CHAPTER VII
GOTHLAND
Scarcely more than fifty miles from the Swedish mainland, with which communication is maintained by comfortably appointed steamers which run daily from Nynäshamn, and boasting a mild and delightful climate, is an island whose history reads like a romance, and whose many relics of a prehistoric culture mark it out among all time. Forgotten by the world of commerce and almost unknown to the present-day tourist, the town of Visby, capital of the island of Gothland, was once an important commercial centre, the splendour of its churches, merchant houses and town walls evidencing great wealth, and bearing witness to the artistic imagination of Swedish master-masons and builders. And as you steam into its harbour you see a city which for picturesque beauty has few rivals in the world: tall, graceful spires and city walls built on natural rock terraces, whose rugged outline of masonry appear to have been fashioned by a giant of fable, and a coast-line which seems to rise up in one single sheer cliff, or in terraces with yellow or blue-grey rocks that tower like mighty ramparts against the sea.
It is not known when the first city of Visby was built, but archæologists tell us that there was a town on the present site more than 2000 years before Christ, and only a few years ago men digging in the market-place near the ruins of St. Catherine’s Church found large blocks of stone, and under these the ruins of another town, evidently of the Stone Age.
Long before Visby was born, however, Gothland was already an island empire and occupied a position in the trade of the Baltic identical to that occupied by Rhodes or Crete in the Mediterranean.
Of this old Visby we have little record apart from a mention that is made of it by the Guta Saga when relating certain incidents that occurred in Gothland during the tenth century, at the time Christianity was first introduced into the island.
“When the Gothlanders were heathen,” the Saga says, “they sailed with cargoes to every land, both Christian and heathen. Then saw the merchants Christian ways in Christian lands, some of them being baptized and even bringing back priests with them to Gothland. Bothair of Akeback built a church on the place now called Külstade. But as the people of the island would not suffer the church but set fire to it and burned it, he built yet another with feasts and sacrifices at Vi, which when the people also tried to burn, he climbed upon and said: ‘If ye will burn the church, then shall ye burn me also’. This the people would not do, as Bothair had as wife the daughter of Likkair Snälle, who was their ruler at that time, and Likkair enjoined them not to do this deed. Whereupon the church was left to stand unburned. It was built in the name of All Saints on the place that is now called Peter’s Church, and was the first church in Gothland which was left to stand....”
Vi means place of sacrifice, and Visby means therefore village by the place of sacrifice, it being evident that the village must even before this period have enjoyed a certain importance as a religious centre for a larger or smaller portion of the island population, its inhabitants being the ancestors of those Teutonic races which fifteen hundred years ago overthrew the might of imperial Rome and revolutionised the world. That Gothland was even then a sea power of considerable importance is proved by the vast treasures in gold and silver which have been unearthed in the island, and many of the gold coins which have been found are minted with the profiles of Greek emperors or inscribed in Roman or Arabic, this evidence showing that the Goths were as adept in the arts of commerce as they were in those of war. Gothland was inhabited by a race of bold sea rovers and traders, who sailed down the rivers of Russia, carrying far and wide their cargoes of pitch, tar, limestone, and salt, the products of their island. Marauding and looting as they went, they were hardly welcome guests in the countries which they visited, and accordingly, not only were able to exchange or barter their cargoes most profitably for the precious wares, furs, skins, and honey of Russia, and the woven fabrics, spices, food-stuffs, and silver ware of the east, but also returned home, their war chests well replenished with the gold and silver tribute which their unwilling hosts had paid to rid themselves of their importunate presence.
