Norwegian Life Part 5

There are few countries in which education is as free as in Sweden.

From the grammar school to the university in all its stages, the cost is defrayed entirely by the state or the parish. Education is thus not a privilege of the wealthy, but a benefit common to all.

In Norway you are scarcely ever out of sight of a schoolhouse, and Professor Nielsen, of the university, on being asked concerning the ratio of the illiterates, looked surprised and replied that he was not aware of any illiterates; that he did not recollect having seen any statistics on the subject, and ventured to a.s.sert that anybody in Norway could both read and write.

Education is free throughout the entire primary system, a course of seven years, between the ages of seven and fourteen, when the law prohibits the employment of children in any occupation, and requires them to attend school at least thirty hours a week for twelve weeks each year in the country and fifteen weeks in the cities. The maximum term is forty weeks in both city and country districts. There are in the kingdom 5,923 school districts, governed by _Skolestyret_--boards consisting of the parish priest, the president of the munic.i.p.al council, and one of the teachers chosen by themselves. There is also a board of supervisors, composed of three men or women, elected by the parents of the parish. Childless people are not allowed to vote. This board of supervisors does not appear to have any definite function except to advise and find fault. The school board elects the teachers, determines the courses of study and methods of discipline, and submits recommendations and estimates for appropriations annually to the munic.i.p.al council. In both city and country what is called "voluntary instruction" is provided outside of the legal school hours, which may be taken advantage of by people who are willing to pay for additional attention from the school teachers, but it is neither free nor compulsory.

The compulsory studies in the primary schools are the Bible, the catechism of the Lutheran creed, the Norwegian language, the usual elementary branches, with history (including a treatise on the const.i.tution and the government of Norway), botany, physiology (including the fundamental principles of hygiene and the effects of the use of intoxicating liquors), singing, drawing, wood-carving, the use of the lathe and other tools, manual training, gymnastics, and rifle shooting.

The national law requires that schoolhouses shall be so located as to be within a distance of two miles of the residences of ninety per cent of the children of school age. The poor are provided with text-books upon application, and in some places the munic.i.p.al council provides every child a warm dinner at noon. It can be paid for if the parents prefer, but the better cla.s.ses look upon this provision with prejudice, as they do upon all charities. Nevertheless, it is an excellent idea to be sure that the children of the poor get at least one warm meal every day. In the city of Christiania, 711,302 meals are served annually in the primary schools. The average attendance is 22,750, so that only about 24 per cent of the children take advantage of the free dinner. Only 18,341 of these meals are paid for, and those are taken on stormy days by children of well-to-do parents.

The Norway school teachers must be graduates of normal schools, of which there are twelve in the kingdom; they must pa.s.s examinations and serve a probation of three months before they are definitely engaged, but when they have once received an appointment, they are settled for life and sure of a pension at the end of the long term of faithful service. The same rule applies to all civil service employees, for the school system is a part of the government. There is no such thing as rotation in office. Promotion is expected by all who deserve it. A worthy and efficient teacher, having begun in youth at the lowest grade, expects advancement to the highest, according to the judgment of the school boards and supervisors. School teaching is a career, just as a government clerks.h.i.+p is a career. People enter both professions with the expectation of making them their life-work, although from our point of view they offer very little inducement.

The average salary of the school teachers in Norway is only about $220 a year, the men receiving a little above the average and the women a little less. The highest salaries are paid in the city of Christiania--$756 for men and $434 for women. Head masters to the number of 1,992, like parsons, are furnished with houses to live in and little tracts of land, three or four acres, where they can raise vegetables for their families and keep cows; and nine hundred and ten of them add a little to their incomes by serving as parish clerks.

When they become too old to teach, they receive pensions of from $56 to $224 a year, and when they die, their widows are remembered by the government to the extent of from $28 to $74 per year.

The primary school system of Norway costs an average of $5.60 per child per year in the country, and $13.16 per child in the city, or $1.26 per capita of population in a year.

There is a secondary school system under the control of the national government, administered by the department of education and religion.

