Like those of the Continent, they are only teaching institutions, and
the students who matriculate at Upsala and Lund must lodge in town or
board with families living there. Beyond attending the lectures and
going up to be tested, they have no direct intercourse with their
professors.

In this brief sketch of the institutions provided by the state it
will be seen that what especially characterizes public instruction in
Norway and Sweden is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a
serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course.
By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the
protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best
years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and
thirty years of age when he first treads on the threshold of his
career. On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary
qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe
tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the assurance of
finding the way more or less open to success.[i]




CHAPTER X

HAAKON VII, THE NEW KING OF NORWAY


There is something essentially, almost ludicrously, modern about
the creation of Norway's new king. Not that it is the first time a
sovereign has been, so to speak, "custom-made." An eligible foreign