Of the treasures thus accumulated, part was melted down and fashioned into ornaments and vessels, and part was buried in hiding-places in the island, only a small proportion having so far come into the possession of archæologists. Of the many tens of thousands of coins which have been discovered more than half have been dug up in Gothland, the majority of these being of Arabian, Greek, or Roman origin, and the remainder of Saxon, Rhine and South German, Turkish, Polish, and even Hungarian extraction. Of the English coins many date from the reigns of Kings Edgar and Ethelred, and the Cyfic or Arabian coins, of which over 25,000 have been discovered, were brought from the Caspian Sea during the eighth and ninth centuries; they were struck principally at Cufa on the Tigranes. As a Chinese cup and a shell from the Indian Ocean have, moreover, also been found in graves not far from Visby, it is clear that the light Viking barques which set sail periodically from this northern island carried out far-reaching and extensive expeditions to most parts of the world, and that Gothland can therefore justifiably claim to have possessed a prosperity which in its own time unfolded itself in almost fabulous splendour.
Of the early history of the island we have, unfortunately, apart from what archæology teaches us, nothing but the most hazy traditions, though the Guta Saga of the thirteenth century tells us that when the population of Gothland reached a certain figure one-third of the inhabitants was selected by lot and bidden to leave the country with all their goods and chattels. “Then were these loth to go,” so the Saga writes, “but went they to Thor’s stronghold and lived there. Then would the country not suffer them there but drove them thence. Then went they forth to Fårö and remained there a time. Even there, however, they were not permitted to remain but went out to an island near Esthonia called Dagö, where they lived and built a stronghold for themselves which is still to be seen. Also there they were unable to subsist, but went by water called Düna up through Russia. And they proceeded so far that they finally came to Greece, where they lived until now and still speak in a tongue somewhat similar to our own.”
There is a hill which is called Torsburgen (Thor’s stronghold), on which one can still see the remains of the castle where the banished men of Gothland made their last stand against their countrymen. The mountain is broad—a huge plateau which is crowned by a forest; and so steep that on three sides of it, it is almost unscaleable. On the fourth, approach to it is barred by mighty mile-long walls constructed of rough boulders, which represent so prodigious an amount of labour, with their hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of stone, that the mind is almost staggered by it. In the middle of the forest lies the castle of Thor, where the last desperate remnant of the rebels made their final stand before being overpowered by force of numbers, a mass of fallen stones and boulders and crumbling walls, most of which have fallen, testifying to the homeric age of which we possess so little record. When these incidents took place we do not know. We have, however, been able to estimate that as early as the sixth century before Christ at the beginning of the Iron Age, the inhabitants of Gothland began to migrate to other countries, the climate of the island having suddenly and rapidly become exceedingly cold, and that by the third century before Christ the island had become almost entirely depopulated. During the next centuries, however, the population increased so rapidly that when the Great Migration took place, Gothland was able to send thousands of Viking auxiliaries to swell the ranks of the mighty armies that were marching south to make a mass attack on the Roman Empire.
[Illustration: KALMAR CASTLE]
The Great Age of Gothland did not, however, begin till the twelfth century, by which time the commercial supremacy of the island had become so firmly established that not only the northern states of Europe, but even England, began to adopt the sea laws and coinage of the enterprising Gothlanders, while the greater part of the more lucrative trade of northern Europe passed into their hands. The old steel-yard in London near Blackfriars Bridge was the yard of the Gothland merchants where they stored their iron and steel merchandise, while merchants from the island are mentioned as purveyors of miniver and wax to Henry III. of England. Soon Visby began definitely to take up its place as the leading commercial settlement of Gothland, while many foreign merchants settled in the town in the hope of rivalling the prosperity of the native traders, the Germans coming in such numbers that at one time more than half the town council and two of the principal magistrates belonged to that nationality. In 1163 Henry the Lion, Duke of Lübeck, granted the merchants of Gothland peaceful entry into his land and extensive trading privileges on condition that his subjects enjoyed similar rights and immunities in theirs, while a similar trade alliance was gradually signed between Visby and no less than thirty other cities which was ultimately to lead to the formation of the Hanseatic League.