It embraces forty-six high schools, located in different parts of the country, known as _Latin-Gymnasier_, or cla.s.sical schools, at which students are prepared for the university, and _Real-Gymnasier_, or technical schools, in which they are taught English, mathematics, the natural and applied sciences, bookkeeping, stenography, and other branches that will fit them for commercial or industrial pursuits.

There are also twelve cathedral schools, one for each ecclesiastical diocese, which were founded in the middle ages, and are supported by large estates acquired from the early kings and by confiscation of church property after the Reformation. There are also five private academies, attended chiefly by the sons of rich men.

The University of Christiania, which is one of the first in Europe, was founded in 1811, and has five faculties, with sixty-three professors, eighteen fellows, and about 1,450 students, of whom 70 are studying theology, 20 law, 330 medicine, and 600 are in the scientific department. The professors are appointed by the king, and receive salaries of about $950 a year, with a longevity allowance in addition amounting to about $125 every five years. The fellows are paid about $350 a year, and are provided with lodging rooms. Tuition at the university is free upon payment of a matriculation fee of $10. Women have been admitted on even terms with men since 1882, and 260 have matriculated, of whom 53 have taken degrees. The university has an endowment of $1,310,000, with legacies amounting to about $250,000 to encourage original investigations in special lines of study. The Nansen fund, which amounts to about $150,000, is intended to encourage exploration on the seas. The hospitals of Christiania are in charge of the medical department.

There are also the usual schools for the deaf, dumb, blind, weak-minded, and crippled children, supported by the state, and reform schools for the correction and restraint of the depraved. Technical schools, with day and night cla.s.ses, for teaching the trades to young men and women, four schools of engineering in different parts of the country, nine industrial schools for women only, where they can be trained to earn their living by sewing, dressmaking, weaving, millinery, embroidery, and other needlework, bookkeeping, typesetting, stenography, typewriting, photography, and other lines of industry, and an art school especially patronized by the king in connection with the art gallery at Christiania, where painting, drawing, and designing, modeling, decoration, and the art of architecture are taught.

In most of the counties are found what are called _Amtsskoler_--schools to educate people for a practical life, with separate courses for each s.e.x, the boys being taught farming, gardening, and mechanics, and the girls the arts of the household.

There are also schools of deportment, where girls are fitted to act as governesses and are taught the social graces, music, dancing, the languages, and conversation. In several of the cities are workingmen's colleges, known as _Arbeiderakademier_, where mechanics who have an ambition to acquire a better knowledge of their trades and general culture, may attend lectures in the evenings, delivered by scientific men, successful mechanics, and other specialists. The range of subjects includes every branch of human activity.

In Sweden, in the _Folkskola_, Elementary or People's School, maintained by the parish under the direction of the school board and the close supervision of the state, instruction is compulsory as well as gratuitous. As in Norway, between the ages of seven and fourteen every boy and girl must attend a public school, unless the parents can show that their child is receiving equivalent instruction elsewhere, in a private school or at home. No exception or compromise is allowed, and no "half-time" system or "rush" through the school to suit the convenience of the factory or the farmer. For seven years, during eight and a half months of the year,--allowing for summer, Christmas and Easter holidays,--and thirty-six hours per week, every boy and girl in the kingdom receives instruction and goes through the same curriculum. The school board, which has the direct management of the schools is elected to the parish, and women are eligible to it. The state, which controls the whole system of education, from the A.B.C.

cla.s.s to the college and university, maintains alike its unity and its efficiency, and sees to the strict enforcement of the law. Parents who try to evade it, through malevolence or neglect, may even, after due warning, be deprived of their children, who are taken over by the community during their school years.

In thinly populated districts the school may be "ambulatory," held now in one part of the district and now in another, so that all may attend in turn. In such cases the schooling is reduced to four months in the year. But there is no district, however poor or thinly populated, without its _Folkskola_. There are nearly twelve hundred of these in the land, attended by seven hundred and forty-two thousand pupils, and employing sixteen thousand two hundred and seventy teachers of both s.e.xes.

