THE WOMEN OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN

No volume dealing with Scandinavian life would be complete without some tribute to the women of Norway and Sweden. They are magnificent specimens wherever you may find them in the kitchen, the factory, the harvest field, the hospital, the schoolhouse, the drawing-room, or the palace. They are good mothers, good daughters, and good wives, and while their devotion to their sons, husbands, and fathers is not surpassed by their sisters in any land, they are at the same time independent, self-reliant, and progressive to a degree that offers a striking contrast to the statue of the representatives of their sex in other countries of Europe. They give their best talents, affections, and strength; they ask the same in return. There is no country, not even the United States, where women exercise a wider influence, both direct and indirect in the home, the school, the church, upon the platform, and in the press. There is no other country in which the professions, trades, and other occupations are so free to them, or in which their opportunities are utilized with greater zeal, ability, and success. They work side by side with men upon the farms, in the factories, in mercantile establishments, counting-houses, government offices, and in art, science, and literature, and are equally capable, although, as in other lands, their pay for the same labor and equal results is less.

From the time that Margit Larsson saved Gustavus Vasa from capture by the Danish soldiers by hiding him in her cellar, the women of Sweden have exercised a powerful influence in politics, although it has been indirect, and the ablest and most progressive to-day prefer that their present political condition shall remain unchanged. They do not think it wise to extend the franchise any farther for fear that universal suffrage will result in the corruption of national politics, which is now comparatively pure. They prefer the present restrictions, which give the ballot only to women who pay taxes, because it deprives ignorant and incompetent women of a voice in the government, and avoids the dangers that often attend the participation of the masses in elections. They prefer to direct their efforts to securing an increase in women’s wages, so that they may receive the same compensation as men for the same work, and hope to accomplish practical results by educating public sentiment and bringing moral pressure upon the employing class.

Speaking on this subject, an eminent Swedish writer says: “In the energetic campaign for the betterment of the condition of women, the Swedes have taken the first place among European nations. If one seeks the cause of it, it is found in part in the fact that in Sweden, since the remotest time, women have enjoyed a respect greater than in most of the other countries, but without doubt it is also due to the superiority of the intellect, judgment, and wisdom of Swedish women, and in later years to the numerical excess of women in our population. This has made the means of existence to single women a practical problem. During the present generation a great change has worked itself out in this sense, that the field of activity for women has been greatly enlarged. The activity of women, who at other times found ample domain in the multitude of occupations in the domestic life, has become less important in that respect and has grown in importance in the labor and occupations that in other countries are left exclusively to men.”

The advancement of women in Sweden was greatly encouraged and assisted by the quiet influence of the late Queen Sophia and her sister-in-law, the late Princess Eugenie, the sister of Oscar II. The queen, always an intelligent, progressive Christian woman, with a profound consciousness of the responsibility attached to her official rank and influence, was a women’s woman, and was habitually engaged in promoting movements for the benefit of her sex, and with due respect to the proprieties of her position. She never lost an opportunity to assist and encourage all who were engaged in advancing the physical, moral, and social well-being of the women of Sweden and Norway.

The association of Swedish Women, which is a branch of the International Council of Women, was organized in 1896, and has over twelve thousand members, its object being to promote the welfare of the sex, to educate them on all questions concerning their legal and social rights, to enlarge their sphere of activity, and to assist those who are thrown upon their own resources to earn their living. The active, practical work is done by subordinate societies devoted to particular interests, as, for example, the Fredrika Bremer Association manages a sick relief fund for wage earners, assists students in the universities and technical schools, finds employment for those who need it, conducts schools for trained nurses, keeps a register of women who are capable of performing various duties, and is continually engaged in works of benevolence.

Another organization, known as the Swedish Woman’s Association for the Defense of Their Country, is purely patriotic, and was organized in 1884 in connection with the movement for the increase of the army, for the purpose of educating public opinion. It has forty affiliated local committees carrying on a propaganda of patriotism. There is a women’s club at Stockholm whose special purpose is to protect working women from persecution by their employers and others, to educate them concerning legal rights of women wage-earners, and to furnish legal advice and counsel to those who are in trouble. The seamstresses have an alliance, and the shop girls are organized into a union.

The advancement of women commenced under the leadership and inspiration of the late Fredrika Bremer, the famous authoress, who is well known in the United States because of her frequent visits here and her literary works. She was the pioneer of the movement to improve the condition of women morally, socially, and intellectually.

