SWEDEN OF OLD

Evening Star, Issue 19197, 13 March 1926, Page 10

SWEDEN OF OLD

WHEN THE WORLD WORSHIPPED THE SUP Sweden, to a great many, is known ai “ The Land of the Midnight Sun,” and, if any school geography bo remembered, as a country with a. lot of tiresome islands, the despair of tests and examination days. But Sweden is much—very much—more Ilian that. It is a charming country, abounding with gems of scenic loveliness, and much of it is dotted over with picturesque castles and timbered houses of great antiquity, so that it has attractions both for the artist and the antiquarian. The latter attractions comprise very much more, however, than those relics of medieval times. In Sweden there is an enormous number of graves, sun temples, and monuments dating from prc-liistoric times. There are also numerous wonderful rock carvings, dating from iho Bronze Age, and giving a fair idea of Iho life pursued by the inhabitants of Scandinavia a thousand years before Iho Christian era. Many of Iho bronzo and gold objects which are found iu those ancient graves, and which may bo seen in tho museums of Copenhagen and Stockholm, are of such beautiful design and workmanship that it is a question whether wo have advanced very much in our conception of art since llioso far-distant days when men used bronze implements instead of iron and steel. In ‘Unknown Sweden,’ by Mr J. \V. B, Stcvnni. M.J.1., tbeso matters are discussed in an interesting way. Hero is an extract;—

“ The last time I visited Skauc, the home of my Gothic forbears, I resided at a beautiful chateau on the shores of a picturesque but strangely weird and mysterious looking lake near Christianstad. All around this place were relies of the sum worship that was carried on there long before the advent of Bytboas. On om side, Im tho right, was Iho mysterious Baiberg, full of ancient grottos; in later times tho homo nf Iho robbers who have long since been hunted out of existence. On the shore opposite, over the peaceful lake whoso red waters have time after time, echoed with the shrieks of those offered to Bal, was tho village of Kalhy. 11 Strewn round this region, which was probably n great, seat of Bal-worship when David reigned iu Jerusalem, are tho relics of that worship—inscribed stones, sacred groves, sacrificial altars. From time to time the peasants find in tiia ground sacred axes bronze vessels, and round figures of the sun which were once, gilded with line gold like the sacred vessels of Solomon’s Tempic. “Occasionally great silver or copper kettles, probably used for holding tho blood of tho victims, aro dug up, either in fragments or almost entire. This beautifu! lake, now so placid, is associated with terrible memories of the ages when the cruel bloodstained gods of the heatbeu ruled over the wido world. “ Those indeed must have been terrible) times, and, as I gazed upon ilia shores of that tranquil lake, 4,000 years became as to-day, while the hills around me seemed full of worshippers; the priest* and priestesses of Bal in their long white robes chanted their songs in honor of the sun god, as their victims, after being sacrificed to the stone altars of tho mountain side, were thrown in the beltane fires; while, on all the surrounding hills, seminude and frenzied people were dancing m wild delight that the midsummer sun had returned to fructifv the earth.

“As T watched *those scenes in imagination T saw other Bal tires were lit on the Danish shores opposite, until my vision reconstructed these weird and awful rites in far-away Britain, Germany, Gaul, Spain, Portugal, the Balearic Isles, the great Atlantis, Mexico, and Peru. The whole life of that ancient world arose before me, and I. seemed to sec again the great empire in mid-Atlantic rising from the deep and sending forth its priests, its merchants, and navigaters to the uttermost parts of the earl.li,”