Lapps, and records encounters that reveal both Swedish curiosity about America and social debates over profanity, class, and women’s suffrage. In Dalecarlia, she follows the history of the fiercely independent Dalecarlians, whose rebellions helped shape Swedish liberty and whose support enabled Gustav Vasa to overthrow Danish rule. At Falun she sees the copper mine that supplies the pigment for Sweden’s red houses and visits the region associated with Carl Larsson and Selma Lagerlöf. At Rättvik she observes peasants in traditional dress gathering for church, learns of Gustav Vasa’s local supporters, and admires the Dalecarlians’ self-respect, honesty, democracy, and attachment to old ways. Crossing into Norway with Fröken Nordstern, she is moved by the unfortified border and its promise of peace. In Trondhjem she visits the cathedral, Industrial Museum, and royal residence of King Haakon and Queen Maud. Sailing onward through Norwegian fiords, she experiences the mountains as eerie by night and radiant by day. At Molde, the City of Roses, she enjoys a Scandinavian breakfast, discovers goats’ milk cheese, and looks out from the hillside over flowers, islands, fiords, and snow-flecked mountains.

By Mary Wilhelmine Williams · First published 1908 · Genre: Travel Literature, Travelogue, Epistolary Nonfiction · 11 chapters · 70,042 words

First lines

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, July 20, 191-

_Dear Cynthia_:

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

Scandinavian travel writing · epistolary travel narrative · early 20th-century travel · Denmark · Sweden · Norway · Copenhagen · Bornholm · Stockholm · Dalecarlia · Norwegian fjords · ancestral homeland

What this Textopian page supports

Cousin-Hunting in Scandinavia is listed on Textopian as a historical account by Mary Wilhelmine Williams, dated 1908 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Contents

More by Mary Wilhelmine Williams