Sweden was the first country to recognize the property rights of women. This was due to an event that occurred a thousand years ago. While the king and his army were engaged in foreign wars, the Danes invaded the province of Smoland, when the women armed themselves to defend their homes. They were led to battle by the beautiful Blenda, who defeated the invaders and drove them from the country. In recognition of their heroism the king proclaimed a decree granting the women of the country property rights, and it has been since recognized as the law of the land.

All the professions and occupations common to men are open to the women of Sweden, and in 1862 suffrage was granted women in municipal affairs. They are permitted to vote at the election of delegates to conventions which choose members of the first chamber of parliament. These rights can now be exercised by all women who pay taxes. In Stockholm, however, a woman voter must be out of debt and the lawful owner of the property upon which the taxes are paid.

The members of the first chamber of the parliament, which corresponds to the United States Senate, are elected by conventions of delegates chosen at popular elections in the country and in cities by the members of the municipal councils. Therefore, as women have the right to vote for members of the municipal council and for delegates to these conventions, they participate indirectly in the election of the Swedish Senate; but comparatively few exercise the privilege.

Women of advanced views, aided by the members of the socialist party, are now seeking universal suffrage and a law making them eligible to parliament and to membership in the provincial and municipal councils. This proposition has not met with much favor, and the only time it has ever been brought to vote it was unanimously defeated in the first chamber of parliament and in the second by fifty-three nays to forty-four yeas, less than one-half the members present voting.

The first woman to practice medicine in Sweden was Caroline Widerstrom, who is still living and occupies a prominent position in Stockholm. Her practice is as large and as profitable as that enjoyed by most of the men physicians.

The foremost woman in Sweden to-day in intellect and influence, in popular esteem and in public movements, and the recognized successor of Fredrika Bremer, is Ellen Key, an authoress and editorial writer upon Svenska Dagbladet.

In the system of local government in Norway, women now participate upon an equal basis with men. The movements which culminated May, 1901, had been going on since 1884 under the leadership of Miss Gina Krog, who may be called the Susan B. Anthony of Norway. In the latter year she organized a woman’s suffrage association, delivered a series of lectures on the subject, and established a newspaper called the Nyloende meaning “the new ground.” Miss Krog is something over fifty years of age, of fine education and excellent family, and has been noted for her activity in literary and charitable affairs. She has been a teacher, a writer for the press, a director of charitable institutions, and has lived a life of great activity and usefulness, devoting her own means with generosity to the cause which she has undertaken.

The suffrage movement at first attracted little attention, but public sentiment grew slowly, and in 1890 Miss Krog succeeded in having a bill brought into the storthing giving women the right to vote in school matters. It received forty-four out of a total of one hundred and fourteen votes. The liberal party then made it an issue, and two years after the same bill received a majority in the storthing, but required two-thirds of the votes to pass. At that time a property qualification was required of men. The income tax returns were used as registration lists at the polls, and none but those who paid on incomes of $84 in the country and $92 in the city were allowed to vote.

The leaders of the movement for universal suffrage for men united forces with the women suffragists, and in 1898 accomplished their purpose. The women might have succeeded the same year but for an unfortunate division in their ranks. One faction wanted to limit suffrage to unmarried women who own property and deprive married women and dependent daughters and wage-earners of the ballot. But a compromise was finally arranged, the two factions were brought together, and in May, 1901, succeeded in accomplishing the purpose for which they have been engaged. They received the support of a large portion of the conservative members of the storthing as well as the unanimous support of the liberal and radical parties, only twenty votes being cast in the negative.

The women of Norway do not propose to rest on their present success. Miss Krog is continuing the fight to secure the right of participation in national as well as municipal affairs, and believes that the women will have all the political rights of men in Norway within the next few years. She insists that public sentiment favors the cause and that parliament will take a step further soon and amend the law by making it broader and more general. Universities are open to women on an equal basis with men, and many women are taking advantage of the opportunity to secure the higher education, and if ever, like the women of Finland, they are allowed to sit in parliament, they will be amply fitted to do so.

Under the present law only women who pay a certain amount of taxes can vote. An unmarried woman living at home is deprived of the ballot unless she has an income of her own; a married woman can not vote unless either she or her husband has a stated income. Thus many of the most intelligent and progressive women of the country are still outside the suffrage line. Everybody in Norway who earns a dollar pays an income tax. It may be very small, but a certain percentage of each day’s wages of every peasant goes into the government treasury. Every person in Norway declares that it is the least objectionable means of raising money for national and municipal expenses that has ever been tried there, and that it stimulates the patriotism of the people, who realize that they are contributors to the support of their government, and should take an active interest in its management.

