The Argosy — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I rT O_O Under Northern Skies. 135 still looking after us. Anticipating our need, she had stood and watched, and now, with energetic signals, made it plain that we must keep to the left. Desolate and remote this village, which was called Vang, might be ; primitive and poor its inhabitants; but barbarous or uncivilised they were not. Kindly and hospitable they are; and, as already remarked, these virtues do not spring from interested motives. Not far off now, crowning the heights above us, were the ruins of Hammershuus, the end of our pilgrimage. A winding path led to them through a copse or thicket of brushwood and stunted trees, where ferns and wild flowers grew in profusion. Stiles had to be overcome, and here and there small dykes tested one’s leaping powers. ‘The steep cliffs of the earlier part of our walk had disappeared, and with them the extreme grandeur of the coast, but the ruins before us stood out boldly on the slopes that were washed by the Baltic. It was a tug to reach them ; the final struggle; but at last we stood within the ruins, looking down from crumbling walls on all the change and decay of man’s art and handiwork; looking upon the rocky slopes, eternal in their might and majesty. ) These medizeval ruins date back to the 13th century, and were then in the hands of the Church. So, also, at one time was the whole island. ‘They are some of the most extensive ruins in Europe ; and to antiquarians some of the most interesting. But the whole island possesses a store of antiquities of great value; runic stones, and circular churches, and other evidences of its ancient history. Change and decay have set their seal upon the ruins of Hammer- shuus. Many portions have entirely disappeared, and probably more would have done so but for occasional restorations. It was first built by Erlandsen, Archbishop of Lund, and in those unsettled times it frequently changed hands: now belonging to the Church, now to the State. Crowning those desolate and distant rocks, it must have been a grand and noble object ; from its remoteness, a sort of wonder of the world. Fierce were the fights it witnessed, great the bloodshed, legion the prisoners that languished in its dungeons. Some of these dun- geons have preserved substantial traces of their existence, as if they had been the most solidly built portions of the great structures. In those days it may be that no other building was in sight be- yond the dependencies of the great castle, and of these no traces remain. Even now the ruins stand out alone and desolate, with no modern tenement to disturb their romantic influence and im- pression. But on the other side, in the hollow, beyond the wood and the wild heather, near the lighthouse of Hammeren, is an inn that, with its numerous buildings, forms quite a small colony. It owes its existence, and whatever prosperity it may enjoy, to the ruins ; and in this way, as well as in other ways, the deeds we do live after us. From the castle heights this small cluster of houses looked buried in Conmicboooks (CO)