The Home of Mankind

by Hendrik Willem van Loon

  For that country with its 16,000 square miles and its total lack of natural resources, armies, navies, mines, or mountains (at no point does the country rise above 600 feet) is worth a dozen other countries of infinitely greater size and more pretensions and militaristic ambitions which I could mention if I felt so inclined. The Danish people, entirely through their own efforts, have lowered the illiteracy percentage to zero, they have made themselves the second richest country per head of all Europe, and they have practically abolished both riches and poverty as they are known in the rest of the world, establishing instead a balance of average, moderate well-to-do-ness which is without an equal anywhere else.

  Denmark, as one glance at the map will show you, is composed of a peninsula and a number of Islands separated from each other by wide open sounds, across which the railway trains are carried on ferries. Its climate is exceedingly unpleasant. All winter long a strong eastern wind is apt to blow across her flat fields, bringing cold showers of rain and forcing the Danes, like the Dutch with whom they have so much in common, to spend a great deal of their time indoors, a circumstance which has contributed greatly to making them a heavy book-reading nation. In consequence thereof they are a singularly well-informed group of people who own more books per head than any other nation.

  But the rain and the wind keep the pastures moist, and the grass grows and makes the cows fat, and as a result of all this Denmark alone is able to provide the world with thirty per cent of its butter. But whereas in most other countries the soil would be owned by rich and absentee landlords, the Danes, who are essentially democratic (in the social and economic rather than the political sense of the word), have never encouraged the development of those vast holdings which we have encountered in other countries.

  There are to-day 150,000 independent farmers in Denmark who operate small farms, ranging from ten to a hundred acres, and there are only 20,000 farms larger than one hundred acres. The dairy products which are sent abroad are produced and prepared according to the most modern and scientific methods, as taught by the rural agricultural schools, which are merely a continuation of the free High School system spread all over the country. The buttermilk that is left over as a by-product of the butter manufacturing is used to feed the hogs, which in turn provide the British market with most of its bacon.

  As this trade in butter and bacon is much more profitable than the cultivation of grain, the Danes are obliged to import their grain. They can do this, however, quite easily and cheaply, as Copenhagen is only two days by steamer from Danzig, and Danzig is the old export harbour for the vast granaries of Poland and Lithuania. Part of this grain is used for poultry-raising, and millions of eggs are sent each year to those same British Isles which for some mysterious reason have been satisfied until now to allow foreign farmers a free and open market.

  In order to maintain what almost amounts to a monopoly in farm products, the Danes submit to a most rigorous State control of everything that leaves their country, thereby establishing for themselves such a reputation of absolute integrity that their trademark has come to be accepted as a guarantee of absolute purity.

  Like all races of Teutonic origin, the Danes are incurable gamblers, and during the last few years their ventures in banking and in stock-market speculation have cost them a tidy sum of money. But the children and the cows and the hogs remained when the banks closed their doors, and now they are at work once more. The only difficulties they have got to fear have to do with the rapidly increasing state of bankruptcy of most of their neighbours, making such a simple dish as ham and eggs a luxury beyond the reach of the average man.

  The towns on the mainland are of no importance. On the west coast of Jutland (the name of the old peninsula from which so many of the original settlers of England came) lies Esbjerg, which is the main export harbour for the many agricultural products, and on the east coast lies Aarhus (the double A is pronounced OA in Danish), one of the oldest centres of Christianity in this part of the world where the people continued to worship their heroic pagan gods (their Odins and Thors and Baldurs) until only four centuries before the discovery of America.

  The Little Belt (I believe there are plans now to build a bridge across it) separates Jutland from Fyen, the first of the big Baltic islands. In the centre of Fyen (cows, hogs, and children) lies the city of Odense (the place sacred to Odin) where Hans Christian Andersen was born, the son of a poor and sickly shoemaker but one of the greatest benefactors of mankind.

  Then we cross the Great Belt and reach the island of Zealand, the heart of the old Danish Empire. Here at a wide bay, protected from the violence of the Baltic by the small island of Amager, the vegetable garden of the capital, lies the charming city of Copenhagen, the ‘Merchants’ Harbour’ of the Middle Ages.

  During the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Danes ruled an empire which included England and Norway and parts of Sweden, Copenhagen was merely a fishing village, and Roskilde, about fifteen miles inland, was the royal residence from which those distant domains were administered; but to-day Roskilde is of no importance, while Copenhagen has gone on increasing insize and importance until now it provides entertainment for one-fifth of the entire population of the country.

  DENMARK IN RELATION TO NORWAY AND SWEDEN

  Copenhagen is a royal residence, and a few guards in very handsome uniforms present arms when the King goes swimming or fishing, or strolls forth to buy himself a packet of cigarettes. But you will look in vain for any other manifestations of military grandeur. This small country, which has done some of the hardest and bitterest fighting in the days gone by, and which even as recently as 1864 was able to hold its own against Prussia for quite a long time, voluntarily abolished its army and navy and has replaced them by a small corps of State police to enforce whatever neutrality will survive the next outbreak of a general European conflict.

