Part 5

The Danes have thus long been a racial complex, but the fair Nordic type predominates on the whole. Denmark's share, especially in the organizing aspects of the great maritime movements of post-Roman times, is well known, but Petersson's view that this occurred during a period of favourable climate and ice-free coasts in the northern seas helps one to realize the connexion of that activity with a particular period. The association of Denmark and Norway in maritime activity was long continued, and when the latter fell on bad times in the Middle Ages, the domination of the former became very marked. The political aspect of the matter is outside our scope, but with the nineteenth century the weakening of Denmark under German pressure loosed the bonds, and circumstances gave Norway in the end a remarkable opportunity. It thus came about that in 1864 Denmark saw the end of her _ancien régime_, and began a new career. The name of her Bishop Grundtvig stands out in company with that of Abbé of Jena and a few others in the drab century of commercial imperialisms. He set out to re-educate the Danish people in co-operation and simplicity, and, with his high schools for the development not so much of the technicalities as of the {54} amenities of life, he became one of those who builded better than he knew. The sheer financial success of the new agriculture of Denmark, thanks to skilled co-operative organization, is an outstanding phenomenon, however much may be due to the general increase of prosperity of the stock-raiser in the regions round the manufacturing centres. Copenhagen has become a centre for the wholesale marketing of butter, with train ferries and other communications making links with Esbjerg, with Germany, with Sweden, and across to the east side of the Baltic. Like Switzerland and Holland, Denmark contributes in no small measure to the intellectual life of Europe, partly through the opportunities her sons find in Berlin and other large centres of the big nations.

Of the first peopling of Norway comparatively little is known, but the population must have been sparse indeed until man was fairly well equipped to cope with that region's serious difficulties. It is a country of ledges along a broken coast, fantastically cut by fjords which are deep valleys of the edge of a high plateau modified by ice and then partially submerged under the sea. The partial submergence has converted outlying hillocks into a maze of islands, between which and the land there is, for long distances, a fairly open channel, an old longitudinal valley no doubt. The men of the fjords are in large measure of the tall, fair, long-headed Nordic type, but around the seaward ends of the southern fjords are dark broad-heads, who in this case are almost beyond doubt settlers from the sea. The physical geography of Trondhjem Fjord, on land and water, helps to make clear its special early importance, particularly during a period of good climate, but the whole of Norway suffered sadly in the fourteenth century from bad harvests and Hanseatic interference, and from that time onwards to the nineteenth century Norway's fortunes were low.

As in other lands of ancient poverty (note Finland and Switzerland) the nineteenth century brought the final merging of the old aristocracy in the people; the relation with Denmark was {55} loosed and a temporary link with Sweden, partly under fear of Russian Tsarist aggression, did not take deep root in the lives of the people. Much importance must be attached to the linguistic and literary revival of which the famous Bjornsen is the central figure. Meanwhile British Free Trade, and especially the repeal of the British Navigation Acts (1849), gave the Norse sailor and shipbuilder a chance, and the country developed a great mercantile marine, which managed to maintain itself until 1914, in spite of the advent of the iron ship and steamer. During and since the war Norway has not managed to keep pace with other mercantile marines like those of the United States of America and Japan.

Internally, Norway was from far-off times till quite recently a people of fisher-farmers prizing individual property on the small cultivable ledges beside the fjords, and leading cattle to summer pastures on the high grasslands of the great mountain plateau. The practice of inheritance by the first-born son is traditionally associated with these little farms so difficult to subdivide, and the long-continued absences of much of the male part of the population (fishing) are another feature. The latter fact is said to be accountable for the unique power of women in Norwegian affairs, and the women have certainly contributed much to the modern development of Norway as a pacific, self-reliant democracy. In the twentieth century there has already been a great growth of industry based on the hydro-electric power available in such quantity in the fjords; the chemical industry, including the preparation of nitrates from atmospheric nitrogen, is a feature. Since the war the value of Norwegian currency has gone down with the slackness of shipping and the inability of Germany to trade as she used to do, but the depreciation is not very great, and may well right itself if the war-clouds clear. Fish and timber have long been, and are likely to remain, valuable commercial assets; the need of imported cereals is a permanent difficulty.

At the back of Norway, on the high mountain plateau, are the {56} Lapps, whose seasonal wanderings disregard the international frontier between Norway and Sweden. Fortunately, therefore, when Sweden and Norway gave up (in 1905) their artificial and temporary union, it was mutually agreed, as became enlightened peoples, that the frontier would be entirely demilitarized. The separation coincided with a great development of Norway's trade, based upon the application of hydro-electric power to industry.