There is no doubt that these were halcyon days for Visby, and that owing to its position as foremost commercial power in the north it was able to exercise an authority and prestige in the Councils of the League that made it almost the sole arbiter of its destinies, while its wealth was so fabulous that, as an old ballad ran:
The Gothlanders weighed gold with twenty-pound weights And played with the rarest gems; The pigs ate out of silver troughs, And the women spun with distaffs of gold.
To guard against attack, imposing walls were constructed around the city built on natural rock terraces which soon converted Visby into one of the strongest fortresses of the age, while it began to rival the finest towns in Europe in the splendour of its churches, public and private buildings, and the wealth of its merchant princes.
This being the case, it was no wonder that the city soon began to attract the cupidity of kings and pirates, and that during these centuries there were many occasions on which her burghers were called upon to defend their city, though the time was to come when even her massive walls and the staunch hearts of her defenders proved inadequate to ward off attack. Her decline and fall began as soon as internecine strife arose between her citizens and those of the countryside, and when open warfare arose between the two camps owing to the resentment that was felt by the country merchants against those of the town for claiming the exclusive right to the commerce of the island, her fate was really sealed. In the spring of 1288 the peasant merchants took up arms and marched on Visby, the war that ensued proving so indecisive that King Magnus, who had hitherto exercised a purely nominal suzerainship on the island, was encouraged to interfere. He invaded it with a powerful army, put an end to the war, and converted Gothland into a Swedish province after suppressing all its privileges and exemptions from taxation. This curtailment of her liberties, coupled with the displacement of commercial routes owing to the crusades, the rapid rise of Lübeck as mistress of the Baltic, and the further wars that were waged against her, hastened the downfall of the city, though she continued for a time to mint her own coinage and even to oppose successfully (in 1313) by force of arms the attempts made by Swedish and other kings to extort fresh taxation from her coffers or gain possession of her citadel. Then misfortunes began to crowd in upon the town. Smaller and smaller became its commerce, and thinner and thinner the streams of silver that poured in from the lands beyond the sea, while bitterly cold winters and dry summers came with cattle pests and plagues which mowed down rich and poor alike, the dead and dying lying in street or square uncared for, polluting the air. Then finally the end in 1361, when Valdemar, King of the Danes, determined to take possession of Visby and of what still remained of its wealth. Landing at Västergarn, where a few hundred peasants who offered resistance were defeated, he advanced upon the town between burning homesteads, and after slaughtering 1800 peasants who fought to the last in defence of the capital, entered the city. Whether or not the legend is true according to which the burgomaster’s daughter fell in love with the Danish king and delivered up to him the key of the town, or that other legend which relates that Valdemar was admitted into the city through a breach made by the burghers themselves in the hope of so gaining the whole commerce of the island, now that their rural competitors had been wiped out, the fact remains that Valdemar looted the town in spite of its unconditional surrender and compelled the authorities to hand him over three hogsheads filled with gold, silver, and precious stones.
[Illustration: RUINS OF BORGHOLM CASTLE, ÖLAND]
In the church of St. Nicholas are two sightless rose windows, each of which, so a legend tells us, contained a carbuncle so large and luminous that it served as a beacon to mariners as they steered their vessels into Visby Harbour. And these King Valdemar carried away with him when returning home with his booty, only to encounter a storm off the coast of Gothland, when every ship foundered. To this day the inhabitants of the island declare that when the sea is calm they have seen these carbuncles glowing from their resting-place in the deep.
Visby’s star of destiny now set for ever, though it continued to struggle on in the hope of better things, and again and again the town was besieged, looted or even burned, Dane, Swede, and pirate gradually encompassing its ruin. Faster and faster its power on the sea waned and drew to its end, while its ships were taken and plundered till none would venture out to sea. At last came the Reformation, when the treasures of its churches were confiscated and its convents dissolved, while the decayed and ruined churches which had been its proud boast were allowed to go to rack and ruin, only the cathedral of St. Mary being maintained and restored for the new worship. Gradually their roofs blew asunder, their rafters rotted and their arches crumbled away, while from the walls stone fell after stone, religious iconoclasts completing the ruin that others had begun.
