then called by the generic name of skeemad (spoon meat). These still linger among the Danish peasantry, and are now denominated sœbemad.
Torfæus speaks of the gruels and milk soups; and it appears, according to Saxo, that oatmeal gruel, well-thickened, was used by the poorer class of people as a substitute for bread. A little later, cabbages were much cultivated. Salt was made by throwing water on the ashes of seaweed. The inhabitants of the small isle of Lessoe were celebrated among the Danes for their expertness in fabricating this species of salt.
Later still, bees were extensively kept, and carefully tended; their honey being used in the place of sugar. Vinegar came from fruits or beer. This beer was not made from hops, but from the berries of the Myrica gale of Linnæus. Cider, mead, and strong beer (gammeltœlel) were reserved for fêtes. If the early Danes sometimes drank gammeltœlel to intoxication, the nature of the climate must be their excuse; besides, strong beer, as they made it, was far less hurtful than the corn-brandy which they substituted in later times.
Gymnastic exercises were much patronised. Thorlacius has given an excellent description of these games. Saxo relates that the celebrated Danish bishop, Absalon, would often go unattended into the forests to chop wood by way of exercise. Nor were the early Danes inattentive to cleanliness. Their beautifully clear and rosy skins were continually washed and bathed; their flowing light hair was neatly dressed and frequently combed. Towels had been in use from the beginning, and were first made from plaited fibres, or thin bark. Snorro says that King Suend Estridsen, flying to the isle of Hueen, incurred the anger of his hostess; who, not recognising him as her sovereign, scolded him heartily for drying his hands too high up on the towel that she had lent him. The ancient meetings called gildrskraar, and at which fines were levied from offenders against cleanliness and propriety, are further evidence of the sanitary observances of the early Danes.
Doctors were as yet in small repute. During one of the wars prosecuted by the Danish King Suend Tveskieg against England, dysentery appeared in his army. No physician was present to arrest the ravages of the disease; it rapidly spread among the ranks of warriors, and several thousand men perished. The mortality would have been still greater, but for the medical knowledge of an English ecclesiastic whom they had recently brought a prisoner into their camp. In the pompous expedition made by Canute the Great to Rome, when every minister of luxury was included in the royal suite, physicians and apothecaries were alone wanting; and the monarch and his attendants were greatly indebted to the hospitable cares of the Comte de Namur, who welcomed the royal train, and healed the sick and ailing among them.
In those strong, hearty times, the people lived an active and stirring life; and when, by reason of illness or the access of extreme old age, their throbbing pulses waxed feebler and feebler, they boldly faced the shadowy future, and quietly resigned themselves to approaching death. “The hour is come,” was the submissive cry when the sick gave tokens of impending dissolution. After this, in place of striving to arrest the rapidly-nearing crisis, they rather sought to accelerate it. They cited Odin’s example as one worthy of imitation. According to Snorro, this hero no sooner felt his end approaching, than he decided between life and death by falling on the point of his sword. Traces of this feeling are still to be met with. Even yet, in the remoter nooks and corners of the Danish peninsula and its more distant islets, the peasantry neglect to invoke the offices of the physician, and die without his aid. When the tokens manifest themselves which are infallible signs of death, there still exist places in Jutland where the relatives will put on mourning before the patient is dead. The injurious custom of withdrawing the pillow from beneath the head of the dying, even now occasionally practised among the lower classes of the populace, is a disagreeable remnant of former ignorance. About a century and a half ago, it was regarded as a work of true friendship among the nobility and higher citizens to deprive a dying friend of the support for his head. This act of friendly sympathy could not fail to hasten the death of many persons who otherwise might have lived several hours or even days longer.
As may be supposed, from the frequent wars and turmoils, surgery was much more in request than medicine. Kings themselves were experienced surgeons; and every warrior learned the art of healing wounds. Nor were the women deficient in this respect; they often thronged in crowds to the field of battle to tend the wounded heroes. The use of knives and probes was well understood; gashes were sewed up, limbs amputated, and even replaced by wooden imitations. A species of sedan-chair was invented for the conveyance of the wounded. King Suend was carried in one of these. It is said that gashes made by arrows and other ancient arms, were much more difficult to heal than those inflicted by modern weapons. Female surgeons made great use of a kind of soup cooked in stone jars, and seasoned with onions and other herbs, which they administered to their patients before dressing their wounds. The sick having swallowed the decoction, their nurses pretended to judge by their breath whether the hurts were dangerous or not. Probably this soup contained a species of anodyne, which assuaged the sufferings of the wounded, and thus afforded more facility for the examination and dressing of his wounds.
The use of herbs as medicinal applications, was thoroughly understood by the women of those ancient times. In this branch of the art of healing the fair sex were wholly unrivalled. Idun, the wife of Braga, succeeded in many cures by means of a certain species of apple, of which she alone understood the properties, and which has since been supposed to be neither more nor less than a large pill made up of pounded herbs. In the funeral orations pronounced over the graves of noble ladies, their knowledge of the properties of herbs was frequently the subject of distinct eulogium.
