212 THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
rectly. The fact that it has for seven hundred years been the leading 
city of Sweden, that for four hundred years it has been the seat of the 
court, that for three hundred years it has been the stage of our political 
life enacted in the Riksdag, that for one hundred and fifty years it has 
had a permanent opera where performances are given the year round 
—an institution which even London does not possess and which exists 
in very few of the cultural centres in Europe—all this combines to 
make ‘Stockholm produce a more cosmopolitan effect than that of 
other European and perhaps also of American cities of the same size. 
The visitor is sensible of this even before he has seen the spacious and 
unusually attractive restaurants or has noted the luxuriant taxicabs, 
which are certainly finer than the vehicles used in public traffic in any 
of the other cities of the world. Another point of supeiioiity in Stock¬ 
holm is the telephone system. While London in 1914 had only 35 and 
Berlin only 66 telephones for every thousand inhabitants, Stockholm 
had 241 for every thousand inhabitants. It may be admitted unie- 
servedly that these external criteria of a metropolis are superficial, and 
yet they have significance when they apply to that one of the European 
capitals which, next to Constantinople, has the most beautiful situation. 
On granite islands which were formerly covered with a giowth of 
birch and pine, on a talus which is a memento of the glacial period, 
Stockholm lies with broad expanses of water in its very centre, and 
with that mixture of the old and the new in its architecture which is 
not the least of its charms. The heart of the city is Stadsholmen, now 
known as the City Between the Bridges. There, on the site of the 
old palace, lies that “majestic rectangle,” the construction of which 
was begun while Charles XII was fighting in Russia and Poland. 
The royal palace is one of the finest buildings of its kind in the world, 
whether we look at its imposing exterior or at the noble decorations of 
the interior. It is an expression of the grandiose spirit of the time when 
it originated. Of great beauty too is the Swedish Hall of Knights in 
the Dutch-French baroque style, built upon the initiative of Gustav 
IT Adolf’s friend and co-worker, Sweden’s greatest statesman, Axel 
Oxenstierna. It was erected in the seventeenth century, in the period 
when the Swedish nobility was at its zenith, and as it lies theie on 
Stadsholmen, its mighty brick walls reflected in Riddarholmen Canal, 
it is a monument of great artistic value, and in our—fortunately or 
unfortunately, according to the point of view completely democra¬ 
tized present-day Sweden, it is an incentive to gratitude for the dis¬ 
tinguished services that the Swedish nobility has rendered and is still 
rendering in the cause of Sweden’s defense and of Swedish culture. 
No more than a stone’s throw away, on the tiny Riddarholmen 
island, looms Riddarholmen Church, the venerable pile which shelters 
within its walls the graves of Gustav II Adolf and Charles XII. 
These two monarchs were the only crowned heads of Europe for several 
