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Chap. XLVII.
ODENSE.
245
for the benefit of no one. Across a hill, too, called
Graabjerge, the peasant will tell you it is dangerous
to pass after nightfall, for the unwary pedestrian may
suddenly find a red-hot rein poked into his hand, and
be compelled to plough as long as the tortured spirits
care to repose themselves. In this case there is but
one resource : kick off your shoes—sabots, if you wear
them—and, when you turn back, shove your feet quickly
into them, and take to your heels.
ODENSE.
Oh for the meadow of Menved I its eight square
miles of haycocks! Stuffy, oppressive Funen! We
may grow used to it, but at present we despise her
“prettiness” from our hearts’ core. At last comes
Odense—not a bad town, with long streets and fine
churches. A canal alone connects it with the fiorde.
Despicable place I A city—capital, too, of a Danish
island—and no water save a murmuring brook! No
historic interest can ever make up for such a
disappointment, so the sooner we are off from the clean but
noisiest of all noisy post-houses the better.
Don’t inquire the etymology of the city’s name, and
rashly plunge into the vortex of real Odins and false
Odins. It won’t pay. The statue which once stood
on the so-called Odin’s høi has long since disappeared.
Let us turn at once to Knud the Holy, of whom we
have heard so much—not Knud, flushed with the hopes
of victory, about to sail with his mighty fleet to wrest
his rebellious province of England from the Normans—
not Knud prosperous lord of the castle of Sjorring, which
we visited together one windy day—but Knud in the
fair isle of Funen, with a few followers, a fugitive from
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