The St. Mary Banner

ONCE BUSY CITY NOW QUIET
Wisby Has Little to Show That It Was at One Time Liveliest Place of Its Size in Europe.

To the eastward of Sweden, in the inhospitable Baltic, lies the great island of Gothland, with its capital of Wisby. Little visited and little known, Wisby is one of the most interesting cities of northern Europe. It is in the track of half the Russian and Scandinavian sea commerce, but few ships make the land today in which was once the busiest of northern harbors. Land at Wisby and you find a quiet little city with ivy-covered houses and gardens of roses, going about its unimportant affairs in an atmosphere of placid calm. It takes a considerable effort of the imagination to call up a picture of the times when Wisby was to the Baltic and the North sea what Venice in the height of her power was to the Mediterranean. Wisby in those days was the wealthiest and liveliest city of its size in Europe. The men of Wisby seem to have been traders from the beginning. Back in the ancient Norse chronicles there is mention made of Wisby galleys that went all over the known globe and traded the treasures of the Levant with Norse kings. Today they are still digging about in a desultory fashion on the island in search of historical relics and the shovels bring up coins of all the ancient nations--coins of old Britain, of barbarian Russia, of the numberless German states, of France and Spain and north Africa. Wisby gathered the gold of every land with her venturous trading keels, in times when a little business trip had as much romance and danger as the forays of a knight errant fighting over his lady's eyebrow.