33.3 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 24/27)

Education, science and literature advanced rapidly in Sweden. The universities of Uppsala, Abo and Lund were among the best in Europe. Jons Jakob Berzelius was one of the founders of modern chemistry, developing a table of atomic weights far more accurate than Dalton's and isolating many chemical e-lements for the first time. Alfred Nobel perfected nitroglycerine and dynamite. Poets abounded, with perhaps the most famous being Esaias Tegner, who wrote the "Frithjofs Saga", a series of legends taken from an old Norse cycle of lays. By 1888 there were 21 translations into English and 19 into German. (Ref. 55 )

Denmark

At the close of the last century in August of 1800, Denmark had joined Russia. Prussia and Sweden in the Second League of Armed Neutrality, pledged to resist British search of neutral vessels. Fearing that the combined naval power of those nations might put an end to her mastery of the seas, Britain decided that one of those fleets had to be destroyed. Denmark's, being close at hand, was chosen and attacked in a vicious sea battle off Copenhagen and most of the Danish ships were disabled or sunk. But Denmark survived and attempted to continue neutral for another 6 years, while she rebuilt her seagoing fleet. In 1807 Britain demanded the use of the entire Danish navy to use against the French and when the Danes ref used war broke out again. General Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) landed 30,000 English troops on Zealand and after bombarding Copenhagen he finally seized the naval harbor and all ships in it. This forced the angry Danish Crown Prince Frederick VII to join up with Napoleon and his country was sucked up in the European whirlpool, once again ending up on the losing side.

In the middle of the century, a number of citizens went to the king and demanded a free constitution and got it. But in both Schleswig and Holstein there were many German people who wanted German rather than Danish rule and the Danish king soon had to go to war against the Holstein rebels, with the unfortunate result that that drew Bismarck into the scene and those provinces were soon lost to Germany (1866). We have detailed above the loss of Norway early in the century, but the old Norwegian dependencies of Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe and Virgin Islands were kept by Denmark.

Between wars the Danes made significant contributions to science, literature and art. Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) founded the science of electromagnetism through 38 years of experimentation. Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844) was one of the two greatest sculptors of Europe of his time. After a Dane invented an improved cream separator, Denmark developed a large butter industry to go along with bacon production. (Ref. 117 , 8 , 211 )

Finland

Finland proper now began to have a denser congregation of true Finns, displacing a sparse and probably related Lapp population. Russia took control of the land in 1809 with a sudden, surprise defeat of the Swedish forces. The Diet was abolished and there was severe oppression by the conquerors. Late in the century, however, when Czar Nicholas II wanted to blend the Finns into the Russian Empire, a struggle resulted and led to a revolution just after the turn of the century in 1905. Actually in essence this was a great national strike that has seldom been equaled anywhere. It did force some changes and a new one-chamber Diet was formed with some political advancements such as freedom of the press and universal suffrage. The Finns did not obtain their final independence until the Boleshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.