Many of the wisest men in Norway consider the universal suffrage amendment to the constitution, which was passed in 1898, a mistake for this reason because it removes a powerful incentive for men to accumulate money. The Norwegian has a large and natural fund of patriotism. He loves his country like the Swiss. Nowhere else do men and women have to work so hard for a living, but life is the more precious the harder one has to labor to sustain it. We value things according to their cost. In the tropics, where no man need work, human life is held cheaply. Men die and kill without compunction; they excite revolutions and overthrow governments, sparing neither themselves nor others. But in Norway, as in Switzerland, where it is a ceaseless struggle from the cradle to the grave, there is more national pride and patriotism than in any land, and the privilege of living and working and suffering is esteemed as the most precious inheritance of man.

Women in America who are working for the ballot have only to go to Norway to find that having a voice in the making of the laws of the country does not remove every obstacle to the progress of the sex; that there are still many injustices, and that the women work as hard as the men. The Norwegian woman usually carries a little more than her share of the load, and can support a husband without difficulty if he insists upon it. There is nothing so admirable in this world as a useful woman, particularly if she is married to a man inclined to leisure and loafing. In Norway and other countries of northern Europe the ballad, “I Love to See My Dear Old Mother Work,” is something more than an affectionate sentiment. It has a practical significance, and is frequently found in husbands as well as sons.

Of all the labor that the women of Norway engage in, especially women in the rural districts, is the occupation of caring for the saeter. A saeter is a summer ranch or dairy farm peculiar, to Norway a cabin among the pastures way up in the mountains, where the cattle are driven during the summer months and butter and cheese are made. Almost every large farmer has a saeter. When the spring field work at home has been finished, the cattle are taken thither by the young women and girls, often twenty and sometimes forty miles away, where they stay during the summer and make butter and cheese, gather hay, knit stockings, and embroider linen. The dwelling is usually a rude hut with a single room, mud floor, an open fireplace without chimney, and a few pieces of rough furniture. Sheds and pens surround the hut, and there are patches of enclosed ground where hay is made and where the younger members of the flock are protected. The cattle are called at night by a horn made of birch bark. When blown lustily, it gives a clear note not unlike the cornet, and the cattle invariably respond to its sound.

There is a good deal of romance about saeter life in books, but I should say that there is very little in actual experience. Many of the charming fairy stories in Norwegian literature have their scenes in those mountain dairies. The saeter girls (saeterjenter they are called), have a peculiar and melodious cattle call, known as the Huldrelok, which is said to have been inherited from the Huldre-folk, a species of fairy that are very pretty, but unfortunately have tails. Usually a young farmer falls in love with one of the girls, and when he discovers that she has a tail, is so shocked and disappointed that he throws himself over a precipice; or perhaps the Huldre-folk gobble him up and carry him off into the mountains of the Josteldalsbrae and keep him there, while the girl he left behind him grieves herself to death because of his desertion.

The dairy maids are supposed to have a peculiar costume, and photographs are often seen of them arrayed in picturesque dress, but I never saw them worn. In all the saeters I visited the clothes worn were very plain and ordinary, and seemed to have been selected for wear and not for looks.

We visited a saeter one day and found two young people in charge, a boy and a girl, neither of them over seventeen, we should judge from appearances. Their herd consisted of fifteen cows, and they expected to remain in that desolate country two or three months, making cheese and butter. Our little saeterjenta had the heart of a poet, although her brother seemed stupid, and even liberal presents of money did not wake him up or make him interesting. I do not suppose that this child had ever been twenty miles from the humble cabin in which she was born, but the wide, wide world had been opened to her through the books she had studied at school. She could talk a little English, and knew a good deal about the United States. She had a brother in Minnesota, and many of the boys and girls in the neighborhood had gone across the Atlantic and found homes on the saeterless prairies of our Northwest. She would like to go herself, she said, but her mother was old and feeble and the work of the farm fell upon her little shoulders. Yet she was brave and contented. Her mind was clear, her imagination active, and among her homely surroundings she had found food for thought and an opportunity to give expression to the poetic sentiments that inspired her. Each of her fifteen cows had a name. One she called Moon Lady, because she often wanders away at night; another the Crown Wearer, because of a peculiar tuft upon her head. She addressed them all in terms of affection and talked to them, seeking their sympathy, for, poor child, they and that stupid, tow-headed broder were her only companions.

In the little saeterjenta we have a type of the laboring peasant women of Norway and Sweden; all willingly industrious and all philosophically extracting some sweets out of the burdensome life they must live, and that is why I say they deserve a tribute, whether in the field or factory, the saeter, the common home, or the palace.