  That is about all there is to say of Denmark. The country peacefully goes its own way. The royal family keeps off the front page of the more sensational newspapers, and while few people have three overcoats, none go without, and while only a small percentage has a motor car, every man, woman, and child possesses at least a couple of bicycles, as you will know for yourself if you have ever tried to cross a street in a Danish city just before the hour for lunch.

  In a world devoted to the worship of bigness Denmark does not play an important part. In a world devoted to the idea! of greatness it would occupy quite a considerable position. For if the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people is the ultimate goal to which all governments should aspire, Denmark has done more than enough to justify its continued existence as an independent nation.

  THE DIKE

  THE NORTH SEA

  Chapter XVIII

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  ICELAND, AN INTERESTING POLITICAL LABORATORY IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN

  From the days of her ancient imperial glory Denmark has retained a few scraps of land, including that sixth continent, Greenland, which, seems to contain valuable mineral treasures (iron, zinc, and graphite) but which is so completely covered with glaciers (only about one-thirtieth of the whole of Greenland is free from ice) that it may never be of any value unless the axis of the earth shifts just a tiny little bit and allows Greenland once more to enjoy that tropical climate which must have prevailed there millions of years ago, as we are able to deduce from the presence of several large coalfields.

  Her other colonies are the Faroe Islands (literally the Sheep Islands), which lie two hundred miles north-west of the Shetlands and have a population of about 20,000 people and a capital city called Thorshavn, from where Hudson commenced his dash across the ocean which carried him to Manhattan. And then there is Iceland. The latter is a country of particular interest. Not only on account of its volcanic nature, which makes it a veritable storehouse for all those queer phenomena we usually connect with the mysterious fires from old Vulcan’s furnace, but also on account of its political development. It is the oldest republic of our planet with a r
ecord of self-government which began some ten centuries ago, and which with only a few short interruptions has lasted until to-day.

  The first settlers of the island were fugitives from Norway who found their way to this distant spot in the ninth century.

  Although 5000 square miles out of the total of Iceland’s 40,000 are perpetually covered with glaciers and snowfields, and less than one-hundredth of the island is really fit for purposes of agriculture, living conditions there were so much more favourable than in the mother country that already by the beginning of the ninth century there were over 4000 homesteads inhabited by free and independent farmers. And these, continuing the habits of practically all early Germanic tribes, at once established a loose form of self-government. It consisted of an Althing—a gathering of the different local ‘Things’ or ‘moots’ (really the same word as our ‘meeting’). This Althing met once a year during midsummer on a huge volcanic plain called the Thingvellir, and situated about seven miles distant from Reykjavik, the present capital, which is only a hundred years old.

  During the first two centuries of their independent existence the Icelanders developed enormous energy, composed some of the best sagas that have been written, discovered Greenland and America (five centuries before Columbus), and made this northern island, where in the winter the days are only four hours long, a more important centre of civilization than the mother country itself.

  But the curse of all Germanic races—an all-too-pronounced individualism which makes political or economic co-operation almost an impossibility—had accompanied the natives on their flight to the west. During the thirteenth century Iceland was conquered by the Norwegians, and when Norway became part of Denmark, Iceland followed suit. The Danes completely neglected the island, which henceforth was at the mercy of French and even Algerian pirates until all the old prosperity had disappeared, while the literature and architecture of the heathenish period lay forgotten and the ancient wooden buildings of nobles and freedmen were being replaced by huts made out of peat.

  Since the middle of last century, however, there has been a return of some of the old prosperity and with it a renewed demand for complete independence. To-day Iceland once more rules itself as it did eleven centuries ago, although outwardly still recognizing the King of Denmark as its sovereign. The biggest city on the island, Reykjavik, has about 25,000 inhabitants and is the seat of a university. The total number of inhabitants does not exceed one hundred thousand, but they have an excellent literature of their own. There are no villages but only isolated firms, where the children are taught, and taught well, by itinerant schoolmasters.

  Altogether this is a most interesting little corner of the world. Like so many other small countries, it shows what can be done when intelligence is pitted against unfavourable outward circumstances. For Iceland surely is no earthly paradise. While the winters are not very cold, due to the presence of a branch of the Gulf Stream, the summers are much too short to allow of the cultivation of grain or fruit. And then, it is for ever raining!

  ICELAND

  The twenty-nine volcanoes of which the most famous, Hekla, has been responsible for twenty-eight outbreaks during the period of which we have any historical record, have covered the island with vast tracts of lava, some of which are over a thousand square miles large. Earthquakes have upon occasion destroyed hundreds of farms, and enormous fissures or clefts, running often for miles across the solid sheet of lava, and sulphur springs and lakes of boiling mud make travel from one part of the island to another a somewhat complicated affair. The geysers, or hot-water gushers, for which Iceland is so famous are interesting rather than, dangerous, for although one of these, the famous Big Geyser, sometimes spouts its boiling water as high as a hundred feet, their activity is steadily decreasing.

  And yet people not only live in Iceland but want to go on living there. During the last sixty years more than 20,000 of them have moved to America, chiefly to Manitoba. But many of these emigrants have returned whence they came. It rains. And it is uncomfortable. But it is home.