* * * * *
Of all the mediæval splendour attained by Gothland there are consequently nothing but ruins, but these ruins are in themselves so wondrous, and the Visby of to-day reflects so many of the features of the merchant city of Hanseatic times, that few cities are more interesting to visit. With its many picturesque red-tiled houses and gables, its many architectural treasures and imposing castellated walls, its lovely gardens yielding every summer roses of luxuriant abundance, and its mild climate and many recreational facilities, Visby is in fact an ideal spot for a holiday.
The first thing that impresses as you land on the island is the mighty wall that dominates all the surrounding country and encloses the city almost in its original perfection; vast grey battlemented walls, mellowed by age and the touch of ivy, with thirty-eight towers which rise some of them to a height of 70 feet and recall those of Cracow or Carcassonne, and between them a picturesque series of bartizans supported by corbels, the whole being among the most perfect specimens that are still preserved of mediæval fortress architecture.
Of these walls the west or shoreward are considerably older than the others, it being probable that on the land side the town was at first only protected by a palisade-crowned rampart which was in course of time replaced by a wall with crenellated coping and a banquette along the inner side surmounting a row of pointed blind arches, but towards the close of the thirteenth century it was still further heightened and the greater part of the towers erected, the new superstructure of wall between the towers resting upon the parapet and being only broken by a series of bartizans. In earlier times, moreover, a number of moats partly hewn out of the solid rock provided additional security to the city, though few of these water defences are now visible.
The oldest and most interesting of these towers is undoubtedly the Powder Tower, the only remaining fortification of the old port, its heavy barred vaultings and sturdy walls probably dating back to the eleventh century; but the lover of legend should also linger for a moment near the Tower of Jungfrutornet, or the Maiden’s Tower, and hear how the burgomaster’s daughter fell in love with Valdemar and gave him the key of the city which she had stolen at night from under her father’s pillow. The story goes that as soon as he sailed for Denmark the citizens built this tower and immured her alive as a punishment for her treachery.
The wall undoubtedly owes its imposing effect in a large measure to the fact that the land outside it is for the most part desolate and devoid of vegetation, and its vast grey fortifications, which extend their battlemented tops around the town for more than two and a half miles, are exceedingly impressive. Before entering the town, however, you should pass by a certain field lying just outside the walls, where a very old stone cross is to be found, and also pay a visit to the mediæval scaffold which is situated to the north of the town near the old Lepers’ Church of St. Göran. Both are worth visiting.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF VISBY]
The first, Valdemar’s Cross, which is engraved with the likeness of the Saviour, and a Latin inscription reading as following:
In the year of our Lord 1361, on the third day after St. James, fell the Gothlanders before the gates of Visby in the hands of the Danes. Here lie they buried. Pray for them,
is in spite of its old age almost in a perfect state of preservation, only one arm having been destroyed. It was erected on the very spot where the peasants of Gothland made their final stand in defence of Visby against the might of the Danish crown, and near it lie buried many of the peasants and Danish soldiers who fell on that historic occasion. Some twenty years ago excavations in this old burial-place brought to light several hundred skeletons in rusted armour, many of the shields being pierced with arrows or dented by sword-cuts. It is believed that these skeletons are the remains of the Danish invaders, as only the Gothlanders were buried under the cross itself.
The second consists of a mediæval scaffold, three stone pillars once joined by wooden rafters upon which malefactors were wont to be hanged in olden times. Grim and menacing, they stand on a high cliff so that all may see, a lasting memorial of an age when evil-doers were exposed even in death to the public eye _pour effrayer les autres_.
