THE HIDDEN LAND

Hokitika Guardian, 2 September 1926, Page 3

THE HIDDEN LAND

HAPPY. HEALTHY DENMARK. ( By J. M. N. Jeffries). COPENHAGEN, July IS. There can he no country, certainly no old-established country in Europe, which is in quite such a curious situation as Denmark. There she lies, in the centre of the Scandinavian world, at the same time one ni the most visited and the least visited lands in Europe. Tier many visitors, apart from the Danes from America, are all ot one category. They are all experts. Specialists. theorists, professors, scholastic envoys, and scientific delegates, the whole international army of makers nnd breakers of blue-books upon schooling and farming stream every year through Denmark in a search for northern light upon the problems which oc-

cupy them. For Denmark has much to tell the ■members of that army on these questions, in her treatment of which she may be said to lead the world, and the flapping of their notebooks ami the scratch of thoir pencils as they take it down can be heard in Iceland when the expert season here is at its full. On the other hand, to the general public, to the average traveller, and even Wi the habitual tourist, this ancient kingdom, one of the true heirlooms of the human race, is almost as unfamiliar as Arabia. You will find more books of a- lion-technical character concerning Arabia on the shelves of British booksellers than you will find hooks upoft Denmark. A recent inquiry at one of London’s most widely stocked firm* ended in the production of six, two of which were technical, one an old pamphlet-, ami two works printed in the iSStli. century! Such is the

reward of virtue. For the last 60 years, too. her history would appear to have been as quiet as her scenery, which contains no great rivers or lakes or mountains. Indeed, for their nearest approach to a mountain Danes have to go to sea. The host they have in the way of vertical earth is the island of Bornholm, which is far away ill the Baltic, over 100 miles from Copenhagen. It- rises to about 340 ft. and would do nicely as a

rest-cure home for members of the Alpine Club. One way and another, therefore, her native tranquility lias kept Denmark in the background. Even the great Baedeker himself, obliged to produce a a guide-book covering the three Scandinavian countries, obviously dallied in Sweden and Norway with rod and line, and. as he starred a salmon-pool, sent

the hoy off to do a bit about Denmark. My own feelings. I confess, as I approached its coasts were not entirely I sanguine. I felt that if there was anything write about it would surely have been written long ago. But it was one of the lovely summer evenings of these latitudes, and as we neared Fsbjerg, from the low-lying stretches of land around it there was borne out to *ea, such a wild, sweet odour of heather as I recall nowhere else, ft beautified the small seaport, which otherwise had little to distinguish it except that- it looked very like some small Eng-

lish port, as, indeed, Denmark does resemble England generally. Perhaps I wns in the mood for it. but in anv cas* the breath from the land

seemed to rno to come as a sort of portent. Here was Nature working a pleasant surprise, and I said to myself that I should find in this unknown country, things as simple and as splendid in their way as the small of the heather blowing from oft' Jutland. Nor was I wrong in that first intuition. Next day took me to Elsinore, which all this month is celebrating its five-hundredth anniversary. The sun shone on the old streets, on the .scarletroofed and gabled houses, on the 16th. century apothecary’s with the crowned swan on its painted walls, on the oldtimbered lanes and the dark red churches. The waters of the Sound lapjiod upon tho wharves and there was a vigour in the air. full of sali and of tar and wet with tho whispers of the sea. Everywhere were the children of the Dane, hoys and girls alike with their blue eyes like fresh-opened mirrors, their corn-coloured hair tossing as they ran down the Stengado beneath the banners, which tossed, too, in a. red and white flood above them. Every house in that street was alight with the Dannebrog, the white cross on the fiame-tongued flag which has flown unaltered over Denmark since the days when onr King John was facing his barons. On the same site, under the same banner, children with the same hair and eyes had danced in 1420, 1326—yes. and 1220. Their descendants, as they ran about- that afternoon or walked in demure files l»c----neath their teachers’ care, were like so many living monuments to the magnificent permanence of a small race. There are not three and a half million Danes yet, and when you think of the assaults of the centuries and of the great comnosito races environing them, tho first wonder of Denmark, you realise, is that she is there at all.