No more conscientious, hardworking, and respectable cla.s.s of men and women can be found than the teachers. Eight years' study, first in a special seminary and then in a training college, has taught them their profession both in theory and practice. They are convinced of the importance and dignity of their office, and are respected accordingly.

Socially, the general type of the school teacher is a superior one.

There are at present in the Riksdag, occupying seats as members of the second chamber, no fewer than eleven teachers in elementary schools, twelve teachers in secondary schools, one inspector of schools, and one university professor. In the rural community, the school teacher is something of an authority. Most of the members of the parish have "sat under him" at school in their early life, and owe to him most of what they know. For years he has been diffusing knowledge around him, and has been looked up to as the fountain of book learning. He is the local parson's great coadjutor in parish matters, and being a ready speaker, is of no mean influence in the parish a.s.semblies. The one dark blot in the existence of the school teacher is the small salary received. Few of them receive so much as $300 a year, the average running from $225 to $275; even in Stockholm the figure going little beyond $300. Living is, however, cheap in the rural districts, and these teachers, who are drawn generally from the rural and indigent cla.s.ses, are accustomed to frugality and economy. They are lodged free of rent in the schoolhouse or a cottage attached to it, and are allowed firewood and other small prerequisites. They have generally a small garden or potato patch to cultivate, and can keep a cow and a few hens. They often add to their modest stipend by extra work, such as teaching in the evening cla.s.ses, playing the organ in church, and writing, or some such work after school hours.

At fifteen, after seven years' a.s.siduous attendance at the _Folkskola_, the boy and girl have finished their education, so far as compulsory instruction goes, and they are free to begin work on their father's farm, in his shop or his trade, or take service anywhere and s.h.i.+ft for themselves. They may, however, if they like, pursue their studies further in the continuation schools, or in the evening cla.s.ses provided in most parishes, or repair to a college or gymnasium town, if they elect to enter the church, the liberal professions, or the service of the state. But they have first to be confirmed, and it is here that the definite religious instruction is given. The preparation for confirmation, which entails a much longer and more advanced course of religious instruction than is usual for confirmation in England, is independent of the school and takes place in church, parents being allowed every liberty in the choice of the clergyman who performs this office for their children. English readers who are acquainted with Longfellow's admirable translation of Tegner's beautiful poem, "The Children of the Lord's Supper," are aware of the importance of this ceremony in Swedish social life. It is the great turning point in the existence of Scandinavian youth. The boy and girl emerging from it leave boyhood and girlhood behind them. Knee-breeches and short frocks have given way to pants and long skirts. The boy sports his first watch and glories in his first s.h.i.+rt-front. The girl discards her long plaits, and wears her hair in a top-knot. They have made their profession of faith in public, have been examined in regard to it, and have had to answer for it in the presence of the whole congregation.

They have a.s.sumed henceforth the full responsibility of their acts. In the eyes of the church, if not in the eyes of the law, they are free and responsible members of society.

The secondary schools are maintained by the state, and are confined to the towns. They comprise nine forms in seven cla.s.ses, of which the last two have double forms. The first three correspond to the curriculum of the primary schools, where are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, natural sciences, singing, drawing, and gymnastics, to which are added _Sloyd_ and gardening for the boys, and needlework and cooking for the girls. Scholars who have pa.s.sed these in the primary schools enter into the fourth form. They are generally divided into two branches, the cla.s.sical and the modern, according as the cla.s.sics or languages predominate in the curriculum, which comprises religion, Swedish composition, history, geography, philosophy, Latin, Greek, German, French, mathematics, zoology, botany, physics, chemistry, and drawing. After the fourth form, pupils must declare, with the written approbation of their parents or guardians, whether they will follow the cla.s.sical or non-cla.s.sical course, according as they intend to qualify for the universities or the technical high schools. Not all the pupils who attend these secondary schools complete the full course and pa.s.s the final examination. More than half--those who mean to devote themselves to trade, agriculture, or industry, and those who have not developed the capabilities necessary to confront the severe final test of the "maturity" examination--leave the school on attaining the upper forms.

