ue of Christian IV. Another
fine square is the Eidsvolds Plads, planted with choice trees and
carpeted with intensely bright greensward. The chief street is the Carl
Johannes Gade, a broad thoroughfare extending from the railroad station
to the king's palace, halfway between which stands the university. In a
large wooden building behind the university is kept that unrivalled
curiosity, the "Viking Ship," a souvenir of nine hundred years ago. The
blue clay of the district, where it was exhumed in 1880, a few miles
south of Christiania, has preserved it all these years. The men who
built the graceful lines of this now crumbling vessel, "in some remote
and dateless day," knew quite as much of true marine architecture as do
our modern shipwrights. This interesting relic, doubtless the oldest
ship in the world, once served the Vikings, its masters, as a sea-craft.
It is eighty feet long by sixteen wide, and is about six feet deep from
the gunwale. Seventy shields, as many spears, and other war equipments
recovered with the hull, show that it carried that number of
fighting-men.

In such vessels as this the dauntless Northmen made voyages to every
country in Europe a thousand years ago, and, as is confidently believed
by many, they crossed the Atlantic, discovering North America centuries
before the name of Columbus was known. Ignoring the halo of romance and
chivalry which the poets have thrown about the valiant Vikings and their
followers, one thing we are compelled to admit--they were superb marine
architects. Ten centuries of progressive civilization have served to
produce none better. Most of the arts and sciences may, and do, exhibit
great progress in excellence, but ship-building is not among them. We
build bigger, but not finer, vessels.

The burial of this ship so many centuries ago was simply in accordance
with the custom of those days. When any great sea-king perished, he was
enclosed in the cabin of his galley, and either sunk in the ocean or
buried with his vessel and all of its warlike equipments upon the
nearest suitable spot of land. We are told that when a chieftain died in
battle, not only were his war-horse, his gold and silver plate, and his
portable personal effects buried or burned with his body, but a guard of
honor from among his followers slew themselves that he might enter the
sacred halls of Odin (the Scandinavian Deity) properly attended. The
more elevated in rank the chief might be, the larger th