The commerce of Christiania is increasing annually. Over two thousand vessels were entered at its custom house during the year 1885. There are regular lines of steamers established between here and London, Hull, Glasgow, Copenhagen, and other ports, which transact a large amount of business in the freight department, with a considerable incidental passenger trade. The harbor is frozen over at least three months of the year, though that of Hammerfest, situated a thousand miles farther north on the coast of Norway, is never closed by ice, owing to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream,--an agent so potent as to modify the temperature of the entire coast of Scandinavia on its western border. Wenham Lake Ice, which was originally and for some years shipped from Massachusetts to England, now comes direct from the Christiania fjord! An English company has long owned a lake near Dröbak, which yields them an ample supply of ice annually. The London ice-carts still bear the name of "Wenham Lake," but the ice comes from Norway. We were told that the quantity shipped for use in England increases yearly as ice grows to be more and more of a domestic necessity.
The Storthing's Hus is quite a handsome and imposing building, of original design in the Romanesque and Byzantine style, facing the Carl Johannes Square, the largest open area in the city. It was finished and occupied in 1866. The Market Place is adorned with a marble statue 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 boulevard extending from the railroad station to the King's Palace, half way between which stands the imposing structure of the University. Opposite this edifice is the Public Garden, where an out-door concert is given during the summer evenings by a military band. In a large wooden building behind the University is kept that great unrivalled curiosity, the Viking ship, a souvenir of more than nine hundred years ago. The blue clay of the district where it was exhumed in 1880, a few miles south from Christiania at Gokstad, has preserved it nearly intact. The men who built the graceful lines of this now crumbling vessel, "in some remote and dateless day," knew quite as much of the principles of marine architecture as do our modern shipwrights of to-day. This interesting relic, doubtless the oldest ship in the world, once served the Vikings, its masters, as a war-craft. It is eighty feet long by sixteen wide, and is about six feet deep from gunwale to keel. Seventy shields, spears, and other war equipments recovered with the hull show that it was designed for that number of fighting men. A curious thrill is felt by one while regarding these ancient weapons and armor, accompanied by a wish that they might speak and reveal their long-hidden story. In such vessels as this the dauntless Northmen made voyages to every country in Europe, and as is confidently believed 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. Some of the arts and sciences may and do exhibit great progress in excellence, but shipbuilding is not among them. We build bigger but not better vessels. This ancient galley of oak, in the beauty of its lines, its adaptability for speed, and its general sea-worthiness, cannot be surpassed by our best naval constructors to-day. An American naval officer who chanced to be present with the author, declared that there were points about this exhumed vessel which indicated retrogression rather than progress on the part of modern builders of sea-going craft. The bent timbers on the inside are of natural growth, the sheathing boards are an inch and a half in thickness, firmly riveted, the iron bolts clinched on either end. Near the gunwales the bolts are of oak. The planking slightly overlaps, being bevelled for the purpose; that is, the hull is what we technically call clinker-built, and would probably draw about four feet of water in a sea-going trim. The bow and stern are of the same pointed shape, and rise a considerable distance above the waist, giving the vessel what sailors term a deep sheer inboard.