To those who intend to enter the professions, the civil and military service, and the church, the full course of the secondary school is necessary, the "maturity" examination certificate being the only open sesame to the universities, the special colleges, and the technical high schools. To obtain it and to don the white cap, which is the outward and visible sign of university members.h.i.+p, is the first great step in the life of the ambitious youth.

For young men destined for the technical trades and professions, there are open, after they have pa.s.sed the maturity examination at the secondary school, two special inst.i.tutions, where they complete their technical training--the Technical High School of Stockholm, and the Chalmers Technical Inst.i.tute at Gothenburg, besides elementary technical schools at other places. The Stockholm Technical School, which is the most complete, comprises five branches: (1) mechanical technology and machinery, s.h.i.+pbuilding and electrotechnics; (2) chemical technology; (3) mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining mechanics; (4) architecture; (5) engineering. The course in each of these sections takes between three and four years. Generally several are combined, const.i.tuting a course of six or seven years.

There are two universities in Sweden--Upsala in the north, founded in 1477; and Lund in the south, founded in 1668, to which may be added the Medical College in Stockholm, founded in 1810, and limited to the medical faculty. The studies at these universities are thorough and comprehensive, but unusually long. They have each four faculties,--theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy,--and grant three different degrees in each, besides special degrees in theology and jurisprudence for entering the church and the government services. Even these last, which are easiest to obtain, require a course of from four to five years. To take a medical degree a young man must stay nine years at the university, and two additional years in the hospitals, making eleven years in all. Unlike English and American universities, the Swedish universities are non-residential.

Like those of the Continent, they are only teaching inst.i.tutions, and the students who matriculate at Upsala and Lund must lodge in town or board with families living there. Beyond attending the lectures and going up to be tested, they have no direct intercourse with their professors.

In this brief sketch of the inst.i.tutions provided by the state it will be seen that what especially characterizes public instruction in Norway and Sweden is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course.

By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best years of his youth are pa.s.sed; he is already between twenty-five and thirty years of age when he first treads on the threshold of his career. On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the a.s.surance of finding the way more or less open to success.[i]

CHAPTER X

HAAKON VII, THE NEW KING OF NORWAY

There is something essentially, almost ludicrously, modern about the creation of Norway's new king. Not that it is the first time a sovereign has been, so to speak, "custom-made." An eligible foreign prince is tendered a seat upon an ancient throne; the form is old, but the spirit, how new! Republican though she is to the backbone, Norway has elected to be governed by monarchical methods, fearing with her isolated and primitive peasantry, to put the machinery of control into the hands of the people themselves. She must have a king, but he shall be of a new variety; in short, a republican king. She will not even have him addressed as were the monarchs of old, by the Norwegian equivalent of "Your Majesty." He shall be just _Herre Konge_, plain "Mister the King."

Even as the Norwegians welcomed Haakon VII to their sh.o.r.es, they took pains to show him clearly his rightful place. In his address delivered to the newly arrived sovereign on board the battles.h.i.+p Heimdal, Herr Michelsen, President of Council, and for six months virtual President of Norway, used these significant words: "For nearly six centuries the Norwegian people have had no king of their own. To-day a king of Norway comes to make his home in the Norwegian capital, elected by a free people to occupy, conjointly with free men, the first place in the land. The Norwegian people love their liberty, their independence, and their autonomous government which they themselves have won. It will be the glory of the king and his highest pleasure to protect this sentiment, finding his support in the people themselves. This is why the Norwegian people hail you to-day with profound joy and cry, 'Long live the King and Queen of Norway!'"

Was ever so frank a bargain driven with a king before? "Behold," says Norway in effect, "you may sit on a throne; but beware how you attempt to king it over us. We will give you a salary to transact our official business and act as official figurehead. But you must never overlook the fact that it was we who made you and not you yourself."