The Norwegian people centuries ago seemed to be giving up their language for Danish, but here, as in so many other countries (Bohemia, Serbia, Finland, Flanders, Catalonia, and Wales), the nineteenth century brought a resurgence of local speech, and the work of Bjornsen and Ibsen gave that speech a literary standard, and made its literature a power in the modern world, fortunately with comparatively little development of international antagonism, for by this time there was no language competing locally with Norwegian; Danish had retired and Swedish was too far off to matter seriously, though its pressure was at one time threatened.

The Western Scandinavians of late Viking times spread across the northern seas to Iceland, Greenland, and 'Wineland', which has been identified with the New England coast of North America. The connexion with America was lost, and that with Greenland almost, if not quite, lost as well, probably in the severities of climate of the fourteenth century, but that with the Faroes and Iceland persisted. In this way Iceland has become in some sort a repository of the Scandinavian past, and thence has spread in modern times a knowledge and appreciation of the ancient sagas of the Norse rovers, with elements embedded in them that date back far beyond Viking times. Icelandic and the literature embodied in it have thus become an important matter for students of European tradition and literary history, and the influence thence exerted on modern Germany, notably through Wagner, has been far-reaching and many-sided.

Sweden's associations are necessarily very different from those {57} of Norway. It is true that the high plateau is fairly sharply marked off from the rest of Sweden, but the steps down are less precipitous than on the Norwegian side, and though Sweden has a Lapp-world as her mystery soil for folk-tale, yet contacts between Swede and Lapp and Finn do take place and influence type. The recent beautiful atlas of photographs of Swedish types illustrates this for that country, but shows that the most characteristic element, as in Norway, is the tall, fair Nordic type.

It is apparently chiefly since the recovery of the north from the severities of the fourteenth-century climate that Sweden as a unit people has shown the most marked activity. A factor in this was undoubtedly the weakening effect of the great religious schism in Germany with the opportunities this gave to the France of the Counter-Reformation and the Bourbons.

Sweden even went through a phase of control of nearly the whole of the Baltic (_c._ 1660), but this could not be maintained, though the southern peninsula of Scania has never returned to its old associations, which date back to prehistoric times, with Denmark. The rise of Russia brought about the withdrawal of the Swedish influence from the east side of the Baltic, but the Finlanders of the south-west include several Swedish-speaking groups, and 96 per cent. in Aland use that language. The episode of military glory contributed to the maintenance of a local aristocracy, which has made Sweden very distinct, socially, from Norway, though democratization has gone a long way even here, and no new titles of nobility are created. Her more extensive lowlands, with possibilities of wheat in the southern half, make farming a richer matter than it can be in either Norway or Finland, while timber and good iron ore open up industrial and commercial possibilities, to which the zone of lakes and its canal system contribute not a little in the way of transport facilities. Sweden is thus a relatively rich Baltic land, though many features are shared in common with the peoples of the other (Finnish, {58} Lettish, and German) Baltic coasts, and her natural associations with Baltic Germany should be understood and appreciated. Sweden has come through the war with her money at a general European premium, a distinction she shares with Holland and Switzerland alone among all the peoples of Europe.

7

_The Peoples on the Eastern Border of Europe-of-the-Sea_

We have now surveyed the linguistic groups of Romance, Celtic, and Teutonic speech, and may note that among those of Celtic speech we find the most marked survivals of antiquity in social features. Among the Romance- and Teutonic-speaking peoples we find that there has long been a tendency towards closer accord between linguistic and political groupings, and that now, with some exceptions it is true, the political units are also linguistic ones. The regions of Romance and Teutonic speech are the great regions of organization of the State; they have a stable scheme of administration and revenue, a settled legal order, an approach to representative government based upon a franchise; in short, they are the regions of the patriotic nation-state. The exceptions have been noted here and there in the above sketch. Alsace is Alemannic in speech but French in attachment in many respects. Switzerland is a unique combination of units belonging to three language groups. Flanders, or the area of Flemish speech, is partly in France and partly in Belgium. Flanders and Alsace are two of the most serious of European problems, and even if they be mitigated by political foresight, the dangers from them are not likely to diminish definitively unless the 'nation-state' can be made to occupy less of the political horizon.

