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94 Education of youth. HISTORY OF
THE SWEDES.
Attachment to liberty.
that the windows of the castle of Stockholm are
said to have been carried off’ by the Danes under
Christian I.
Youth was trained to hardy and martial habits ;
the boy, we are told, must earn his morning’s meal
by hitting the mark with the arrow 6. When he
had reached an age which admitted of his defending
himself against violence, he received a blow on the
back, with an exhortation never again to submit to
one without resenting it7. The Gothlanders and
Fin-landers were regarded as the most expert bowmen;
the battle-axe and spear were regarded as the chief
weapons of the inhabitants of Sweden Proper.
Despite the prohibition of the general use of arms,
the peasant seldom quitted his house, even for the
church, unarmed, if only on account of the wild
beasts, of which the wolves were the most
formidable. Sometimes the length of the distance and the
difficulties of the country prevented him from
repairing thither more than once or twice in the
year8. On such occasions the weapons were
deposited in the porch, which still bears from this
circumstance the name of the weapon-house.
Relics of the catholic period are still found here
and there among the country people in isolated
superstitious usages and broken Latin prayers. A
belief in various elemental spirits, on the other
hand, was descended from the days of heathenism,
unless we suppose that the manifold legends of
such beings are ever generated anew by com-
6 Ut non panis pueris exhibeatur, nisi sagitta prius
teti-gerint metam. Olaus Magnus, xv. 1.
7 Stiernhcek (de jure Sueonum vetusto), says that this was
only in the case of sons of nobles.
8 So it was in certain districts of Vermeland at the end of
the fifteenth century, according to the statement of Olaus
Magnus.
3 See the poem in S. R. S. v. ii. sub fin. Bishop Thomas
died in 1443, as stated on his grave-stone at Strengness. (The
munings with nature, in her vast and savage
solitudes, among the forests and mountains of the
North.
To value life not too highly, and freedom above
all price, may be noted in conclusion as the leading
feature of old northern religion. This
consciousness of their lights no dominant power had been
able to extinguish, and still amidst the perils of
foreign oppression, the men of Sweden cherished
the hope of .a coming deliverance. Therefore did
bishop Thomas of Strengness, in his elegy 011 the
death of Engelbert thus sing :
Thou noble Swede, now hold thee fast,
Mend what was faulty in the past,
’Gainst wile and fetch defend thee ;
Gage thou thy neck, ply well thy brand,
To rescue thine own father land,
And God may comfort send thee.
The bird his brood-nest tends with care,
So does the wild beast guard his lair,
Then mark what is beseeming ;
Thee sense of truth and right God gave,
Be rather free than other’s slave,
The while life’s gifts are teeming.
verses quoted, slightly modernized in the spelling by
Professor Geijer, are as follows :
O edla Svensk, tu statt nil fast,
Ocli battra thet, som forra blast,
Tu lat tik ej omvanda ;
Tu vaga tin hals oc swa tina hand,
At fralsa tit egit fadernesland,
Gud ma tik trost val sanda.
E11 fogil han war sin egin bur,
Swa gora oc all willena djur
Nu mark hwat tik bor gora;
Gud hawer tik giwit sinn oc skal,
Var heller frij an annars tral
A medan tu kaut tik rora).
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