Is it any wonder that when asked to undertake to govern a people so independent, so proud spirited as this, Prince Karl of Denmark took time to think? Or that he asked for a popular vote that he might know how large a proportion of the _frei_ people of Norway really wanted him for a king?

This was not the only reason why he hesitated. Being himself on his mother's side a Bernadotte, he could scarcely ascend the Norwegian throne without the friendly sanction of Sweden. Moreover, his wife, Princess Maud of England, was more than reluctant to undertake life in Christiania and the duties of queens.h.i.+p. Lastly, Prince Charles himself ran a shrewd risk in a.s.suming the crown, lest, should his relations with Norway become difficult, he might be forced to resign, and find himself--having abandoned his naval career for the throne--in a state of abject poverty.

All three objections were finally overruled. Sweden, fearing lest an empty throne in Norway should give impetus to the movement for a republic, and that such a movement might afterward spread to her own borders, was as much in haste to see Norwegian affairs settled as the Norwegians themselves, so she swallowed her grievances. Most amicable correspondence pa.s.sed between Prince Karl and the Crown Prince of Sweden, the latter expressing himself anxious to be the first to welcome Haakon VII into his capital. What became of Princess Maud's reluctance is not definitely known. It is understood that she never found life at the Danish court very amusing, and probably the prospect of exchanging Copenhagen for a city of less than half its size did not allure her. She must have realized that if she accepted a share of the Norwegian throne, she would be forced to abandon her favorite cure for _ennui_--frequent flights to the court of England--for Norway has had quite enough of absentee royalty. The English papers a.s.serted that King Edward used his parental authority to overcome his daughter's scruples. At all events, she gave in. As for Prince Karl's reasonable fear of dethronement and penury, the Norwegian government quieted that by promising a respectable pension in case the king should find it expedient to abdicate.

So, then, the affair was comfortably arranged. The king has a salary of $200,000, a crown when he had no hope of ever feeling one on his brow, and the problems of a court without a n.o.bility.

And now the world is asking, "Has Norway done well for herself?"

Certainly she has done well in putting a Scandinavian prince on the throne. No alien would ever understand Norway or be understood. If reports are creditable, the Kaiser made the most of his friends.h.i.+p with the country in support of the claims of a son of his own. Had a German secured the throne, there would have been sown fresh seeds of discord on a peninsula which can raise a sufficient crop of dissensions without any aid from the rest of Europe. For Denmark, still nursing the rankling grievance of the Schleswig-Holstein affair, detests the thought of everything German.

King Haakon combines the advantages of Scandinavian birth with the very positive political a.s.set of blood relations.h.i.+p to half the courts of Europe. Grandson of the late King Christian of Denmark, the young monarch is also nephew to King George of Greece, the Dowager Empress of Russia, and Alexandria of England, a grand-nephew to the late Oscar of Sweden, son-in-law to King Edward VII, and cousin to the Czar. To a relatively defenseless country like Norway, this means a good deal.

In himself the new king is a clean-lived, healthy young man of thirty-three, in personality quite fit to represent a nation which thinks well of itself. Tall, though not quite so tall as his uncle, Prince Christian, whose mark on the famous old royal measuring-column at Roskilde comes just under that of the giant, Peter the Great, King Haakon is slight, yet vigorous-looking, and splendidly well set up.

The face, while scarcely so handsome as the profile pictures lead us to think, is a distinguished one, and has for Norway this charm, that it is markedly not of the Bernadotte type, although his mother is a Bernadotte. Those who know him describe him as an extremely intelligent and sensible young man, easy and tolerant without being weak, and capable of strenuous devotion to hard work. These things bespeak an industrious, efficient, and tractable king, such as the Norwegians, who would equally resent either vacillation or tyranny, know how to appreciate.

It has been said in France that King Haakon abandons tiller and compa.s.s for crown and scepter without one hour's training in politics or diplomacy.