When we turn our attention eastwards from the lands of {59} Romance and Teutonic to those of Slavonic and Baltic languages, we find that, until recently at all events, there was no accord between the political and the linguistic units, and that, even now, the accord is fragmentary enough. We find also that in place of the principle of 'one region, one language', which applies broadly in the west, there is nearly always a minority language alongside the majority one. The 1914-18 crisis has shown how very unstable were the political units of the last fifty years, and the 'nation-state', that is a settled administration worthy of the name of 'state' combined with a social unit based upon tradition, has only just begun its career in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, in this eastern part of Europe we find languages of non-European character in Finland, Esthonia, Hungary, and Turkey, and to some extent in Bulgaria. This is then the zone of Euro-Asiatic contacts and interpenetrations, and these contacts have determined a great deal of the characteristics of the social order in this part of the Continent.

While the above statement is broadly true, it must, nevertheless, be stated that history records considerable and persistent, if partially unsuccessful, efforts to develop the nation-state in those western Slavonic lands which felt the influence of Rome either through the Empire or through the Church, while the contagion of nineteenth-century nationalism has spread far and wide.

During the period of close settlement and fixation of language and of growth of administration in the west there were periods of pressure Europewards from Asia, illustrated by the coming of Szeklers and Magyars, and the formation of the Magyar kingdom of Hungary, by the advance of the Bulgars, since practically Slavonized, by the pressure of the Mongols on Russia, and by the spread of the Turks. The spread of Finn or Finno-Ugrian peoples westward along the north is probably older, and has been more gradual and less organized.

Apart from this northern Finn-route and subordinate {60} Finn-ways (Perm, Kazan, Samara) to the Volga, the westward roads have been along the loess, either that of the Polish platform or that of Wallachia and the Hungarian plain, and the defence of the west against pressure along these ways gathered chiefly around Vienna and around Poland (Cracow in earlier times and Warsaw later on). Austria, as we now know it, was once the Ostmark, the eastern march or frontier domain of the German-speaking peoples, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire which has just collapsed after a long process of decay was the fruition of the organization that defended Western Europe from Asiatic pressure on the south-east. It was obviously not a nation-state, for besides its German and Magyar elements it included under its control the many Slavonic and partially Slavonic people of the hill frame around the middle Danube. Its day of greatness coincided with the holding up and the beginning of retreat of the Turkish pressure; its subsequent history is one of clever diplomacy aiming at maintaining a power created for a purpose that was now no more. The improbability of any renewal of effective pressure from Asia on the now so highly armed west of Europe did away with the _raison d'être_ of Vienna as a city of camp and court, and it will require a higher development of European unity to make Vienna take its definitive place as the nerve centre of the Continent's land-communications. For the present, therefore, the size and magnificence of Vienna seem to lack justification, and there is manifest distress. A far smaller city would do admirably for the capital of the small area henceforward to be called Austria, and the past traditions of Vienna expressed in palaces and luxuries are hardly what would naturally grow up around a modern railway centre. When, however, we realize the need for increased unity of Europe we cannot but feel how valuable the University Museums and Libraries of Vienna might be were they internationally developed so as to give Europe a natural culture-centre second only to Paris. The suggestion to make Vienna the {61} capital of the League of Nations revealed an over-emphasis on the military and diplomatic tradition of Vienna, an aspect of that city's life which it might be perilous to redevelop.

But as we are concerned with the peoples of Europe rather than with the states, this slight mention of Vienna must suffice, and we may proceed to deal with the linguistic groups of Europe east of the Teutonic and Romance areas in the way in which we have touched upon those of the west.

The Baltic or Letto-Lithuanian languages have already been mentioned, and little more need be said save that they have long felt the double pressure of Teutonic and Slavonic influences and have absorbed words from both. Apart from them, the languages spoken are largely of the Slavonic family, and it is frequently said that the Slavonic languages are less distinct from one another than are the languages of the Romance and the Teutonic families. They have been less influenced by written forms than have the latter; oral tradition has counted for more, and differences have consequently not become so fixed as farther west. There is a certain amount of dispute as to the primary home of Slavonic speech, but it seems increasingly likely that it arose as an adaptation of older forms of Indo-European languages by the people of the Carpathian arc and the Polish platform on its north-eastern flank, and that it spread thence especially in the post-Roman centuries. Schlüter has found reason to believe in a considerable movement from the hills to the valleys and plains in those centuries, and with this we may connect progress of forest clearings and spread of Slav languages, especially towards Muscovy. Most of the regions of Slav speech came into touch with Christianity first of all through Constantinople, but in the case of the more westerly ones the influence of the Roman Church outweighed that of its eastern sister before many centuries had passed, and the Roman principles spread eastward as far as the bounds of what has been called above 'Europe-of-the-Sea'.