Between these imposing walls the life of the town, now a ghost of its former self, pulses lazily through narrow and crooked cobbled streets which are lined with low-eaved and small windowed wooden or stone houses;[3] and along these disused byways of travel, whose very name is an inspiration, are ruins of churches and abbeys, cathedrals and dwellings, that date from the Hanseatic age and attest the glory of Visby’s past. The whole effect is extremely picturesque, in spite of the intrusion here and there of certain houses, products of more recent times; while interspersed among these and brightened, moreover, in many places by greenery and the famous rose gardens that you will find sandwiched in the most unlikely places, are high and stately gabled houses, the residences of the merchant princes of the Middle Ages. And the ruins of ten wondrous stone churches, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose yellow ivy-clad walls and graceful arches and columns provide the most convincing of testimonies not only of Visby’s former greatness and prosperity but of the hold which religion then occupied in the heart of her citizens.
[3] Many of the latter being built from stones taken from the old churches.
Of the older houses many are well preserved and had their origin in the prosperous days of the town in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They are characterised by high narrow façades and gables with corbel steps, and arches that span the streets and provide the city with one of its characteristic features. The stateliest of these old mansions are those that are found along the Strandgatan in close proximity to the mediæval harbour, one of their typical features consisting of church-like cellars which are canopied by cross vaultings on slender, graceful columns, and usually divided into two stories by a flooring of beams placed at half the height of the ceiling. The house containing the museum of the town, a magnificent collection of Gothlandic mediæval art, “Gothlands fornsal,” possesses such a cellar, a portion of the floor originally dividing it into two stories having been removed to suit the requirements of the museum; but this mansion, unlike many of the mediæval buildings of the town, shows nothing on its exterior to betray its great age. Among those who have preserved their old-world exterior best are the well-known Old Apothecary’s shop “Gamla apoteket”, also in the Strandgatan, which dates from the days of King John of England, the Liljehorns’ house, and the hotel Visby Börs in the same street, and certain groups of houses in Hansgatan, as again the woodshed of the bishop’s palace in Drottensgatan and the Burmeister House.[4] Many of these mediæval houses were obviously utilised for business purposes and occasionally contained as many as eight stories.
[4] Whose wall and ceiling decorations date from 1650.
Even more striking, however, are the ruins of the splendid stone churches which are dotted here and there through the irregular streets and lanes, the view that these command from their towers being one of surpassing loveliness; an interesting cathedral which was consecrated in 1225 and is still in use to-day, and ten wonderful old ruins, relics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries which represent every style of architecture in the Middle Ages except the late Gothic. I doubt if any town in Europe of anything like the size of Visby or even much larger can present anything architecturally of so engrossing an interest.
The Cathedral of St. Mary was originally built as a basilica, _i.e._ with three aisles, of which the middle one was the highest. It also had a vaulted transept with an apse adjoining, and was lighted by windows which perforated the clerestory above the roof of the side aisles. Of this original building only the lower part of the great west tower and part of the transept are preserved, the remainder of the church having undergone many alterations. Shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century the original chancel was replaced by the present choir, while the beautiful and still preserved Bridal Porch was constructed in the south gable of the transept. New side aisles were then substituted for the old, corresponding in height and width with the nave, their roofs being so arranged that every vaulted square had its own saddle roof with the gable facing the length of the building, while every second column separating the aisles was pulled down, these changes having the effect of converting the entire interior into a single whole except for the chancel and tower chapels. Some time before 1400 a large hall, whose walls were superimposed directly over the colonnades, was erected over the vaulting of the nave and another roof laid over it, to whose walls new slanting roofs were joined for the side aisles. In this manner the exterior of the cathedral was considerably heightened and again looked like a basilica, though nothing was changed in the interior of the church itself. About the same period the towers, now altogether too low for the remainder of the church, were raised to their present height.