The statement appears incontestable. In view of the remarkable longevity of the late king of Denmark, and the excellent health and prospects of the Crown Prince and his immediate heir, this younger son of a royal house was not brought up to look for a crown. Instead, he was destined from the outset for a naval career. For all that, it is not safe to say that he has had no training in politics or diplomacy.

One can scarcely grow up in the family of the "father-in-law of Europe" and not learn the principles of the great game of world affairs. King Haakon is no stranger to the queer old palace among the beeches at Fredensborg, where every summer King Christian gathered together his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren from the courts of England, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece; and where conversations took place which, if reported, would vitally interest the whole round world. In his lifetime, the Czar Alexander III was particularly fond of holding long talks at Fredensborg with his nephew Karl, then a lieutenant of the navy, whom he found especially intelligent and open-minded.

It is thought in Copenhagen that King Haakon may, even during the last years of his father's life, have had some experience in the government of Denmark, since his father, the Crown Prince, was called upon to perform many of the old king's duties. At least, if he did not actually transact royal business, he acquired no small acquaintance with the working of government machinery.

Nothing, certainly, could have been more fitting than that a ruler of Vikingland should be educated for the sea. Nor could anything have been devised better calculated to knock the nonsense out of a princeling than apprentices.h.i.+p in the Danish navy. Hrolf Wisby, who messed with Prince Karl when he was a naval cadet, says that the lad was at first little more than a piece of court furniture. Any one who is familiar with the appalling frankness and unvarnished brusquerie of grown-up Danes can judge whether the hazing and horse-play on a Danish man-of-war was agreeable, and whether it was medicinal in a case of congenital self-esteem. Prince Karl lived the life of an ordinary middy, scrubbed decks, mended his own clothes, slept in a hammock, and ate provender which was anything but fit to set before a king. It is recorded of him that he was an expert in polis.h.i.+ng a certain bra.s.s binnacle lantern. We wonder if he ever thinks now of a certain line in Pinafore, "I polished that handle so care-ful-lee, that now--"

As ensign, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, and finally captain of a frigate, the young man acquitted himself well, earning the reputation of a capital officer, hardworking, careful, no martinet towards his men, though by no means to be trifled with. In practical seamans.h.i.+p, he excels any other prince of his age, and can command any kind of naval craft from torpedo boat to battles.h.i.+p, and lead in actual battle.

In forming their court, King Haakon and Queen Maud are gathering about them the literary, artistic, and musical people of the realm, for they are devoted to the companions.h.i.+p of gifted folk. The queen has herself written plays under the pseudonym "Graham Irving," and the king paints a little in aquarelles, and plays the piano almost too well to be termed an amateur. Both are accomplished linguists, speaking with discrimination French, German, Russian, English, Norwegian, Swedish, and, naturally, Danish. There is no barrier of speech in their intercourse with members of the diplomatic corps.

The little heir apparent, Alexander, rechristened Olaf, has already done much toward ingratiating himself with the Norwegian people, although but a half dozen years old. On the day when the royal couple entered Christiania, the boy was but two and a half years old, but he was very much interested in the decorations, and seemed to catch the enthusiasm of the crowd, for he waved his little hand spontaneously.

In counting up the merits of the king, the promising little heir must by no means be left out.

Trondhjem Cathedral, where all the kings and queens of Norway for centuries have been crowned, and where the coronation of King Haakon VII and Queen Maud occurred, stands on the site of what was undoubtedly the first Christian church in the country--that erected by Olaf Trygvason in 996. Within its confines bubbles the spring which sprang from the tomb of that later Olaf who is the patron saint of Norway, and somewhere under its walls lie moldering the bones of medieval kings, four of whom accepted their consecration before the altar where King Haakon received his crown. It is a thousand pities that hammer and chisel should have exorcised the spirits which ought to haunt this venerable shrine. It is as if England's Abbey had been scrubbed and resurfaced, and new noses had been provided for all the crumbling stone kings and queens. Trondhjem Cathedral has burned down so many times, and the work of restoration has been so sweeping, that it takes an active imagination to invest it with the proper glamour of romance.