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8

_The Slav-speaking Peoples and the Borders of the East_

Of the western Slavonic-speaking peoples the Czechs, inhabiting the hill-girt country of Bohemia, are among the most important. They were first Christianized by the Eastern Church, but became Roman Catholic, the early religious centre being at Taus (Domazlice), at the Bohemian exit of a pass from Bavaria. Later on, Prague was founded and became the capital, and it should be noticed that in it, as in many other cities of Slavonic language, the cathedral is within the castle, typifying association between religious and political leadership, both being frequently more western (German) than the rest of the population. It was natural both that the small, compact, and distinct mass of Czechs should early attain a sort of national self-consciousness, and that their country, in spite of its physical separateness, should receive German immigrants, especially up the Elbe gap. The distinctive personality of Bohemia is illustrated by the fact that the University of Prague, founded on the Paris model, was the first University established beyond the Rhine; it is illustrated also by the fact that Bohemia at so early a date, under John Huss (_c._ A.D. 1398), revolted against Papal abuses, and would undoubtedly have become schismatic had military force not been exerted strongly from without. Nevertheless Bohemia has not been able to maintain political independence in the past. After a short period of power it subsided under Hapsburg influence as Vienna began to gather Europe around her to defend Christianity. And later on (1620) the Czechs were subjugated, and the Counter-Reformation and the Jesuits with their universalist and anti-nationalist ideas repressed the Slavonic tradition until it broke loose once more in the revival of Romantic literature and Nationalist feeling {63} which was such a feature of the nineteenth century. In that century the rise of industry brought many more Germans into North and North-west Bohemia, making that region a sort of 'Ulster', distinct in feeling from the rest of Bohemia, which is far more agricultural. But the rise of Czech feeling spread afresh the use of that language in spite of two centuries of severe repression, and Prague had to develop Czech and German Universities side by side. The relation of Bohemia to Vienna politically was also reflected financially; Vienna was until 1918 to a large extent the money centre for Bohemia, while that country supplied the rest of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a large proportion of its needs in manufactured goods. As a result of the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Bohemia has risen to power again, and has many advantages for the immediate future in spite of dire need of fertilizers, machinery, and credit. Her new government is promising well, and stands out in favourable contrast to those of some of the other countries which have risen suddenly after the war. Its problems will be that of arranging for German co-operation and that of devising substitutes for the old financial links with Vienna.

Between Bohemia and the Carpathians, or more strictly the Tatra, is a physiographical trough such as so often occurs between fold-mountains (e.g. Tatra) and old blocks (e.g. Bohemia). It is occupied by the March (or Morava) river, is called Moravia, and is known as the Moravian gate, for through it Vienna communicates north-eastward not only with the Oder basin via Breslau, but also with the Vistula basin via Cracow. Somewhat more German than Bohemia the Moravian gate is still mainly Slavonic, with dialects grading eastwards towards Polish. There has been some difficulty in settling the limits of Moravia and Poland, the former having properly been allocated to the Czech, or better, Czechoslovak, state in the recent treaties. The dispute centred chiefly upon Děčin (formerly called Teschen), and was {64} solved by the cession to Czechoslovakia of the greater part of the coalfield and the railway which lies in Czechoslovakia, both before it enters and after it leaves Děčin territory. The town of Děčin itself goes to Poland. Not only does Czechoslovakia include Moravia, but it also stretches along the south flank of the Carpathians through a region of Slovak speech and rural life right on to the small district where Ruthenian just emerges west of the Carpathians. Thanks to their different language these Ruthenians are to have local autonomy under Czechoslovakia.

The new state is thus of considerable size, and includes several dialects of Slav; it is both agricultural and industrial; it is keenly patriotic, and disposed, one hears, to split off from the Roman Church, just as it was so disposed in the Middle Ages. This state is contrasted to some extent with the majority of the Slavonic regions, in that, in spite of a large German element, there is more homogeneity and strength of cultural tradition throughout the Czech country than there is among many other Slav-speaking peoples.

Farther east the pressure from the Asiatic grasslands and plateaux hindered the development of social settled life in the Middle Ages, when it was progressing farther west, and as a consequence the population of the towns is often different in tradition from that of the country. In the rural districts, again, the culture connexions of the ruling classes have often been different from those of the simple village folk. The result is that in many parts there have long been three social strata, often differing in language, religion, and political association. Upper Silesia has, in parts, German towns set in Polish country, and though some of the German element is of fairly recent introduction (and connected with industrial development), it nevertheless illustrates the social and political problem.