Interesting as is the Cathedral of St. Mary, the ruins of the other houses of worship that once served the spiritual needs of Visby’s thirty thousand people are, in my opinion, infinitely more arresting in their loveliness. The force of their appeal lies, I imagine, in the picture which they afford of an age when religion was not a hollow sham but a reality to which every man readily turned, not only in those moments of trial when even the careless remember the claim of the Deity, but also in those more prosperous times when men rapidly develop an illusory sense of their own power and might. Visby in her heyday supported no less than sixteen churches and the island nearly a hundred, many of these being vast structures of mediæval splendour, to whose adornment many precious metals and jewels had been lavished and many great artists had contributed a quota.
Near the walls are the beautiful towers of St. Drotten and St. Lars, sister churches which are said to have been built by two maiden sisters who hated one another so heartily that each erected her own church in order not to sit together in the same place of worship.
St. Drotten has a square tower which is reminiscent of the western tower of the cathedral and is built in one piece with an almost quadrate nave, while St. Lars, which is cruciform in shape and shows a marked Byzantine influence, impresses by virtue of its majestic proportions, its characteristically high arched paired windows, and its massive vaulted rooms that fill in the corners of the cross and open to its arm, no ingenuity having so far accounted for the triforia that are hollowed in its walls at various heights and facing the nave of the church.
St. Nicholas, which like St. Lars has wonderful long slender windows, is a three-aisled church, with a square chancel and a pentagonal apse, which was originally built as a basilica, and then so altered that the height of the three aisles is now the same. It was taken over by the Dominicans about 1220 when they arrived in Visby, the decorative sculptures of the doorways being very similar to those found in the bridal porch of St. Mary’s.
St. Clement’s, as it stands to-day, also belongs to the same period, _i.e._ about the middle of the thirteenth century, but within its walls are the foundations of three, if not more, older church edifices, the first probably dating back to about 980, a circumstance that speaks eloquently of the wealth and love of building that characterised the Great Age of Visby, since it is clear that none of these churches were destroyed by human agency, this period being then almost the only one during which the island remained at peace with the world.
The other ruined churches of Visby include the churches of St. John and St. Peter, which was the successor of Botair’s wooden church to which I have already alluded, and also St. Olaf’s Tower, which is almost identical to the western tower of the cathedral, all these being interesting specimens of twelfth-century architecture, but none that I have mentioned, except perhaps St. Lars, are as quickening to the imagination, or as remarkable for the beauty of their architectural features, as the churches of St. Catherine and the Holy Ghost.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF VISBY]
The first, which was dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria, belonged to the Franciscan friars who settled in Visby in 1233, but only acquired its definite form with its graceful columns and lofty vaultings in 1413, its beautiful columns and arches remaining to this day in an almost perfect state of preservation. The second, which belonged to the charitable institution of the Holy Ghost, consists of an octagonal tower with two vaulted stories and two separate floors, with a common chancel and an apse that is let into its eastern wall. Original in conception and better preserved than most of the ruins of the city, the Church of the Holy Ghost ranks perhaps as the finest church of the island.
Of the hundred or more churches which are to be found in other parts of Gothland, the more interesting are undoubtedly those which date back to the twelfth century or even further, such as the richly decorated wooden church of Hemse, now preserved in the Historical Museum at Stockholm, the church Garde with its plain nave and Byzantine paintings, the churches of Dalhem and Stånga, and the large Cistercian convent church in Roman constructed after the designs of the French Cistercians, the simple grandeur of whose arches and columns recall those of another Rome; yet even the other more modern churches often present interesting features. Distinguished by plain wall surfaces and an almost entire lack of the buttress system that characterises Gothic architecture in the west, they possess a style that is pure Gothic and yet are strongly national in tendency. Their towers are very varied in shape, but usually tall and slender, while the interiors convey an impression of great spaciousness, thanks to the height of their slender columns, the solidity of their vaultings, and the wide span of their equally high arches. Speaking for myself, however, I confess to have derived greater pleasure from seeing the many wonderful carved portals, baptismal fonts, and well-preserved wood carvings, some of these the work of the greatest sculptors of the age, that abound in the island, many of the roods, figures of the Madonna and statues of saints, which have been preserved, possessing a very high artistic value. In this respect I rather fancy the little island of Gothland is perhaps richer than almost any country in the world save France and Germany, the beauty and originality of its wood carvings and decorative sculpture providing further proof of the exceedingly high culture attained by its citizens in the days of their prosperity. No lover of beauty should therefore fail to pay a visit to a few of these old churches, and especially to Viklau and Öja. The first possesses the only known wood carving attributed to the famous cathedral workers of Chartres, the leading sculpture centre in the twelfth century; the second an equally beautiful rood that is generally held to be the work of a French sculptor of the thirteenth century.