  Chapter XIX

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  THE SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA, THE TERRITORY OCCUPIED BY THE KINGDOMS OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY

  The people of the Middle Ages, who lived in a happy world of fairy stories, knew exactly how the Scandinavian peninsula happened to have got its queer shape. After the good Lord had finished the work of creation, the Devil came along to see what He had been doing those seven long days He had been away from Heaven. When the Devil saw our planet in the first flush of its young loveliness he lost his temper, and got so terribly angry that he heaved a large rock at Mankind’s new home. That rock landed in the Arctic Sea and became the Scandinavian peninsula. It was so barren and bleak that it seemed entirely unfit for life. But the good Lord remembered that a little bit of rich earth had been left behind when He got through fashioning the other continents. These remnants He then sprinkled across the mountains of Norway and Sweden. But of course there was not enough to go round, and that explains why the greater part of these two countries has always remained a home for trolls and gnomes and werewolves, because no human being could hope to make a living from such a poor soil.

  Modern man also has a fairy story but it is a scientific one, based upon certain facts which he has been able to observe with his own eyes. According to geologists, the Scandinavian peninsula is merely the remnant of a very old and very large continent which long before the era of the coal forests had stretched from Europe all the way across the Arctic Ocean to America.

  We know of course that the present arrangement of our continents is of very recent origin—that the continents seem to have been constantly on the move, like leaves floating on a pond, and that several continents, now separated from each other by oceans and seas, were once upon a time a solid mass of land. When the continent of which Norway and Sweden had formed a part disappeared from view, only the easternmost ridge—the mountain-ranges of Scandinavia—remained above water. So did Iceland and the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands and Scotland. The rest now lies at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Some day the rôles may be reversed. Then the Arctic Ocean will become dry land, and Sweden and Norway will be turned over to the whales and the little fishes.

  The Norwegians do not seem to lose any sleep on account of this threat to their homeland. They have other things to worry them. The problem, for example, of keeping alive, which is by no means a simple one when you remember that in Norway less than four per cent. of the total area (only four thousand square miles) can be used for purposes of agriculture. Sweden is a little better off with ten per cent. but even that is not so very much.

  There are of course certain compensations. One-half of Sweden is covered with woods and one-quarter of Norway is covered with pine and fir forests. These forests are slowly being cut down, but lumbering is not the devastating business it is in America. It is done in the most scientific way imaginable, for both the Swedes and the Norwegians know that their country will never be any good for ordinary agricultural pursuits. That is the fault of the glaciers, which once upon a time covered the whole of the peninsula from the North Cape down to Lindesnaes. These glaciers scraped the soil from the rocky hillsides as completely and efficiently as a dog licks a plate. Not only did they deprive the mountains of their hard-earned soil (it takes millions of years to make enough soil to cover such a vast stretch of land), but they carried it away with them and deposited it over that great northern plain of Europe of which I told you in the chapter about Germany.

  THE BARREN SOIL OF THE MOUNTAINS

  The scouts who went ahead of the great Asiatic invasion of Europe of forty centuries ago must have known this. When at last they crossed the Baltic, they found Scandinavia inhabited by a few nomads of Finnish origin. It was easy enough to drive them back into the fastness of northern Lapland. But when that had been done, how could the new settlers hope to make a living?

  There were several ways. In the first place, they could go out and fish. The endless ba
ys and fjords, which were really nothing but deep grooves dug into the rocks by the glaciers trying to reach the ocean, gave the country a coastline almost six times as long as it would have been if the Norwegian coast had formed a straight line, as it does in Holland or Denmark. The Norwegians are still fishing. The Gulf Stream sees to it that all the harbours, even as far north as Hammerfest, remain open the whole year round. The nooks and crannies of the Lofoten Islands, on the brink of those cool, clean Arctic waters which the cod seems to prefer for breeding purposes, provide work for more than a hundred thousand fishermen and to an equal number of people engaged in the business of canning whatever the trawlers bring on shore.

  In the second place, if they did not care to fish, they could turn pirates. All along the Norwegian coast there lies a row of islands and islets which account for seven per cent. of the country’s surface and which are separated from each other by such a complicated system of narrows and sands and bights and straits that a steamer going from Stavanger to Vardo has got to carry two pilots, each of whom takes charge every six hours.

  During the Middle Ages when there were no beacons and buoys and lighthouses (Lindesnaes is the oldest lighthouse on the Norwegian coast, and even that is of comparatively recent date), no outsiders would come within a dozen miles of this dangerous coast. Although the story of the famous Maelstrom between two of the Lofoten Islands has been greatly exaggerated, no inexperienced skipper would venture into this watery labyrinth without at least half a dozen natives to show him the way. Those pirates therefore who made their own familiar fjord their base of operations knew that they had little to fear as soon as they were within sight of the home range of mountains, and they made very good use of this natural advantage. They improved their ships and their fighting technique until they could venture forth as far as England and Ireland and Holland. Once they had discovered the road to these comparatively nearby places, they gradually lengthened their voyages until the people of France and of Spain and Italy and far-off Constantinople began to feel uncomfortable whenever some returning merchantman reported that he had seen the dragon of a Viking ship somewhere in the neighbourhood.