United States or Mayotte ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"There is Torborg, the king of Upsala's daughter. If you can win her for wife it will be the greatest marriage in the north." To this advice Rolf would not listen. He had heard of how the shrewish Torborg treated her suitors, and felt that wooing her would be like taking a wild wolf by the ears.
Upsala's Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts. The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden times the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard. The runes roll, you see!
Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then shone on Upsala's hills.
Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks. Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page of history.
Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room from the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured.
The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge palace with its towers.
We see ancient Icelandic manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air and we are there; by Upsala's ancient hills.
Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church stands the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it leads us close past Upsala's old hills Odin's, Thor's and Freia's graves, as they are called.
We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore. Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles grow over Geier's and Törnro's graves? No, but to the young and the living Upsala's life the students.
Word Of The Day