The three masters who are principally responsible for the building of the churches of Gothland are Le Frans, Botwid and Sighafr, all three justly reputed in their age as leaders of their art; but many other talented artists, whose names have purposely remained concealed under a _nom de guerre_, have contributed their quota to the embellishment and building of these splendid mediæval monuments. It has been calculated that over 400 churches would now be left standing in this tiny island as a record of the tremendous ecclesiastical building activity which took place in Gothland from the earliest Christian times to the middle of the fourteenth century, if the Goths had been spared the series of catastrophes which was destined to leave them the easy prey of pirates and marauders, and I should say that this figure is probably underestimated.
There is one further characteristic found in these churches, moreover, that should appeal to the lover of folk-lore. It appears that Gothland, like Scandinavia and Great Britain, was in the Bronze Age a great centre of sun worship, and that this adoration of the Sun god (Bal) lingered on in spite of Christianity among the many customs that have survived to show a pagan influence.
Many of the dances, for instance, which are given round the Beltane fires on Midsummer Eve are 3000 years old and date from that period, while the remains of a sun chariot have also been discovered not far from Visby; but what is even more interesting is the fact that the chief door of practically every church in the island faces south and yet lies as near to the west as possible. This has undoubtedly to do with the cult of the sun, as the good people of Visby sought in this manner to conciliate both their new and old convictions. Even to-day the peasants of the island never dance or spin on Thursday (the day of Thor, the god of thunder), this being the one day of the week when in pagan times they were unable to pay their worship to the Sun god.
[Illustration: SUNDAY AT RÄTTVIK, DALECARLIA]
Apart from the churches and a few well-preserved merchant houses dating from Hanseatic times, such as the famous merchant mansion of Kattlunda in the south of the island, which was obviously designed for defence against an enemy, the interior of Gothland has little to offer in the way of scenic attractions, if we except the luxuriantly beautiful groves and “leafy meadows” which are found interspersed here and there among the desolate fen and woodland, and occasional patches of wheat and beet sugar characterising the scenery. With these exceptions, everything worth seeing is concentrated along the coasts. Along the west are romantically wild cliffs and downs, with here and there a pleasant little cove or inlet, and the two lonely Karl islands with their steep cliffs and a bird life so varied that it is difficult to believe any human being has ever set foot on the island; along the east, broad open bays, sandy shores, and rocky promontories worn away by the sea and moulded into strange fantastic shapes recalling those seen in the wildest parts of the Breton coast or the Giant’s Causeway; to the south a low shore and headland fringed with Hoburgen’s mighty rocks; and to the north the large island of Fårö with its impressive drift sands and the wild-looking Isle of Sandö, where forest and sand are ever waging a fight for existence: a scenery, in short, which for sheer grandeur and picturesqueness resembles no other in the world, and over which I have seen sunsets flaming with almost southern splendour. Truly Gothland is an ideal spot for a holiday, and with its many imposing ruins of a vanished culture, its wild scenery and coast line, its mild climate and its pleasant seaside resorts of Snäckgärdsbaden, Kneippbyn and Slite, all easily accessible from Visby by rail or motor, combines a sufficiency of attractions that should make it a favourite resort for any traveller who is desirous of exploring new and strange ground.